Define Your Company's Purpose in a Sentence

Great companies have a single purpose that drives them toward success.
That purpose is simple, straightforward, and no longer than a sentence.
For example,

Google's is "We organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful,"
and ING Direct's is "We lead Americans back to savings.

This is not a tag line but a single idea that defines the company's reason for existing. Discover what your company is best at and put it into a sentence. Don't settle with being the middle of the road, but strive to be the most responsive, most colorful, or most focused. Then, make sure that everyone in your company knows that sentence and uses it to drive success.

Hills Like White Elephants - Hemingway / Volcano - Demian Rice

Hills Like White Elephants - Ernest Hemingway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hills_Like_White_Elephants

Volcano - Demian Rice

소통되지 못하는 것들에 대하여.

MOT newmix cover ver.

Don't hold yourself like that
You'll hurt your knees
I kissed your mouth and back
But that's all I need
Don't build your world around volcanoes melt you down

What I am to you is not real
What I am to you you do not need
What I am to you is not what you mean to me
You give me miles and miles of mountains
And I'll ask for the sea

Don't throw yourself like that
In front of me
I kissed your mouth your back
Is that all you need?
Don't drag my love around volcanoes melt me down

What I am to you is not real
What I am to you you do not need
What I am to you is not what you mean to me
You give me miles and miles of mountains
And I'll ask for what I give to you
Is just what i'm going through
This is nothing new
No no just another phase of finding what I really need
Is what makes me bleed
And like a new disease she's still too young to treat
Volcanoes melt me down
She's still too young
I kissed your mouth
You do not need me

지족상락(知足常樂)

知足常樂
만족할 줄 알면 항상 즐겁다


꺼벙이를 그렸던 길창덕 화백 별세, 고인의 명복을 빕니다.

이미지출처 : opentory.joins.com

   "죽기 살기로 만화 그렸어. 만화 때문에 이렇게(폐암) 됐지만 후회는 안 해. 사람들에게 희망을 줬으니까."

30일 타계한 고 길창덕 화백은 '지족상락(知足常樂)'이란 네 글자를 남겼다. '만족할 줄 알면 항상 즐겁다'는 뜻이다. 2006년 1월 경기도 산본 자택에서 기자와의 만남을 끝으로 모든 언론과 행사에 서 자취를 감췄던 그는 '지족상락'이란 자신의 철학처럼 만화를 그렸고, 여생을 보냈다. 2004년 정부에서 받은 보관문화훈장도 그에겐 큰 의미가 없었다. 마지막까지 6.25로 인해 헤어진 어머니에 대한 그리움을 가슴 속에서 삭였다.

• 일간스포츠 | 장상용 기자 | 2010.02.01 08:32 입력

A Library to Last Forever

By SERGEY BRIN

Published: October 8, 2009
Mountain View, Calif.

“THE fundamental reasons why the electric car has not attained the popularity it deserves are (1) The failure of the manufacturers to properly educate the general public regarding the wonderful utility of the electric; (2) The failure of [power companies] to make it easy to own and operate the electric by an adequate distribution of charging and boosting stations. The early electrics of limited speed, range and utility produced popular impressions which still exist.”

This quotation would hardly surprise anyone who follows electric vehicles. But it may be surprising to hear that in the year when it was written thousands of electric cars were produced and that year was nearly a century ago. This appeared in a 1916 issue of the journal Electrical World, which I found in Google Books, our searchable repository of millions of books. It may seem strange to look back a hundred years on a topic that is so contemporary, yet I often find that the past has valuable lessons for the future. In this case, I was lucky — electric vehicles were studied and written about extensively early in the 20th century, and there are many books on the subject from which to choose. Because books published before 1923 are in the public domain, I am able to view them easily.

But the vast majority of books ever written are not accessible to anyone except the most tenacious researchers at premier academic libraries. Books written after 1923 quickly disappear into a literary black hole. With rare exceptions, one can buy them only for the small number of years they are in print. After that, they are found only in a vanishing number of libraries and used book stores. As the years pass, contracts get lost and forgotten, authors and publishers disappear, the rights holders become impossible to track down.

