 Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, I really would like to welcome you very warmly to our panel, Global Financial Reform. Where do we stand? This is a title pretty open, so almost everybody can relate to that. I'm pretty sure and has a position. And I hope it will be a successful panel. I hope it will conclude the ECB forum with a lively debate, a lot of discussions, and the question which we raise here now with this, where do we stand with the Global Financial Reform? I think is a very useful reminder that we did not only overhaul the supervisory architecture in Europe, but that we had an unprecedented Global Financial Reform the last five years, eight years, when you look on everything what happened on the global basis, on the European basis, on national basis. I think a reform which one could fairly say, I think no stone has been left unturned. Some would even say too many stones were turned. It took a financial crisis as severe as the last one to make global banking regulators and supervisors under the aegis of the Basel Committee and the FSB to agree to higher capital, better quality of capital. I just remind you of the leverage ratio, the liquidity standards, the macro-prudential overlay, two-prudential supervision we talked about. I'd like to remember or remind you on TLAC, the design for the requirements for total loss absorbance capacity. I think something what will change the landscape too. And last and not least, we devote a lot of time to the timely and consistent implementation. So my list is for sure not comprehensive. It is, I think, impressive. And we would like to discuss today, shall we do more or shall we do less? I think these will be the main questions. And the panelists I have here with me, I'm very proud of and delighted. They ensure that we are able to address these issues in depth and in a kind of variety with regard to public and private sector perspective. And I'd like to introduce them all. Nevertheless, I find it kind of weird to introduce them because everybody knows them. But I will do so. Stefan Ingvis sitting next to me on the right is governor of the Swedish Central Bank. And I read you were named governor in 2006. So nine years. You are chairman of the Basel Committee. That's why I see you almost quarterly, if not more, in 2011. And in previous jobs, you were director of the Monetary and Financial System Department of the IMF and general director of the Swedish Bank Support Authority. So you own some banks. Nicolas Verrand, a senior fellow at Bruegel. You co-founded Bruegel. And you are visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. And you had some senior positions in the French government, which I read, and in the private sector. So you bring a broad perspective with you. Charles Gotthard is a colleague from the academic part. Well, you look back on a very long and successful career. In central banking and academia, I just heard you started in the Bank of England. May I allow to say this? In 1968, that is amazing. You are a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee and an emeritus professor at the London School of Economics. And it's really a pleasure to have you here with us this afternoon. And Jean Lumière, chairman of the board of the directors of BMP Paribas. And before you joined BMP Paribas, you served as the president of the European Bank for construction and development and as director of the France Treasury. So now, as I introduced you all, I would love to start with Stefan. And we decided to put one or two questions to each of the panelists. And they can talk a little bit about these kind of questions. And then we will see what kind of, perhaps, lively debate or position we get from the other panelists. And if there is time left, I think we said a quarter past four is our finishing time because then we will lose panelists at a quarter past four. But when there is time left, then I'd love to take questions from the audience, too, if you do not mind. So Stefan, I would be happy to hear something about, do you think that we are finished with the post-crisis reform? Did we get back credibility with regard to regulation? Well, let me say a few words then about where we are when it comes to post-crisis reforms. I do think that we are much closer to finishing this set of reforms than if you go a few years back. And this is really our main priority in the Basel Committee today, to make sure that we actually get these things done. There are a few things that we still have left to deal with. Then let me list them. We need to calibrate the leverage ratio. We have defined the leverage ratio, but we haven't picked the number as of yet. We have to revise the risk-based capital framework, and that's code word for, say, putting in more constraints on how you actually calculate risk weights. We need to finish what is called the standardized approach to doing risk weights. And that's basically because the old approach is so old it goes all the way back to Basel I. So there aren't enough people around who remember where those numbers came from. So we need to modernize. And then when we have done that, we need to recalibrate the whole thing, because these things need to fit together in a way that makes sense. In addition to this, and this is more for the Financial Stability Board, they are in the process of concluding the work on total loss absorbing capacity, TLAC. One way of describing TLAC is to say that in the original Basel III, the tier two capital ended up being too low. And then we got this sort of TLAC