An important advantage of this option would be to eliminate the procyclicality of the micro-prudential liquidity regulation in its current formulation; a disadvantage would be an added layer of complexity.” (Tobias Adrian and Markus Brunnermeier) According to Carosio, another solution would be the one proposed by Perotti, Enrico and Javier Suarez (2009) “to levy charges on banks funding maturity, a proxy for systemic liquidity risk” and the one proposed by Tobias Adrian and Markus Brunnermeier, “to tie levies to measures of systemic risk” or the one proposed by Nicoletti Alltimari, Sergio and Salleo (2010), “to devise market instrument that make liquidity available on a contingent basis, when a systemic trigger is activated”. Undoubtedly, these issues require additional analysis and work. In the area of the microprudential regulation, the Basel Committee, as we all know, in December last year proposed an impressive collection of reforms aimed at increasing the resilience of the individual financial institutions in case of panic and stress. Without elaboration, I would only mention the following: First, increasing the quality and the quantity of the capital; Second, increasing the capital charges on the basis of the trading portfolio; Third, introducing of a leverage ratio for the financial institutions. Fourth, improvement of risk management and disclosures, as the crisis has revealed the weaknesses of the so-called “improved” risk management techniques on the basis of the internal risk models. Fifth, special attention should be paid to the so-called counter party credit risk from OTC derivatives.

History doesn’t seem to offer much of a guide, though we’ve seen other periods of sustained productivity booms. We did not anticipate this acceleration, which itself suggests we need to be somewhat tentative in forecasting its future. Dale Jorgenson, Mun Ho, and Kevin Stiroh have concluded in some recent research that there’s a reasonable prospect that structural productivity growth will average just over 2.5 percent a year for the next decade. And they think the probability of growth exceeding that pretty favorable forecast is higher than the odds we’ll be disappointed. In support of that view, they make essentially two points. First, they do not see evidence of deceleration in the pace of advancement in technological innovation; nor do they see signs of diminishing marginal returns to IT investment or evidence that we are coming close to fully exploiting the potential of past innovations to improve productivity. And second, they argue that the improved competitive environment - in all its dimensions - is likely to continue to be a spur to further innovation, to further investment in technology and further adoption of technology. These are reasonably compelling arguments. Their forecast is close to that of the Council of Economic Advisers, the Congressional Budget Office and the consensus of private forecasters. They may prove to be right. But the overall environment for investment and innovation could be materially affected by the disposition of our fiscal and external imbalances and our exceptionally low net national savings rate. A few key points about the dimensions of these imbalances.