Inevitably, the few remaining copies of the books are left to deteriorate slowly or are lost to fires, floods and other disasters. While I was at Stanford in 1998, floods damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of books. Unfortunately, such events are not uncommon — a similar flood happened at Stanford just 20 years prior. You could read about it in The Stanford-Lockheed Meyer Library Flood Report, published in 1980, but this book itself is no longer available.

Because books are such an important part of the world’s collective knowledge and cultural heritage, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, first proposed that we digitize all books a decade ago, when we were a fledgling startup. At the time, it was viewed as so ambitious and challenging a project that we were unable to attract anyone to work on it. But five years later, in 2004, Google Books (then called Google Print) was born, allowing users to search hundreds of thousands of books. Today, they number over 10 million and counting.

The next year we were sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over the project. While we have had disagreements, we have a common goal — to unlock the wisdom held in the enormous number of out-of-print books, while fairly compensating the rights holders. As a result, we were able to work together to devise a settlement that accomplishes our shared vision. While this settlement is a win-win for authors, publishers and Google, the real winners are the readers who will now have access to a greatly expanded world of books.

There has been some debate about the settlement, and many groups have offered their opinions, both for and against. I would like to take this opportunity to dispel some myths about the agreement and to share why I am proud of this undertaking. This agreement aims to make millions of out-of-print but in-copyright books available either for a fee or for free with ad support, with the majority of the revenue flowing back to the rights holders, be they authors or publishers.

Some have claimed that this agreement is a form of compulsory license because, as in most class action settlements, it applies to all members of the class who do not opt out by a certain date. The reality is that rights holders can at any time set pricing and access rights for their works or withdraw them from Google Books altogether. For those books whose rights holders have not yet come forward, reasonable default pricing and access policies are assumed. This allows access to the many orphan works whose owners have not yet been found and accumulates revenue for the rights holders, giving them an incentive to step forward.

Others have questioned the impact of the agreement on competition, or asserted that it would limit consumer choice with respect to out-of-print books. In reality, nothing in this agreement precludes any other company or organization from pursuing their own similar effort. The agreement limits consumer choice in out-of-print books about as much as it limits consumer choice in unicorns. Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice — fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks.

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Times Topics: Google Book Search | Sergey Brin

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I wish there were a hundred services with which I could easily look at such a book; it would have saved me a lot of time, and it would have spared Google a tremendous amount of effort. But despite a number of important digitization efforts to date (Google has even helped fund others, including some by the Library of Congress), none have been at a comparable scale, simply because no one else has chosen to invest the requisite resources. At least one such service will have to exist if there are ever to be one hundred.

If Google Books is successful, others will follow. And they will have an easier path: this agreement creates a books rights registry that will encourage rights holders to come forward and will provide a convenient way for other projects to obtain permissions. While new projects will not immediately have the same rights to orphan works, the agreement will be a beacon of compromise in case of a similar lawsuit, and it will serve as a precedent for orphan works legislation, which Google has always supported and will continue to support.

Last, there have been objections to specific aspects of the Google Books product and the future service as planned under the settlement, including questions about the quality of bibliographic information, our choice of classification system and the details of our privacy policy. These are all valid questions, and being a company that obsesses over the quality of our products, we are working hard to address them — improving bibliographic information and categorization, and further detailing our privacy policy. And if we don’t get our product right, then others will. But one thing that is sure to halt any such progress is to have no settlement at all.

In the Insurance Year Book 1880-1881, which I found on Google Books, Cornelius Walford chronicles the destruction of dozens of libraries and millions of books, in the hope that such a record will “impress the necessity of something being done” to preserve them. The famous library at Alexandria burned three times, in 48 B.C., A.D. 273 and A.D. 640, as did the Library of Congress, where a fire in 1851 destroyed two-thirds of the collection.