construction after that. And all these things are in the works in one way or the other, and with enough of a push, with enough of an effort, it should be possible to conclude most of this, if not all of this, in the course of 2016. And I do think that this has restored credibility in the sense that banks have better capital today, they have more capital than what they used to have. In addition to that, we have liquidity rules, and we have rules for avoiding too much of a maturity mismatch, and this has been a good thing. On the other hand, we will probably, in a technical sense, never be 100% done because this is a moving matter. And the world changes, and the banks change, and banks behavior change depending on the rules that we put together. And that means that these types of processes will probably go on forever, and that's why we are talking about Basel III and not Basel I, and there will be also work in the future. There is always, when you do this type of work, you're kind of a risk of what one can call reform fatigue. Because if you roll up the same rock up the hill many, many times, eventually you get so tired of doing that so that the whole thing fizzles out. And my country is a very good example. We had a very serious systemic banking crisis in the early 90s, and it basically took us until just a few years ago before we put in a decent framework for restructuring banks. Because in the meantime, there was absolutely no political interest in dealing with these issues because the halftime, if I call it that, after a financial crisis is very short. And that means that it's difficult to win votes in the political arena by dealing with the plumbing of the financial sector. And that's why when there is a window of opportunity, it's important for the plumbers to get on with it as quickly as possible because otherwise it's quite unlikely that it ever will happen. And one has to be aware of that. And also finally, as part of my daily job, there is always a danger of dilution, a danger of pushback. And I see that when I read all the strange emails that I get from the private sector almost daily. We've also heard some PDF files or Word files on this, that, and the other. And there's no tiny issue, tiny enough for the banks to let it go. If you can change the rules in such a way that you can run the bank with less capital. And we have to be aware of that because that process is there. And it's our responsibility as regulators to try to do our best to, on the one hand, putting in place logical, decent, reasonable rules, while at the same time avoiding constant pushback and too much dilution over time. Very many thanks, Stefan. Jean, you heard it. It's about plumbing. And it's about credibility of regulation and whether it is finished now or we will have another kind of reform agenda. My question to you is that, do you think we were too ambitious? Do you think we were exactly correct that we do our work good enough? Well, I'm not so sure it's about plumbing. It's more like, because I'm French, cooking a dish. It's more noble. And for a French, it is very important. And regulators are writing the recipe and it takes time. And banks need to learn how to cook. And then you must make sure that the guy who's going to eat the meal isn't sick. It takes time. What do I mean by this? I think what was done was needed. Fine, I will not disagree on this. There was a need to make the world safer, capital-wise and liquidity-wise. I would add one point, conduct-wise. I think it is as important as the capital and the liquidity questions. So I agree on this. So where do we stand today? I think there are three main words I would like to use. The first one is calibration. Calibration is a serious question, notably in Europe. Banks, fortunately or not, I am not a judge of this question, but play still a very big part in the financing of the economy. Capital Market Union, we welcome, too slow. So we have to be careful, not to move too quickly on one side and not quickly enough on the other side, especially if we were to see a better rate of growth, which we may wish. So we have to be careful about calibration and timing and the sequencing. And there are still a lot of decisions to be made. My second remark would be, how do we digest all of this? It takes time. I can tell you that from the point of view of a bank, it takes time. You need to understand, you need to prepare to make decisions, to manage well. And there are some strategic and structural decisions to be made. By the way, I don't want to give any names, but you may see the type of decisions which are taken these days in many institutions and it comes from far. So to a certain extent, regulators should be confident on the fact that what they have done is being digested and implemented and it has consequences. And you see it and you will see it even more. And I think it's good, but we need to understand this. I would like to add one point for the Eurozone banks. We have another reform, which is the SSM. We welcome. But this is a major reform too. We have to digest. You have to digest, we have to digest and understand well what it means. My last point would be about level playing field. And I would like simply to mention, I know this is a difficult question, but which is the level playing field within the Eurozone? And from that point of view, I welcome the work done by the SSM. It's a major challenge and it has an impact and it will have an impact hopefully quickly, hopefully in a successful way, but this is a big reform. The second notion of level playing field