in this context, central banks have the clear duty of preventing the market from seizing up, with incalculable consequences for other financial players and more generally for the real economy. however, it should be borne in mind that the central banks ’ criteria for accepting assets as collateral for their refinancing operations are particularly restrictive and penalising, and comply with the traditional principles that i have just mentioned. in particular, the value of these securities must be at least equal to the amount lent and the accrued interest, after applying a haircut to take account of a possible decline in their market value during the repo. 4 ) why have the central banks responded differently as regards their monetary policy stance? as regards the central banks ’ response to the crisis, although they converged in their shortterm liquidity management methods, they nonetheless responded differently in terms of monetary policy. the underlying reasons for this divergence are both due to the nature of the shocks that the economies are facing and the mechanisms of their propagation to the real economy and to nominal variables. over the recent period, the industrialised economies have undergone three common shocks : rocketing real - estate prices at least in a number of countries, soaring commodity prices and finally the financial crisis triggered last summer. they have also experienced specific shocks : the real - estate crisis in the united states in a context of household overindebtedness, for example. in the latter case, the economic slowdown already underway since mid - 2006 and the expected consequences of the credit crisis on economic activity over the medium term has led the us monetary authorities to change their monetary policy stance. the very different situation in the euro area, where activity remained favourable, has led the ecb to keep its monetary policy stance unchanged in spite of the uncertainties generated by the financial crisis in a context also characterised by persistent inflationary tensions. 5 ) what lessons can we learn for the future? at the current juncture, financial turmoil is still affecting the markets. however, after more than nine months, i think it is already possible to draw first conclusions in three main areas : - first, the close co - operation between central banks on the one hand and between the supervisory authorities and central banks on the other hand seems, in my opinion, to be a determining factor for efficient crisis management. this point was indeed underscored during the recent work carried out by the financial stability forum. i must say in this respect that the french model of banking supervision, in which

and, at the global level, we are far from having a network ( or set of interconnected networks ) that would support quick and cheap transfers of funds. second, and in close relation to the previous point, the dlt could help remedy the current limits of the existing wholesale market infrastructures. those wholesale infrastructures also have various shortcomings. since rtgs are not interoperable, correspondent banking is often the only solution to transfer fiat money across borders. however, correspondent banking is costly, and the perimeter of the aml / ctf and kyc checks is in some cases uncertain for the counterparties of a payment order. furthermore, for security reasons, the access to payment systems is limited to a certain type of entities ( mainly credit institutions, investment firms, ancillary systems, etc. ). finally, cross - border payments lack traceability. the dlt could also help improve current aspects of wholesale clearing and settlement mechanisms and facilitate in particular gross and simultaneous delivery - versus - payment processes, cross currency settlements and resilience and recovery from operational incidents. if the issues at stake are not the same in developed as in developing countries, the objectives of crypto - assets, and in particular stablecoins, are the same everywhere. they seek to shortcut central authorities and more generally financial intermediaries. however, they bring their own problems. 3 - indeed, it is quite clear that crypto - assets undergoing technical and economic trials bring about not only opportunities to improve our payment systems but also material risks which on the contrary might weaken them if unaddressed, both from an efficiency perspective and a safety perspective through the introduction of new sources of fragmentation, instability and fraud. as many central bankers have pointed out, today ’ s crypto - assets do not satisfactorily offer the qualities expected from a settlement asset to be used interchangeably with commercial bank money and central bank money, let alone to displace central bank money as the central reference of value, as the privileged settlement asset for wholesale transactions and as the last recourse settlement asset given its legal tender status. the reasons for this assessment are well known and documented and boil down to stressing that there are misnamed as « currencies » for three reasons : first, their value fluctuates enormously, preventing them from being used as units of account. for instance, the value of bitcoin ( not however representative of all crypto - assets ) went up