Krzysztof Rybiński: Inflation targeting and the challenges ahead Opening remarks by Mr Krzysztof Rybiński, Deputy President of the National Bank of Poland, at the “Inflation Targeting - Third Joint NBP & SNB Seminar on Monetary Policy”, Warsaw, 18-20 May 2006. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to welcome you at the third seminar on monetary policy organized jointly by the Swiss National Bank and the National Bank of Poland. Let me start by thanking staff members from the host central banks, who have not spared their efforts on preparing this seminar. For the first time in our seminar, apart from economists from the host central banks we have invited representatives of other central banks to share with us their knowledge and experience with inflation targeting. Thus I would like to warmly welcome our guests from the Czech National Bank – the first inflation targeter in Central and Eastern Europe, and from the Central Bank of Turkey – a brand new inflation targeter, which has adopted the framework only this year. The topic of this year’s seminar is inflation targeting (henceforth called IT). As the distinguished former Fed chairman Paul Volcker recently remarked 1 , inflation targeting may sound like an oxymoron since usually central banks strive to fight inflation rather than to breed it. So should we gather here to discuss ways of breeding inflation?
11  “Norges Bank operates a flexible inflation targeting regime and seeks to achieve an interest rate path that provides a reasonable balance between the objective of bringing inflation up towards 2.5% over time and stabilising developments in output and employment.” - Norgesbank, Inflation Report, March 2006. 12  According to the Federal Reserve Act, the Board of Governors and the Federal Open Market Committee should seek “to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.”  13  Cukierman A. “Central Bank Independence and Policy Results: Theory and Evidence”, Lecture prepared for the International Conference on: “Stability and Economic Growth: The Role of the Central Bank”, Mexico City, 14-15 November 2005. 2  BIS Review 42/2006  way central banks should respond to asset prices. Fed Chairman Bernanke claims that central bankers should respond to asset prices only insofar as they affect output gap and thus inflation 14 . Another FOMC 15 member Donald Kohn has described this approach as “conventional strategy” and proposed, what he called, an “extraaction” policy 16 . Monetary “extra action” – according to Kohn would be required if there were clear signals of an asset bubble building up – especially a one fuelled by excessively loose monetary policy – and if costs of “extra action” policy were smaller than the costs of further build-up and subsequent collapse of a bubble.