is across the Atlantic. I would say the global level playing field, not to target only one country or the banks of one country, but let's be clear, there is competition. And from that point of view, I think we need to have a joined vision of what we want as a banking sector at the global level, what we want to deliver, what we want to do, how we want to compete. I understand very well that systems are different. They will not be the same in Europe, in the SSM. We'll have different rules. In the US, there will be different rules. We accept this, this is part of the global world, but the pressure, the intensity of the rules, the targets everybody has in mind must be in line. Otherwise, we may reach a situation in which there is no competition and there is no level playing field. So I don't go into details. This is an extremely complex question, but this is an important question for the future of Europe. So once more, we understand well what is being done. Fine, we try to implement, it takes time. We need to keep a very close eye on calibration and timing and make sure that the CMU moves forward quickly, which once more is not my perception today, and this is a real question. And at the end of the day, I hope that quickly we shall have a level playing field in Europe and we shall remain competitive. Many thanks, Jean. Charles, one lessons learned from the crisis is for sure that we have to work on how can we resolve a bank? You know, resolution is one of the major topics of the last two years and it's not only about T-Leg or AMRA, but it's about the institutional setup too. In Europe, we do have found a solution. So what do you think about that? Do you think that this is a good idea, how we did it, that we have a steady state now between the supervisor and the resolution authority? The answer to that in short is no. And until very recently, there were most countries dealt with bank failures through the ordinary insolvency laws. Those countries that put established separate resolution bodies usually established them separately from the central bank or from the supervisory body. And there were three main reasons why they did that. First one was that, again until fairly recently, quite a lot of dealing with failing banks either called upon or potentially could call upon the taxpayer money, i.e. bailout. In other words, the resolution authority was related very strongly to the fiscal authority rather than, if you like, to the central bank. The second reason for establishing a separate resolution authority was that it was widely considered that there were different incentives. That the supervisor would have an incentive to undertake forbearance because admitting failure was a revelation that you had not effectively succeeded and sometimes you were subject to political pressure as well. Whereas a separate resolution authority would have some incentive to try and get resolution early in order to avoid additional costs. And the third reason for setting up a separate resolution authority was that resolution, at any rate until fairly recently, was a single critical event. A bank would get into trouble, preferably on a Friday, and then the resolution authority over the course of the weekend would arrange a merger, maybe on a good bank, bad bank basis, or it would arrange some liquidation. But anyhow, generally, by Monday morning, everything was done and dusted. So it was a single, quick over. Now all these arguments for having separation effectively have become very considerably weakened in recent years. The first one is that now that everyone is gung-ho for avoiding any form of taxpayer funding, or bailout, the bail-in does not involve any fiscal usage of fiscal taxpayers' money. So that argument is gone. The next argument is with the establishment of the SSM, the ECB is much more separate from political pressures, and particularly since you can always blame any failing on legacy, on the failure of the national supervisory authorities earlier, there is less pressure on the ECB, or the SSM rather, to fall bare because they don't want to admit that they had failed earlier. And finally, and in my view, perhaps most important, the process of resolution is no longer going to be a single event over by Monday, because a bail-in is a reformulation, and the bank will continue, it's meant to continue afterwards, but it will be continuing in a considerably weakened state, because much or all of the bail-inable capital will have been switched into equity, and will no longer be available as a buffer, and its name will be plastered all over every newspaper and television screen you could imagine. And people will suddenly come to realize that that bank was perhaps much weaker than had been expected. And as happened in Northern Rock, there is always a danger that the public will react by saying, you know, it's not just that this has been resolved, it's that we didn't know it was bad, and we're going to flee. So a resolved bank through a bail-inable process is going to be a bank which is going to need a great deal of liquidity support. That cannot be provided by an SRB, it can only be provided effectively by a central bank by the ECB. So again, one of the problems with resolution has always been that people worry about the first round effects, they never think about what happens afterwards. When is the SRB actually going to hand the bank back to the ECB? And the answer is we'll have to do it first thing on Monday morning. So you've got a situation in which the ECB, or rather the SSM, actually knows much more than the