effects of the ecb ’ s measures from the effects of other factors. spreads in the money market have come down significantly since last autumn and, together with the policy rate cuts, have brought about a substantial decline in lending rates to households and firms. there has been much focus on the subdued developments in lending in recent months, especially as our measures have been designed to support lending activity. these developments should however be assessed in light of their consistency with stylised facts of the business cycle, which in fact indicate that the recent credit developments appear to be broadly in line with the currently projected path for real gdp growth. furthermore, based on the past regularities, the current levelling - off of household loans would normally be associated with a further contraction in loans to corporations until at least early 2010. this contraction will presumably be stronger than that for loans to households, as troughs in loan growth to non - financial corporations are usually deeper than those for household loans. to shed some more light on this finding, let me first mention that the historical evidence suggests that real loans to households tend to lead real gdp growth by about a quarter, while loans to non - financial corporations lag real gdp developments by around three quarters. loans to households are mainly driven by housing market developments, and both house prices and interest rates tend to be low during downturns, which increases the attractiveness of borrowing. by contrast, the cash flows of firms usually improve in an economic upturn, which may lead them to their own funds first and only turn to external financing later. moreover, banks may prefer to expand lending earlier in the cycle to households than to firms because household loans are generally better collateralised. it is obvious that we cannot maintain the current degree of policy accommodation and enhanced credit support indefinitely. as the president mentioned, the feasibility of a timely and orderly exit was one of the guiding principles when the non - standard measures were chosen and designed. except for the purchases of covered bonds, the rest of our nonstandard measures have built - in and self - correcting mechanisms that help to reabsorb liquidity and allow for the normalization of the policy stance once this is justified. let me just elaborate on how and when to phase them out. our operational framework worked well until the financial turmoil escalated in september last year, and from an operational point of view, our principal goal will therefore be to re - establish the key features of this framework, in particular to revert to a situation where the one

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