*  *  *  With the benefit of hindsight, we have been endeavoring for nearly two years to distill the critical lessons from the global crises of 1997 and 1998.
And to understand the individual factors and their interactions better, I’ll be taking a closer look today at the causes of our monetary policy measures and their effects. For the European Central Bank’s policy is often referred to as a cause of the current problems in the banking and financial sector. It will quickly become clear that this assumption has its shortcomings.