Global and Regional Surveillance: Lessons from the Euro-Area Crisis

Abstract

In mid-2010, Michel Camdessus, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa and Alexandre Lamfalussy took the initiative to invite a group of 15 friends, former ministers, central bank governors, heads of international institutions top civil servants to join them and engage in in-depth discussions about the problems confronting the international monetary system and about possible reforms aimed at addressing them, in the light of the global financial crisis which had erupted three years before. Indeed, they had in mind, like the other members of the group, that in addition to evident shortcomings in prudential supervision and financial regulation, the failings of the international monetary system contributed notably to the global liquidity crisis that triggered the financial crisis. They also thought that the crisis had provided to be a unique opportunity to identify solutions to a series of problems that the international community had not man-aged to resolve since the Bretton Woods system was abandoned in the early 1970s.