Unconditional – or “quasi-unconditional” – talk about future policy would have impaired the difficult balance that we maintained between supportive credit conditions and persistently anchored inflation expectations. Active emphasis in communication upon “alertness” required keeping all options open to a – possibly quick – change in policy.
Pre-commitment to a policy path would certainly have made that reversal of policy difficult to execute and/or to justify, and therefore non-credible. The markets seem to have internalised these strategic principles with an increasing degree of precision.