In his Introduction to a Panel Discussion on Financial Stability: Consilium given on 9 August Ian Macfarlane of the Reserve Bank of Australia said because of the improvement in banks' risk management and bank supervision, we have not even been close to systemic financial failure in any major country on this occasion. For this we should be thankful. But what we are getting instead are failures in the non-finance sector, Enron, WorldCom, etc., and more particularly a severe tightening of belts in