and we should not forget that the ultimate objective is to increase the pace of economic growth in order to ensure more prosperity and provide more jobs for everyone, which is fundamental for the weakest and the poorest. rather than finding a compromise between the various members of our society, between those that have costs and those that reap the benefits, i see it more as a compromise between the present and future. it is a forwardlooking investment and a better future for the weakest part of the population which entails costs at the beginning. and in any case let us not forget that we cannot ask our children and grandchildren to pay our bills! in europe, the population is shrinking to the point that by 2020, according to different studies, there will be 20 million people available for work. in the united states, it is on the rise. how is this? perhaps this is because the united states is a population with entire generations of immigrants in which the birth rate is higher. and then there is the cultural aspect, they are more optimistic than us. why? this involves philosophical and cultural aspects and i am not convinced that they are structural. there have also been difficult periods in the united states, for example, at the end of the 1980s when europe was more upbeat and had greater faith in the future, in building something together. these are cyclical phenomena and we at the ecb, together with lorenzo bini smaghi, and the governor of the banca d ’ italia, mario draghi, and the entire governing council, try our best to ensure that europe regains confidence in itself. credibility is a key word for the ecb.

beginning of an historic shift in our approach toward money and payments? the payment universe, both locally and globally, has evolved very rapidly over the past five years. the last wave of technological change in payments was 20 years ago when central banks introduced real - time gross settlement systems ( in our case, target followed by target2 ). the new wave is more focused on retail payments and driven by technology. before passing any judgement, we have to start from the principle that innovation is good because it makes payments cheaper and faster. that ’ s an area where we ’ re learning a great deal from our african and latin american colleagues. there ’ s a lot of leapfrogging toward innovative solutions. in the end, the new landscape will be a mix of public and private solutions. so the key question for the years to come is how to combine core public infrastructures like the ecb ’ s fast payment platform, tips, with private systems, and what impulse central banks can give to make this happen in an integrated way. this is a particular challenge in europe where the retail payment world remains fragmented along national lines. the eurosystem is working on it. we ’ d better act fast here, because we don ’ t want this new world of payments to be dominated solely by us and chinese actors. europe has a particular interest in developing its own approach and standards so it can be safe and efficient at home and attractive as an international reference. how do stablecoins, private and public, fit into this discussion? stablecoins have the potential to leverage technological change to bring new and cheaper services to customers – provided that the long list of risks i highlighted is addressed properly. you ’ re asking me whether a public stablecoin will also fit into this landscape. that ’ s an area where we ’ re treading very carefully because the prospects differ across jurisdictions. central bank digital currencies ( cbdcs ) raise a number of serious questions to which we don ’ t yet have answers. although they might look like an attractive proposition for individuals wishing to reap the benefits of technology while holding a safe store of value, they may have shortcomings of their own : there are many ways to implement cbdcs, which we need to study carefully. if they make bank funding more fragile and more vulnerable to liquidity shocks and bank runs, then they might be bad for financial stability and financial intermediation. central banks shouldn ’ t have their heads in the sand and avoid that