I hope such destruction never happens again, but history would suggest otherwise. More important, even if our cultural heritage stays intact in the world’s foremost libraries, it is effectively lost if no one can access it easily. Many companies, libraries and organizations will play a role in saving and making available the works of the 20th century. Together, authors, publishers and Google are taking just one step toward this goal, but it’s an important step. Let’s not miss this opportunity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/opinion/09brin.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Innovation vs. Improvement

크게보기

깜짝태그 : []

Distinguishing Between Innovation and Improvement The organization must be capable of change. Indeed, it must be capable of initiating change, that is, innovation. Innovation involves doing new and different things. Improvement involves doing a little bit better what is already being done. Many organizations confuse innovation with improvement. Improvement, while extremely important, is not the same thing as innovation. Many executives believe they are doing a good job of managing change when in reality all they are doing is improving what exists. Producing and managing innovation is much more difficult than improvement. When an organization innovates it moves scarce and expensive resources from areas of low productivity and non-results to opportunities for new achievement and profitable growth. Drucker clarified the interconnection between continuity and change. He advocated visualizing an organization rotating around three distinct axes: the traditional, the transitional and the transformational. All three dimensions simultaneously call for different degrees of emphasis in the allocation of resources for improved business performance. The traditional business concentrates on the commitments required in extending what is already being done well. The transitional focuses on improving what is already being done. In the transformational business, the focus must be on the identification of new directions and with the commitments necessary to design a new and different business. Producing and managing innovation centers on the transitional and transformational axes. The most brutal conflicts occur when attempting to move the organization into a transformational state.

그린스펀이 생각하는 돈

*다음 자료는 그린스펀이 미국 중앙은행 의장으로 있으면서 남긴 글 중에서 돈에대해 가장 깊이 있게 자신의 생각을 밝힌 것으로 보인다. 그린스펀은 자신의 생각을 둘러서 드러내는 것으로 악명(?)이 높다. 만약 누가 이 글을 완전히 이해했다면 나는 그를 최소한 금융/돈에 관해서는 도사라고 인정할 것이다. 나는 앞으로 나의 짧은 생각으로나마 아래의 글을 조금씩 조금씩 풀어나갈 것이다. 이 과정에 여러분들도 같이 하기를 바라는 마음이다.

 

** 이 자료의 원문은 여기서 볼 수 있다.

 

 

 

Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan At the Catholic University Leuven, Leuven, Belgium January 14, 1997

Central Banking and Global Finance Mr. Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, Minister of Budget, Rector Oosterlinck, Professor Peeters, ladies and gentlemen, it is a distinct honor, and a great personal pleasure, to be here today to receive this degree from such a distinguished and historic university. Central bankers, because of the continuity of our institutions and the nature of our responsibilities, typically are said to take a long-term view. By that, I mean we try to look beyond the current calendar quarter to the next year or maybe even a few years beyond. Standing here in this university, which was founded more than 500 years ago and had already become a leading university in Europe by the 16th century, gives a meaningful perspective to what central bankers consider the longer term.   Today, I shall address the various roles of a central bank encompassing: bank supervision, the provision of financial services, and, of course, monetary policy. I recognize that not all central banks are the same, and in particular that the central bank's role in bank supervision varies considerably from one country to another. However, I view these three elements of a central bank's responsibilities as closely interrelated and mutually supporting, in ways that I will endeavor to elaborate.   Before doing so, I might note that the global financial environment in which central banks operate has become an increasingly important factor in carrying out our responsibilities. This is obviously true of smaller and more open economies like Belgium, but it is true also of countries like the United States that are sometimes thought to be self-contained. Monetary policy in all countries must take account of its effects on, and feedback from, the rest of the world. Many financial services provided by central banks involve cross-border transactions of one kind or another. These international relationships add still one more degree of complexity to the already complex lives of central bankers. That is one of our challenges.

