With these caveats in mind let me nevertheless give you just a few examples where the Euro Area Accounts have already come into play at the ECB during the crisis complementing and enriching our monetary and economic analysis.4 First and foremost, the euro area’s financial structure was a key element in shaping the ECB’s choice of non-standard measures.
The expected sharp increase in US speculative-grade corporate defaults could cause a widening of credit spreads and exacerbate funding problems. Moreover, it could adversely affect the US labour market and consumer spending.