The European Central Bank’s top guns led with their chins in defence of their monetary policy strategy at a major conference in Frankfurt last month and emerged bloodied but unbowed. During the fourth ECB Central Banking Conference, “The role of money: money and monetary policy in the 21st century”, ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet, vice-president Lucas Papademos and economics supremo Jürgen Stark all strongly endorsed the continuing importance that the ECB attaches to its monetary analysis, which constitutes one of the two analytical pillars of its monetary policy strategy. As Stark put it in his opening address: “Monetary analysis is a field that has proven essential to central banks for a long time. We therefore need to invest further in it in the future.”
Several eminent participants begged to...
