but adjustable exchange rates. in that statement he remarked : “ let me lay to rest the bugaboo of what is called devaluation ”. a bugaboo, according to merriam - webster is “ an imaginary object of fear ” or “ something that causes fear or distress out of proportion to its importance ”. well imaginary or not, the ending of the bretton woods system did have consequences. ( though the consequences did not include the one feared by my future father - in - law who had just heard a few days earlier of the engagement of his daughter to a boy with a job offer from the imf : would it survive? ). consequences there were : the closing of the gold window ( announced by nixon as temporary ) became permanent and was followed by a decade in which prices in the us doubled. and they almost doubled again in the following decade! so here is my lesson no. 2 : surprise announcements can have long - run effects. bis central bankers ’ speeches credibility and truthfulness of course statements around devaluations and the run - up to them have had a tendency to weaken the credibility of central bankers ( and other public officials ). take this quote from the irish finance minister reported in the irish times, thursday january 28, 1993 : “ i want to assure the people in london who are putting around the rumours that we are going to devalue today or tomorrow that they are wrong ”. true enough, no devaluation occurred on the thursday or friday … but it did on the saturday. although widely cited, former federal reserve board vice chairman alan blinder famously did not say “ the last duty of the central banker is to tell the public the truth ”. what he did do, it seems, was conduct a survey of central banker attitudes, “ in which officials had ranked ‘ a duty to be open and truthful with the public ’ last among criteria on why credibility was important ”. well, that ’ s even worse, though it ’ s not blinder ’ s view ; it was the view of many central bankers he surveyed in 1999. devaluation denials may have been an obvious reason for this, and it is perhaps unsurprising that regimes such as the disastrous erm, which create such pressures for disinformation, can be among the most ineffective. lesson no. 3 : central - banking - by - surprise makes candid communication extremely difficult. yet we all agree that credible communication is essential for lasting policy success

ideology, is something that continues to require the active efforts of scholars on the global and european stage to find the convincing arguments and evidence of the collective benefit of a more holistic approach to policy action. the need for ireland to engage with partners in modelling the future macroeconomic policy for europe and mapping out ireland ’ s position within that landscape is by now well understood. demographic exceptionalism one legacy of the famine was ireland ’ s persistent exceptionalism in demographic statistics – a topic about which i inherited my father ’ s fascination. as late as the 1950s, ireland really stood out for its weak demographic dynamism. best - known here is the decline in the population of ireland right up until 1961, when it reached a nadir at about half the pre - famine level of well over a century before. this was quite exceptional ( figure 1 ). reviewing a worrying demographic situation in the early 1950s, the government - sponsored commission on emigration and other population problems still found ireland at the extreme end of the spectrum in many dimensions, not only in regard to emigration, but especially related to family formation and childbirth. thus, although the crude birth rate was exactly at the average of twenty comparator countries, this was the product of two outlying features with offsetting effects : an exceptionally high rate of fertility within marriage ( fully 50 per cent above the average elsewhere ) and very delayed marriage ( with average age of women at marriage almost 2 years above the average along with the highest proportion of women remaining unmarried throughout their life ) ( figure 2 ). 1 these distinctive features clearly pervasively influenced irish family, politics and society generally, and not least its economic development. as far as i know, long - conventional interpretations attributing these remarkable demographic anomalies to altered risk perceptions following the great famine remain largely unchallenged. the great famine had drastically changed the perception of risk and perhaps the risk aversion of the survivors of the famine who stayed in ireland and caused them to delay family formation, in many cases indefinitely. faced with such a persistent situation a modern - day development economist would look for alternative risk - pooling and risk - sharing mechanisms – such as crop insurance – as welfareimproving initiatives that could offset the impact of increased perceptions of risk. the 19th century irish financial system offered none of these, of course. indeed, ireland is generally considered to have been backward in the development of community - focused financial intermediaries. for a variety of reasons that are still debated by scholars