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One of the rewards is the international cooperation that these complexities have spawned. That process of cooperation has been especially deep and long-standing among central banks of the G-10 countries, but it involves finance ministries and officials from other agencies and other countries, as well. I call this one of the rewards not just because it has enhanced the policy process but also, on a more personal level, because it has enabled me to develop good friendships with many of my counterparts, including Alfons Verplaetse of the   National Bank of Belgium Let me begin with the fundamental observation, that a nation's sovereign credit rating lies at the base of its current fiscal, monetary, and, indirectly, regulatory policy. When there is confidence in the integrity of government, monetary authorities--the central bank and the finance ministry--can issue unlimited claims denominated in their own currencies and can guarantee or stand ready to guarantee the obligations of private issuers as they see fit. This power has profound implications for both good and ill for our economies.   Central banks can issue currency, a non-interest-bearing claim on the government, effectively without limit. They can discount loans and other assets of banks or other private depository institutions, thereby converting potentially illiquid private assets into riskless claims on the government in the form of deposits at the central bank.   That all of these claims on government are readily accepted reflects the fact that a government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. A fiat money system, like the ones we have today, can produce such claims without limit. To be sure, if a central bank produces too many, inflation will inexorably rise as will interest rates, and economic activity will inevitably be constrained by the misallocation of resources induced by inflation. If it produces too few, the economy's expansion also will presumably be constrained by a shortage of the necessary lubricant for transactions. Authorities must struggle continuously to find the proper balance.   It was not always thus. For most of the period prior to the early 1930s, obligations of governments in major countries were payable in gold. This meant the whole outstanding debt of government was subject to redemption in a medium, the quantity of which could not be altered at the will of government. Hence, debt issuance and budget deficits were constrained by the potential market response to an inflated economy. It was even possible in such a monetary regime for a government to become insolvent. Indeed, the United States skirted on the edges of bankruptcy in 1895 when our government gold stock shrank ominously and was bailed out by a last minute gold loan, underwritten by a Wall Street syndicate.   There is little doubt that under the gold standard the restraint on both public and private credit creation limited price inflation, but it was also increasingly perceived as too restrictive to government discretion. The abandonment of the domestic convertibility of gold effectively augmented the power of the monetary authorities to create claims. Possibly as a consequence, post-World War II fluctuations in gross domestic product have been somewhat less than those prior to the 1930s, and no major economic contraction of the dimensions experienced in earlier years has occurred in major industrial countries. On the other hand, peace-time inflation has been far more virulent.

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Today, the widespread presumption is that, as a consequence of expectations of continuing inflation over the longer run, both nominal and real long-term interest rates are currently higher than they would otherwise be. Arguably, at root is the potential, however remote, of unconstrained issuance of claims unsupported by the production of goods and services and the accumulation of real assets.   Pressures for increased credit unrelated to the needs of markets emerge not only as a consequence of new government debt obligations, both direct and contingent, but also because of government regulations that induce private sector expenditure and borrowing. All of these government-derived demands on resources must be satisfied. Hence, when those demands increase, interest rates tend to rise to crowd out other types of spending.   Any employment of the sovereign credit rating for the issuance of government debt, the guaranteeing of the liabilities of depository institutions, or the liquification of assets of depository institutions enables the preemption of real private resources by government fiat. Increased availability of a central bank credit facility, even if not drawn upon, can induce increased credit extension by banks and increased activity by their customers, since creditors of banks are more willing to finance banks' activities with such a governmental backstop available. If that takes place in an environment of strained resource availability, expanded subsidies to depository institutions--which are often referred to as the "safety net"--can only augment the pressures. An accommodative monetary policy can ease the strain, but only temporarily and only at the risk of inflation at a later date unless interest rates are eventually allowed to rise. This dilemma is most historically evident in its extreme form during times of war, when governments must choose whether to finance part of the increased war outlays through increased central bank credit or depend wholly on taxes and borrowing from private sources.   Accordingly central banks, and finance ministries, must remain especially vigilant in maintaining a proper balance between a safety net that fosters economic and financial stabilization and one that does not. It is in this context of competing demands for resources and the government's unique position that we should consider the role of the central bank in interfacing with banks, and in some instances with other private financial institutions, as lenders of last resort, supervisors, and providers of financial services.   Relationship to banks and bank supervision It is important to remember that many of the benefits banks provide modern societies derive from their willingness to take risks and from their use of a relatively high degree of financial leverage. Through leverage, in the form principally of taking deposits, banks perform a critical role in the financial intermediation process; they provide savers with additional investment choices and borrowers with a greater range of sources of credit, thereby facilitating a more efficient allocation of resources and contributing importantly to greater economic growth. Indeed, it has been the evident value of intermediation and leverage that has shaped the development of our financial systems from the earliest times--certainly since Renaissance goldsmiths discovered that lending out deposited gold was feasible and profitable.   Central bank provision of a mechanism for converting highly illiquid portfolios into liquid ones in extraordinary circumstances has led to a greater degree of leverage in banking than market forces alone would support. Traditionally this has been accomplished by making discount or Lombard facilities available, so that individual depositories could turn illiquid assets into liquid resources and not exacerbate unsettled market conditions by the forced selling of such assets or the calling of loans. More broadly, open market operations, in situations like that which followed the crash of stock markets around the world in 1987, satisfy increased needs for liquidity for the system as a whole that otherwise could feed cumulative, self-reinforcing, contractions across many financial markets. Of course, this same leverage and risk-taking also greatly increase the possibility of bank failures. Without leverage, losses from risk-taking would be absorbed by a bank's owners, virtually eliminating the chance that the bank would be unable to meet its obligations in the case of a "failure." Some failures can be of a bank's own making, resulting, for example, from poor credit judgments. For the most part, these failures are a normal and important part of the market process and provide discipline and information to other participants regarding the level of business risks. However, because of the important roles that banks and other financial intermediaries play in our financial systems, such failures could have large ripple effects that spread throughout business and financial markets at great cost.

