Stefan Ingves: Housing and monetary policy – a view from an inflation targeting central bank Speech by Mr Stefan Ingves, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Economic Symposium, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 1 September 2007. *  *  *  I am honoured to have been asked to participate in this final panel debate in such distinguished company. What I intend to bring to this panel is an account of how Sveriges Riksbank, an inflation targeting central bank, takes into consideration developments in asset prices, house prices in particular, and our experience thus far of doing so. Hopefully this account will be of interest, since it illustrates some of the challenges – analytical and pedagogical – that policy makers face when deciding on the appropriate way of bringing asset price developments into monetary policy decisions making. In going through events in the past few years I will also touch on the criticism that the Riksbank has received from various directions – members of the public in Sweden, financial market participants, and from some members of academia. As a matter of fact, some of the criticism levelled at the Executive Board has come from within the Bank, i.e. from members of the staff. As I will elaborate below, this reflects that there are no simple answers to the question of what the proper role is for house prices in an inflation targeting framework.
As I mentioned, one of the core objectives of supervision and regulation is to support resilience in supervised firms so that they can contribute to the sustained provision of credit and other financial services. We strive to do that in the most effective and efficient manner possible. I mentioned just a few examples of our work in this area, and I look forward to continued dialogue on this key topic. Conclusions We at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Federal Reserve System have a strong interest in understanding the issues facing community banks and ensuring that they continue to play their critical role in the U.S. financial system. We hope that today’s conference sparks an informative discussion around many of those issues. 5/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  I’ll conclude by noting that this conference is just one of several initiatives to encourage communication and outreach with the industry. The Federal Reserve Board also has initiated numerous industry outreach opportunities to provide resources on key supervisory policies, including the development of two programs—"Outlook Live” and “Ask the Fed"—as well as the publication of three newsletters—Community Banking Connections, Consumer Compliance Outlook, and FedLinks. We hope you are able to utilize these resources, and our team will be happy to provide instructions on how you can subscribe to them. Thank you for joining our conference today; I hope you will find today’s presentations useful and informative. 1 FDIC Community Banking Study (December 2012). 2 A Perspective on Supervisory Objectives and Trade-offs, February 23, 2017.