On the technological front, advances in information technology made possible the low-cost collection, processing, and dissemination of household and business financial data, functions that were once highly localized and, by today's standards, inefficiently managed. 2 As credit reporting advanced, models for credit scoring gradually emerged, allowing for ever-faster evaluation of creditworthiness, identification of prospective borrowers, and management of existing accounts.
Thus, it is essential for the ECB to have a President who, due to his experience and life-long achievements, is able to communicate convincingly that the ECB is and remains fiercely independent and inflexibly attached to its primary mandate, price stability.