more useful to wait until they are rolled out so that stakeholders are able to gain some practical experience first. at the recent stakeholders ’ forum on direct debits, some misunderstandings and reservations were already addressed. however, it still remains to be seen whether the end - date for sepa direct debit scheme should be set now or later. the best way to set an end - date is still open for debate. in our view, there are various options available. one would be self - regulation ; another would be regulation by the legislators. regardless of who takes the initiative, regulation could be done directly by determining a date for abolishing the use of national schemes, or, indirectly, for example, by mandating the use of iban or the respective iso standard. as i said before, this debate is still ongoing and i would in fact be happy to receive your feedback on what you consider to be the best end - date and the way to achieve this. 3. communication we believe that some users are still uneasy about switching to sepa because they do not know enough about sepa and its advantages. users need to know more about sepa, the sepa instruments, or the different possibilities that exist to add features to core schemes so that they fulfil specific needs. in short, users need more effective communication ; sepa needs to be “ sold ” to the users. first of all, there is a need for continuous and increased efforts to explain the changes and advantages which sepa will bring to the different end - users. a second way to sell sepa better is to offer attractive sepa products and services. sepa should be user - friendly for customers, whether they are large corporates, merchants, consumers or smes. when it comes to separeadiness, there might be a gap between being “ technically ready ” to send and receive sepa payments and offering marketable, user - friendly sepa products and services. for example, bban - to - iban conversion facilities, the use of iban only, easy - to - use internet banking applications are simple, but also very effective examples of these “ must have ” services and products. people have a natural inclination to cling on to things they know and like. why fix something if it is not broken? here, the onus is mainly on you, the banks, to provide more information to your customers and to convince them with concrete, marketable, and high - quality offers

bank has published an analysis of funding costs, which provides a useful framework for thinking about these issues, so i won ’ t go into them in detail. 1 i will simply make a couple of observations. first, during the easing phase, interest rates for most borrowers still came down quite significantly, because the cash rate changes were so large. for mortgages, floating rates in the past year reached their lowest level since 1964. at the margin, the cash rate cuts were larger than otherwise because the board could see that spreads between intermediaries ’ rates and the cash rate were tending to widen. likewise in future decisions, the board will take careful note of any tendency for spreads to change. davies m, c naughtin and a wong ( 2009 ), ‘ the impact of the capital market turbulence on banks ’ funding costs ’, rba bulletin, june, pp 1 – 13. available at < http : / / www. rba. gov. au / publicationsandresearch / bulletin / bu _ jun09 / impact - cap - mkt - turb. html > second, in australia, housing loan rates came down much more than has been the case in many countries. this was partly because of the prevalence of floating rate housing debt here, but also because spreads on housing loans ( relative to the policy rate ) widened by less in australia than other countries. that is to say, monetary policy still works pretty effectively in australia. the conduct of policy during the crisis going into the crisis, the global economy had been growing strongly. global gdp expanded by 5 per cent in 2007, which capped off several years of well above average performance. the us economy had been slowing for a while as concerns mounted over the financial problems, but even into the first quarter of 2008 global gdp was still expanding at 4 per cent. prices for most commodities were still rising ; oil prices would not reach their peak until july that year. our economy was operating at full stretch, with our terms of trade showing their largest rise in 50 years and delivering a very large income gain to the community. confidence was high ; firms routinely complained of labour shortages ; inflation was tending to rise, worryingly so in the second half of 2007 ; and demand for credit was strong. in this environment, the board was running tight monetary policy to contain inflation. we now know ( but could not know for sure at the time ) that cpi inflation was on its way to 5 per cent. measures of underlying inflation,