Using authorities and funding provided by EESA, the Treasury's Capital Purchase Program provides government capital investments to banks in good condition. Since last fall, nearly $ billion has been invested under this program. Confidence in the U.S. banking system has also been supported by temporary extensions of government safety net policies.
Some of these measures not only proved controversial within the ECB Governing Council, but also raised a number of fundamental questions about the limits of monetary policy. These emergency measures bought the countries time to restore their competitiveness and to consolidate their public finances. Most of the former crisis countries have indeed managed to reduce or even eliminate their current account deficits.