For instance, it is very high among people who do not have upper-secondary school approved grades, as well as among immigrants and young people. These groups comprise a relatively large share of job-seekers. Structural measures to enable these groups to gain a foothold in the labour market are a better recipe than expansionary monetary policy for bringing down unemployment. A further indication that long-run labour market developments are governed by factors other than monetary policy is that unemployment has varied substantially between the countries in the euro area, despite their common monetary policy. Trying to place the responsibility for employment with monetary policy and the central bank is thus, in my opinion, not very meaningful. It could even be counter-productive as the focus is moved from the places where the problems really can be dealt with – the labour market and the political sphere – to a place where they cannot. Sometimes one almost gets the impression that the actual purpose of trying to transfer responsibility for employment to the central bank is to avoid having to take the fairly unpleasant decisions that might be needed to create good conditions for employment. Of course, it would be much easier if the employment problem merely concerned cutting the policy rate to a low level and keeping it there. But it is not that simple.13 Has monetary policy been unclear? Let me now move on to the third type of criticism. It claims that monetary policy has been unclear and difficult to comprehend, particularly in recent years.
Niklaus Blattner: System stability and security of the systems Summary of a speech by Prof Dr Niklaus Blattner, Vice-Chairman the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Luzerner Tage für Informationssicherung (LUTIS, conference on information security), Lucerne, 25 May 2004. The references for the speech can be found on the Swiss National Bank’s website. *  *  *  The stability of the banking system and the security of the financial market infrastructure - including the stock exchanges and especially payment and securities settlement systems - have become an important concern of central banks all over the world in recent years. This has notably happened against the background of the numerous financial crises witnessed during the past decades. Moreover, events such as 9/11 have heightened awareness for the security of the financial markets and other infrastructures. In Switzerland, the growing importance of system stability has also been reflected in the new National Bank Act, which entered into force on 1 May 2004. Within the framework of its principal mandate of pursuing a monetary policy in the interests of the country as a whole while at the same time ensuring price stability, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) is legally obliged to make a contribution to system stability and to facilitate and secure the operation of cashless payment systems. In implementing its mandate, the SNB takes preventive measures as well as measures aimed at overcoming crises. For instance, in a crisis the National Bank plays an important role in providing liquidity.