 I'd like to go back to three topics, to just add the fourth one with fiscal policy. But let's start with the three before opening the floor. The first is this issue of the competitiveness, wage price adjustment. I mean, you all three agree on the diagnosis. That's this part of the function of the Eurelia is not satisfactory. Was not. Sorry? Was not. Well, I mean, yes, some adjustments took place, but the adjustment is still, it's perhaps faster than some would have expected. I mean, Ireland had adjusted extremely well. Even Greece is adjusting, Portugal is adjusting, so, you know, it's taking place, but it's taking place in a slow way and in a partial way. And this is something that was not sufficiently present at the start, was not sufficiently addressed in the reforms. And you mentioned the excessive imbalance procedure. It's not implemented. Pardon me? It's not implemented. Germany has had a set. It's asymmetrically implemented. Yeah. I mean, it's supposed to be implemented. Right. Right. You know, it was supposed to be symmetric. It was never, the procedure was never activated. So the macro side remains neglected. So I think that's one point at which you agree. Now, one of the recommendations of Olivier is saying, we can do better by having a higher inflation rate. So achieving 2% really, and that means in this current situation taking the risk of being a little bit above 2%, you know, but the risk of having too low inflation is very detrimental to the URI, that's what you're saying. And second, that means, you know, all this much more institutional approach to the wage price setting and the social partners that you mentioned. Can I have some reaction from you on this topic? Yeah. I can give you very quick reactions. Number one, inflation is stuck at 1%. In Italy it is about 0.6%. We are talking about higher inflation in Germany. The ECB has essentially lost credibility as an inflation fighting machine. And therefore, there's been a disengagement between price setting behavior and monetary policy. This is like the Bank of Japan. Essentially you have the same problem here. Bank of Japan keeps trying to introduce a similar to monetary policy. Inflation does not budge because the relationship between how people set prices and how inflation gets, and how what the monetary policy does, there's no connection. On adjustment through wages, the main problem through adjustment through wages is social. You know, in my book I tell a story about a woman who is a worker in a factory in Yvria, and her income has gone down from 1,000 euros a month to 600 euros a month. And she says, if you cut it anymore, I won't be able to pay my mortgage. And the social cost, the social discontent that is created through this process is enormous. That is why people have floating exchange rates. The rest of the world has floating exchange rates for a very good reason because it creates an easy adjustment process. The adjustment through wages is almost never possible. Therefore, the idea, and this, you know, coming back to a statement that Olivia, you made, that a floating exchange rate was a non-starter or, I mean, it's non-starter today. I understand that, but was a non-starter. I don't buy that. I simply don't buy that. I mean, and your Claude will remember this, from the time of the breakdown of the ERM to the time of the introduction of the euro was a period of seven years, essentially exchange rates were in effect floating. He was making sure that the exchange rate remained close to what it was for Germany, but that was a policy choice. There was no commitment. And that's the crucial point about fixed exchange rate. There was no commitment to a fixed exchange rate, which allows the possibility that if there is a crisis, there will be an adjustment through the exchange rate. That possibility was essentially removed. And if that possibility is removed, adjustment through wages is never going to happen. So, Claude, particularly on this issue also of the inflationary machine, as Jacques was saying about the ECB, the possibility of generating inflation on target. Well, as you know, it's a problem for all major central banks of the advanced economy. So, I will go there. First of all, I would like to go to the point which was made by Olivier. It is absolutely clear that rules were not respected. My first speech, myself, just appointed president of the ECB, was to tell Germany and France in the European Parliament, by the way, under the presidency of Italy, that it was a pity to refuse that the stability and growth pact rules would be applied to Germany and France. Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder were on the same line. And of course, they were backed by Italy. It's been a pity, not especially for Germany, probably for France, and of course, for Greece and for Portugal and for Spain, in some respect, that considered that the stability and growth pact had not necessarily to be respected. The second experience I could mention was that since 2005, looking at the persistent divergences that we were observing in cost competitiveness and external imbalances, I was circulating every month to all ministers of finance of the euro area, the divergences that were going on and on and on since the start of the euro until 2009, namely after the financial crisis. The only way to block that phenomenon had been objectively the financial crisis. They were all aware of that. They were all aware of the fact that it was possible in this currency area to have the wages and salaries in the public sector in Greece to augment by 117% from the beginning up to end of nine when it was 110% in Ireland, 70% in Portugal and 36% in the average of the euro area when it was 20% in Germany. So the possibility... Dr, aren't you lending support to a shock? Of course. I clearly said it was clear since 2005 that we needed a very strong governance at the level of the centre in order to do what Olivier was calling for, which has been done in the heat of the crisis with the obligation for a number of countries to go back to something which was more normal. And they are all, by the way, in current accounts up to us now, an enormous, I would say, hard way. But how could it be anything but hard when you have distributed currencies in the same, you know, euro area currency that is an international currency of great value by 117% in Greece. It was obvious that the adjustment would be very, very painful. But all that being said, we are supposed now to be in a different world. And I fully agree with Olivier that the macroeconomic imbalance procedure has to be applied symmetrically. And of course, maybe a number of observers were too optimistic in thinking that Germany in a overheating situation would go back to the average yearly inflation that it had observed in the past. Before the euro, 40 years before the euro, Germany had a yearly inflation of 2.93%. It is what we need now, clearly. If we want the 2% to be respected at the level of the euro area as a whole, we need a number of countries. The cases in point are clearly Germany and the Netherlands, a little bit perhaps Austria, and others below the average in order to catch up with their last competitive cost competitiveness inside the setup of the euro area. So, but let's not forget, the MIP has been created. So the criticism is that it is not