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Any use of sovereign credit--even its potential use--creates moral hazard, that is, a distortion of incentives that occurs when the party that determines the level of risk receives the gains from, but does not bear the full costs of, the risks taken. At the extreme, monetary authorities could guarantee all private liabilities, which might assuage any immediate crisis but leave a long-term legacy of distorted incentives and presumably thwarted growth potential. Thus, governments, including central banks, have to strive for a balanced use of the sovereign credit rating. It is a difficult tradeoff, but we are seeking a balance in which we can ensure the desired degree of intermediation even in times of financial stress without engendering an unacceptable degree of moral hazard. The disconnect between risk-taking by banks and banks' cost of capital, which has been reduced by the presence of the safety net, has made necessary a degree of supervision and regulation that would not be necessary without the existence of the safety net. That is, regulators are compelled to act as a surrogate for market discipline since the market signals that usually accompany excessive risk-taking are substantially muted, and because the prices to banks of government deposit guarantees, or of access to the safety net more generally, do not, and probably cannot, vary sufficiently with risk to mimic market prices. The problems that arise from the retarding of the pressures of market discipline have led us increasingly to understand that the ideal strategy for supervision and regulation is to endeavor to simulate the market responses that would occur if there were no safety net, but without giving up the basic requirement that financial market disruptions be minimized.   To be sure, we should recognize that if we choose to have the advantages of a leveraged system of financial intermediaries, the burden of managing risk in the financial system will not lie with the private sector alone. With leveraging there will always exist a remote possibility of a chain reaction, a cascading sequence of defaults that will culminate in financial implosion if it proceeds unchecked. Only a central bank, with its unlimited power to create money, can with a high probability thwart such a process before it becomes destructive. Hence, central banks will of necessity be drawn into becoming lenders of last resort. But implicit in the existence of such a role is that there will be some sort of allocation between the public and private sectors of the burden of risk of extreme outcomes. Thus, central banks are led to provide what essentially amounts to catastrophic financial insurance coverage. Such a public subsidy should be reserved for only the rarest of disasters. If the owners or managers of private financial institutions were to anticipate being propped up frequently by government support, it would only encourage reckless and irresponsible practices.   In theory, the allocation of responsibility for risk-bearing between the private sector and the central bank depends upon an evaluation of the private cost of capital. In order to attract, or at least retain, capital, a private financial institution must earn at minimum the overall economy's rate of return, adjusted for risk. In competitive financial markets, the greater the leverage, the higher the rate of return, before adjustment for risk. If private financial institutions have to absorb all financial risk, then the degree to which they can leverage will be limited, the financial sector smaller, and its contribution to the economy more limited. On the other hand, if central banks effectively insulate private institutions from the largest potential losses, however incurred, increased laxity could threaten a major drain on taxpayers or produce inflationary instability as a consequence of excess money creation.

