While the crisis has brought many disappointments, international cooperation among central bankers has been vital and has worked beyond expectations. One lesson we have learned is that a financial crisis spreads rapidly from one continent to another. We are all interconnected and even more interdependent than we understood before the crisis.
In this sense the theme for you conference, North America in the World, and the World in North America, is more than appropriate. *** Today’s speech I will raise three central themes that have to do with Finland’s transatlantic relations, in a historic perspective. Firstly, Finland was the only country to fully serve its debt to the United States after World War I.