SRB about the bank initially, and then has to handle it the moment effectively the bail-in is going to take place. Now under these circumstances, is it actually worth introducing an additional layer of complexity, i.e. a separate body like the SRB, rather than leaving the whole thing with the ECB? Now the second point that I wanted to make, which is slightly aligned with that one, is that the idea that you'll know what when a bank is solvent and when a bank is not solvent is actually just not true. You never know when a bank is solvent or insolvent because it's contextually, it depends on the context. For example, let me take Lehman's. When the Lehman crisis hit, we the public was told that the creditors would get back 19 cents on the dollar. Recently we've been told that effectively the creditors will get back all their money and more. The question of the state of the bank depends enormously on the context. And what really worries me is that the incentives are going to be such that when a bank gets into resolution under these circumstances and a forensic auditor will no doubt get sent in, because he will only have one bite at the cherry, because he will only have one chance to say who gets bailed in and how much and in what form, that everyone will take a worst-case scenario because you don't want to be blamed for underdoing it. That we got it wrong, there were actually more losses. Now under those circumstances, what is going to happen is that the announcement about the bail in is likely to lead to a public assessment about potential losses which is actually, in my view, likely to be far, far greater than the true losses that will be hit when, if you like, the immediate panic is over. And the problem there is the statement that Bank X, which previously, by its standard accountants had been told was probably reasonably well capitalized, is now going to be shown according to this worst-case scenario, which I think the forensic auditor will take on for self-protection, that the statement is going to be, actually it's not, it's in terrible, terrible, terrible shape. And so the difference between the previous accounts and the post-resolution accounts will look absolutely dreadful. And under those circumstances, what is people going to think about every other bank in the system? It's a recipe, a potential recipe for contagion. So what you've got to think about is when you do all this, how do you actually prevent people getting very, very frightened about the banking system as a whole? How do you actually assess whether the losses that you claim to be there are there simply because there's a panic, a general systemic problem for the banking system as a whole? And what will happen when that state is over and we return to a normal situation? My worry is that this resolution process can actually lead to, through standard incentive structure on both the SRB and the forensic auditors that it will employ, could lead to an amplification and to a contagious development for the system as a whole. Well, many thanks, Charles. A lot to think about and perhaps later to discuss, lively, Nicolas. I'd like to ask you whether we did enough with regard to finding global reform and really ensure then that we have a level playing field picking up what Jean said, or whether you see any what we call here, a localization, that we do have some high level rules, but that at the end in the implementation and how it is treated and dealt with by supervisors, you see a lot of divergence across your jurisdiction. What is your view? Thank you. First, I would like just to express my gratitude for being invited today. It's very gratifying to be here. Of course, it's an honor and privilege, but also because this is such a celebration of the one year of the SSM. I'll come to your question, of course, but I really want to say this. I'm often asked, the SSM, what difference does it make? So what? It's not a true banking union. We don't have deposit insurance. The vicious circle has not been broken, so is there really a difference here? And I think it's important to hammer out the message that this does make a huge difference. It's based, of course, on anecdotes from individual banks. And as was said before today, I think by Matthias quoting Charles, the tragedy of supervisors is that their successes are unsung and their failures are public. From anecdotes, it seems that you guys at the SSM are making a lot of a difference. And even so, most of this happens behind the scenes. I think that's important. Now, on a more public note, when a year goes, the results of the comprehensive assessment were announced, like any other commentator, I had to say, is it credible? Well, maybe, but we only will know with time because if you think of the stress test of 2010, 2011, on the day of the announcement, you couldn't assess the credibility. You could only see that it was not credible and after a few weeks, after a few months, some banks that had been given a clean bill of health did fail. And this is no offense, of course, to the EBA. They didn't have the authority to do otherwise. But now, one year afterwards, we can assess the credibility of the comprehensive assessment in a way we couldn't 12 months ago. And it has kept its credibility. It has not failed. So, Greek banks issue has been discussed earlier today. I think it's very important to remind ourselves of this, and by the way, on the Greek banks, I think the fact that at least two of the four Greek banks will be able to fill the capital gap only with private sector money is also a