In spite of needing more flexible markets with its single currency, Europe faced stronger nominal rigidities than East Asia in labour and product markets.11 This limited the ability of euro area countries to adjust to asymmetric shocks, especially as cross-border labour mobility was low and public debt levels were already high. And finally, no mutual insurance mechanism was in place. But, and here comes the good news, unlike emerging Asia in the late 1990s, Europe had a well-established regional political framework to address its crisis. The framework of integration and cooperation among EU members is old and dense, building on the experience gained with the European Monetary System12. This made it possible to create the necessary instruments (the EFSF and ESM) for financial support for domestic adjustment programmes to come mainly from within the Union, with the IMF focusing on monitoring conditionality. 8  See Kochpar, K., P. Loungani and M. Stone (1998): “The East Asian Crisis: Macroeconomic Developments and Policy Lessons”, IMF Working Paper 98/128. 9  See Cavallo E.A. and J. A. Frankel (2008). “Does Openness to Trade Make Countries More Vulnerable to Sudden Stops, Or Less? Using Gravity to Establish Causality”, Journal of International Money and Finance, Volume 27, Issue 8, pp. 1430–1452. 10  See Loong, L.S. (2000). “Post crisis Asia – The way forward”, BIS William Taylor Memorial Lecture, 21 September 2000. 11  See Heinz, F.F. and D. Rusinova (2011): “How flexible are real wages in EU countries? A Panel Investigation”, ECB Working Paper No 1360.
Abdulrahman A Al-Hamidy: Compliance and anti-money laundering Speech by His Excellency Dr Abdulrahman A Al-Hamidy, Vice Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) ,to the Fifth Annual Gathering on “Compliance and anti-money laundering”, Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, Institute of Banking, Riyadh, 26–27 March 2013. *  *  *  Dear Audience, It gives me pleasure to welcome you all, and I would like to thank those who have participated in the preparation for this gathering. I also would like to extend my thanks to the colleagues at the Institute of Banking and the speakers to this gathering. Dear Audience, The continued holding of this gathering for the fifth year confirms the firm conviction held by all of us of the risks that the crime of money laundering poses to the global economy. It also reflects the Kingdom’s commitment to combat money laundering, and its support of the measures taken against it, and the implementation of the best international practices in this field. The discussion of this gathering derives its importance from the increasing trend towards globalization, easing restrictions on international cross-border movement of commodities and services and the revolution of communication and information technology. Dear Audience, Money laundering operations have witnessed a quantum leap at the global level over the last years. This was reflected in the various and diversified methods used in their implementation, expanding the volume this type of crime. Developed and developing countries suffer from this crime.