rates with maturities up to one week were brought back to usual levels. however, tensions remained in money market rates for maturities above one week. in order to support a normalisation in this money market segment, the ecb decided to implement two supplementary longer - term refinancing operations, the first decision being taken on 21 august and the second on 6 september, both with the usual maturity of three months. in preparing and deciding upon the various operations, the eurosystem remained, as usual, in close contact with other central banks, including in particular, but not exclusively, the federal reserve, the bank of japan, the bank of england, the bank of canada and the swiss national bank. these other central banks also took steps, each within the parameters of their own operational framework. when comparing the steps taken by the various central banks, it is important to take account of these differences in operational frameworks. in any case, it is important to stress that the eurosystem has shown its capacity to react both promptly and effectively to these challenges. i am convinced that, given the circumstances, we did the right thing at the right level at the right time. monetary policy stance through these liquidity operations, the ecb fulfilled one of its key responsibilities, namely to ensure an orderly functioning money market. i will now turn to our primary objective, namely that of delivering price stability over the medium term and be credible in the delivery of price stability over the medium and long term. i would like to emphasize that our primary mandate calls for our monetary policy stance to deliver price stability in the medium term. once the level of interest rates is decided we have the responsibility to ensure the smooth functioning of the segment of the money market that we influence. the two responsibilities are clearly separated and should not be mixed. on 6 september the governing council decided to leave the key ecb interest rates unchanged. the incoming macroeconomic data confirmed that risks to price stability remain on the upside over the medium term, as identified by both our economic and monetary analysis. the incoming macroeconomic data also again confirmed the strong fundamentals of the euro area economy and support a favourable medium - term outlook for real gdp growth. data on activity in the third quarter – from various confidence surveys and indicatorbased estimates – remain overall favourable. the latest data on unemployment indicate improving labour market conditions and the global economic activity is expected to remain robust, as the likely slowdown in the united states is expected to be largely offset by the

to improve very substantially our handling of conduits and special vehicles. looking forward, some tentative policy implications can be identified from a financial stability perspective. first, we need to restore confidence as we have a paradox that there is a large number of high quality assets which investors are currently treating as if they were not creditworthy. now, it seems to me that the one important reason why we observe such a lack of confidence is because we do not have sufficient transparency. this is an area that we need to look at very carefully, to see which measures should be taken to improve transparency. let me remind you that after the asian crisis we drew that conclusion : the absence of sufficient transparency had driven a number of investors and market participants to consider that each particular issuer in asia was to be treated with great caution and fear, because they were not sure of the accuracy of the information and data which were displayed. the international community drew the conclusion that it was necessary to increase transparency in particular as regards monetary policy, fiscal policy and the level of reserve assets in these emerging markets. and it worked, in my opinion, pretty efficiently. so again, it is a lesson that we learnt in the past. i am now at your disposal for questions.