##puy. spiegel : what makes you so sure that europe ’ s top politicians will not now use the ecb as a money printing machine permanently? trichet : again, we will take all the additional liquidity that we are bringing into the system back out. our monetary policy stance is unchanged. we have never hesitated for one second to take the decisions needed in order to ensure price stability, without taking into account any pressure groups. spiegel : but the banks, too, are being spoilt by the ecb. as part of your so - called nonconventional measures, you have again made it possible for them to borrow countless billions. in doing so, are you not handing out even more play money to the financial markets? trichet : again, we do what we believe we have to do in all consciousness in order to be able to deliver price stability over the medium term. we do not take into account pressure groups and lobbies. we supply liquidity to the banks so that they can finance the real economy and support the recovery, they know that. spiegel : have you made any individual mistakes in the last few weeks? trichet : this is not for me to judge. history will do that. last week helmut schmidt described the performance of the ecb as flawless. spiegel : mr trichet, thank you for talking to us.

for growth next year rather than a significant drag, as has been the case for the past several years. prospects for nonresidential construction are poor, however, given weak fundamentals and tight financing conditions. in the business sector, manufacturing activity has been expanding and should be helped by the continuing strength of the recovery in the emerging market economies, especially in asia. as the recovery takes hold, enhanced business confidence, together with the low cost of capital for firms with access to public capital markets, should lead to a pickup in business spending on equipment and software, which has already shown signs of stabilizing. i have discussed two of the principal factors that may constrain the pace of the recovery, namely, restrictive bank lending and the weak job market. banks'reluctance to lend will limit the ability of some businesses to expand and hire. i expect this situation to normalize gradually, as improving economic conditions strengthen bank balance sheets and reduce uncertainty ; the fallout for banks from commercial real estate could slow that progress, however. jobs are likely to remain scarce for some time, keeping households cautious about spending. as the recovery becomes established, however, payrolls should begin to grow again, at a pace that increases over time. nevertheless, as net gains of roughly 100, 000 jobs per month are needed just to absorb new entrants to the labor force, the unemployment rate likely will decline only slowly if economic growth remains moderate, as i expect. the outlook for inflation is also subject to a number of crosscurrents. many factors affect inflation, including slack in resource utilization, inflation expectations, exchange rates, and the prices of oil and other commodities. although resource slack cannot be measured precisely, it certainly is high, and it is showing through to underlying wage and price trends. longer - run inflation expectations are stable, having responded relatively little either to downward or upward pressures on inflation ; expectations can be early warnings of actual inflation, however, and must be monitored carefully. commodities prices have risen lately, likely reflecting the pickup in global economic activity, especially in resource - intensive emerging market economies, and the recent depreciation of the dollar. on net, notwithstanding significant crosscurrents, inflation seems likely to remain subdued for some time. the foreign exchange value of the dollar has moved over a wide range during the past year or so. when financial stresses were most pronounced, a flight to the deepest and most liquid capital markets resulted in a marked increase in the dollar. more recently, as financial