Moreover, a maturity extension resolves rollover risk for the coming decades.

Like banks, all these financial institutions are subject to liquidity or rollover risk the risk of going belly up if their creditors do not rollover their short term credit lines.

In the meantime, I think it is sensible that we support Ambassador De La Sablière's proposal for a one month rollover.

Like banks, all these financial institutions are subject to liquidity or rollover risk the risk of going belly up if their creditors do not rollover their short term credit lines. But, unlike banks, they do not have the safety net implied by central banks role as lender of last resort.

Meanwhile, the current French proposal of a voluntary rollover by banks is flopping, as it would impose prohibitively high interest rates on the Greeks.

The Secretariat has advised that audits not conducted in 2004 and considered high risk, would be considered for rollover into the 2005 work plan.

This by itself creates a rollover risk, which is why, for example, a small firm in Bozen (Bolzano, in Italy s South Tyrol) is subject to higher financing costs than its competitor in Innsbruck (in Austria s northern Tyrol).

The real problem is the rollover of existing debt in a stagnating economy. For example, Italy will soon have a balanced budget in structural terms, but must still face the problem of refinancing old debt as it matures each year.

Will it be possible for them to rollover their market funding in these circumstances? Already, the Greeks and the other countries subject to special measures have been shut out of the wholesale markets, and are reliant almost entirely on the European Central Bank.

Moreover, the new federal bonds very long maturities meant that there was no rollover risk. It would have been very dangerous to expose the federal government to this danger, given that the operation was rightly perceived at the outset as extremely risky.

1. Expresses its satisfaction with the efforts of all Member States to solve the year 2000 problem before the rollover date of 31 December 1999, including by working to ensure that the private sector was fully engaged in addressing the problem and by tackling it in those systems under their own control