As an example, under the chairmanship of my predecessor, Wim Duisenberg, whose passing away a month ago has deprived our community of central bankers of a man of remarkable wisdom and lucid judgement, we took immediate decisions after the dramatic events of 9/11, pouring very large amounts of liquidity in euro, setting up a swap agreement with the Fed and decreasing rates.
This has demonstrated very clearly that the ECB was eager to act decisively and immediately when appropriate and had absolutely no enshrined bias for waiting for the “slowest ship in the convoy”. This observation that all observers and market participants made was certainly important in reinforcing the credibility of the Governing Council of the ECB when embarking on a “reinforced alertness”.