To start with probably the least important aspect of all this, I am surprised by how little emotion has been sparked by Mr Carney's remarks, that there might be a case for replacing narrow inflation as a target with nominal GDP target, or the cash value of annual economic output.
Various rules have been proposed, including a price-level rule (zero inflation), an inflation target rule (2 percent inflation), a nominal GDP target, and a Taylor rule designed to control the growth of nominal income by controlling the monetary base.
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The more puzzling self-inflicted wound was Mr. Carney's decision to float the idea that the BOE might drop its inflation target in favor of a nominal GDP target.
But under a strict nominal GDP target, the breakdown doesn't matter.
In practice, he made clear - in his written answers and his testimony - that he didn't think a nominal GDP target would trump the current system, even in the current climate.
The big fiscal stimulus enacted this month by Mr Abe will get Japan part way towards his 3 per cent nominal growth target, but advisers to the government say the BoJ needs to pull its weight too.
The idea behind this, roughly similar to the Carney argument for a nominal GDP target, is that the only way to stimulate activity, in a deeply deflationary environment is to convince people and businesses that you really will spend whatever it takes to ensure that prices and nominal demand will be higher next year than they are today.
Most infrastructure funds in Brazil say they target nominal returns of around 20%.
The Financial Times reports that the Treasury has cooled on the idea of formally replacing the inflation target with a target for nominal - or cash - GDP.
To make up for that lost growth in the next five years, the Bank would need to target growth in nominal GDP of well over 6% a year between 2013 and 2017.
At that point, he said, adopting a nominal (or cash) GDP target might then be the right way to go.
In his paper he recommended that the Fed commit to keeping policy easy until the economy reaches a particular target, such as nominal GDP (ie, output unadjusted for inflation) returning to its pre-recession path.
But the fact that the Fed failed to announce nominal income growth as its official target (focusing instead on interest and inflation rates) made it more difficult for the Fed to keep the economy on this path during the financial crisis.
But you have to wonder whether it will also turn out to be another step towards a post-crisis world of monetary policy, where the nominal rate of inflation is no longer the target of choice.
There are also practical arguments against a new target: such as the fact that nominal GDP is not calculated in a timely fashion and - unlike the CPI - is subject to large and frequent revisions.
Some economists now argue for an inflation target of more than 2 percent to stimulate nominal income growth.
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The fact that people don't understand what nominal GDP is seems to me to be a really strong argument against making it a target.
Now to be clear I think the primary driver of low interest rates across the board is the presumption of weak nominal growth and that weak growth leading the Federal Reserve to keep a low interest rate target.
That could include increasing government-bond purchases, or setting itself a monetary target not just based on a positive inflation rate, but on robust growth of nominal GDP.
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