% believe in the wisdom of institutional processes or in enlightened economic debates for sufficiently steering national cycles. they must be complemented with common rules and anchors to ensure fiscal discipline. in other words, in the famous rules / discretion debate, we need indeed more discretion … but not too much ; and we need less mechanical or obscure rules, but we still need rules. the setup should indeed ensure binding thresholds for the minimal annual adjustment of public finances. let me add that the more we progress effectively on national fiscal discipline, the easier we could envisage a common fiscal capacity – which we badly need. mario draghi eloquently advocated it recently, v and i wish it will be part of his new mission on competitiveness in europe. * * * to conclude, let me borrow a fundamental principle from physics, stated by isaac newton : “ when two forces unite, their efficiency double ”. well, it is time to combine the two forces of our monetary and fiscal policy, towards a greater efficiency of our euro area economy and to the benefit of our citizens. thank you for your attention. i press release : governors and heads of supervision endorse initiatives in response to the banking turmoil and reaffirm priority to implement basel iii. ii eurogroup statement on the euro area fiscal stance for 2024, press release, 13 july 2023. iii c. bouthevillain, s. debu, towards a much - needed reform of eu fiscal rules : the european commission ’ s proposals, banque de france bulletin no. 246 : article 2, 21 june 2023. iv x. debrun, l. jonung, under threat : rules - based fiscal policy and how to preserve it, european journal of political economy. v the economist, mario draghi on the path to fiscal union in the euro zone, 6 september 2023.

mr. greenspan remarks on income inequality remarks by chairman of the board of governors of the us federal reserve system, mr. alan greenspan, at a symposium sponsored by the federal reserve bank of kansas city in jackson hole, wyoming on 28 / 8 / 98. income inequality : issues and policy options i am pleased once again to open this annual symposium. at the outset, i wish to thank tom hoenig and his staff for assembling a highly capable group of experts to inform us and to stimulate discussion on an important issue in the world economy. the study of income inequality - its causes, its consequences, and its potential policy implications - has a long history in economics, although it has not always had a high profile among researchers and policymakers. to borrow a phrase from professor atkinson, income distribution in recent years has been “ brought in from the cold. ” in part, that awareness has resulted from the experience of many industrialized economies with widening earnings inequality in the 1980s and 1990s. it has been heightened by interest in the consequences of economic change in developing, newly industrialized, and transition economies. the experience of industrialized countries, including the united states, with growing income inequality has spawned a great deal of research on the functioning of labor markets, on the sources of shifts in the demand for various types of skills, on the supply responses of workers, and on the efficacy of government efforts to intervene in the operation of labor markets. a number of those who have contributed importantly to this work will be participating in this conference. one story that has emerged from that body of research is now familiar : rising demand for those workers who have the skills to effectively harness new technologies has been outpacing supply, and, thus, the compensation of those workers has been increasing more rapidly than for the lesser skilled segment of the workforce. that this supply - demand gap has been an important source of widening earnings inequality is now widely accepted within the economics profession. however, the considerable diversity of experiences across countries as well as the finding that earnings inequality has also increased within groups of workers with similar measured skills and experience suggest that we may need to look deeper than skill - biased technological change if we are to fully understand widening wage dispersion. in particular, how have private and public institutions influenced inequality over the past two decades? what roles have been played by growing international trade and the evolving ways in which production is organized? again, the participants in this symposium are well - equipped to speak to these issues,