Peter Praet: The European Central Bank's monetary policy - past and present Speech by Mr Peter Praet, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at the Febelfin Connect event, Brussels/Londerzeel, 16 March 2017. * * * In recent years it has been often said that the ECB has become the “only game in town” for stabilising the euro area economy.
Ultimately, the only way to get sustainably higher interest rates is to improve the broader environment for growth, by adopting policies designed to increase productivity and potential output over the long term--policies that are mainly outside the scope of our work at the Federal Reserve. 13  12 13  See Greenwood and Hanson (2013). See Powell (2016) and Yellen (2016).