The amount of funds outstanding in the call money market is declining gradually. Interest rates on term instruments basically continue to be stable but have increased somewhat from the start of June. The Japan premium remains negligible. Yields on long-term government bonds have been moving in the range of 1.6-1.8 percent.
The third building block is the transparency and clarity of the ECB’s strategy and aims. The ECB’s primary final objective is price stability. This final objective will before 1999 be operationalized and quantified in a way that is meaningful and understandable to the markets and the public at large.