Let me say first of all how much I regret not being with you in Beijing for this conference. When I looked at this agenda, I regretted it all the more because it’s a very full agenda on some very important points.

I think we’re all learning a lesson that finance is not a national matter anymore, it’s essentially international and that requires a lot of complications, a lot of thought, a lot of ideas about how to bring this together better in regulation, not just in financial regulation, but financial structure, in accounting, in auditing, in credit rating agencies, many other aspects, so that is a real challenge. But what I particularly was struck by in this year’s conference is the emphasis on international monetary reform. That is a subject that has not received much attention for decades, but we found out, as you know, we’ve had huge imbalances developing internationally, huge imbalances within Europe, those imbalances are characterized perhaps most of all by Chinese accumulation of huge amounts of foreign reserve, by the big deficits in the United States on the other side, and those imbalances have contributed to the international financial difficulties. They have also led to a lot of changes in exchange rates that have not been very helpful, I think, in terms of international trade and development.

So you’ll have a lot to talk about in the next couple of days, it’s a very full agenda, I wish you good luck, I hope when you get all the answers you will immediately inform me of all those answers. So go ahead and go to it and it really is important that you bring attention to the issues of international monetary reform. Thank you very much.

(This article is the opening speech of Mr. Paul at the IFF 2011 Global Annual Meeting)