Large scale buy-backs took place from 4 November 2008. Partial normalisation of the situation made it possible for us to follow suit when the ECB lowered its interest rates by 0.5 per cent on 6 November. In December, the monetary-policy spread gradually narrowed by a total of 0.75 percentage point.
Conclusion (Chart 8) During 2009, Danmarks Nationalbank gradually reduced interest rates so that the spread to the euro area narrowed again. Today, the monetary- policy spread is only 5 basis points. But the actual money-market spread is around 50 basis points, mainly due to the substantial amount of excess liquidity in the Euro area.