Yet the crisis has damaged banks and at times severely disrupted the functioning of financial markets. Addressing these problems needed to be done through non-standard measures. The ECB has decided such measures, for monetary policy reasons, since the very start of the global crisis. It has been offering liquidity to financial institutions at a fixed rate and with full allotment.
It has also provided this liquidity over an extended period of time, up to 12 months, so that the euro area banking sector, Germany’s banks included, could continue to be as correct as possible a vehicle for the transmission of our monetary policy. With additional liquidity demanded by the euro area banks, our balance sheet has expanded during the crisis.