applied as it should. And I fully agree with Olivier, but let's not say that we did nothing in the circumstances. And I was looking for that, you know, since the very first observation that there was no spontaneous correction of this persistent divergence. You should save a little bit of time to speak a bit, Olivier. Of course. I thought that Schauch said something very unfair. And I think Jean-Claude is done in opposition to actually contradict him. He said the ECB has lost all credibility because inflation is less than 2%. We understand the problems of central banks. ECB is not the only central bank to have been unable to increase demand sufficiently to achieve inflation. Has done more or less everything it could. That was just not enough. Same thing has been true in the US. It has taken a long time to get back to 2%. So the notion that the ECB has lost credibility. I'm happy to say this because I've criticized the ECB enough in the past to have credibility. But you should not say things like that. There's a huge difference between the Fed and the ECB. I appreciate very much what you said. By the way, since the very beginning, we delivered 1.75%. For a central bank, we said at the very beginning, it will be less than 2%, but close to 2%. It's not that bad over 20 years. I'm not speaking of your phase, Jean-Claude. I'm speaking of today. Today, the inflation rate is stuck at 1%. The US interest, sorry, inflation rate is stuck at 1%. The Fed is at 2% and rising. The ECB is 1% and not trust. Ashoka, there is some kind of consensus now, including the IMF, that we are not absurd in projecting 1.7 for next year and 1.7 for the year afterwards, which is more or less in line. It's been being made clear for the last five years. Yeah, I mean, of course. But we were in the worst crisis ever since World War II. And it started in Wall Street. So to put the blame on the euro area is a little bit overdone. Sorry to interrupt. Olivier, you recently published a piece on Italy, giving your assessment of the fiscal policy of the current coalition. So that would be a good point to start with. Give us your take. So I'll make two points. The first one is this piece that you referred to which came out yesterday, which argues that the fiscal expansion that Italy is embarking on may actually not affect growth positively at all. The reason is when you have a fiscal expansion, you're going to get an increase in interest rates. In normal countries, the central bank is going to react. But when you are in a country where the investors, the foreign investors, domestic investors are on the edge, what you're going to get is a spread. And basically, the increase in the spread that the government and the budget has created, which is about 300, 250 points, is probably sufficient to upset any direct effect. So my sense is that the forecasts of growth for Italy are wrong, and this has implications. Because if they don't deliver on growth and they have a larger deficit in the end, then things will look bad. Now, the other point that I want to make is that there's a more fundamental point, which is it's a point I made yesterday briefly, but I'll make it again, which is if you have in any of the euro countries a populist government, which is not willing to play by the fiscal rules at all, which appears to be fiscally responsible or makes noises about maybe there's a plan B if we get out of the euro. It is a recipe for foreign investors to take their money, move out, for domestic investors to take their money, move out. What is the amount of money which can in principle move just from the foreign investors? It's more than $2 trillion. There is absolutely no way anybody can stand in the way of a stampede, in which case, in this case, the banks have to close. There's a banking holiday, and they have to reopen with a lira. And that scenario, I think, unfortunately, has positive probability. And I think it's going to be an existential issue for the euro, because the probability that there is a populist government somewhere in the euro in the next 10 years is fairly high. And that tension is going to be there. It's very hard to see how it gets resolved. The euro is incompatible with at least some forms of populism. I would add just one caveat to what you just said, because you sort of can be understood as saying, we have no instrument. There is an instrument that the OMT of the ECB, but it supposes that there is a program of a policy program that's agreed upon between the ESM and the government, which is obviously the solution to the political equations if we see a T-PASS again, which is somebody changing his mind, realizing that the environment is not very nice, then the crisis can be solved. But if the government insists on keeping the same line, there is no OMT, there is no program, and it doesn't happen. Reactions to this point, yeah, Jean-Claude? Yeah, well, again, I think that any time we have a problem, we are back to the existential problem of the euro, I think it's wrong. And I think that we proved over the last 20 years that this permanent assumption that we are on the verge to catastrophe is not right. We had the stress test. We passed the stress test. The situation of Italy today is much, much better, obviously, than the situation of Greece. And even in Greece, the people didn't want to leave, as I already mentioned, the Italian people didn't want to leave. The Prime Minister, the President of the Council of Ministers in Italy and the two leaders of the two other parties had said publicly, we don't want to leave the euro, we don't want to leave the European Union. So I think there is a triangle. The market, investors and savers, the world over, and nationally, of course, the government and the promise they made. And the commission and the partners, the commission is simplification for all the other partners in Europe. And my bet, which I'm very confident on the result, would be that a solution would be fine-out. And of course, the markets, if there is the confirmation that Italy doesn't want to do anything that would reestablish credit-worthiness, I experience that myself in August 11. And it was so dramatic that we intervened overnight on the market. Massively, it was the SMP program, we didn't let the speculation to explode. I wrote a letter to Berlusconi in explaining Berlusconi that in my mind and the mind of Mario, because there was the double signature of the ECB and of the national governor, we thought the situation was so dramatic that the government had to give a number of new signals to the overall investors and savers, the world over. And it was done, and of course, there were changes of government and so forth. So I am absolutely confident on the fact that we will surmount the difficulty. The political difficulty, I fully agree, is extremely worrying, not only for Italy, but for others, because when extreme left and extreme right are uniting, it is the worst possible political situation you can have. We have had the experience of the 30s between the two world wars. So I take very, very seriously the political aspect. I would not say that it means that the euro area will explode. Okay, I'm not saying it will happen. I'm on the same side as you. If I had to take a bet, I would bet against, but I think the probability is sufficiently high that we have to think about it.