But he said the current policy of inflation targeting had been the most successful.
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No central bank currently follows strict inflation targeting, nor has anyone advocated it for the Fed.
Whereas monetarism buckled as a policy, inflation targeting has proved far more effective.
As some have queried, the kind of stability delivered by inflation targeting today may be the stability of the grave yard.
That has meant that inflation targeting, especially in Brazil, has been politically easy, since it has meant gradually falling interest rates.
This is partly thanks to the central bank's regime of inflation targeting (with a target range of 2-3%), which helped to cap inflationary expectations.
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In his defence of classical monetary policy in the German city of Freiburg, Mr Weidmann also attacked the idea of shifting away from inflation targeting.
That is a big difference from inflation targeting, which always looks forward and, in effect, treats every monetary policy committee meeting as if it were the first.
Inflation targeting spread around the world rapidly during the 1990s and 2000s, partly due to the influence of the academic work of Mr. Bernanke and his co-authors.
Moreover, the experience of both these countries suggests that inflation targeting can be successfully applied to reduce inflation from moderate levels, say around 20%, to near price stability.
But it is a signal moment when an Anglo-Saxon economy, wedded to the ideology of inflation targeting for the past 20 years, suddenly begins to "look through" the inflation figures.
Joshua Raymond, chief market strategist at City Index, said the report showed "a continuing divorce of priorities at the Bank of England from inflation targeting to supporting the economic recovery".
Mr Carney said there was room "within the framework of flexible inflation targeting that exists in most advanced economies", for central banks to achieve monetary stability over the appropriate horizon.
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But, as I said on Thursday, the biggest argument against that you hear from people at the Bank is that our "flexible inflation targeting" regime already gives you everything you might have wanted from a nominal GDP regime.
Precisely what "flexible inflation targeting" can and should mean is, of course, the great subject of the moment among UK monetary policy nerds (and plenty of economic journalists) as we eagerly await the arrival of the new UK bank governor.
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In 1993, we were just entering what you might call the golden age of central bank inflation targeting - when central banks were not only given the task of targeting future inflation but actually seemed to be able to do it.
The current stampede of industrial and emerging countries alike toward floating-cum-inflation targeting, and away from exchange-rate and monetary anchors, suggests that this combination is the only real alternative to giving up a national currency in favour of monetary union or dollarisation.
It is possible to see the outlines of an agreement, where the bank accepts the need for some kind of inflation targeting, along with the understanding that it will not raise interest rates soon if the government continues to push reforms and tackle spending.
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So if the urge to deleverage is the new and somewhat depressing (in both senses), deflationary and overwhelming economic reality, the question that follows - and is broadly the one raised by Mr Carney - is whether inflation targeting provides the right kind of stability for this era.
The central bank is used to being blasted, even for the idea of inflation-targeting itself.
He said he would only use inflation-targeting if a consensus existed at the Fed that it was a good idea.
The inflation-targeting regime, introduced after Britain was spat out of the European exchange-rate mechanism in 1992, was already proving a success.
Exchange-rate flexibility (which is a prerequisite for inflation-targeting) can also bring problems.
When South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) first introduced inflation-targeting about 12 years ago, he had been bullish on South Africa, he admits.
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"The flexible inflation-targeting framework should remain broadly in place, " he said.
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And one possible step in that direction would be to state explicitly the range of inflation rates Fed officials will tolerate, a practice known as inflation-targeting.
First, emerging economies have specific problems that make inflation-targeting difficult.
Labour's Chris Leslie warned that there might be circumstances under which the aims of the Financial Policy Committee, which primarily focuses on financial stability, clashed with those of the Monetary Policy Committee, which mainly deals with inflation-targeting, but is also obliged to take growth into account when making decisions.
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