, having been displayed in bratislava to mark the euro cash changeover in slovakia, and also in barcelona and rome. after berlin, it will continue its journey across europe, to destinations that include estonia, luxembourg, poland and greece. the museum fur kommunikation ’ s partner museum in frankfurt am main will also host the exhibition next year. the ecb truly welcomes the cooperation from all partners who contribute to making the public more acquainted with the euro, our money, and i want to thank ms kugler and her team who have made tonight ’ s event a reality. ladies, gentlemen, distinguished guests. it is a pleasure for me to declare this exhibition open. thank you.

used in one way or another in the past. what has been unconventional over recent times is the way these tools have been used. negative interest rates the first of the four tools discussed in the report is negative policy rates. this is one tool that is truly unconventional. prior to the financial crisis, it was widely thought that zero was the lower bound for the policy interest rate – so it was common to talk about the ‘ zlb ’, or the zero lower bound. it was thought that if interest rates went below zero, people would hold their savings in banknotes rather than be charged by their bank to deposit their money. but zero has not turned out to be the constraint that it was once thought to be. so we now talk about the elb – the effective lower bound – not the zlb. while countries with negative interest rates have seen some shift to banknotes, it has been on a limited scale only. this reflects the use of bank deposits for making transactions and the fact that most banks in countries with negative interest rates have set a floor of zero on retail deposit rates. these banks have judged that it doesn't make sense, either commercially or politically, to charge households and small businesses negative interest rates on their deposits. it is worth pointing out that negative policy interest rates have largely been a european phenomenon. policy interest rates have been negative in the euro area, denmark, sweden and switzerland. rates have been lowest in switzerland, at minus ¾ per cent ( graph 1 ). the only country outside of europe that has had negative policy interest rates is japan, but even there it is only a very small share of bank reserves at the bank of japan that earns a negative rate, at minus 0. 1 per cent. https : / / www. rba. gov. au / speeches / 2019 / sp - gov - 2019 - 11 - 26. html 2 / 12 26 / 11 / 2019 unconventional monetary policy : some lessons from overseas | speeches | rba graph 1 extended liquidity operations the second unconventional policy discussed in the report is the extended use of central bank liquidity operations. in response to the financial crisis, many central banks made significant changes to their normal market operations to deal with strains in financial markets that were impairing the supply of credit to the economy. while the specifics differ across countries, the changes to market operations included : expanding the range of collateral accepted ; providing much larger amounts of liquidity ; extending the maturity of liquidity operations ; increasing the