to strengthen the financial regulatory structure, and are being considered in other nations. however even more important was to agree at the international level on the appropriate methodology to identify the common lessons that would be drawn on a co - ordinated basis on both sides of the atlantic as well as on both sides of the pacific. the present turbulences are a global phenomenon. only a global response can be effective. after the asian crisis, at the initiative of g7 finance ministers and central bank governors the financial stability forum was created as the informal grouping where a synthetic diagnosis of the state of global finance could be carried out with a view to identifying the potential weaknesses affecting the international financial system and areas for improvement. in this respect i am happy to say that the “ report on enhancing market and institutional resilience ” – that has just been presented by the financial stability forum to the international community and in particular to the g7 and to the international monetary and financial committee of the international monetary fund – corresponds well to what the international community asked for. i am happy that we have a consensus on implementing the g7 ’ s precise recommendations with determination and in line with the recommended timeline. the community of central banks will be particularly alert for these recommendations to enter into force. having participated in the g7 discussions three days ago i will stress the recommendations that we consider among the immediate priorities for implementation within the next 100 days : • financial institutions should fully and promptly disclose their risk exposures, writedowns and fair value estimates for complex and illiquid instruments in their upcoming mid - year reporting. they should do so consistently with leading disclosure practices as set out in the fsf report. • the international accounting standards board ( iasb ) and other relevant standard setters should take urgent action to improve the accounting and disclosure standards for off - balance sheet entities and to enhance guidance on fair value accounting, particularly on valuing financial instruments in periods of stress. • financial institutions should strengthen their risk management practices, including rigorous stress testing, under the support of supervisors ’ oversight. financial institutions should also strengthen their capital positions as needed. by mid - 2008, the basel committee should issue revised liquidity risk management guidelines and iosco should revise its code of conduct for credit rating agencies. i will also underline the main areas where important recommendations have to be implemented either by end - 2008 or at the latest by 2009, namely revising capital requirements under pillar i of basel ii ( e. g. certain aspects of the securi

##em ’ s refinancing operations for the maintenance periods since august 2007 remained at around €450 billion, as in the first semester 2007. when overnight interbank rates in the united states and europe came under upward pressure, the first liquidity response during the turmoil was to try to keep short - term money market rates near policy rates with a more active liquidity management. this became clear on the morning of 9 august when the overnight rate increased very sharply and significantly signalling a degree of disruption of the money market. the ecb therefore conducted a finetuning operation with an overnight maturity, in which it injected liquidity into the market via a fixed rate tender with full allotment of all bids. during the following week, the ecb carried out three more liquidity providing fine - tuning operations, each with an overnight maturity and progressively smaller amounts. in addition to these fine - tuning operations, two supplementary longer - term refinancing operations with a three - month maturity, the first on 24 august 2007 and the second on 13 september were conducted to address the sharp drop of activity in the longer - term money market. in this way counterparties were able to reduce their net need for liquidity over a longer horizon. a special tender with full allotment of all bids occurred again on 18 december 2007, when, due to year - end liquidity tensions, it was deemed efficient to leave to the market to determine the exact allotment amount. this overall allotment amounted to eur 349 billion ( usd 503 billion at the exchange rate prevailing at the date ). in general, the ecb made more frequent use of fine - tuning operations than in “ normal times ”, both in order to inject further liquidity in addition to the one provided in the main refinancing operations but also to absorb excess liquidity, in order to steer the eonia close to the minimum bid rate. these measures, both fine - tuning and ltro operations have allowed the ecb to maintain control over short - term money market rates and to ensure orderly conditions in the euro money market, without requiring a structural change of the eurosystem ’ s operational framework for monetary policy implementation. all these measures have been supported by prompt communications, which helped reassuring the market on the readiness of the ecb to take adequate measures. some central banks conducted also other actions, which mainly included expanding the range of eligible collateral and of counterparties. the bank of japan and the ec