François Villeroy de Galhau on the Ethics of Currency

Trust relies on three key elements and this is what I call the golden triangle. Independence, mandate and accountability of central banks and each of them is being challenged today.

In this episode, we hear the Michelle Kandisu central banking lecture presented by François Villeroy de Galhau, governor of the Banque de France. The theme, the ethics of currency.

Today we central bankers are responsible for trust. We produce it and we stand accountable for it.

François Villeroy de Galhau has been governor of the Banque de France since 2015. He's also member of the European Central Bank governing council and chairs the BIS, the Bank for International Settlements. IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva introduced the event.

In October last year when we had our annual meetings, many of us were quite a bit growth was coming up strong. We ended the year with 6.1% growth and vaccines gave us the confidence to expect that the pandemic is over. So we thought inflation that we were experiencing would go away and we were proven wrong. Wrong when Omicron hit. Wrong when Russia invaded Ukraine. Wrong when during this summer climate shocks have affected dramatically agricultural productivity in many places and we are likely to suffer that further in the future. So inflation is stubborn. It is more broad-based than we thought it would be. And what it means is that we need you, François, we need central bankers to be as stubborn in fighting it as inflation demonstrably has been. We are mindful that you are on the front line and all in this audience, we are with you and of course we at the IMF work relentlessly to provide the analytics that can help us steer through this time of uncertainty. So let me welcome you to the floor. We admire what you have done with macro prudential policy build buffers in France they helped with COVID. We admire your leadership on the network for greening the financial system. But above all, we are pleased that our speaker today brings some of Michel Camdessus with him. They're close friends and apparently Michel Camdessus participated in the thinking for this lecture. So with François we get him and Michel Camdessus for today. François, to you.