painstaking. carmen once described an episode where she found herself, at 3 o ’ clock in the morning, counting the number of zeros in records from countries that had experienced hyperinflation. of course, with such a tiring task a little help can come in handy. if the legend is true, carmen ’ s husband and frequent co - author, our friend vincent reinhart, once put together almost all the economic data published by the league of nations and gave it to carmen on valentine ’ s day. maybe carmen can tell us a little bit more about this most unusual gift. now back to carmen ’ s economic research. carmen ’ s specialty is to draw lessons for the present by studying the past. taking a long - term view helps to put things into perspective, and reveals that there are often historical analogies to contemporary situations that may at first seem unprecedented. carmen ’ s work reminds us that the financial crisis of 2007 / 08 was far from unique in economic history. however, when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, even carmen concludes that this time truly is different. the global lockdowns imposed as a reaction to the virus are something the world has never seen before. page 3 / 4 today, carmen will talk to us about monetary policy in times of high public debt. carmen has published extensively on the various implications of high public debt. for instance, in an influential paper written with maria belen sbrancia, carmen showed how western governments managed to repay their debt after world war ii through a set of policies known as ‘ financial repression ’. measures such as legal ceilings on interest rates and restrictions on international capital flows created an environment where domestic savers had no other option than to invest in low - yielding government debt. financial repression was particularly effective in liquidating public debt when accompanied by a steady dose of inflation. the relation between monetary policy and government finances is an old and critical issue in central banking. it is also a very timely topic, given the massive increase in public debt that many countries have experienced since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. we are living through times of extraordinary uncertainty. what we can safely assume, however, is that the interplay between monetary and fiscal policy will be among the key challenges that central bankers will face in the years to come. to cope with these challenges, carmen ’ s ability to take a step back and to provide us with a clear view of the big picture is most welcome. with this, i

all miss the same key risks. 2 such a culture could possibly create vulnerabilities in the financial system. at the fed we try to address this issue, in part, through appropriate disclosure about the supervisory stress test. we have published information about the overall framework employed in various aspects of the supervisory stress test, but not the full details that banks could use to manage to the test. this - making it easier to game the test - is the potential negative consequence of transparency that i alluded to earlier. we also value different approaches for designing scenarios and conducting stress tests. in the united states, in addition to supervisory stress testing, large financial firms are required to conduct their own stress tests, using their own models and stress scenarios that capture their unique risks. 3 in evaluating each bank ’ s capital planning process, supervisors focus on how well banks ’ internal scenarios and models capture their unique risks and business models. we expect firms to determine the risks inherent to their businesses, their riskappetite, and to make business decisions on that basis. and that is a good place to stop. thank you. ben s. bernanke ( 2013 ), “ stress testing banks : what have we learned? “ speech delivered at the “ maintaining financial stability : holding a tiger by the tail ” financial markets conference sponsored by the federal reserve bank of atlanta, stone mountain, april 8. under the dodd - frank act, all financial companies with more than $ 10 billion in total consolidated assets that are supervised by a primary federal financial regulatory agency are required to conduct an annual companyrun stress test. however, only bank holding companies with $ 50 billion or more in total consolidated assets are subject to the supervisory stress test and an evaluation of their capital planning process. bis central bankers ’ speeches