credit crunches. reforms that avoid such panic reduce the likelihood that financial stress transmits to real economy stress. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches it is arguable, as i noted at the outset, that the extreme liquidity shock was simply a function of the scale of the economic impact of the covid crisis, and the central bank response a necessary and unavoidable consequence of a tail event. supported by central bank intervention, markets have certainly stabilised. 12 indeed, some seem to have fully recovered their pre - crisis levels. i would reiterate, however, that the crisis is far from over and further negative covid19 developments could cause financial instability to return. and although it may seem that all is ‘ back to normal ’ and we should move on, i think the march episode raises two important and perhaps uncomfortable broad questions – questions to which we will need to return. first, do we need more resilience, particularly liquidity resilience, in the non - bank parts of the financial system? we have, as i have set out, made the banking system much more resilient to severe, unanticipated shocks. the banking system, admittedly, plays a core role in our economies. what would be the costs and benefits of greater resilience in market based finance – which now accounts for around half of the global financial system? and second, if central banks have to backstop liquidity in financial markets – as they do for solvent banks – how should that be organised and what should be the consequences for the private sector? these are questions i believe the central bank and regulatory community will need to address. it is too early for answers to these questions. and i expect new issues will arise as we progress through this crisis. but we should not lose the insights that the last few months have given us already about how the system functions under stress. some us equity markets recently reached record highs, both the ftse 250 and the s & p 500 have gained over 40 % from their march lows, and sterling 3m and usd 3m libor rates have come in 70bps and 81bps respectively from their crisis highs all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches i would at this stage identify a number of areas that will likely merit further consideration in a comprehensive, evidence based, analysis of how

years, as machines first displaced agricultural workers and, more recently, factory workers. these shifts were huge. in 1750, half the labour force worked in the primary sector. today, it is 1 %. estimates of the potential scale of future job displacement are highly uncertain. studies suggest between 10 % and 50 % of the global workforce could see their jobs disrupted significantly, if not displaced entirely, all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / speeches over the next 10 - 15 years. 26 at the upper end, that would be almost 2 billion people globally whose livelihoods could be significantly disrupted. this is vastly more than any previous industrial revolution. as in the past, the costs of this disruption are unlikely to be spread evenly. recent studies have shown that those at greatest risk are likely to work in sectors and regions still reeling from earlier industrial revolutions. jobs among lower - skilled workers doing routine tasks in the service sector in post - industrial towns and cities are ripe for automation. 27 the bbc website has an app which puts this probability at 83 %. if that were the path followed by the fourth industrial revolution, it could be a recipe for another “ i ” – inequality – as various studies have shown. 28 earlier industrial revolutions were also associated with rising levels of inequality, at least in their initial phase. against a background of uncomfortably high starting levels of inequality in some countries, that could raise already - grave concerns about the inclusiveness of societies. just in case i haven ’ t depressed you enough already, it is possible to paint a more dystopian picture still. the science fiction writer raymond kurtzweil, among others, has speculated about the possibility of a “ singularity ” – a point where machines surpass the functioning of the brain in every task. 29 estimates vary on when this point might be reached, if ever. but a number place it this century. the singularity, were it to arrive, would mark a second inflexion point for humankind. the course of human history, beyond that singularity point, is not just unknown but unknowable. it is, by definition, beyond the limits of even our imagination. at that point, human control over our own destinies could be lost forever. this is not biological extinction, in the sense of dinosaurs and dodos. but it could be neurological extinction. were the singularity to arrive, some have argued this would take societies to their next evolutionary state