, together with all the national supervisory authorities, launched a year ago the recently completed comprehensive assessment of the 130 most significant european banks. another obstacle has thus been removed to the contribution that the ecb ’ s monetary policy can make to reviving growth. monetary policy has done and will continue to do its part but it is not enough. on the demand side, just bear in mind that since 2007 private investment in the euro area has fallen by 15 % and public investment by 12 %. let ’ s not forget that in some countries of the euro area unemployment was already high even before the crisis. at the same time there is ample evidence that a significant proportion of the current unemployment is structural. a fiscal policy which, in compliance with the existing rules, may see more investment and lower taxes, together with an accommodative monetary policy are not enough to generate a revival of strong and sustainable growth without the necessary structural reforms in product and labour markets. increased competition, the completion of europe ’ s single market, measures which would allow unemployed workers to quickly find a new job, thus reducing the period of unemployment, measures which would raise the level of specialisation and adapt it to the demand have long been on the economic policy agenda of many euro area countries : may the thought now make way for action. it is clear that both demand and supply side policies are necessary. the lesson of 2012 has taught us that the crisis of confidence in the euro was also caused by uncertainty about the future of the single currency – which turned out to be unfounded. amid this uncertainty, european leaders responded in june 2012 by creating the banking union which led to the ecb becoming the single supervisor. this was the most important act of integration that has ever been decided on since the creation of the euro. ties that endure need a solid basis of mutual trust. the euro area countries have in recent years greatly strengthened their ties and correspondingly expanded the basis of trust on which they rest : the single monetary policy, with common fiscal rules, now with a banking union and a single banking supervision and soon with a common capital market. our experience shows that sharing national sovereignty is a precondition for lasting trust in planning our shared european journey. bis central bankers ’ speeches

and i know it ’ s one that firms are spending a lot of time thinking through and trying to figure out how to ensure a strong culture. as we are thinking about it, we ’ re asking ourselves a series of questions – and i thought i ’ d share a couple of these with you as food for thought on this topic. culture starts at the top of the organization – “ the tone at the top ” • do the directors / ceo set the right tone for behavior at the organization? • is there effective challenge and debate at the board meetings / committee meetings? bis central bankers ’ speeches • do personalities interfere / get too big within the company for effective risk management? • what ’ s the dialogue like between supervisors and the firm? in a strong risk culture, incentives within the firm set the right expectations for behavior. • how are audit and supervisory findings handled? • does the performance management system reward both good behavior and punish bad behaviors or lapses? at the end of the day, culture is fundamentally about people. • no organization can fully identify all policies or procedures for every type of issue that might occur. • the culture needs to be embedded deeply enough in the organization and be strong enough to ensure that sound decisions are made throughout the organization – from top to bottom and from side to side. • so, a strong culture identifies risks or issues that are new or unexpected and quickly escalates problems. bad news needs to travel quickly. culture can be a difficult characteristic to measure, but there is good work underway at the international level to further the dialogue on risk culture in particular. following on the fsb ’ s work on risk appetite, the fsb ’ s supervisory intensity and effectiveness group has undertaken additional work on risk culture and how firms and supervisors should be assessing risk culture within firms – and we expect to see the results of that work in the next month or so. frbny organizational changes i ’ d like to close with a couple of comments about some recent changes we ’ ve made to our internal organization. earlier this year, we formed two new units within the financial institution supervision group – the large international financial institution ( lifi ) unit and the regional, community and foreign institution ( rcfi ) unit. the lifi area is currently is responsible for roughly the top 23 foreign firms based here in new york with the largest u. s. presence ( outside of the four firms that are covered in our complex financial institutions portfolio ) ; and, the rcfi unit is responsible