I was determined to make that point forcefully. And the markets did the rest. So once you’d said this and it had a market reaction, did you have a clear plan then of what you were going to do to back it up? A strong commitment to intervene in an unlimited fashion supported by an equally credible commitment of the country concerned.
Given the experience with SMP, that commitment needed to be clearly spelled out and backed by a programme with the then EFSF, now the ESM. The sense is now that it has acted as a nuclear deterrent. You never really needed to draw on it because markets find it so convincing.