As students at the AMSE and as future economists, analysts and researchers, you will have a big role to play to ensure that, irrespective of the big changes to come in tomorrow’s financial intermediation, our compass continues to point toward the common good of financial stability. 3 4  The Road ahead, 1995 Madre  9/9
Faced with such swings in sentiment, I want even more to stress today two ideas that are constant and consistent: (A) the ECB has been an innovative and efficient inflation-targeter, including in the Covid-crisis; (B) beyond Covid, the ECB has a powerful “quartet of tools” to keep its monetary policy as accommodative, and for as long as necessary. A. The ECB as an innovative and efficient inflation targeter In the first part of my remarks, let me try to answer three questions: is the ECB clear in its objective? is it consistent in its instruments? and is it efficient in its results? Page 2 sur 9 I. Is the ECB clear in its objective? For the ECB, like all other major central banks, our inflation objective is our lodestar. That means our definition of price stability should be simple, symmetric, and medium-term oriented. However, not everyone may perceive it this way. Hence, in the context of the Strategy Review launched by Christine Lagarde, we are currently reflecting on whether it can be communicated more clearly. To make it even simpler, we should reexamine the overly sophisticated qualifiers attached to the 2 % figure (“close to but below”). There is no benefit in appearing ambiguous about what we are aiming at. “Symmetric” refers to the fact that our objective is a target and cannot be a ceiling. Looking backwards, a central bank that has been successful in achieving its target on average will have had roughly as many episodes of inflation above its target as below.