In normal times, central banks cut their key rates, and this passes through to the yield curve. However, in order to deal with the financial crisis, the ECB like other central banks have brought their key interest rates to very low levels, around zero. This means that our traditional monetary policy tools had to be supplemented by other instruments, known as non-standard instruments, in order to reach our prices stability objective. I will return to this point later. b) The second challenge, which stems from the first, is the risk of an unanchoring of expectations, which would make it harder for us to achieve our 2% target again. Indeed, if inflation stayed too low for too long, economic agents may revise downwards their inflation expectations, which would create second round effects. Lower inflation expectations influence economic agents’ price- and wage-setting behaviour, which in turn keeps inflation low. It can even raise the risk of deflation, defined as a cumulative process of falling prices, including those of assets, or even wages and production, as the world economy experienced in the 1930s or Japan partially underwent in the 1990s. Such deflationary dynamics are not at play today; but that is why our inflation target is symmetrical. We consider too low inflation to be just as costly as too high inflation. And, therefore, it is more risky for central banks to act too late than too early. Since the start of the year, we have observed that market-based measures of inflation expectations have fallen.

In light of recent international experiences of bank failures, the traditional intervention criterion of lending to “solvent but illiquid” banks has been put to the test as it becomes increasingly difficult to determine the necessity for intervention as well as the method and timing of such measures. The extension of such support will therefore be based on a careful balance of various considerations, which include amongst others, its potential systemic implications, the cost of the intervention, the cost of failures, avoiding disruptions in the functioning of markets and finally its potential social implications. In order to avoid long term moral hazard, the lender of last resort is based on the rigorous application of viability tests and the “first loss principle”, where losses are borne by the shareholders of the financial institutions. The operational framework also needs sufficient flexibility, in terms of policy instruments, acceptable collateral and range of counterparties, to deal with exceptional market conditions. Going forward, cooperation arrangements for dealing with crises will continue to be further enhanced. This includes further strengthening current cooperation arrangements among the various regulatory agencies in Malaysia, as well further advancing cross-border cooperation in the region. Indeed, significant strides have already been taken to strengthen the cooperative framework between central banks and supervisory agencies in the region to promote financial stability at the regional level. These have included the establishment of various regional mechanisms for cooperation and coordination in surveillance, information sharing and crisis management.