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the avowed purpose was not to stop the perceived property boom, but rather to ensure that the banks would remain healthy even in the event of a subsequent bust. finally, and for the sake of completeness, it should be noted that fiscal measures might also prove useful in some circumstances. reducing the extent to which debt service charges ( particularly for housing ) could be deducted from taxable income would probably have an effect. other fiscal changes ( eg turnover taxes in the housing market ) might also be thought useful. 13 implementing monetary policy as suggested above might also be done in a variety of ways. a more rule - based approach might focus on the rates of growth of monetary aggregates or credit aggregates, similar to the way policy tended to be conducted in some countries in the 1970s. the difference, of markets, and the vulnerabilities of the system as a whole. finally, the committee on payment and settlement systems oversees an important part of the underlying infrastructure of the system. goodhart made this point again in his per jacobsson lecture ( 2004 ). a recent study by the group of ten contact group ( 2003 ) into the microeconomic policies contributing to the turbulence in asset prices is worth reading in this regard. however, would be that the policy tightening would be as much directed to heading off incipient financial excesses, with a potential for financial instability, as it would be to resisting inflationary pressures. a two - pronged approach, a variation on the current approach of the european central bank, might then have something to recommend it. 14 goodhart ( 2004 ) and a host of others have also suggested ways in which credit growth and asset price increases might be linked more tightly to subsequent movements in policy rates. in contrast, monetary policy might rather be used in a highly discretionary way to respond to growing imbalances that were judged by policymakers to threaten financial instability. arguably, this is the approach that has recently been taken by both the bank of england and the reserve bank of australia. in the face of rapid increases in housing prices, and an associated rapid increase in both household debt and household spending, both central banks raised policy rates even though actual ( if not necessarily projected ) inflation was well under control. similarly, in sweden the monetary authorities did not lower rates by as much as might have been expected given an undershoot of their inflation target. they cited their concern about very rapid increases in house prices as the reason. cooperation among official agencies pursuing macropr