and even in terms of expanding our collateral framework which, from the outset, was already a very comprehensive collateral framework. it has been a big challenge. one of our challenges is that we had to take decisions very rapidly at the level of the governing council. and we again proved that, thanks to teleconferencing, in one hour and a half or two hours we could make a full judgment and take a decision. we had to test the capacity to have such teleconferences at very short notice, in order to be sure that we could confront any new situation. we had a large number of teleconferences with the governing council. you see there … [ points to telephones on table ] if the situation were to demand now that we had in one hour and a half a teleconference with the governing council, we will then indeed have a teleconference in one hour and a half. the full continent would be there. that ’ s very impressive, because this would mean all members of the governing council from ljubljana to helsinki and from lisbon to dublin. ft : and as you say, an exceptional crisis, a global crisis. how much worse would it have been without the euro? trichet : it is very difficult to reconstruct history with new assumptions. but my memory of what we experienced together in the old days is certainly that we would have had a situation which would have been very difficult, because on top of all of these global challenges that are without precedent, we would have had to cope with the intra - european tensions, the equivalent of the intra - erm 1 tensions, and that would have been demanding. there is no doubt from that standpoint that the enormous challenges we had at the level of the euro area as a whole were, very fortunately, not the result of intra - euro - area tensions, and that is something which is important. ft : and that would have put the single market at risk? trichet : and that would have put the single market at risk, sure. not only have the central banks had to cope with exceptional situations. governments were called upon to take action in various forms, and the fact that europe is a union of sovereign states means that a lot of decisions implying taxpayers ’ money or risks to taxpayers are taken at the level of governments and parliaments. hence there is a constant need to ensure that we maintain the single market and its level playing - field, and that we do not

for the coordination of surveillance for cross - border institutions – a little bit like in the us. the federal reserve has a position which concentrates very much on the big cross - border institutions. and i see also suggestions coming from the private sector, coming from the industry, that we could play a more important role in this domain. as president of the ecb ’ s governing council, i would say again, i have no position of the governing council, but i think it's flattering for the governing council that we are called to reflect on that, by both parliament and perhaps the high - level group that has been set up by the commission and where you have a number of eminent personalities. we will see. a little bit of philosophy again. we cannot afford to put in the future the concept of the market economy at risk as we did. i have known myself a world where you had an east and a west, a north and a south. in this matrix, we were only one square out of four where you could say they are in favour of market economies. the others were devising other ideas, which failed, and it's very good that they failed. however, the trust which was put in the resilience of the market economy is at stake now. i think we were, again, quite lucid on this. i have permanently with me the first page of the financial times warning of it, it was january 2007, in davos, where i was providing the sentiment of my colleagues, as it has arisen from the governors ’ meeting in basel on the fact that market participants had to prepare for a significant correction because risks were underassessed and underestimated in global finance. but the fragility, not only of global finance but of the global economy itself, is something that we should reflect on. you know, there are some key intermediate inputs that are produced in only three factories in the world. this is not reliable. we have this just - in - time system, with minimum inventories, which in case of a shock might make the full body of the real economy more immediately vulnerable. in the financial system we have eliminated a number of cushions and shock - absorbers that we had here and there. this morning, i was telling our staff, that this is as if we had been keen on eliminating a number of air bags from the [ global finance ] “ car ”. so now that we have an accident, we are surprised to