The notion that monetary regimes are very powerful in shaping public expectations had received dramatic evidence when the old monetary policy order, the Bretton Woods arrangements, foundered.
In those circumstances, private sectors in a large portion of the industrial world were left for years in the dark about the “true” objectives of monetary policy, and about the determination with which central banks were prepared to pursue it. A new monetary order could not be established unless it tackled the problem of the mandate and of the strategy squarely.