Against this background, I would like to focus my intervention today – from my perspective as a central banker – on the challenging environment for monetary policy created by the ongoing euro area financial and sovereign debt crisis.
In the first part of my speech I would like to recall some of the main policy “failures” leading up to the present crisis and briefly review the more recent policy actions undertaken by the ECB. As the ECB has repeatedly stressed, the main responsibility for resolving this crisis lies with governments and the financial sector.