of reserves down the road. for all these challenges, i look forward to your ideas, your expertise, your input. because monetary policy is too important, too crucial for our economy and our general well - being, to rely on trial and error. the ecb, the central banks, would prefer to avoid the honour of receiving an ig nobel prize. yes, in the history of the ig nobel prizes some were also awarded as criticism wrapped up in a blanket of satire. for instance, in 2009, the ig nobel for economics was awarded to the directors, executives, and auditors of four icelandic banks for demonstrating that tiny banks can rapidly mushroom into huge banks, and vice versa, and for demonstrating that similar things can happen to an entire national economy. so, to avoid that'honour ', we need data and research to fulfil our mandate, so that we can do the best possible job at what we must do best. because in monetary policy, we cannot live by the slogan of the ig nobel prizes, also the closing remark of the annual ceremony : " if you didn't win a prize – and especially if you did – better luck next year! " so, make us think! 3 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches

– the global financial crisis ( gfc ), the european sovereign debt crisis and a pandemic that kept the economy in lockdown. and more recently, russia's unjustifiable war in ukraine that caused energy prices to spike and inflation to soar. shocks that have challenged central banks all over the world in their quest for price stability. shocks that have challenged us to find new instruments, to expand our toolkit to counter the deflationary dynamics and enable governments to engage in fiscal 1 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches stimulus. a challenge that we met by deploying several unconventional monetary instruments, including forward guidance, asset purchases and longer term refinancing operations. did they work? yes, they certainly left their mark. forward guidance and asset purchases lowered medium to long - term interest rates, making credit more affordable and boosting the economy. tltros significantly reduced banks'funding cost, and stimulated banks to pass on these favorable funding costs to businesses and households. these measures are now an integral part of the central bank's toolbox ; they add policy space when rates are at the lower bound, even though they are not unbounded themselves. yet, as we have found out, they also come with a challenge : the combination of instruments and the sequencing we ourselves imposed have created a very high degree of persistence in our monetary policy. in other words : it reduced our ability to'turn the ship'when inflation flared up. why was that? the moment policy makers could effectively raise rates was delayed because we communicated that the we would first stop with net asset purchases before raising rates. and stopping asset purchases takes time. they were a novel, untested instrument. and as brainard argued : uncertainty regarding an instrument calls for smaller steps. so, to'turn the ship ', we started by gradually reducing the net asset purchases to zero under the pepp and app. after that, in july 2022, we were'free'to raise rates for the first time. what followed was a rise of policy rates at an unprecedented pace : between july 2022 to september 2023, policy rates increased by a total of 450 basis points from minus 0. 5 percent to 4 percent today. restrictive policies will likely remain needed for some time to come to get inflation back down to target. personally, and conditional on incoming data confirming the latest projections from september, i see the current level of our policy rates as a good'cruising altitude'where they