The US “soft patch” in mid year followed a brief period when price statistics in the US had people worried about inflation. The number one topic of discussion the previous year, of course, had been deflation. There were also periodic concerns that the attempts to engineer a slowdown in China might over-achieve, resulting in a slump of global significance.
We are confident that these changes will help to ensure the functioning of the money markets whilst keeping in place adequate safeguards for the Eurosystem’s financial interests. EU financial crisis management Let me now turn to the second issue on which the panel of experts prepared studies, namely financial crisis management in the EU.