It is not popular to raise the retirement age. Workers have a valid desire to consume some of their increasing productivity in the form of leisure time, or earlier retirement. At the same time, Social Security and Medicare together pose huge financial problems. It is also not popular to raise payroll taxes, or to ration health care.
The third development, an intensification of the international debate on financial stability, also links the first and second conferences on monetary stability. In the context of the institutional framework for monetary stability, issues such as crisis prevention and crisis resolution, transparency and how to best organise prudential supervision have already been discussed in this forum.