Setting The Right Example

摘要

Despite the worldwide financial crisis and incipient economic recession, some European countries have escaped the worst effects. Malta is one of them. This Mediterranean island, only 316 square kilometres in size and with a population of 410,000, has suffered no systemic shocks and no banking failures. One reason is that Malta has stuck to conventional banking. Its banks have benefited from an approach based on old-fashioned intermediation between retail depositors and borrowers. They have not relied on wholesale funding and they have substantial liquidity, adequate capital and prudent lending policies.