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In practice, the policy choice of how much, if any, of the extreme market risk that government authorities should absorb is fraught with many complexities. Yet we central bankers make this decision every day, either explicitly or by default. Moreover, we can never know for sure whether the decisions we made were appropriate. The question is not whether our actions are seen to have been necessary in retrospect; the absence of a fire does not mean that we should not have paid for fire insurance. Rather, the question is whether, ex ante, the probability of a systemic collapse was sufficient to warrant intervention. Often, we cannot wait to see whether, in hindsight, the problem will be judged to have been an isolated event and largely benign.   Thus, governments, including central banks, have been given certain responsibilities related to their banking and financial systems that must be balanced. We have the responsibility to prevent major financial market disruptions through development and enforcement of prudent regulatory standards and, if necessary in rare circumstances, through direct intervention in market events. But we also have the responsibility to ensure that private sector institutions have the capacity to take prudent and appropriate risks, even though such risks will sometimes result in unanticipated bank losses or even bank failures.   Our goal as supervisors, therefore, should not be to prevent all bank failures, but to maintain sufficient prudential standards so that banking problems that do occur do not become widespread. We try to achieve the proper balance through official regulations, as well as through formal and informal supervisory policies and procedures.   To some extent, we do this over time by signalling to the market, through our actions, the kinds of circumstances in which we might be willing to intervene to quell financial turmoil, and conversely, what levels of difficulties we expect private institutions to resolve by themselves. The market, then, responds by adjusting the cost of capital to banks.   Throughout most of this century, we central bankers have made our decisions largely in a domestic context. However, in recent decades that situation has changed markedly for many countries and, obviously, is changing rapidly here in Europe.   While failures will inevitably occur in a dynamic market, the safety net--not to mention concerns over systemic risk--requires that regulators not be indifferent to how banks manage their risks. To avoid having to resort to numbing micromanagement, regulators have increasingly insisted that banks put in place systems that allow management to have both the information and procedures to be aware of their own true risk exposures on a global basis and to be able to modify such exposures. The better these risk information and control systems, the more risk a bank can prudently assume.   The revolution in information and data processing technology has transformed our financial markets and the way our financial institutions conduct their operations. In most respects, these technological advances have enhanced the potential for reducing transactions costs, to the benefit of consumers of financial services, and for managing risks. But in some respects they have increased the potential for more rapid and widespread disruption.

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The efficiency of global financial markets, engendered by the rapid proliferation of financial products, has the capability of transmitting mistakes at a far faster pace throughout the financial system in ways that were unknown a generation ago, and not even remotely imagined in the 19th century. Financial crises in the early 19th century, for example, particularly those associated with the Napoleonic Wars, were often related to military and other events in faraway places. Communication was still comparatively primitive. An investor's speculative position could be wiped out by a military setback, and he might not even know about it for days or even weeks.   Similarly, the collapse of Barings Brothers in 1995 showed how much more rapidly losses can be generated in the current environment relative to a century earlier when Barings Brothers confronted a similar episode. Current technology enables single individuals to initiate massive transactions with very rapid execution. Clearly, not only has the productivity of global finance increased markedly, but so, obviously, has the ability to generate losses at a previously inconceivable rate.   Whether we think about risk in financial markets from a national or, increasingly, international perspective, we should recognize that, if it is technology that has imparted occasional stress to markets, technology can be employed to contain it. Enhancements to financial institutions' internal risk-management systems arguably constitute one of the most effective countermeasures to the increased potential instability of the global financial system.   Because the evolution of new technologies takes time, I suspect that we have tended to exaggerate the negative effects of information and data processing technologies on financial markets. We have focussed on the ability of financial market participants to increase their leverage beyond the elusive optimum point. That is, some have voiced concern that the subsidy embodied in the safety net has supported a greater degree of risk-taking than might be appropriate. This is obviously a legitimate concern.   Nonetheless, although we may not yet fully appreciate the benefits of recent technological advances, the availability of new technology and new derivative financial instruments already has facilitated more rigorous approaches to the conceptualization, measurement, and management of risk by financial institutions. There are, of course, limitations to the statistical models used in such systems owing to the necessity of overly simplifying assumptions.   Consequently, human judgments, based on analytically less precise but far more realistic evaluations of what the future may hold, are of critical importance in risk management. Although a sophisticated understanding of statistical modeling techniques is important to risk management, an intimate knowledge of the markets in which an institution trades, and of the customers it serves, is turning out to be far more important.

