It is a pleasure to speak at this commemoration of 20 years of Bank of England monetary policy independence. In my remarks today, I will consider how central banking in the United Kingdom and the United States has evolved in response to the challenges of recent years. I will address a limited set of topics and will have time to touch only briefly on each. These remarks are divided into three parts. In the first part, I will discuss several aspects of aggregate monetary policy: central bank independence, policy transparency, and policy tools. In the second part, I consider differences between the approaches of the two ... (full story)