the speed of technological change and a growing reliance on third - party, technology - based services is increasingly introducing new risks and vulnerabilities to the sector. to begin to address this, the fsb is focused on achieving greater convergence in areas such as regulatory reporting of cyber incidents, and we will deliver those recommendations to the g20 in october. banking reforms — an assessment to date next month, the fsb will release the final report of its most ambitious evaluation of the effects of post - gfc banking reforms. the report on too - big - to - fail ( tbtf ) reforms is the fsb ’ s most analytically rigorous evaluation carried out to date. when looking at these reforms, indicators of systemic risk and moral hazard moved in the right direction, and effective tbtf reforms seem to have brought net benefits. in fact, at the beginning of the covid event, we observed a far more resilient banking sector than that which entered the 2008 crisis. yet, if the benefits of tbtf reforms are to be fully realized, there remains further work to do. the fsb outlines this work in its forthcoming evaluation. further analysis of such reforms, international financial standards, agreed g20 and fsb commitments, recommendations, and other initiatives will provide us with better insights into whether the reforms are working as intended or conflict with one another, are structured efficiently, and if they are in need of refinement. transitioning away from london interbank offered rate ( libor ) - 10 one last particular item to mention : libor. transitioning away from libor is a significant undertaking that the fsb has been engaged in for almost a decade. the fsb set forth a roadmap for clear actions that financial firms and their clients can take to ensure a smooth transition away from libor. 3 this year, the fsb will report to the g20 on ongoing progress and issues related to the libor transition, including supervisory issues related to the benchmark transition. conclusion we faced a confluence of events over the past year that demanded international coordination in several key areas, and that is precisely why the fsb was created more than ten years ago ; a beacon at the end of another fateful march. the span of territory and topics covered can admittedly seem bewildering at times — i ’ ve covered only a few of them today. yet as the fsb builds its agenda for each coming year, the process is much like a pointillist painting.

the recent softness in consumption suggests that this net wealth erosion has continued to weigh on household spending. that said, it is important to recognize that the extraction of equity from homes has been a significant support to consumption during a period when other asset prices were declining sharply. were it not for this phenomenon, economic activity would have been notably weaker in the wake of the decline in the value of household financial assets. in the business sector, there have been few signs of any appreciable vigor. uncertainty about the economic outlook and heightened geopolitical risks have made companies reluctant to expand their operations, hire workers, or buy new equipment. executives consistently report that in today ’ s intensely competitive global marketplace it is no longer feasible to raise prices in order to improve profitability. there are many alternatives for most products, and with technology driving down the cost of acquiring information, buyers today can ( and do ) easily shift to the low - price seller. in such a setting, firms must focus on the cost side of their operations if they are to generate greater returns for their shareholders. negotiations with their suppliers are aimed at reducing the costs of materials and services. some companies have also eschewed the traditional annual pay increment in favor of compensation packages for their rank - and - file workers that are linked to individual performance goals. and, most important, businesses have revamped their operations to achieve substantial reductions in costs. on a consolidated basis for the corporate sector as a whole, lowered costs are generally associated with increased output per hour. much of the recent reported improvements in cost control doubtless have reflected the paring of so - called " fat " in corporate operations - - fat that accumulated during the long expansion of the 1990s, when management focused attention primarily on the perceived profitability of expansion and less on the increments to profitability that derive from cost savings. managers, now refocused, are pressing hard to identify and eliminate those redundant or nonessential activities that accumulated in the boom years. with margins under pressure, businesses have also been reallocating their capital so as to use it more productively. moreover, for equipment with active secondary markets, such as computers and networking gear, productivity may also have been boosted by a reallocation to firms that could use the equipment more efficiently. for example, healthy firms reportedly have been buying equipment from failed dot - coms. businesses may also have managed to eke out increases in output per hour by employing their existing workforce more intensively