our non standard measures – the full allotment of liquidity at fixed rates, the covered bond purchase programme and the securities markets programme – to be commensurate to the market disruption, in order to improve the transmission of our monetary policy. bis central bankers ’ speeches some german central bankers say that the ecb ’ s actions have taken it to the limit of what is defensible, while others say that it has overstepped this limit. we are entitled to use all of the instruments mentioned, since the transmission of monetary policy is at risk if interest rates for “ risk - free ” monetary and financial investment instruments in the individual euro area countries are hampering our monetary policy. at the same time, we have always made it clear that financial stability is the responsibility of governments. we had to intervene – for monetary reasons – only because for a long time governments did not take their responsibility for ensuring financial stability seriously. have we perhaps gone too far as regards our monetary policy? to answer that, we should look at the policy rates of other currency areas, such as japan or the united states, which are much lower than ours. any comparison with other important advanced economies ’ central banks shows that we are actually very prudent in our application of non - standard measures. but is that also true of the non - standard measures? again, the comparison is simple. look at the evolution of central banks ’ balance sheets since the start of the crisis. our balance sheet has increased by around 80 %. on the other side of the atlantic, the equivalent balance sheet has grown by 226 %. none of us can ignore the crisis. drawing on the ideas of the great german thinker max weber, i would say that we have to rely on both the ethic of conviction, which i associate with the interest rate measures, and the ethic of responsibility, which i associate with all the non - standard measures. and we have to do that in a highly responsible way. that being said, did you know that in my own country i was called the “ ayatollah of the strong franc ” and “ tietmeyer ’ s clone ”? you must admit that you find that flattering. it was meant as very harsh and serious criticism by some in my home country. on the other hand, there are also those in germany who are not critical. i was awarded the karlspreis in aachen and the global economy prize in kiel. this was a very great

##r. unlike banks, these market participants often do not have access to central bank operations. were the transmission across money market rates to weaken, or rates to decouple from policy intentions, this could have implications for monetary policy implementation in the future. understanding the changing forces that affect money market activity is essential for policy makers. to foster an improved understanding of recent trends in money markets, this conference brings together some of the best academics, central bankers and practitioners. i look forward to many insightful discussions over the next two days. thank you very much for your attention. https : / / www. ecb. europa. eu / press / key / date / 2020 / html / ecb. sp201123 ~ 8d9573b1b1. en. html 5 / 7 24 / 11 / 2020 shifting tides in euro area money markets : from the global financial crisis to the covid - 19 pandemic [ 1 ] i would like to thank marie hoerova for her contributions to this speech. [ 2 ] this speech builds on the recently published ecb discussion paper “ money markets, central bank balance sheet and regulation ” ; see corradin, s., eisenschmidt, j., hoerova, m., linzert, t., schepens, g. and sigaux, j. - d. ( 2020 ), “ money markets, central bank balance sheet and regulation ”, ecb discussion paper no. 2483. [ 3 ] a non - bank financial institution is a financial institution that does not provide the traditional banking intermediation role, in particular it does not accept demand deposits from the public. examples of non - bank financial institutions are investment funds, money market funds, central clearing counterparties ( ccps ), insurance companies, pension funds and hedge funds. [ 4 ] there are several channels through which money market conditions affect lending conditions. for example, the conference paper by corbae and gofman ( 2019 ) points out one novel channel, namely that interbank markets provide a channel for banks to collude in the market for business loans ; see corbae, d and gofman, m. ( 2020 ). “ interbank trading, collusion, and financial regulation ”, working paper. altavilla, carboni, lenza, and uhlig ( 2019 ) document that the cross - sectional dispersion in unsecured inter