Monetary policy in particular is not an alternative to structural reforms – this is not only true with regard to the peripheral countries but also with regard to the large countries of the euro area including Germany and France. It is certainly true that reaping the fruit of success comes with a time lag.
This paradigm holds that large banks have a comparative advantage lending to those relatively transparent customers from which they can obtain "hard," or quantitative, information, such as standardized accounting data, and community banks have a comparative advantage lending to relatively opaque small businesses and households. However, this division of labor between large and small institutions has begun to blur.