As far as I recollect, the Czech Republic and its policymakers were in no case giving lectures to Visegrad colleagues on what “fair-sighted policies” to adopt to successfully “escape the worst of the financial crisis” as our country’s financial system seems to have done so far. After all, Slovak and Polish financial systems proved to be as robust as the Czech one in this crisis. At the same time, I must admit that we in the Czech Republic might have been – from time to time - visibly frustrated with the attitude of the elites of Europe’s more developed countries (notably the EU and UK authorities as well as the FT Group writers), who have actually been the ones trying to teach us how to built a stable banking sector. The irony is that central Europeans are hearing these lectures from the authorities who noticeably failed in this task and from the media which failed to address the shortcomings of the west European financial systems before they became visible to everybody including unhappy taxpayers. The second part of our frustration has usually been stemming from our endless efforts (which may finally bear fruit as far as the FT is concerned) to point out the very basic differences between individual countries in the central European region.
Miroslav Singer, Vice Governor, Czech National Bank