As both a policymaker and an economist, I welcome this opportunity to look back on the first five years of the euro to see what we can learn from the experience and to consider what this grand experiment implies for the future.
In fact, these kinds of financing are today the main component of financial institutions’ assets and the focus of their business. Anyhow, we see that every country in the region is taking precautions. In our case, for an economy in transition towards its long-term cruising speed, foreign reserve accumulation is an extremely useful countercyclical policy.