*  *  *  It is a pleasure for me to welcome you today. I would like to start by thanking you all for coming to Frankfurt to participate in this conference. We are happy to have a good mix of people from academia, industry and European policy institutions in this room.
The topic I have been asked to cover today is extremely broad. I will start by briefly outlining the institutional framework, strategy and objective of the Eurosystem. Subsequently, I will address what seems to be a permanent feature of central banking, and perhaps also of human destiny, namely the need to take decisions in an uncertain environment and based on imperfect knowledge. 1.