ECB’s Weber: It Seems Too Early To Announce End Of Crisis

BERLIN (MNI) – ECB Governing Council member Axel Weber said in
remarks prepared for delivery on Wednesday in Berlin that the economic
crisis is not over yet.

“We have just entered the fourth year of the crisis and it still
seems too early to announce its end,” Weber said in his draft text.

Nevertheless, the lessons from the crisis are now being transformed
into political reality, the Bundesbank president said. “This is
especially true for the reform of financial regulation,” he remarked.

Commenting on the recent agreement on the Basel III banking
regulation, Weber noted that there is some concern in the financial
industry regarding possible negative impact on the real economy. Banks
have argued that the additional burdens would constrain their capacity
to hand out loans to a degree that might reduce economic activity.

Weber responded to these concerns by saying that “recent studies by
the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and others show that the
impact of financial reforms on economic performance is likely to be
rather small.”

–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com

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