Rules are naturally important and useful for orientation purposes, but they must not degenerate into automatic responses. They cannot be a substitute for the responsibility of decision-makers in a concrete situation - although they can provide an orientation for such responsibility. Incidentally, the Bundesbank has never applied its monetary targeting policy in mechanistic fashion, especially not during the nineties.
And the experience it gained of that approach was excellent. BIS Review 57/1999  4  The point of properly understood strategies - not wrongly understood automatic responses - is to provide longer-term orientation. They should certainly have a binding character - in the sense that the central bank is required to justify the extent to which actual decisions are compatible with the strategy.