john iannis mourmouras : the pandemic crisis as a challenge greece the day after opening speech by professor john iannis mourmouras, senior deputy governor of the bank of greece, at the imn's greek banking & npl management virtual event, 9 september 2020. * * * good afternoon everybody in athens and europe, good morning to new york, let me first thank the imn, especially chris and my friend jade for the kind invitation to offer a few opening remarks at today ’ s important webinar on “ greek banking & npl management ”. i wish to all of you to be healthy and stay safe and next year we all get together in athens at the imn ’ s real event, and not like this year ’ s virtual event. although the corona shock hit all countries in the world, both in terms of public health and national economy, its effects are asymmetric on both frontiers. this is because, on the one hand, the speed of governments ’ responses in flattening the pandemic curve differed among countries and, on the other hand, because of different initial conditions and timing of the appropriate monetary - fiscal policy mix. in europe, southern countries have been hit harder than northern ones, both in terms of the brunt of the disease and the economic recession. in my country, measures to combat the pandemic were taken by the government in a timely fashion and the citizens exhibited selfdiscipline and respected the public addresses of the greek prime minister kyriakos mitsotakis ; the total number of reported cases was equally low. greece is among the five best performers in the eu in terms of coronavirus deaths per million. the latest forecasts with regards to the greek economic outlook this year is for a recession around 7 - 8 % and for next year a recovery of around 3 - 4 %, namely not a v - recovery, similar to the rest of the eurozone. looking ahead, the economy will benefit in the coming years mainly from two drivers : a ) the catching up effect, which will be bigger as a result of a combination of the mou and pandemic years and b ) from the government ’ s reforms agenda and fdi. more on the positive side, last week greece held a successful bond auction, it ’ s fourth in 2020, to raise €2. 5 billion and boost state cash reserves. the public debt management agency said the sale was 7, 6 times overs

longer - term refinancing operations ( ltros ) and decides the main refinancing operations to be carried out through a fixed - rate tender procedure with full allotment. ecb cuts the base interest rate from 2. 50 % to 1. 00 %, and introduces the first covered bond purchase programme ( cbpp1 ). ecb activates the securities markets programme ( smp ). the ecb launches the second covered bond purchase programme ( cbpp2 ) and introduces the 3 - year ltros. the ecb announces the outright monetary transactions ( omts ). the ecb cuts the base interest rate to 0. 25 % and introduces forward guidance. the ecb cuts the base interest rate to 0. 05 % and the deposit facility rate to - 0. 20 %, bringing it for the first time in negative territory and introduces the targeted longerterm refinancing operations ( tltro ) with a 4 - year maturity. ecb introduces the expanded asset purchase programme ( app ) and cuts the deposit facility rate to - 0. 30 %. ecb accelerates the expanded asset purchase programme ( app ) and cuts the main refinancing operations ( mro ) rate to 0. 00 % and the deposit facility rate to - 0. 40 %. indeed, the 10 largest central banks now own assets totaling $ 21. 4 trillion, accounting for 29 % of the world economy, up by 10 % from end - 2015, double what it was in midseptember 2008 and almost half the value of all debt in bloomberg ’ s global bond index ( as shown in chart 1 )! chart 1. the combined assets of the 10 largest central banks finally, almost 75 % of the world ’ s central bank assets are controlled by policy - makers in four regions : china, the us, japan and the eurozone. the following six – that is, the central banks of england, brazil, switzerland, saudi arabia, india and russia – each account for an average of 2. 5 %. the remaining 107 central banks tracked by bloomberg, mostly with imf data, hold less than 13 % ( see chart 2 ). chart 2. central banks ’ combined assets chart 3. stock of assets purchased by the four major central banks as a percentage of national gdp source : bank of greece, european central bank, fed, bank of england and bank of japan. note : the ecb ’ s purchased assets in the context of the