On 16th November 2009, SUERF, CEPS and the Belgian Financial Forum coorganized a conference "Crisis management at cross-roads" in Brussels. All papers in the present volume are based on contributions at the conference and the SUERF Annual Lecture which followed the event.

Why is the policy of no alternatives so dangerous? -- What does "crisis policy" mean and why do its consequences have a disintegrative effect? -- What are the costs of the low interest rate policy? -- How much was the debt relief for Greece really? -- To what extent do national additional money...

Where is a liability union already evident today? -- To what extent is the reconstruction fund the blueprint for a fiscal-centralist European Monetary Fund? -- Is debt relief coming? -- Are Greek "geuros" and Italian "minibots" as government money the solution? -- Why are national parallel...

We derive four sets of counterfactual national interest rate paths for the 17 Euro Area countries for the time period 1999 to 2012. They approximate desirable national interest rates countries would have liked to implement if they could still conduct independent monetary policy. We find that...

Soon, euro area membership could more than double, with the vast majority of accession countries being quite different in economic terms compared with current members. Under the current decision-making system, this can lead to high decisionmaking costs and there is a risk that monetary policy...