Government bond trading is typically over the counter, with dealers playing a key role as intermediaries. Pressure on their intermediation capacity is set to increase as government debt continues to grow. Enhancing the volume of centrally cleared transactions could help mitigate risks to market functioning by freeing up the balance sheet of dealers and encouraging all-to-all trading. The need for liquidity management will remain. Fixing the "plumbing" alone may have limited impact in a market-wide deleveraging episode with one-sided flows. Hence central clearing of government bonds and repos would not fully eliminate financial market risks but would change their nature. […]