its own, with little prospect for self - correction. moving with maximum speed against this backdrop, policymakers at the federal reserve acted swiftly and unreservedly in an effort to break the damaging psychology that was taking hold. the series of policy actions announced over the past month – both conventional and unconventional – reflected a full recognition that the current shock is qualitatively different from the financial crisis of 2008, without a culprit other than the virus itself. unconstrained by a diagnosis of who was to blame – and considering the mounting downside risks – the speed and scale of the policy response was free to match the dimensions of the unfolding shock. i won ’ t review all of the actions that the fed has taken over the past month – they are well documented elsewhere – but i would like to note of the breadth of activity to stabilize the financial 1 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches system and to support the flow of credit, both within and outside banking system. to that end, i ’ ll describe a few of the lending and credit facilities that the new york fed is charged with standing up to supply credit for households, businesses, and state and local governments : commercial paper funding facility by the middle of march, unusually high funding needs and pullbacks by key lenders of short - term funds led to surging rates in the market for commercial paper, or short - term ious issued by businesses and municipalities. interest rates on longer - term commercial paper, in particular, rose to levels not seen since the financial crisis of 2008. many issuers were reportedly unable to place commercial paper with a term of longer than a week, leading to increased risk that companies would not be able to fund basic operational needs, such as meeting payrolls or financing inventories. with backing from the u. s. treasury, the federal reserve established the commercial paper funding facility as a funding vehicle that can purchase new issuance of commercial paper from highly rated businesses and municipalities, and certain issuers that were downgraded after the virus shock. by providing assurances to issuers and investors that retiring commercial paper can be replaced with new issuance, the facility will promote confidence in the market and support the flow of credit to businesses and municipalities. corporate credit facilities ( ccfs ) at the same time that short - term commercial paper markets were nearly frozen, so too were markets for longer - term corporate borrowing – at precisely the moment when companies most needed a financing buffer. borrowing rates for investment -

with the idea i am about to propose. this theme is saying to me that we must not be too engrossed in the business of analyzing the past lest we forget to look ahead toward unchartered waters we must yet traverse. i think that after three and one half years of meetings and conferences we are all fatigued with an overload of hind - sight wisdom that offers perfect explanations for the 2008 global financial crisis that none or very few saw coming. the irony is that very few of us saw the coming of the 2008 crisis because we were too busy analyzing the crisis before that one. now, the fact that the caribbean went relatively unscathed from the global financial crisis, except for the clico and baico experiences, is by no means an indication that we were any better prepared ; in my view it was mere lucky happenstance and this is what we need to address in the future. i am sure caricom heads of government at their june 2009 meeting in georgetown, guyana had this near miss catastrophe squarely in their rearview mirrors when they agreed on the urgency of putting in place a strong framework for regional financial stability. citing, among other things, the clico and baico experiences, they tasked the committee of central bank governors to prepare a proposal for the creation of a regional architecture for financial stability for final consideration by the council for finance and planning ( cofap ). the mandate was to accelerate the construction of a robust regional financial stability framework. bis central bankers ’ speeches the committee of central bank governors set about this task diligently. first, they secured funding from the inter - american development bank for a regional financial risk assessment project under the aegis of the caribbean centre for money and finance ( the ccmf ). then, a three - day workshop for regional regulatory stakeholders was held in port of spain, trinidad on 3 to 5 march 2011 to discuss the requirements and actions needed to develop the framework and to agree on the outline of the terms of reference for the planning and implementation of a financial architecture that supports regional financial stability. from all accounts, the workshop was well attended and yielded several recommendations on governance and operational structure of a regional financial stability board. however, progress on this project recently stalled as governors remain fundamentally at odds over a few of the major recommendations, in particular : • the recommendation for the ccmf to become the central reporting body for financial stability ; • the legality of regional regulators sharing sensitive confidential information with a non - regulatory body