US Officials: Military Action Is Still On The Table If Iran Resumes The Killing Of Protesters – Axios

Can I start by extending my welcome to all participants in the Bellagio Group, and congratulate the organisers on a timely and highly relevant choice of subject. My role today is some scene setting. I am going to cover three points. First, a reminder of the benefits of open economies and why they need to be supported by an international rules-based system which gives important roles to multilateral institutions. Second, I will set out some of the conditions that help to make this system work. And, finally I will highlight a number of the specific big challenges we face today and must take on. The benefits of trade and openness in terms of specialisation and larger markets are very well known. So, too, is the need to have rules of the game and some form of commitment and co-ordination device to put these rules into effect and protect legitimate national interests. This may sound reasonable enough, but defining exactly such national interests has been hard, not least because their precise nature and force can change over time. Bretton Woods was a defining moment in terms of institution creation, but it was, of course, context specific – in the context of beggar my neighbour policies in the inter-war period when the institutional fabric of the gold standard broke down, and then a global war. The effectiveness of the international rules-based system has a number of key general dependencies. First, it depends on domestic national support and license – it cannot operate in isolation. The goals of international co-ope BANK OF ENGLAND'S BAILEY: NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO CLOSE THE WORLD TO THE BENEFITS OF TRADE BoE's Bailey: Populism is making economic challenges harder

BELARUS LEADER LUKASHENKO SIGNS DEGREE TO ALLOW 'CRYPTOBANKS'