Sabine Lautenschläger: Monetary policy - end of history? Speech by Ms Sabine Lautenschläger, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank, at the Center for Financial Studies Colloquium, Frankfurt am Main, 29 May 2018. * * * In 1992, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama announced the end of history.
The cold war had just ended, and in Fukuyama’s view, this marked “the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution”. Liberal democracy had prevailed; the final form of government had been reached. There was no need for history to continue. Similar claims were made about monetary policy. The great moderation, for instance, was traced back to better monetary policy.