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Current turbulence in Europe is a reminder that the crisis is not over, but has merely entered a new phase. In a world awash with debt, repairing the balance sheets of banks, households and countries will take years.

Using turnover ratios, Anderson and Lavoie describe the recent evolution of liquidity in various secondary government bond markets, focusing specifically on the market for Government of Canada securities. They attribute much of the recent variation in liquidity to such cyclical factors as changes in the interest rate environment and investors' appetite for risk, as well as developments in equity markets in the late 1990s. They also examine longer-term structural and policy-related trends, including the rate of adoption of financial and technological innovations and the level of government borrowing and debt-management initiatives.

Over the past couple of years, there has been considerable debate about productivity and our standard of living in Canada. For the most part, the discussion of these issues has been useful, but at times it has been somewhat confusing.

Central banks face considerable uncertainty when conducting monetary policy. The COVID-19 pandemic brought this issue back to the forefront of policy discussions. We draw from academic literature to review key sources of uncertainty and how they affect the conduct of monetary policy.

This is the fourth of the Financial Markets Department’s descriptions of Canadian financial industrial organization. The paper discusses the organization of the securities lending market in Canada. We outline key characteristics of securities lending contracts, participants in the securities lending market, the market infrastructures that support securities lending activities, and aggregated statistics describing the Canadian market.

While greater global financial integration is beneficial, the authors discuss how foreign capital inflows can also facilitate the buildup of domestic vulnerabilities and potentially lead to destabilizing reversals. Canada’s current international investment position is typical of advanced economies and will likely continue to act as an economic stabilizer. However, the growth and composition of Canada’s international investment position warrant continued monitoring.

The Bank projects that the economy will grow by 2.2 per cent in 2012, 2.3 per cent in 2013 and 2.4 per cent in 2014. The economy is expected to return to full capacity by the end of 2013.

The Reports section of the Financial System Review examines selected issues of relevance to the Canadian and global financial systems. The December 2014 issue features two reports on important developments in the financial system: rapid growth and innovation in the market for exchange-traded funds, and the increasing significance of cyber attacks to the operational resilience of financial institutions and financial market infrastructures.

Following an estimated 1.9 per cent in 2012, the Canadian economy is expected to grow by 2.0 per cent in 2013 and 2.7 per cent in 2014, and to reach full capacity in the second half of 2014, later than anticipated in the October Report.