Miguel Fernández Ordóñez: Facing the crisis in Europe Opening address by Mr Miguel Fernández Ordóñez, Governor of the Bank of Spain, at the Conference in memory of Luis Ángel Rojo, Madrid, 21 February 2012. *  *  *  Good morning, and many thanks for having accepted our invitation to participate in this Conference in memory of Ángel Rojo. Presiding over this tribute by the Banco de España, to which Ángel Rojo devoted much of his peerless personal and professional calibre, and in which he developed many of his analytical and intellectual contributions, is frankly a privilege I would have preferred never to have taken up. It was in the Bank where he was able to successfully transform macroeconomic thought into economic policy design and implementation, heightening the reputation of the Bank itself and no doubt contributing to enhancing the well-being of Spaniards. The Bank wanted this tribute to be as solemn an occasion as the key role Ángel Rojo played within it merits, and that it should be worthy of the deep impression he made and the valuable legacy he bestowed upon us, which all his followers have sought to preserve. Fortunately for future generations, the guiding principles of his thinking as Governor can be found in numerous written texts taken from conferences and speeches that greatly impacted Spanish society and the economic policy debate in a singularly important phase for the modernisation of our economy.
José De Gregorio: Workshop on financial markets and monetary policy Opening remarks by Mr José De Gregorio, Governor of the Central Bank of Chile, at the Workshop on Financial Markets and Monetary Policy, Santiago, 6 August 2010. *  *  *  On behalf of the Central Bank of Chile I would like to welcome you all to this workshop on the interactions between financial markets and monetary policy. We have put together a very interesting group of papers that are surely at the forefront of research in this area. The episodes that started to unfold during the second half of 2008 reminded us once more of the central importance of financial markets for the functioning of the economy. As the crisis progressed and policy makers tried to mount a response that could mitigate the effects on the real economy, understanding which actions would have the bigger impact at the smallest possible cost become a key priority. At the same time, gauging how the traditional policy actions would affect the economy in a scenario of deep disarray of financial markets also become an important priority in Central Banks and Treasury Departments around the world. The collection of papers that will be presented here today try to illuminate different features of the policy dilemmas I just mentioned. They are then a very welcome contribution. To some extent economists lacked a clear theoretical framework to understand the role of financial markets as both an originator and propagator of shocks when the crisis started.