sarah bloom raskin : accommodative monetary policy and its effects on savers speech by ms sarah bloom raskin, member of the board of governors of the federal reserve system, at the y ’ s men and y ’ s women of westport, westport, connecticut, 1 march 2012. * * * good morning. i appreciate this opportunity to meet with you today. i am pleased to see that my parents are in the audience. i credit my parents with a lot, especially with promoting a strong work ethic in our family that taught us the fundamentals of a market economy. from a tender age, my brother and i had a series of unusual jobs. for example, kenneth gave french horn lessons. he was about 13 years old at the time, so our parents would not permit him to charge more than $ 1. 25 per hour. kenneth had four students. my mother permitted him to use the living room for lessons, as long as his students took off their muddy shoes at the door, so kenneth had no overhead expenses and was both grossing and netting about $ 5. 00 per week. given the scarcity of french horn teachers in our neighborhood, kenneth had a monopoly in the french horn market. so long as the local high school bands produced a steady stream of french horn players, kenneth was assured that his services would be in demand. i had an even less lucrative job that involved truly unskilled labor. i numbered pages. my father, who was in the publishing business, would, in the days before word processing, bring home book manuscripts that did not have page numbers on them. these manuscripts needed to be numbered, and that ’ s where i entered the market, so to speak. my father came up with the idea of paying me to number the manuscript pages. the rate he set for me was one cent – and that was not one cent per page, but one cent per two pages. needless to say, this wage was really too low for me, and i wanted to go on strike, but i was only 10 years old. by the time i became a teenager, and it occurred to me that i could strike, i had been displaced by the progress of technology – specifically, word processors with automatic numbering options – which reduced my bargaining power to, well, nothing. i could talk more about this particular job – noting the fact that even at the age of 10 i found this job to qualify as one of the most tedious known

record highs, and the employment situation has improved substantially. wages and prices are no longer seeing a sustained decline and have turned to an uptrend. however, achieving the price stability target of 2 percent is taking more time than expected. in such a situation where economic activity and prices have improved significantly but their developments have been somewhat varied, it is appropriate to conduct monetary policy by taking account of a variety of developments in a comprehensive manner. this means that, in continuing with powerful monetary easing, we now need to consider both its positive effects and side effects in a balanced manner. the latest policy response is indeed in line with this thinking, and the bank's stance toward aiming at price stability with a view to contributing to the sound development of the national economy has not changed at all. going forward, it will continue to make its utmost efforts as a central bank, taking account of developments in economic activity and prices as well as financial conditions, and thereby firmly support corporate activities in japan. thank you very much for your attention. japan's economy and monetary policy speech at a meeting with business leaders in osaka september 25, 2018 haruhiko kuroda governor of the bank of japan chart 1 japan's economy real gdp s. a., ann., tril. yen cy 05 source : cabinet office. chart 2 exports and overseas economies projections for major economies ( imf ) real exports y / y % chg. s. a., cy 2015 = 100 world projection projection 3. 2 3. 7 3. 9 3. 9 advanced economies 1. 7 2. 4 2. 4 2. 2 united states 1. 5 2. 3 2. 9 2. 7 euro area 1. 8 2. 4 2. 2 1. 9 japan 1. 0 1. 7 1. 0 0. 9 4. 4 4. 7 4. 9 5. 1 china 6. 7 6. 9 6. 6 6. 4 asean - 5 4. 9 5. 3 5. 3 5. 3 emerging market and developing economies cy 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 notes : 1. the figure for real exports for 2018 / q3 is the july - august average. notes : 2. the post - 2018 figures in the right table are based on july 2018 weo projections. sources : imf ; ministry of finance ; bank of japan. chart 3 corporate profits and business fixed investment business fixed investment plans ( june tankan