The considerable strengths of the institutional framework of the Fed - full de jure independence, the depth of technical talent, a committee designed to bring a diversity of independent perspectives to the monetary policy decision making process - have not been strong enough to deliver consistently good monetary policy decisions over time. The constituency for price stability in the United States today seems broad and strong and reasonably bipartisan, but it's been a generation since we've had high inflation and had to face the costs of bringing it down. It seems like a long time since monetary policy has been the subject of major political or popular attention. And the extent of deference the Fed now enjoys - the extent of de facto autonomy - is a relatively recent, surprisingly recent phenomenon, and substantially due to the competence demonstrated by the past two chairmen. Monetary policy has been the beneficiary of a long period of good fortune in the form of smaller and less adverse external shocks, a sustained and very large acceleration in productivity, the disinflationary forces produced by global economic integration, greater flexibility in the U.S. economy and improved financial sector resilience, and the effects of these factors and technological change in reducing macroeconomic volatility. We don't know much about the probabilities surrounding the future path of most of these variables. We face a number of transitions ahead that will have important implications for U.S. monetary policy.
At the end of 2015, in Bulgaria the share of SEPA credit transfers in the total number of customers’ credit transfer orders in euro was 59%, and the migration to the EMV standard for bank payment cards and POS terminals is over 90% and is nearly complete. • With effect from 1 February 2016, Member States must remove settlement-based national reporting obligations on payment service providers for balance of payments statistics relating to payment transactions of their customers. Soon the National Assembly is going to pass amendments to the Currency Law, introduced with the Law on consumers’ real estate loans, and the related changes are going to be made to Ordinance No.27 on the balance of payment statistics. Therefore, payment service providers will no longer be required, for the needs of the balance of payments statistics, to keep registers and provide the BNB with information on transactions and payments between residents and non-residents and on  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  cross-border transfers of over BGN 100 000. We expect that these changes would be passed by the end of July this year. • In relation to the agreement reached between the MoF, BNB and market participants, the BNB as the fiscal agent of the government works on a project for the technical implementation of direct connection of the Government Securities Depository with the EBOND system to the BLOOMBERG PROFESSIONAL platform and the system of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange.