mervyn king : balancing the economic see - saw speech by mr mervyn king, deputy governor of the bank of england, to the plymouth chamber of commerce and industry ’ s 187th anniversary banquet, on 14 april 2000. * * * mr chairman, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, i was delighted to receive an invitation to speak at your 187th anniversary banquet. plymouth people are brave souls. and few are braver than those who choose to listen to a central banker at 10 o ’ clock on a friday evening. the more so, when i tell you that our ambition at the bank of england is to be boring. not, i hasten to add, at events like this. but in our management of the economy where our belief is that boring is best. macroeconomic policy has, for most of our lifetime, been rather too exciting for comfort. as miss prism told her charge in the importance of being earnest, “ cecily you will read your political economy in my absence. the chapter on the fall of the rupee you may omit. it is somewhat too sensational ”. if the rupee was too sensational, what words could describe the drama of sterling during the past fifty years? devaluations in 1949 and 1967, eight - week membership of the european “ snake ” in 1972, and the exchange rate mechanism ( erm ) which we joined in 1990 and left in september 1992. and now, of course, sterling ’ s remarkable strength against the new currency of the euro. in short, the peripatetic pound has caused, and continues to cause, severe headaches for economic policymakers. but was currency instability really the cause of those headaches in the past, or was it simply the effect of bad policies? some of both is the answer. large movements in sterling can create problems for monetary policy, as we have seen very recently. equally, the absence of a credible monetary framework means that the currency is likely to be volatile. sterling crises of the past reflected an absence of monetary stability. inflation has eroded the value of money to the point where the purchasing power of £1 in 1950 has been reduced to less than a shilling, or 5p, today. the failure to control inflation led to excessive expansions of the economy, and the subsequent struggle to bring inflation back down resulted in severe recessions. this country experienced the sharpest decline in output of any g7 economy in the early 1980s. and in the early 1990s only canada

mark carney : statement on the july monetary policy report opening statement by mr mark carney, governor of the bank of canada, at a press conference following the release of the monetary policy report, ottawa, 23 july 2009. * * * good morning. senior deputy governor paul jenkins and i are pleased to be here with you today to discuss the july monetary policy report, which we published this morning. • global economic activity appears to be nearing its trough, and there are increasing signs that activity has begun to expand in many countries in response to monetary and fiscal policy stimulus and measures to stabilize the global financial system. • however, this recovery is nascent. to sustain global growth, effective and resolute policy implementation remains critical. • the bank has long expected that economic growth in canada would resume in the second half of this year and pick up in 2010. indeed, growth in canada should resume this quarter. the dynamics of the recovery projected in today's mpr are broadly consistent with the bank's medium - term outlook in april. • stimulative monetary and fiscal policies, improved financial conditions, firmer commodity prices, and a rebound in business and consumer confidence are spurring domestic demand growth. • however, the higher canadian dollar, as well as ongoing restructuring in key industrial sectors, is significantly moderating the pace of overall growth. • some of the early strength in domestic demand represents a bringing forward of household expenditures, which modestly alters the profile of growth over the projection period relative to the april mpr. we now expect the canadian economy will contract by 2. 3 per cent this year and then grow by 3. 0 per cent in 2010 and 3. 5 per cent in 2011. • total cpi inflation declined to - 0. 3 per cent in june and should trough in the third quarter of this year. while core inflation held up at 1. 9 per cent in the second quarter of this year, the bank still expects core inflation to diminish in the second half of this year. • the bank expects both total and core inflation to return to the 2 per cent target in the second quarter of 2011 as aggregate supply and demand return to balance. • a stronger and more volatile canadian dollar represents an important downside risk to output and inflation. • on tuesday, the bank reaffirmed its conditional commitment to maintain its target for the overnight rate at the effective lower bound of 1 / 4 per cent until the end of june 2010 in order to achieve the inflation