The Bank of Canada announced today it will sell $2 billion of its holdings of treasury bills. This transaction will offset the temporary increase in assets associated with the term purchase and resale transactions announced today.
As part of its continuing provision of liquidity in support of the efficient functioning of financial markets, the Bank of Canada announced today that it will enter into a 28-day term purchase and resale agreement (PRA) as follows:
Today, I'd like to discuss some of the crucial issues that we have been dealing with during this period. I'll begin with a brief overview of some key events that have led to the turbulence that continues to upset financial markets and that greatly contributed to the remarkably wide credit spreads that we now witness.
As is the case for so many cities and regions in Canada, London's economy and that of southwestern Ontario are directly affected by changes in the global economy. And, as with so many things in life, the better we understand the forces of change, the better equipped we are to deal with them.
On 5 March 2008, the Bank released for comment its proposed eligibility criteria for accepting ABCP and noted that two broad policy objectives guided the Bank's assessment. First, the eligibility criteria should mitigate any risks to the Bank that might be associated with accepting ABCP securities as collateral for the SLF.
As announced in the Debt Management Strategy 2008-2009, minor operational changes will be made to the bond buyback program to broaden the eligible basket of securities available for buyback operations. The changes are as follows:
The Bank of Canada today announced that Professor Michael Devereux of the University of British Columbia and Professor Shouyong Shi of the University of Toronto are the recipients of the Bank's Research Fellowship for 2008.