BIS central bankers’ speeches  •  Capital requirement tools, including changes in leverage ratio requirements, imposition of a countercyclical capital buffer, and higher differential capital requirements for commercial real estate exposures;  •  Liquidity tools, such as changes in the liquidity coverage ratio and net stable funding ratio;  •  Credit-based tools, such as limits on loan to value ratios;  •  Supervisory guidance; and  •  Stress testing. Monetary policy was also considered as a tool – either as a complement or as a substitute. It was noteworthy that in the discussion there was no agreement as to what instruments should be emphasized and the ordering in which they should be used relative to monetary policy. Among the available macroprudential tools, stress testing, raising margins on repo funding, and supervisory guidance garnered greater support compared to capital, liquidity, or credit-based tools. In general, the exercise identified several issues with respect to the use of macroprudential tools. One issue was the perceived difficulty of coordinating among different regulators. Another was the fact that many of the tools have implementation lags. The challenge of timely implementation steered some members back to using monetary policy, or toward those macroprudential tools – such as stress tests – that might be able to be implemented more quickly. The exercise underscored that much more development work in the area of macroprudential regulation is needed. Let me now turn to the issue of ex ante, hardwired macroprudential standards that Adam has discussed.
The availability and quality of genuine euro area statistics – i.e. those which are more than just the sum of the national data of the Member States – has improved very substantially over the last ten years. Most notably, the ECB and Eurostat now regularly and jointly release quarterly real and financial euro area accounts that are both integrated and comprehensive. And yet, I would strongly favour an improvement in the timeliness of such releases, which would then be even more useful for the ECB’s monetary policy-making. The credibility of euro area and relevant national statistics is of key importance to the ECB, and this also requires that such statistics be effectively communicated. This applies in particular to the HICP. In view of the importance to the ECB of euro area monetary, financial and external statistics, the Governing Council has endorsed a strategic vision that should further increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the compilation of these statistics by the Eurosystem. This entails even more intensive cooperation not only among the statistics departments of the NCBs and the ECB, but also between those departments and external parties such as statistical institutes, supervisors and the financial industry. I hope that the gains resulting from these synergies will then be used to close some of those gaps in the ECB’s statistics that I mentioned earlier and to improve market transparency as regards the issues that have come to the fore in the ongoing financial turmoil.