is absolutely decisive. at this stage we are not in favour of euro bonds. q. what is your opinion of zapatero? a. it is not for the president of the ecb to judge or give good marks or bad marks to the prime ministers! we are fiercely independent from the executive branches and we are issuing the currency for all the people, all the 17 nations, and political sensitivities. bis central bankers ’ speeches q. what about draghi? a. the appointment of the president of the ecb is the responsibility of the heads of state and government, after having had the advice of the parliament and the governing council of the ecb. q. does he have the right profile? a. we have a great governing council, with very wise and experienced colleagues. and i have to say that miguel [ fernandez ordonez ], mario [ draghi ] and all others have the right team spirit. and it is this very good team spirit which counts. q. what will you do after 31 october? a. we ’ ll see. i have a very hard job ahead of me. there ’ s no time for complacency in many ways. i still have five and a half month! i will be completely absorbed by my work until the end of october. q. in these eight years, what has been the worst moment? may 2010? a. we have had major challenges from the start. immediately after my arrival the largest countries in the euro area, germany, france and italy, were asking for an easing and even a dismantling of the stability and growth pact. we had to fight that. and there were other big challenges afterwards ; the crisis has certainly been one. this is the greatest crisis since the second world war. it could have been even worse – the worst crisis since first world war – if we had not made the decisions we made. they were times that required a great deal of effort. it has been very rewarding to see the team spirit of the governing council and of the staff of the ecb and of the other central banks of the eurosystem. there have been some intensely challenging moments, during which my greatest satisfaction has been to see a formidable dedication to the euro and to europe, in serving our 331 million fellow citizens.. q. what is your legacy? a. it ’ s not up to me to talk about that. bis central bankers ’ speeches

. those sdrs, however, would not be immediately available for use by their beneficiaries. rather, they would be “ frozen ” and unblocked only in pre – specified circumstances ( landau, 2009 ). criteria for use would not be defined on the basis of individual countries ’ situations, but on consideration of the conditions prevailing in the global economy and international capital markets. if properly constructed, such a scheme may provide, for no cost, the kind of insurance that countries are currently seeking by building excess reserves. how would countries access to this new source of liquidity? the traditional approach would allocate contingent liquidity to countries according to their quota shares in the imf. however, those are very imperfect representations of countries ’ liquidity needs especially in times of crisis. taking inspiration from the contingent capital literature, one could imagine that countries could “ buy ” the access to contingent liquidity in crisis times by paying, in normal times, a premium to the issuer ( the imf? ). this could prove less costly than accumulating excess reserves. going one step further, and transposing an idea from caballero and kurlat ( 2009 ), the imf could issue tradable instruments giving access to contingent liquidity once it has been activated. if broadly traded between public entities, the price of such instruments would give a useful indication of underlying systemic tensions in international financial markets. regional arrangements another approach would privilege regional arrangements either for pooling reserves or redistributing them though permanent swap agreements. asian countries, especially, are working on and implementing progressively such schemes through the chiang mai initiative. it should be noted that regional pooling is efficient only when countries are facing asymmetric liquidity shocks within the region. pooling brings no additional benefits when shocks occur on a global scale and all countries are hit simultaneously. also, regional arrangements cannot avoid the moral hazard problem that all multilateral schemes are facing. nevertheless, there seems to be considerable scope for regional arrangements to prosper in the future. first, they can act as useful complements to more global schemes and be articulated with ( and supported by ) imf facilities. second, one can expect regional financial integration to progress, especially in those parts of the world where huge pools of savings are available and currently intermediated through financial systems located outside the region. with deeper financial integration, the probability of significant portfolio shifts inside one region increases markedly, creating the potential for asymmetric liquidity