*  *  *  Each month the MPC sets a policy rate, Bank Rate, that will prevail until our next policy meeting. But no one – here today, in the market, or on the Committee – thinks that setting the overnight money market rate for the coming 30 days can be enough to steer demand conditions and maintain stable inflation.
This technology has become so ordinary that we forget just how revolutionary, and how new, it is. Thirty years ago, just as I was proceeding for my PhD, I would buy stacks of airmail envelopes, to communicate with my family back home. We spent weeks, even months, without hearing from each other, because of the difficulty and expense it took to  communicate.