policy. subsequently, prof. fischer extended his research to the role of policy in the context of rational expectations, stickiness in prices and indexation of wages. israel a brief comment on the bank of israel under governor fischer ’ s leaderships. israel came out of the crisis relatively unscathed, and the credit for that goes largely to stan. replying to a question on how that happened, he answered, and i quote, “ when the crisis came, we saw it approaching from afar in the form of currency appreciation, and we balanced this phenomenon with foreign exchange deals. when lehman brother collapsed, we decided it was the moment to cut interest rates. ” whoever said “ academics do not make good practitioners ”? in 2010, the bank of israel was ranked first among central banks for its efficient functioning, according to imd ’ s world competitiveness yearbook, yet another tribute to stan ’ s leadership and sagacity. in september 2009, the bank of israel was the first bank in the developed world to raise its interest rates demonstrating stan ’ s intellectual courage to be an outlier. in october of 2010, stan fischer was declared central bank governor of the year by the euromoney magazine. central bank lessons professor fischer will be speaking today on “ central bank lessons from the global crisis ”. that topic needs no explanation, but maybe it needs some context. when asked what he thought of the french revolution, mao zedong had famously replied – “ it is too early to tell ”. people who take a long view of history, like mao, take the position that it is just too soon to draw the lessons of the crisis. policy practitioners do not have the luxury of historians ; they have to respond to unfolding developments in real time, and incorporate the lessons of experience. there is another reason why it is not too soon to be talking about the lessons of the crisis ; indeed why we should be more activist in learning the lessons of the crisis. in their bis central bankers ’ speeches painstakingly researched book, “ this time is different : eight centuries of financial folly ”, kenneth rogoff and carmen reinhart show how over eight hundred years, all financial crises can be traced to the same fundamental causes as if we learnt nothing from one crisis to the next. each time, experts have chimed that “ this time is different ” claiming that the old rules do not apply and the new situation is dissimilar to the previous one. is this time really different for central banks?

performed by credit functions and assessment of a bank's capital assessment process. conclusion implementation of basel ii has been described as a long journey rather than a destination by itself. undoubtedly, it would require commitment of substantial capital and human resources on the part of both banks and the supervisors. rbi has decided to follow a consultative process while implementing basel ii norms and move in a gradual, sequential and co - coordinated manner. for this purpose, dialogue has already been initiated with the stakeholders. a steering committee comprising representatives of banks and different supervisory and regulatory departments is taking stock of all issues relating to its implementation. as envisaged by the basel committee, the accounting profession too, will make a positive contribution in this respect to make indian banking system stronger.