To summarize, financing by means of firewalls is no substitute for restoring solvency – or to go back to my original metaphor – it is not an effective sword for cutting the knot. This can  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  only be achieved through economic adjustments and structural reforms, in which case a firewall may well be helpful. 4.
Central banks in advanced economies have drastically reduced policy rates, but bank borrowing rates for final users – households and companies – have come down only marginally. In the United States, where policy rates are lower than 1%, rates for mortgages and companies are in most cases higher than in the euro area, where policy rates are at 3.25%.