a provision and disclosure of covenants of corporate bonds and corporate bond management will be reviewed to promote the investors ’ holdings of corporate bonds with low ratings. moreover, for issues related to the secondary markets, development of the infrastructure to provide information on market prices is currently under discussion to facilitate appropriate investment decisions by investors and determination of issuance environment by issuers. the bank of japan hopes that market participants will continue to take initiatives to strengthen market infrastructure, thereby improving stability and accessibility in the corporate bond markets. b. strengthening infrastructure in the stock markets in japanese stock markets, measures have been taken to improve the accessibility of transactions amid fierce competition with, for example, financial markets in asian emerging economies. specifically, in january 2010, the tokyo stock exchange ( tse ) launched “ arrowhead ”, the next - generation trading system for cash equity products. due to developments in it, the environment surrounding the stock exchanges has changed significantly, and a trading system called algorithmic trading, which automatically enters trading orders based on a certain data processing mode, has become popular among market participants. in other countries, as order placement and execution processing have accelerated, high - frequency trading ( hft ) has become common. therefore, the introduction of arrowhead meets the needs of investors at home and abroad to automate and accelerate the transactions. in addition, the tse has been exchanging opinions with market users on the extension of trading hours, such as abolishing noon recess, which is uncommon in other major countries. in japan, the share of stock trading through a proprietary trading system ( pts ), a trading system created by private firms, accounts for less than 1 percent of total listed stock trading, but in july 2010 one of the major companies from abroad started to offer a pts. if the polarization of stock trading between stock exchange and off - exchange transactions leads to competition among these transactions, the utilization of the pts, together with the measures taken by the tse that i mentioned, is likely to help provide investors with more trading opportunities and activating transactions. in the united states, the sudden stock market plunge in may 2010 – the so - called “ flash crash ” – increased concern among market participants about financial market instability resulting from active algorithmic trading and the polarization of trading due to widespread offexchange transactions. in this regard, price limits set for each stock issue may have contributed to market stability in japan. market participants, however, should pay careful attention to market stability given the trend of automation and

head in. the conclusion of our discussions at the july board meeting was that the best course of action is to maintain the mid - march package and to continue to monitor the effects of the pandemic on the economy. the board has not ruled out future changes to this package, though it recognises that, in the current environment, there are limitations to what more can be achieved through monetary policy. given these limitations, and the outlook for the labour market, there is an important ongoing role for fiscal policy and use of the government's balance sheet. i would now like to turn to this issue. the government's balance sheet over recent decades, the conventional wisdom has been that the government's balance sheet has a limited role in managing economic fluctuations, with the main focus instead being on structural and intergenerational issues. the global financial crisis, and now the pandemic, have caused some rethinking here. what we have seen over recent times is the government balance sheet being used to smooth out large shocks to private sector incomes. by smoothing things out, the government is helping people right now and also limiting the longer - term damage to the economy. https : / / www. rba. gov. au / speeches / 2020 / sp - gov - 2020 - 07 - 21. html 10 / 13 21 / 07 / 2020 covid - 19, the labour market and public sector balance sheets | speeches | rba the clear evidence from history is that the deeper and more protracted a downturn, the more severe are the economic scars. these scars occur through : young people not getting onto the jobs ladder, or slipping off it, with permanent effects on their lives people losing training opportunities with long - term consequences for their career prospects lower levels of investment in physical capital and research the damage to the fabric of our society and to people's lives that is caused by a long spell of unemployment. we need to do what we can to limit the severity of these costly scars. these scars have long - term effects and they damage our society and our economy. the government can play an important role here by using its balance sheet to smooth things out and reduce the severity of the downturn. in doing so, it helps not only in the present but in the future as well. in principle, this smoothing function can work in a few ways. one is through direct transfers to households and businesses. another is for the government to spend money directly itself on activities that create jobs