vindication of what the SSM has been saying about them in the spring and the recent assessment. So, I noted President Draghi's remarks this morning when he said that the SSM was not a key development. He said in many ways, the keys to going further in making the eurozone more solid. And I think it's very important to realize that this is a big, unsung success of European integration. People always complain with reason about what doesn't work in Europe and our vulnerabilities. But here is a major shift. Structural, fundamental, that is being implemented, has been implemented with credibility so far. And I think it has to be said. Now I come to your question. The global financial reform, I look at it purposefully from a European perspective because here we're in the ECB forum, we're talking about the SSM anniversary and so I will focus on really how does it look seen from Europe. For understandable reasons, it's not presented that way but reform in Europe following the crisis, or maybe we should say during the crisis, is largely a convergence towards the US model. By which I don't mean that we will emulate everything that exists in the US, that would not be desirable, that would not be feasible. And I think if you think of, for example, Fannie and Freddie, there is no reason we would want to create exactly the same organizations. But if you think of data-driven supervision in the SSM, if you think of our resolution framework, here I quote literally Elke Koenig, who said that the FDIC had been the model. And if you think of capital markets union, of course, which as presented, at least by Jean-Claude Juncker, is explicitly designed to make banks a bit less dominant in our system, these three things, again, don't mean we're going to end up identical to the US, but we're coming closer. And this, on the face of it, is an enabler of global convergence, or at least of transatlantic convergence in terms of financial reform and financial regulation. By the way, the reason for this, I think there is a reason for this convergence, and it's pretty plain and obvious when you think of it. The trigger of the financial crisis was the subprime market. It was coming from the US, no doubt. But the magnitude of the crisis, the magnitude of the financial shock in 2007, 2008, and I refer, for example, to the analysis that the IMF did at the time in successive reports of the Global Financial Stability Report. The magnitude was essentially comparable on both sides of the Atlantic, and much higher than in Asia in terms of financial shock. Now look, the US basically resolved the financial aspect of their crisis, the financial fragility in 2009, and we're still in it in Europe in 2015. And even so, it's not necessarily the ways that policymakers and politicians would present it in the European context. I think everybody is aware of the fact that in spite of generating the crisis in the first place, the US has been able to react much more quickly. We can debate why exactly is that because they have bigger capital markets? Is it because they have better supervisors? Is it because they have more transparency? We can dispute, but what is undisputable is that they went back to normal more quickly, and that I think is the fundamental driver of the fact that it's us Europeans who are converging towards their, some aspects at least of their model, rather than the other way around. So on the face of it, that's good for global convergence and global consistency. Now of course, things are more complicated because at the same time, there's a big shift in the European attitude and in the attitude specifically of the European Union and the European Union institutions. And the shift is that in the pre-crisis environment, the European institutions tended to be champions of global rules and global consistency, think of IFRS adoption in 2005, think of Basel II. It's no longer the case. I refer to the excellent work done by the Basel Committee, very pioneering work for which I think the Basel Committee deserves more praise than it has received to assess not only the binary question on whether there had been an effort to transpose their standards, but also whether the transposition was actually consistent with the content of Basel III, the so-called regulatory consistency assessment process. And if you read those reports and they're available for, I think a dozen of jurisdictions at least worldwide, all jurisdictions except the US and the European Union, and that includes all major Asian economies, includes Switzerland, includes many, they're all compliant. So US is largely compliant, so EU is materially non-compliant. So maybe you can question the methodology, but it has been really engineered to be neutral and objective. So I think we have to ask ourselves, is that true? Are we largely materially non-compliant when everybody else is compliant or largely compliant? And I'm afraid that's true. I sense, and to a certain extent, you can say similar things about derivatives reform. I think here's a picture is much more balanced in terms of no goodwill in terms of having global consistency between the US and Europe, but the EU has certainly not been exemplary in terms of implementing derivatives reform in a way that ensures consistency and a level playing field. So here I hear a lot of cognitive dissonance in Europe, especially in the European Commission, but not only, perhaps as much in the European Parliament, for example, because as they say in the US, the European Union still talks the talks, but doesn't work the work. When you listen