Isabel Schnabel: Societal responsibility and central bank independence 05/27/2021 | 09:50am EDT Send by mail : Message : Required fields Keynote speech by Isabel Schnabel, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the 'VIII. New Paradigm Workshop', organised by the Forum New Economy Frankfurt am Main, 27 May 2021 Central banking in times of shifting societal concerns The best contribution that central banks can make to economic prosperity is to maintain stable prices: this was the broad consensus among academic scholars and policymakers emerging in the late 1970s when inflation in many advanced economies had surged to double-digit levels, thereby eroding purchasing power and hitting the poorest in society the hardest (