He has held various positions of responsibility at the BIS over the last 35 years and during this period he has authored numerous publications in the fields of monetary policy, banking, finance and issues related to financial stability. Alfred Kammer is the Director of the European Department at the International Monetary Fund. In that capacity, he leads and oversees the IMF's work with Europe on financial sector surveillance, monetary and macroprudential policies and financial regulation, among other key areas. Lucrezia Reichlin is Professor of Economics at the London Business School with a background in central banking. She was previously Director General of Research at the European Central Bank. Last but not least, Ricardo Reis is the A.W. Phillips Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. Widely regarded as one of the top research macroeconomists of his generation, Ricardo has published extensively on monetary and fiscal policy, inflation and business cycles. Thank you Claudio, Alfred, Lucrezia and Ricardo for kindly accepting the invitation to be with us today. As discussed with you, I would first give the floor to Alfred. 3/3  BIS - Central bankers' speeches
The relationship between economic activity and inflation is not particularly stable either. In the difficult deliberations we had to make in September we Executive Board members reached different conclusions, with a majority voting to raise the repo rate while the minority to which I myself belonged voted to hold the interest rate unchanged. On this occasion I shall not go into the various reasons for my stance in depth; they were clear from the separate minutes of the monetary policy meeting and I discussed them in a speech I held a couple of weeks ago. 6  BIS Review 121/2008