to European policymakers, they're talking as if the EU was still the champion of global standards in practice, whereby it's no longer the case in reality. I believe, and I think there is a very strong case that the EU fundamental interest is in having global standards. And the EU, because of its size and magnitude and importance, needs to feel responsibility, not just for itself, but also for the entire system. So here my observation would be that there is a lot of responsibility for EU institutions, for the SSM among them. There is a piece of good news, which is that the SSM, through its supervisory discretion, through PILAS two measures, can do a lot to get the European Union back to battle three compliance, and I hope it will do that. My final point is precisely about the system and especially the governance of the system. So you asked me about balkanization. The irony is that balkanization is actually happening or has happened more accurately inside the EU and specifically inside the eurozone. It hasn't really happened at the global level. When you look at the trends of cross-border, capital flows and the like, they haven't really been reversed, at least not sustainably, by the crisis from non-eurozone jurisdictions to non-eurozone jurisdictions, generally speaking. And especially if you think of Asia, basically financial integration, both within Asia and with the rest of the world, for example, has not been halted by the crisis. So that's the good news. Now, to sustain cross-border financial integration in the world, well, inside the eurozone, I think it's being dealt with with the creation of the banking union and that's a huge piece of good news. So I expect that the balkanization that we've seen will be reversed. I'm hopeful about this. But from a global perspective, for this cross-border integration, which I think is beneficial from an economic perspective, to be sustained, you need a global system that can create good rules and have, ensure some consistent enforcement and for this you need global buy-in. So the governance matters a lot and we know that your situations are not ideal and that large emerging jurisdictions, primarily China, but also others, are not comfortable, don't have a sense of ownership in the system that would guarantee this sustainability. Now here, I have to come to a topic which is highly contentious and emotional, which is European representation. Think of the Basel committee. It's contentious and emotional, but it's also glaringly obvious. In an SSM world, in a banking union world, do we actually need all the representatives in the Basel committees that we have for individual, European, eurozone member states? So obvious answer is no. So it's purely a question of transition, but I think we have to be lucid about this and if I'm blunt, I have to say the same probably applies to the financial stability board itself or at least to the financial stability board steering committee. Again, I know that this is contentious, it is emotional, but I think we have to face it with lucidity because if these issues are not really mentionable in polite society inside the eurozone or inside the ECB, they are discussed all the time outside of the eurozone. And if we think of how the institutions of our global financial standard setting are looked at from Asia, the fact that we have banking union, you no longer have autonomy of supervisory policy in the NCA's, but they all get a seat and a voice and more representation for Europe than for Asia, this is seen very clearly and is being discussed without taking a kid glow. So it's a difficult topic, but I think there is a strong case for Europeans to adjust proactively and not to wait until it's too late to adjust in a way that makes sense for us. Sorry for mentioning this and thank you. Many thanks. So we have enough provocative thesis now and I won't ask you, Stefan, whether you think we should decrease the Bottle Committee membership, okay? You will get around that. Yeah, but I'd like to open for the panelist when you would like to take a position towards the thesis you heard from others to give you an opportunity. Now, otherwise I will ask you, but you have, yeah? Okay, Stefan. On my side then, a few reflections on what we heard, Sean's point about calibration is a highly relevant one because that's a major exercise and there are many moving parts when we're talking about calibration here and that makes it harder than in earlier calibration exercises because in the best of worlds, one would like to do all of this in one goal and have one single Bottle Committee meeting where we produce this wonderful new flower and everybody will be happy ever after. But given the number of moving parts and given the number of people around the table, regardless of where they come from, it's very hard to do that. So it's gonna be a process to make that happen and after that it's of course a process in itself in the banking community to make these things happen. So it will take a bit of time but I do think that we are heading in the right direction when it comes to getting this done. On your point and this was also Nicola's point on global governance, yes, one would like to have something which is highly uniform globally but one needs to be mindful of the fact that in the real world, at the global level, all the governance structures that we have are soft in one way or the other and it's very, very difficult and hard to change that. What is doable in the short run is just simply to keep talking, talking, talking, hoping that that gradually