2  BIS Review 97/2010  In spring 2007 the Governing Council endorsed the pursuit of an agenda to enhance the ECB’s monetary analysis. Why did we start this? How did we come to organise it? Finally, what have we achieved over the past three years? 1. Reasons for enhancing monetary analysis  Looking back, I must say that the timing was most opportune.
M3 had persistently been growing, far in excess of the reference value, and had actually started to increase by doubledigit rates compared with a year earlier. What was going on? Did this reflect an underlying trend? How would this end? These developments seemed to expose a number of shortcomings in our analysis.