flexible and forward - looking approach to financial supervision that seeks to motivate prudent management - and thereby complete the “ virtuous circle ” by encouraging further advances in risk management. the reforms underway are especially evident in the banking world under the basel committee ’ s “ basel ii ” framework. i should add that the international association of insurance supervisors ( iais ), a fellow association of supervisors in the insurance area, is now discussing a supervisory framework that would apply to all insurance regulatory systems globally. evolution in risk management and the reform of financial supervision should complement and reinforce each other, and the progress in each area will be influenced by the work underway globally to revise accounting guidelines. the geneva association has taken a great interest in this topic, so i will conclude my remarks with some brief thoughts from my perspective on the convergence of accounting standards, advances in risk management, and supervision. ii. trends across financial services sector allow me to begin with an overview of recent trends in risk management. last year, a body representing major financial supervisory agencies conducted a study of 31 banks, securities firms, and insurance companies in 12 jurisdictions. this body - called the “ joint forum ” - consists of expert supervisors from member agencies of the basel committee, the international organisation of securities commissioners ( iosco ), and the iais. the joint forum seeks to identify best practices and develop guidance for activities across the financial services sector. in its report, which was published in august 2003, the joint forum identified two important and recent trends among large, complex firms engaged in banking, securities, or insurance, or in some mix of these activities. a. integration of the risk management function one of the most notable advances in risk management across all three financial services sectors is the growing emphasis on developing a firm - wide assessment of risk. this constitutes the first trend in the joint forum ’ s report. improvements in technology and telecommunications have made it easier for firms to gather, collect, and analyse large amounts of data on their exposures and business activities efficiently and increasingly in near “ real time. ” to make the best use of firm - wide data, some organisations have established a dedicated risk management function to foster more highly integrated and systematic approaches to risk measurement and management. the risk management function typically promotes the use of common risk measures across business lines. it can then report the firm - wide risk data to senior management. reports may range from daily updates on “ value - at - risk ” trading positions to regular, if less

john c williams : monetary policy and the economic outlook remarks by mr john c williams, president and chief executive officer of the federal reserve bank of new york, at euromoney real return xiii : the inflation - linked products conference 2019, new york city, 4 september 2019. * * * as prepared for delivery thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning. in a speech chair powell gave last month, he said, “ low inflation seems to be the problem of this era, not high inflation. ” 1 persistently low inflation is just one of the reasons the theme of this conference is very timely. our dual mandate goals and inflation is one of the topics i ’ m going to address today. the fed has two goals set by congress : maximum employment and price stability. these are also known as the dual mandate. when i talk about price stability, our objective is to keep the inflation rate near our symmetric 2 percent goal, 2 so understanding inflation data and how it fits into the broader economic picture is critically important. this morning i ’ m going to set the scene for that broader economic picture and explain how changes in the landscape influenced the rate adjustment the federal open market committee ( fomc ) made in july. i ’ ll then discuss the challenges on the horizon and how they feed into my thinking on monetary policy. this is as good a time as any to remind everyone that the views i express today are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the federal open market committee or others in the federal reserve system. the economic outlook if you do an online search about recent economic developments, the word “ uncertainty ” will come up a lot. and it ’ s true that uncertainty, both at home and abroad, is playing an important role in my thinking about the economic outlook and monetary policy, as i ’ ll discuss shortly. but when you take a step back and look at where things stand today relative to our goals, the economy is in a favorable place. the current expansion is the longest on record. the economy continues to grow at a moderate pace, as seen in the latest gdp numbers. and this growth has supported month after month of job gains and a pickup in wage growth in the past couple of years. furthermore, the overall unemployment rate is near the lowest it has been in 50 years. and the benefits of the strong labor market have been broad across the population : unemployment rates for african - americans and hispanics, while still higher than the overall rate, are near their all -