produces convergence because that is what we've got and that is not likely to change in the near future. To Charles's process remarks about resolution in the future, let's hope that it takes longer than in the past before governments have to get involved because that's one way of thinking about the bail-in process and how it is supposed to work. We just don't know how it will work but I do think though that history tells us and we need to be mindful of that. In the textbook case, the central bank is the lender of last resort. Strangely enough, there aren't any textbooks talking about the other part of this but in the real world, like it or not, governments end up being the owner of last resort and that happens and has happened in the past time and time again. What I do hope though is that with the present framework that now has emerged in Europe, it will take longer than in the past before that happens and that the governments have, by far, to use less money before that happens but it's not something that we know will happen and there is no guarantee at all actually going forward what will happen in the future. And that holds particularly in countries where the banking sector is highly concentrated where you have very few very large banks because then it's, of course, even more difficult to go through these resolution phases because you're actually gonna have to run a bank in resolution for months or maybe years when it comes to making that happen. There are many things, Stefan. The other panelist, Jean, would you like or? Maybe two very quick remarks. The first one is on the debate raised by Nicolas about Europe's lagging behind. I'm not so sure. We had different models. For good reasons or not, I don't know, we are changing the funding model of the economies, right? More market. It takes time. The US have taken more than 50 years to adapt and to create it. I think Europe and especially the SSM is moving quickly forward and banks are moving quickly. I think we should make a different appreciation of what's happening. I think it is the opposite. We are moving quickly. What is lagging behind, and I go back to my remark, is the market tools to compensate what banks may not do in the future. And that's my personal concern. I'm not an academic. I look at the reality of the financing of the economy and this is worrisome. I stop here, but this is clear. My last remark is on, the second remark is on the point about the global framework. Probably I'm becoming too old or senior to be naive. I know that quickly it could become a talk shop. Maybe I've done a lot of talk shops in my life. So I think my point was not exactly this. My point was slightly different. I understand that various constituencies in the US or Europe may have different views about the way to create rules and measure the implementation of the rules. That I can agree. What is key and maybe more humble is that our regulator pays a lot of attention to the type of pressure, to the type of commitments, requirements which are imposed on the SSM banking system to make sure that there is a fair global competition. It doesn't mean to be weak. This is not what I mean, but it must be a constant review of the way we behave, the way people behave in different constituencies to make sure that on the points on which we compete, European corporates have the choice. And this is a very serious structural question for Europe in the future. Anything, John? I just want to make one remark about Nicholas's comment about Europe having recovered much more slowly than the US. He didn't mention the one thing that I think was made the critical difference. And that was the top money. The Americans had public sector money, which they could use to recapitalize the banks that were in difficulty. For a variety of reasons, there was no equivalent backstop in Europe, and therefore the banks were not recapitalized to anything like at the same extent. And I want just to go on from that to make one more comment about the balance between bail in and bail out. In Jean's excellent lecture, he suggested that the alternatives between having the taxpayer finance the losses and bail in was the banks for the cost. Well, banks actually can't bear costs. It's always an individual who bears a cost somewhere or other. And if we're going to go from bail out where the taxpayer bears the cost, it is going to be those who have been putting funds into the bail in of credit instruments. And that will be the pension funds and the insurance companies. So what you're doing, essentially, is you're switching the burden from the taxpayer to the pensioner and to the person who's invested in the insurance companies, which will actually be much more concentrated than it was before. And the question that I ask is, why is it necessarily such a good idea to switch the burden from the taxpayer to the pensioner? Many things, Charles. You know, I plan to come to one topic which we did not yet touch upon, and that was micro and macro. Yeah? But we have about 10 minutes left, and I promised to open up the floor for questions coming from you. So I will try now to look into the round whether somebody wants to raise a question to one of the panelists. And if not, then we will do the micro-macro. No questions. Where? Did you see? Oh, you have a comment. