The free negotiation of prices between the customer and the bank certainly represents one of the key areas of free competition, but if the result is out of proportion to the service provided, then - as past experience has shown - new operators or procedures tend to emerge - in Europe possibly in the form of cross-border cash transports or the increasing use of credit cards - which is unlikely to  1  BIS Review 129/1999  be in the interest of either the banking industry or of consumers.
But over the 2000s, our real income increased much more quickly than our output owing to the large increase in our terms of trade.