With that in mind, one key lesson learned from the financial crisis is that, in terms of risks to the stability of the financial system, it would be short-sighted to look only at banks. Rather, all financial intermediaries need to be adequately regulated and effectively supervised. This applies also, and especially, to insurance undertakings. We’ve already made great strides here.
This is in a sense what the cross-checking is all about. Of course, the merits of a more formalised forecasting combination would have to be weighted against any possible loss of information that might be associated with it. This brings me to another criticism that is sometimes voiced, namely that monetary developments are not regarded as being informative about the Eurosystem’s monetary policy decisions.