also publishes key monthly information on the outstanding amounts and net sales of shares issued by the funds. a further important improvement concerns the timeliness of the publication of these statistics : as from 2010, the statistics will become available after one - and - a - half months ( compared to 3 - and - a - half months in the past ). there are many reasons why high quality statistics on euro area investment funds are important for the ecb ’ s monetary and financial analysis. let me just highlight two of them : first, since investment funds are large institutional investors, their portfolio choices may be indicative of more general trends in portfolio diversification. for that reason, these statistics are certainly also useful for explaining monetary developments. second, changes in investment funds ’ asset value are transmitted, through the valuation of their shares, to households and firms. in turn, these wealth effects, may have implications on aggregate demand. the structure of the financial assets held by investment funds also provides important information regarding the financial risks that are indirectly borne by households and firms through their portfolio of investment fund shares. in addition to the new statistics on investment funds, separate data are now also published every quarter on euro area money market fund balance sheets. as a consequence, one can now perform analyses for the whole sector of funds. these new data on money market funds are also a useful addition to the ecb ’ s monetary analysis. because of the close substitutability between their shares issued and bank deposits, money market funds form part of the monetary financial institutions sector and are thereby contained in the m3 figures. from now on, the new investment fund and money market fund data will be published in regular monthly ecb statistical press releases. i am convinced that the new harmonised statistics yield novel insights into the structure and development of the financial sector of the euro area economy. the financial crisis clearly demonstrated that high quality and up - to - date statistics are indispensable to policy makers and market participants alike. thank you very much for your attention. now, the director general statistics, mr. steven keuning, will present more detailed features and the first results of the new statistics. following his presentation we stand ready to answer your questions.

financial system, to issue warnings when the assessment of risks are deemed to be significant, and to suggest, when appropriate, policy recommendations. close cooperation with national eu supervisory authorities and with global institutions ( such as the imf and the financial stability board ) should help this new institution and the central banks represented on the esrb to deal with the challenges posed by increasingly interconnected national financial systems. conclusions let me conclude. the recent financial crisis has re - opened the debate on the relationship between monetary policy and asset prices. at the heart of that debate are questions like : is price stability too narrow an objective for monetary policy? should monetary policy “ lean against the wind ”, in order to avoid asset price bubbles? i would answer these questions in two ways. first, a monetary policy which has price stability as its primary objective is a necessary condition for avoiding asset price bubbles and promoting financial stability. with the benefit of hindsight, it seems that some of the financial imbalances which built up prior to the crisis resulted from monetary policies which were not fully in line with the objective of price stability. either the policies were also pursuing other goals, such as supporting economic activity and employment, or they were not focusing on the appropriate indicators of inflationary pressures, attaching, for instance, too much importance to output gaps and too little to monetary and credit developments. the first steps to take are to put monetary policy back on track – so that it focuses primarily on price stability – and to improve the underlying analytical framework. in particular, it ’ s essential to include monetary and financial variables in the information available to central banks. they can provide the signal that the monetary policy stance needs to be tighter well before the business cycle reaches its peak, in order to ensure price stability over the medium term. second, a monetary policy which is appropriate for price stability might not suffice to ensure financial stability. indeed, given that asset prices react more rapidly than other prices, they may overshoot their long term equilibrium value and have undesirable effects on the financial system. if this were to happen, should monetary policy react, even if price stability is not at risk? in other words, should interest rates be raised even if, taking into account all possible indicators, price stability is not endangered but there are risks of an asset price bubble building up? i personally think that a case has not yet been made for such a course of action. it would imply that monetary policy follows two objectives with only one instrument,