For instance, in February we considered that the new information received since our previous monetary policy meetings in October and December did not justify the relatively large upward adjustments in the interest rate forecasts made by some other market analysts. The fact that other agents make their own assessments of how the interest rate will develop is essentially very positive. One of the arguments put forward against a central bank presenting its own forecast for the interest rate path was that the agents in the financial market would then stop making their own analyses of interest rate developments. However, these misgivings have proved unjustified. Opinions on the interest rate and future economic developments still differ, which is a natural consequence of the uncertainty regarding the future development of the economy. In particular those who operate in the financial markets know that we live in an uncertain world and for this reason the assessments of interest rate developments will continue to differ. Another argument against a central bank presenting its own forecast for the interest rate is that the central bank would lose credibility if the forecast proved to be wrong. It has also been speculated in various market comments that it would entail a loss of prestige for the central bank to revise its forecasts and that the central bank should therefore by wary of doing so.
Economies of scale and scope may have been changing in different areas of banking and even taking different directions. For example, the rapid development of information technology has made the collection and processing of information considerably cheaper, but at the same time technological investments are taking a larger share of banks’ resources. Therefore, economies of scale in some aspects of the collection of information may have been reduced, but at the same the time investments in more sophisticated technology have increased economies of scale and scope in some areas of banking. While I do not wish to go into detail on this matter, the general picture that emerges is that the banking industry has to be in a position to adjust to a new situation and take these factors into consideration. Indeed, in the course of the last few months, a number of bank mergers in the euro area, including mergers between relatively large institutions, have been announced or are being contemplated. Such “high-profile” mergers are likely to contribute to an acceleration of the pace of both the consolidation and integration of the banking systems of the euro area. However, it should be remembered that the recent pattern of consolidation represents part of a longer-term trend in the European banking industry, as is highlighted by the large decline in the number of credit institutions in the euro area countries over the past decade or so. In the mid1980s there were more than 11,000 credit institutions in the euro area countries; today they number around 8,000.