that while the recent experience may have made us a bit more confident about detecting bubbles, it has not resolved the problem of doing so in a timely manner, nor has it shown that small - to - modest policy actions will reliably and materially dampen speculation. an extra policy reaction to changes in asset prices thus still remains questionable. the second frontier to be mentioned tonight is related to the monetary policy implementation, current situation on the money market and financial stability of the banking sector. for years the monetary policy implementation was not an issue and central banks were able to tighten the short - term money market interest rates such as for instance 3m pribor closely to the key policy rate. unfortunately, this changed in august 2007 for the us interest rates when the 3m libor for the us dollar denominated funds started to deviate significantly from the federal reserve target for funds. a year later following the second round of the financial crises that peaked during the bankruptcy of lehman brothers also the czech short - term money market rates started to elevate well above our policy rate, the two week repo rate. quoted from speech of vice chairman donald l. kohn : “ monetary policy and asset prices revisited ” at the cato ’ s institute 26th annual monetary policy conference, washington, d. c., on november 19, 2008. what we know is that all these movements were caused by principal uncertainty among the commercial banks worrying about their solvency and financial stability. the banks were not sure among themselves about to what extent they were hit by the collapse of the market with asset - backed securities and consequently about their counterparts ’ ability to stay in the business over a longer period than one day. central banks reacted and extended the money market operations in order to narrow spreads between the market rates and key policy rates. for instance, the czech national bank introduced a new liquidity providing repo operation despite the fact that the money market as a whole operates with huge surplus and on average the czech national bank has to withdraw roughly 400 billions czech crowns from the money market to be able to control the market interest rates. while introduction of this new operation made the money market participants less nervous, unusual spread between the market rates and the key policy rate still persists. this is not only the case of the czech economy or other central european economies but we observe the same also in the eurozone. commercial banks operating in the eurozone are willing to borrow around 250 billions euro from the european central bank paying the key policy

times a year. statistics was one of the first areas in which such co - operation was established. this is entirely logical, since without the creation of a basic statistical framework it would not have been possible to communicate on monetary policy matters. among the most important outcomes was a creation of monetary survey. this survey made it possible to compile monetary and credit aggregates. one of the preconditions for influencing the money supply was to establish what is known as the “ monetary base ”. the ongoing liberalisation process meant that it was no longer important to divide the balance of payments statistics into koruna and foreign currency transactions. this classification was replaced by a standard breakdown into transactions between residents and non - residents. numerous statistics linked with regulation were gradually abolished as individual areas of economic activity were liberalised. these examples merely illustrate how the central bank ’ s entire statistical system was rebuilt from scratch. let me now move on to the more recent past. in 1999 we began to co - operate closely with european institutions. the main topics included monetary and banking statistics, balance of payments statistics and more recently also financial accounts, government financial statistics and general economic statistics. the development of statistics was influenced by a need to standardise each area to ensure compatibility between the eu member states and the candidate countries. hand in hand with these contacts, we began to work much more closely with the czech statistical office. in the area of statistics the czech statistical office is the natural and closest partner of the czech national bank, since these two institutions are the major producers of statistical information in the czech republic. the czech statistical office conducts a far wider range of statistical surveys, providing aggregate information on the national economy, territory, climate, environment, population, elections and other areas of life and activity of our country. the czech national bank is above all a user of economic statistics and collaborates most closely in this area. as both a user and a partner, we can affirm that the quality of the office ’ s statistical output has increased immensely over the transformation period. examples include the publication of national accounts according to international standards and the compilation of data on the government debt and deficit. the czech national bank focuses mainly on monetary and banking statistics and balance of payments statistics. the harmonisation of the monetary statistics with european standards was recently completed in both main components balance sheet statistics and interest rate statistics. monetary and credit aggregates and interest rates are now methodologically comparable with the data of other eu member states. speaking of harmonisation, i