*  *  *  Paul and Alan have me at a disadvantage. Each of us was asked to reflect on our own term in office. But they have the benefit of perspective, whereas my term still has a short time to run.
Increased competition in banking seems to be reducing the availability of relationship lending in the euro area  Before further describing the effects of increased competition on the availability of relationship lending, let me stress that the phenomena we are talking about are not directly observable, and hence making it hard to evaluate the availability of relationship lending with certainty.