Let me pick out a few currency and competitiveness issues to give you an idea of our motivation for this conference. Currencies are at the core of central banks’ business: As a form of money, currencies facilitate the transfer of goods and services by serving as a means of exchange, enable the storage of wealth and serve as a unit of accounting.
* *  *  Technology is a powerful factor of change in our macroeconomic environment. So, a few years ago, our colleagues of the Federal Reserve had to recognize that something new was happening in the US economy: a persistent higher growth and lower unemployment without the emergence of inflationary strains.