banks and academia during the last 4 years. the results of this research and analysis have taken central banks and their monetary and regulatory policies beyond what was considered sacred limits of monetary policy. however, this has not proven very helpful for the economy. it is now five years since the crisis began and the more authorities deal with short - term problems of growth and unemployment, the more they reveal long - term imbalances and structural problems of national and global scale. in the meantime, we still cannot fully define, understand and model the economy in its true stochastic form. typically, long and deep economic and social crisis have become the breeding ground of new philosophies of economic thinking, which, in turn, have encouraged significant policy changes and opened the road to economic prosperity. adam smith, john keynes, milton friedman, and their economic thinking have emerged in the dusk of big crisis. unfortunately, we are still waiting for a new philosophy ; so the question arises : where is our philosopher? we clearly need a new way of thinking, a new approach to economic policy, a lot of new ideas. these new ideas are not easily discovered. they do not pop up themselves ; they hide in the layers of economic and financial data, history of economic developments and economic thought, and philosophy of social interaction in the macro and microeconomic scale. it is not surprising that economists and politicians have started to challenge some beliefs that are regarded as universal economic truths. for example, gdp and growth are challenged as the best measure of happiness and prosperity, globalization is challenged for its externalities in the labour market and inequality, inequality itself is under investigation as a potential culprit of economic slowdown. economic research must broaden its scope to consider all these areas in their work. research must be designed like an increasing spiral, where the newly gained knowledge in philosophy, economic history, empiric research and application of mathematic and statistical models must return to the starting point to confront the set of all new and old problems, prove the generality of its application, and evaluate the set of potential externalities. as i mentioned at the beginning, this is the 100th jubilee of albania ’ s independence and our annual conference this year focused on the development of monetary policy during the last bis central bankers ’ speeches 100 years and paid particular attention to the impact that domestic and international political and economic events have had on the nature of the central bank and its monetary policy. addressing the mixture of historic and economic developments, the large

ardian fullani : recent economic developments in albania speech by mr ardian fullani, governor of the bank of albania, at the press conference on monetary policy decision - making of the supervisory council of the bank of albania, tirana, 24 march 2010. * * * the supervisory council of the bank of albania, in its meeting of 24 march 2010, analyzed and adopted the monetary policy monthly report. given the latest economic and monetary developments at home, their projections in future and after assessing the balance of expected risks, the supervisory council of the bank of albania, at the conclusion of discussions decided to leave the key interest rate unchanged, at 5. 25 %. after the heavy shock incurred over 2008 and during the first six months of 2009, the world economy has entered into a recovery stage of the economic activity, stimulated by the expansionist monetary and fiscal policy. the main central banks continued to follow an easing monetary polices with the purpose to sustain lending market and to guarantee the economic stability growth. the end of economic recession is accompanied by the invigoration of inflationary pressures, thus reflecting both statistical impact related to the performance of basic commodity prices, as well the demand growth in the world economy. the performance of financial markets was stable and the main indicators of risk are stabilized at lower rates. notwithstanding, the attention of financial markets is dominated by the increase of uncertainty in terms of fiscal stability of some euro area countries. this is reflected on the increase of government securities yields of these countries, as well as on the enhanced sensitivity of investors against fiscal developments. the economic activity is assessed to have recorded a progressive slowdown of the growth pace, these last six months. the latest indicators of real economy, as sales ’ indicators, the monetary and confidence indicators, signal further hampering of the economic growth during the fourth quarter of year 2009 and in the early months of 2010. the stoppage of investments from the major part of businesses, the low exploitation of capacities, the decrease of capital goods ’ import, and the low increase of loans for investments, reveal a slower performance of private investments even in the early months of this year. on the other hand, the more moderated growth paces of employment and wages, the shrinking of consumer loans, the weak performance of retail sales, as well as the indices on the increase of consumers ’ preferences for savings, show a hampering even of the current and expected consumer in the short - term period. external sector of economy has manifested positive signals during january