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Canada’s advantages were very apparent through the financial crisis. They sheltered us from the worst of the storm and put Canada at the front of the pack coming out of the recession.

Why does household financial health matter to the Bank of Canada? It matters because how Canadians spend and how much they spend affect both the conduct of monetary policy and the stability of the financial system.

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.

As the title of my speech suggests, I would like to discuss the connections between the real economy – the tangible world of jobs, goods and services – and the more intangible world of finance – of money flows, interest rates and the stock market. They have a long and eventful history.

There is an old saying, “Knowledge is gained from experience, and experience is gained from mistakes.” In Canada, we made our mistakes early and often in the 1970s and 1980s. Our fiscal situation deteriorated sharply, inflation surged to double-digit levels, and a few small regional banks collapsed.

As a native Montrealer, I am particularly pleased to be coming home to deliver my first speech as Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada.

Insights from financial markets are somewhat fleeting at the moment. A broad range of asset prices from the Canadian dollar to S&P500 futures to European sovereign spreads are unusually correlated and volatile.

Keynes wrote prophetically of the economic consequences of the Treaty of Versailles. Could the same be said of current financial reforms? Are policy-makers taking for granted the essential role performed by finance in a vain pursuit of its risk-proofing?

We are three years into the global financial crisis, and its dynamics still dominate the economic outlook. In particular, broad forces of bank, household, and sovereign deleveraging can be expected to add to the variability and temper the pace of global economic growth in the years ahead.

I am honoured to address members of the Canadian Association for Business Economics. My remarks today will focus on critical issues that the Bank of Canada has studied over the past four years and how this research will inform our work as we move forward post crisis.