And, in that endeavour, did the ECB do the right thing when it claimed “instrument independence”, within the confines of the Treaty stipulations, when delivering on its objective by using conventional instruments was no longer a viable option? In attempting to answer these questions, let me take a step back.
Over the past decades, a clear consensus has emerged that price stability is the sole, or at least the primary, responsibility of a central bank. This is what we call “goal dependence”: central 1/8  BIS central bankers' speeches  banks did not – and should not – choose their ultimate goal.