Huw Pill: What did the monetarists ever do for us?

Speech by Mr Huw Pill, Chief Economist and Executive Director for Monetary Analysis of the Bank of England, at the Walter Eucken Institut / Stiftung Geld und Währung Conference "Inflation and Debt: Challenges for Monetary Policy after Covid-19", Freiburg (Germany), 24 June 2022. 

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Accompanying annex of the speech. 

Good afternoon everyone.

It is a great pleasure to be here in Freiburg to attend this excellent and topical conference. My thanks are due to the organisers, especially Professors Feld, Krause and Moellers, and to the sponsoring institutions, the Stiftung Geld and Waehrung and the Walter Eucken Institut, for their invitation and hospitality.

I am tempted to start my remarks with the phrase: 'And now for something completely different ...'.

In part, this is intended to signal a change of pace. After a series of outstanding presentations of very high quality research papers, I am afraid that I will lower the tone somewhat by bringing more of a policy orientation to the discussion.

But it is also a nod to the Pythonesque title assigned to my remarks.

I understand that Monty Python was (and is) very popular in Germany. But to avoid any mis-understanding, I thought I should clarify from the outset that the title is an allusion to a famous sketch from one of the Money Python films.