[S]uch an approach was seen as likely to be relatively simple and efficient to administer, relatively straightforward to communicate, and effective in enabling interest rate control across a wide range of circumstances.”13 The second major issue facing the FOMC is whether to change its strategic framework to mitigate the risk of a return to the effective lower bound for interest rates. Once the federal funds rate is close to zero, the FOMC is constrained in its ability to lower short-term interest rates further, and the other available policy options to provide monetary policy stimulus may be less effective. If the FOMC were unable to provide sufficient stimulus, the economy could have difficulty recovering. In turn, inflation and inflation expectations could fall—and thus raise real interest rates—effectively tightening monetary policy and making the task of generating a sustainable recovery even more difficult. Some have argued that a desirable way to reduce this risk would be to raise the FOMC’s inflation objective from 2 percent to perhaps 3 or 4 percent. Their reasoning is that if the inflation objective were somewhat higher, nominal interest rates at the later stages of the business cycle would also tend to be higher, which would provide greater scope for the FOMC to cut short-term interest rates to stimulate the economy, if necessary. 4/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  While recognizing that there is a legitimate effective lower bound risk, I do not support the option of raising the inflation objective, for three reasons.

Amendments introduced the legal provisions with the aim to extend investment possibilities of open pension funds, to provide better diversification and to decrease investment risk would fall within the trend currently observed in many countries. All over the world, pension funds may invest abroad, taking even recourse to hedging funds to this end 13 . In most OECD Member States, pension funds may hedge the value of investment portfolio on derivatives 14 . Those changes depend on thorough restructuring of supervision over the open pension funds sector, i.e. the development of a supervision system based on the assessment of risk of open pension funds’ portfolio (risk-based supervision). The supervisory institutions should not concentrate on analyzing formal restrictions imposed onto open pension funds by law, but they should examine the risk of the entire portfolio instead. This development has been widely observed also in other supervisory areas (banks, insurance companies). By way of recapitulation, let me outline the infrastructure of the European clearing system in about 10 years’ time, as prepared by the NBP. At first, let me define the main elements of this infrastructure, which include: 1.  trade platform where transactions on the capital market are performed,  2.  central counterparties (CCP) performing the clearing functions on the capital market,  3.  securities settlement systems (central depositories) performing the depository and settlement functions  10  Black F. (1989), “Universal Hedging: Optimizing Currency Risk and Reward in International Equity Portfolios”, Financial Analyst Journal, July-August 1989.