central banking, and independence this is a challenging moment for central banking. opinion polls show that trust in government and public institutions is at historic lows. 2 in this environment, central banks cannot take our measure of independence for granted. for monetary policy, the case for central bank independence rests on the demonstrated benefits of insulating monetary policy decisions from shorter - term political considerations. but for a quarter century, inflation has been low and inflation expectations anchored. we must not forget the lessons of the past, when a lack of central bank independence led to episodes of runaway inflation and subsequent economic contractions. as for financial stability, the crisis and the severe recession that followed revealed serious flaws at many private and public institutions, including shortcomings in supervision and regulation. the crisis and its aftermath led central banks to take extraordinary actions, actions that challenged the ingenuity of experts in the field and were understandably difficult to explain and justify to a skeptical public. while these actions were authorized by law and on the whole necessary to avert the complete collapse for example, see pew research center ( 2017 ). - 3of the financial system ’ s ability to service households and businesses, they may have also contributed to the erosion of public trust. central banks are assigned narrow but important mandates. for monetary policy, the fed ’ s mandate is to keep inflation low and stable and to achieve maximum employment. for financial sector supervision and regulation, part of our mandate is to foster the safety and soundness of individual institutions. in addition, we have a responsibility, shared with other government agencies, to promote financial stability. i view this responsibility as being highly complementary to other aspects of our mission : financial stability promotes sustainable economic growth, and a stable, well - functioning financial system is an effective transmission channel for monetary policy. indeed, there can be no macroeconomic stability without financial stability. within our narrow mandates, to safeguard against political interference, central banks are afforded instrument independence - - that is, we are given considerable freedom to choose the means to achieve legislatively - assigned goals. while the focus is often on monetary policy independence, research suggests that a degree of independence in regulatory and financial stability matters improves the stability of the banking system and leads to better outcomes. 3 for this reason, governments in many countries, including the united states, have granted some institutional and budgetary independence to their financial regulators. technical implementation and oversight are two areas where instrument independence may be especially helpful. see hogue, labonte, and webel (

things : that our main problems are structural ; that our chief task is to improve and boost productivity ; that we ought to seize the moment to reform our regulations and institutions ; and because whatever we do to improve productivity does not run counter to exiting the crisis but, quite on the contrary, may help us emerge more rapidly from it. to conclude, let me reiterate what i said earlier. if i ’ ve talked of only one area of structural reform, namely labour reform, it is because i think it is the most important one for relaunching corporate start - ups and reducing unemployment. but is it not the only area of reform, and nor are others less necessary. giving a greater degree of legal security to rental contracts, and liberalising the related terms, is absolutely necessary for reducing rental costs and for making a smoother real estate adjustment, without a collapse of the value of the wealth in which spaniards have their assets concentrated. re - launching privatisation, liberalisation and the boosting of competition in numerous sectors is vital because, by reducing unwarranted business margins, workers'real wages can be increased without harming competitiveness. and thus we could say for many more areas of reform. but we'd need many more speeches to talk about this. and fear not, i won't be making them today. thank you.