In view of the short time available to me - plus the fact that you cannot contradict me - I shall be brief. You may perhaps feel that I am being dogmatic: if so, please bear with me. I should like to make four observations. 1. There is not doubt whatsoever that monetary policy can bring inflation under control. When monetary policy is not flanked by the appropriate budgetary policy, and when labour markets - but also goods and services markets - are not flexible, bringing inflation under control will take time. It will take time, and it can also entail costs - which could otherwise have been avoided. But even so, these costs would still be less than the (very high long-term) cost of not dealing with inflation. Let us not forget that while the rich and the powerful can protect themselves from any loss of purchasing power of their money - and in many cases can even benefit from such a loss - the weak and the not-so-rich will always be the losers. Inflation has always been a major source of social iniquity. In addition, it prevents the economy from functioning properly, by falsifying the signals which are given by prices. The speculative boom in the real estate markets in some of our countries at the end of the 1980s caused serious damage - and we are still paying the price. 2.
Once inflation has been brought under control, and once this control has been confirmed, monetary policy can guide short-term interest rates to a level which contributes to balanced growth. Quite a number of EU countries are in such a situation already, with short-term interest rates at around 3%. In others, where inflation has been brought under control more recently, rates have not yet reached this level but are approaching it gradually. The confirmation that inflation has been brought under control does, unfortunately, take time. Finally, in one major country which has seen rapid growth for several years now and in which unemployment has fallen remarkably, short-term interest rates have been raised - applying the principle of preventive medicine. 3. Now, what can we say about long-term interest rates, which also have an important role to play in stimulating growth - perhaps an even more important one than short-term rates? Monetary policy does have an influence on the level of these rates, but its influence is not exclusive and we cannot even predict the direction of its influence with certainty. At this particular point in time, in the first group of countries to which I referred a moment ago, nominal long-term interest rates are at a historically low level - they are well below 6% - but real long-term interest rates can be regarded, perhaps, as still being too high to put continental Europe on the road to more vigorous growth.