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, then we finish with your comment, and then the people still have some time, and I know that Mr. Helwig always has a question. Yeah? And then we finish first with this round, and then we will come to Mr. Helwig and perhaps some others who have some questions. No, a quick comment to Charles' reflection on resolution and getting back to that and how to go about doing it, and particularly in the cases where you're envisaged doing massive bail-in, that means that you end up with a whole new group of shareholders. And no one has ever discussed, as far as I know, the issue is that new group of shareholders capable of running the bank. Because essentially bank restructuring is corporate finance, and then you need to understand what you are doing when it comes to getting out of that mess. And as far as I know, that issue has never been discussed. Good idea. If I may interject on this very briefly, it has not been discussed, but it has been experienced in one place, which is Cyprus. And those who are interested in this area can look at who became shareholders of the big Cyprus banks, and it's very interesting. But the Cypriots say that the Russians have behaved much better on the board than anyone had previously had expected. So it's not necessarily a slam dunk. Okay. Are we finished with this round? Just a very brief remark, because Jean expressed what he felt was an area of disagreement. I'm not sure it is, and maybe I wasn't clear in my exposition. My point is not to say that the EU has been particularly slow or could perhaps be quicker. Actually, when I think of banking union, from this point of decision, which was made to sound 12, five years after the beginning of the crisis, I think progress has been extraordinarily quick, and I again applaud what has been done in this building and elsewhere. My point was about the starting points. I think we had fragilities when we were hit by a broadly symmetrical shock, again originating in the US in 2007-2008. We had a situation in Europe structurally that made it much more difficult for us to react, and the absence of a European tarp is part of that story. So that's for clarification. Okay. Many thanks, Nikola. Well, Mr. Helwig, a very brief one. Okay. And then I look into the round whether there is a second one and then I wrap up. That would be the best. Many thanks. Thank you. Just a question to Charles. I agree with you that resolution is messy and maybe therefore not credible, but your remark on insurance companies and pension funds and the like raises the question, do you go by the principle that no private party would be able to bear the loss and we should have a too big to fail or too important to fail policy as a matter of principle? Banks are rather like utilities, and they should be seen in many ways as utilities. Now, when a railway company fails or an electricity company fails or a water company fails, you don't actually tear up the tracks and tear up the pipes. You keep the pipes going. What you do is you get rid of the management and you ensure that the equity holders lose all their money. And I think the same should be true of banks and you should get rid of the management. And I think the best way of dealing with the banks was essentially what Stefan did in Scandinavia in 1990-91. We should recognize that banks are utilities. You have to keep the biggest ones going because they provide a utility service to societies as a whole. Now, that undoubtedly means that because you've got to keep the thing going that you have to supervise them fairly very strongly. And I very much in favor of your and Annette's argument that as utilities they need to have a great deal more equity capital. I was slightly surprised by your remarks earlier today. You thought there had been too much attention paid to equity and not enough attention paid to structure. That's what I heard you say, but maybe I misinterpreted you. Well, good. But I think that it would be an entirely wrong step to close any really big systemic bank. I think it would be a disaster. I think closing Lehman's was one of the great disasters of our century. Okay, I could go on and on talking only about resolution and whether we believe that too big to fail can be solved, is solved. How should it be solved? But I fear we have to close now. If you do not mind, I'll wrap up, okay? May I congratulate you? Because you have been able to elevate the debate from plumbing to cooking and then even Stefan has mentioned a bunch of flowers, which is absolutely great, but unfortunately with you went back to pipes. So Sabine, you have done very well. The panelists did very well and I'd like to thank you very warmly for participating in this panel. It was really a pleasure and I would have loved to have another, our really discussing in-depth about the very provocative thesis we had here. We came from the reform agendas almost done, but it's never done. Is that correct? The reforms are okay, but the calibration is a serious issue. Without a calibration, it's almost nothing. I should have asked you, Stefan, how long you think our period of digestion, digesting this should be. We did not really talk in-depth about level playing. I feel that it would be another hour to talk about, I think, with regard to balkanization too, very provocative from Charles about, if I understood you correctly, neither the institutional setup with regard to resolution is the best idea nor the content-driven part of resolution is the best idea. And then many thanks for the praise for the SSM, Nicola, but if I understood you correctly, you're really pleading, you know, both of us to have Europe getting closer to the Basel standards and that we are a little bit too slow at the end coping with the crisis in 2008 and really doing our job.