MONETARY POLICY AND FINANCIAL CRISES

The paper discusses the role of monetary policy in preventing financial crises and offsetting their implications. The paper provides a critical evaluation of views on the relationship between monetary policy and financial crises. The author looks at this issue in the context of practical experiences, especially those coming from the U.S. market, where the analyzed ties seem to be the most prominent. The author concludes that a monetary policy exclusively focused on the prices of goods and services and oriented toward keeping inflation in check in the short term, may create an environment conducive to the outbreak of a financial crisis. The probability of such a situation is especially high if the financial market is heavily liberalized and poorly supervised, Koronowski says. However, the main conclusion is that a financial crisis may be prompted by an excessive, prolonged increase in the liquidity of the banking sector after a decline in financial stability or as a result of failed central bank attempts to stimulate credit expansion and economic growth. Yet another conclusion is that monetary policy must be stable not only in terms of inflation, but also in terms of the price of money, Koronowski says. This is indispensable for a healthy financial sector and robust economic growth, the author adds.