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The three articles in this issue provide an overview of the monetary policy decision-making process at the Bank of Canada, a discussion of Bank research on the assessment of vulnerabilities in the financial system and a description of recent fragmentation in Canadian equity markets.

This issue of the Financial System Review reflects the Bank’s judgment that high household indebtedness and housing market imbalances remain the most important vulnerabilities. While these vulnerabilities remain elevated, policy measures continue to improve the resilience of the financial system. A third vulnerability highlighted in the FSR concerns cyber threats to an interconnected financial system.

Bank of Canada liquidity actions in response to the financial market turmoil; understanding corporate bond spreads using credit default swaps; review of the conflicts of interest between participants in the securitization process highlighting the most recent policy measures and potential solutions for ameliorating these agency issues.

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.

In this issue of the Financial System Review, the Governing Council judges that the risks to the stability of Canada’s financial system remain high, as in December. The sources of the key risks are broadly the same as those highlighted at that time and emanate primarily from the external environment.

Errata: The colour labels for Chart 11 in the June 2012 issue and for Chart 12 in the December 2011 isssue were defined incorrectly. See revised charts.

This paper examines the implications of positive news about future asset values that turn out to be incorrect at a later date in an open economy model with banking. The model captures the patterns of bank credit and current account dynamics in Spain between 2000 and 2010. The model finds that the use of unconventional policies leads to a milder bust.

The decline in safe real interest rates over the past three decades has reignited discussions on the neutral real interest rate, known as R*. We address the determinants and estimation methods of R*, as well as the factors influencing its decline and its future trajectory.

The market for cryptoassets has exploded in size in the 10 years since bitcoin was launched. The technology underlying cryptoassets, blockchain, has also been held up as a technology that promises to transform entire industries.

We document a new empirical finding in the foreign exchange market: currency returns show systematic reversals around the benchmark fixings. Specifically, the US dollar, on average, appreciates in the hours before fixes and depreciates after fixes.

This paper summarizes the literature on the performance of various extended monetary policy tools when conventional policy rates are constrained by the effective lower bound. We highlight issues that may arise when these tools are used by central banks of small open economies.