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The diminishing of legal, institutional, and now technological barriers to international financial activities has provided strong impetus to the process of cooperation I referred to earlier. The efforts of bank supervisors meeting at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel have been especially prominent, and deservedly so. They have set minimum standards for sound banking for the world's major banks and have sensitized all of us to the risks that banks must manage. However, their work is not done. Our concepts of appropriate standards continue to evolve just as the technology of risk management evolves. In addition, supervisors from the G-10 countries must continue their efforts to bring supervisors from other countries, including the emerging and transition economies of Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe into the process of cooperation--both to learn from their experiences and to encourage other countries to strengthen their own supervisory systems.   Financial services  While I do not intend to say much about the provision of financial services by central banks, I might distinguish--in an oversimplified fashion--two types of functions. One includes issuing currency, acting as fiscal agent for the government, and other functions that are reasonably straightforward and primarily, though not exclusively, domestic in character. I say straightforward, although I recognize that central bankers in Europe are devoting an extraordinary amount of effort to making sure that such functions will be performed well even as the monetary side of the European Union evolves. These are crucial functions that central banks naturally perform. Nevertheless, one should consider from time to time the extent to which the private sector could perform some of these functions more effectively.   The other type of function relates more closely to the principal thrust of my remarks today and involves the need to ensure that the global financial system operates smoothly. What I have in mind specifically is a central bank's role in large value or interbank payment systems: on the one hand, setting standards for risk controls and monitoring the systems; on the other hand, providing certainty, or "finality," to payments made among participants in the system and, when necessary and appropriate, providing liquidity to participants. Any private bank, or for that matter any private business organization, can provide payment services with final settlement. The difficulty is that the final claim on the books of any private institution is not risk-free. Only a central bank is in a position to perform these functions under all circumstances. That, of course, is an element of the safety net, and it therefore raises the same issues of moral hazard and potential abuse of a nation's sovereign credit rating.   To be sure, private financial institutions themselves must work to develop the infrastructure for ensuring that payments and settlements can take place with reasonable confidence and that the risks other than those absorbed by the central bank are well understood and properly managed. Those risks will not be eliminated entirely; reducing "float" in the payment system to zero, which would eliminate settlement risk, must be balanced by the capital costs of doing so. It has been just in the last year or so that the risks associated with settlement of the enormous volume of foreign exchange transactions have been fully appreciated, more than 20 years after an incident involving Bank Herstatt in Germany brought this issue to international attention. A report produced last year by a G-10 central bank committee elaborated on these risks and urged the private sector to respond with appropriate institutions and risk controls. I am encouraged that much progress seems to be underway in this area, as in others.   Monetary policy This brings me, finally, to the area of monetary policy--the fundamental responsibility of a modern central bank. In this area, I am pleased to say, there have been positive developments, especially with regard to inflation. The recent record on inflation reduction in industrial countries has been impressive. Measured consumer price inflation in G-10 countries averaged only about 2-1/4 percent last year, down more than 3 percentage points from what it was in 1990. Consumer price increases on average in the G-10 have been kept under 3 percent for the past five years--the longest such period of sustained low inflation in more than three decades. Inflation performance in developing countries also has improved substantially. This success reflects in large part a thorough conceptual overhaul of economic thinking and policymaking. A consensus gradually emerged starting in the late 1970s that inflation destroyed jobs, or at least could not create them. This view has become particularly evident in the communiques that have emanated from the high-level international gatherings of the past two decades.

