portugal and, eventually, also spain and italy. sovereign bond markets in an increasing number of euro area countries began to become dysfunctional. this weakened the transmission channel of monetary policy decisions to financial markets and broader financing conditions in the economy. in order to address this problem, on 10 may 2010, the ecb launched the securities market programme ( smp ) under which it conducts outright purchases of euro area debt securities in the secondary market. although the smp remained inactive for a period of around four months between april and august 2011, following renewed tensions in euro area sovereign bond markets, the ecb announced on 7 august 2011 that it would resume purchases under this programme. this took place after the announcement of new fiscal and structural policy measures by the italian and spanish governments. a key distinguishing feature of asset purchases made under the smp is that their liquidity impact has been sterilised through the conduct of weekly liquidity absorbing operations. bis central bankers ’ speeches overall, there has been no net injection of central bank liquidity to the market as a consequence of these operations. these measures and their objectives are therefore fundamentally different from quantitative easing. on 6 october the ecb announced a number of important additional non - standard measures. first, the governing council decided to conduct two new longer - term refinancing operations ( ltros ), with maturities of 12 and 13 months, with the fixed - rate full - allotment tender procedures. the rate in both operations will be fixed at the average rate of the main refinancing operations over the life of these respective ltros. second, main refinancing operations ( mros ) will continue to be conducted with fixed - rate full - allotment tender procedures for as long as necessary, and at least until 10 july 2012. this procedure will also remain in use for the special - term refinancing operations with a maturity of one maintenance period, which will continue to be conducted for as long as needed, and at least until the end of the second quarter of 2012. the fixed rate in these special - term refinancing operations will be the same as the mro rate prevailing at the time. the six ltros with maturities of three - months that will be conducted in the first half of 2012 will also be conducted with fixed - rate full - allotment tender procedures. the rates in these three - month operations will be fixed at the average rate of the mros over the life of the respective lt

##ciplina prevale. non pensa? philip lane : let me emphasise that what we see is that the credit spread remains and, as you say, if there is more risk of fiscal problems, the spread goes up. if there is a reassurance that a government will conform with european expectations, the spread comes down. our assessment is : even though, of course, the eurosystem is the big purchaser of sovereign debt, the market still understands that it is not a guarantee. of course, today because of the inflation too low, we have this policy, but it ’ s a policy about inflation. it ’ s not a policy about the public finances. and so in the future, because we do expect inflation to recover and we do not expect that the super - low rate that we see today is necessarily forever, i think any government which is benefiting from the low interest rate today, as part of their fiscal strategy should be using this opportunity, in part to break the debt down in a gradual way. let me reassure you that the ecb ’ s policy is about inflation. it is not about providing an excuse to governments not to make sure their public finances are in good shape. alessandro marenzi : [.. ] il concetto di helicopter money, e una favola oppure e un meccanismo che si puo studiare concretamente? philip lane : i think it ’ s a fascinating story to examine and i think it ’ s interesting to discuss. but let me emphasise that it is not on the horizon - even to some people with some of those attractions that we don ’ t think will be true to reality. so it remains the case that i think there are more headaches than solutions with that idea. 3 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches