So anxious were they to preserve secrecy and avoid a panic that the IMF’s IT department created a separate SimulationMail e-mail system to avoid notes from the game leaking to the outside.21 Hungary’s own central bank duplicated the simulation. Its results, it breezily informed a conference at the ECB in the summer of 2007, were reassuring. If there was one note of caution, it was a reminder that 60 percent of Hungary’s banking sector was in the hands of Belgian, Austrian, Italian and German banks.