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We should take care, however, that our recent success not make us complacent. It is becoming increasingly evident that a key ingredient in achieving the highest possible levels of productivity, real incomes, and living standards over the long run is maintenance of price stability. But to sustain good inflation performance, we need to understand the other factors that lie behind our recent success, in addition to the policy consensus of governments, which must not be allowed to ebb as memories of the stagflation in the 1970s fade. Internally, various steps are being implemented that free up markets and intensify competition, not just in product markets, but in labor markets and financial sectors as well. On the external side, emerging nations, especially in Asia and Latin America, have become increasingly important as production sites and markets and thus as competitors. Faced with this broadened foreign competition, firms in many countries now find it less easy than in the past to raise prices during periods of rising demand at home.   The process of adjustment has not been entirely painless. Industrial economies in particular are going through an extended period of economic and financial restructuring that has hit some sectors, firms, and groups of workers particularly hard. The fact that in the past these groups may have felt insulated from such forces probably heightened the consequent stress, and may have contributed to some general uncertainty and insecurity. As a result, workers at present, to a greater extent than usual, trade aspirations for higher levels of earnings for job security.   Clearly it takes some time for an economy to realize the full benefits of transition from a high- or even moderate-inflation environment--with associated uncertainties about future inflation--to one where inflation is low and under control. Inflation expectations throughout the economy must fall, and financial-market premia related to inflation uncertainty have to dissipate.   I doubt the tasks of central bankers will become any easier as we move into the 21st century. Clearly price stability should and will remain the central goal of our activities. But we are having increasing difficulty in pinning down the notion of what constitutes a stable price level. When industrial product was the centerpiece of the advanced economies during the first two-thirds of this century, our overall price indexes served us well. Pricing a pound of electrolytic copper presented few definitional problems. The price of a ton of cold rolled steel sheet, or a linear yard of cotton broad woven fabric, could be reasonably compared over a period of years.   But as the century draws to a close, the simple notion of price has turned decidedly ambiguous. What is the price of a unit of software or a legal opinion? How does one evaluate the change in the price of a cataract operation over a ten-year period when the nature of the procedure and its impact on the patient has changed so radically. Indeed, how will we measure inflation, and the associated financial and real implications, in the 21st century when our data--using current techniques--could become increasingly less adequate to trace price trends over time?

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So long as individuals make contractual arrangements for future payments valued in dollars, or marks, or francs, there must be a presumption on the part of those involved in the transaction about the future purchasing power of money. No matter how complex individual products become, there will always be some general sense of the purchasing power of money both across time and across goods and services. Hence, we must assume that embodied in all products is some unit of output and hence of price that is recognizable to producers and consumers and upon which they will base their decisions. Doubtless, we will develop new techniques of price measurement to unearth them as the years go on. It is crucial that we do, for inflation can destabilize an economy even if faulty price indexes fail to reveal it.   However such conceptual and technical issues are resolved, central bankers need to err on the side of caution. Working in the context of our individual political environments, we are the ultimate protectors and preservers of the value of our currencies. A central banker cannot be exempted from one very basic fact: In the long run inflation is essentially a monetary phenomenon. Accordingly, the best approach is to maintain a steady course with an appropriate level of restraint. Countries whose currencies are widely used internationally, like the United States, have a special responsibility to provide an anchor of stability for themselves and the world at large.   Conclusion In conclusion, let me bring together three aspects of central bank responsibilities. Monetary policy must aim to provide a stable macroeconomic environment, to promote sustainable long-term economic growth without inflation and to allow financial markets to operate without excessive uncertainty. Central banks provide direct support to financial markets through their role in the safety net, that is, the extension to the financial system, under certain circumstances, of the nation's sovereign credit rating. This element of subsidy requires a degree of supervision and regulation to ensure that the safety net is not abused. The payment system, and the central banks' involvement in it, is a key element of the safety net and is, as well, at the core of the financial system through which monetary policy is implemented.   Central banks, like everyone else, operate in a global financial market. I can say with some confidence that everywhere, not just in Europe, the concept of a domestic market will have even less meaning in a decade than it does today. It is much more difficult to predict what the world will look like in all its dimensions, but my hope and expectation is that central banks will play a positive part. As all industrial countries are likely to experience similar forces, cooperation is key to our continued success.

영원한 것은 아무 것도 없다 / 법정스님

이 세상에서 영원한 것은 아무 것도 없다.
어떤 어려운 일도
어떤 즐거운 일도 영원하지 않다.

모두 한 때이다.
한 생애를 통해서 어려움만 지속된다면
누가 감내하겠는가.
다 도중에 하차하고 말 것이다.

모든 것이 한때이다. 좋은 일도 그렇다.
좋은 일도 늘 지속되지는 않는다.
그러면 사람이 오만해진다.
어려운 때일수록 낙천적인 인생관을 가져야 한다.

덜 가지고도 더 많이 존재할 수 있어야 한다.
이전에는 무심히 관심 갖지 않던 인간 관계도
더욱 살뜰히 챙겨야 한다.
더 검소하고 작은 것으로써 기쁨을 느껴야 한다.

우리 인생에서 참으로 소중한 것은
어떤 사회적인 지위나 신분, 소유물이 아니다.
우리들 자신이 누구인지를 아는 일이다.


- 법정스님/무소유의 삶과 침묵 중에서 -