children are above average. that sounds like a good description of our corporate bond market. all the issues are triple - a. a few double a issues but no single a, no triple b. how come it becomes so hard to be an issuer of single a or triple b? other countries have done it. in thailand, the median issue is single - a. so, i do not know why it is so hard for a potentially lower issuer to join the corporate bond market. and finally, we have our missing portfolio flows. we used to fear portfolio flows because we saw them as hot money. they come in and leave at the first sign of trouble. but these days, they are not so scary. in the first place, they are so negligible these days ; they can come in and out, and it will not matter. but the big thing is the game has changed ; the intent is not into active investment anymore ; it is in passive investment. passive means you buy the index. at least at the core of your portfolio, you need an index. maybe you can play around on the sides of your portfolio, but the core has to be an index. huge trillions of dollars are now flowing into the major equity indices, global equity indices, and the major primary bond indices. i think we are in a few indices. we talked to vanguard, and they said we are about 0. 1 percent of their bond index. but we are not in any major equity indices, blackrock or state street. we do not know why ; people say it is our withholding taxes, but we are not sure what is going on. bakit hindi tayo kasali? the smaller markets are in these indices. colombia is in that index. etsepuwera tayo, hindi tayo kasali. i do not know why they do not like us. so, there it is. those are my questions. 6 / 7 bis - central bankers'speeches so, i have three wishes for the capital market : build a benchmark curve, maybe using the swaps curve. let us open the corporate bond market - single a, triple b, all investment grade onshore. then, join the global shift to equity index in emerging market bond etf [ exchange - traded funds ]. by the way, the indices are actively traded as exchange - traded funds. so, those are my three wishes, and i hope you guys can help us.

john c williams : the economic outlook - the “ new normal ” is now remarks by mr john c williams, president and chief executive officer of the federal reserve bank of new york, at the economic club of new york, new york city, 6 march 2019. * * * as prepared for delivery thank you for the kind introduction. it ’ s a great pleasure to be here today and a huge honor to be joining the board of the economic club of new york. this institution has been an essential forum for debate for many decades, and i sincerely hope today will be no exception. i ’ m going to start with a spoiler : at a certain point during this speech i will talk about interest rates. i imagine that if i don ’ t, you ’ ll feel you ’ ve been shortchanged. so before i get going, i ’ ll give the usual fed disclaimer that the views i express are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the federal open market committee or anyone else in the federal reserve system. r - star now that ’ s out of the way, i want to take you back a long time ago, to a galaxy far, far away. it ’ s 2001 : destiny ’ s child is topping the charts, you were marveling over your motorola flip phone, and i was a young economist at the board of governors in washington, d. c. at the time, i was burning the midnight oil, along with a fellow economist, thomas laubach, trying to understand what the burst of productivity growth generated by the tech boom meant for interest rates, both in the short term and in the long run. this led us to develop a model for measuring r - star. i know what ’ s going through your mind : “ what is this r - star that you speak of? ” r - star is how economists describe the neutral or natural rate of interest. it ’ s the rate that we expect to prevail in the long run when interest rates are neither providing a boost to the economy nor trying to cool things down. it ’ s neither accommodative, nor contractionary. in other words, it ’ s the “ normal ” interest rate we expect in “ normal ” economic times. g - star one of the major factors determining r - star is … you guessed it, g - star! g - star is what economists mean when they describe trend growth, sustainable growth, or potential growth of the economy. the two main