The European Central Bank’s strategy review was long overdue. The last one took place in 2003, while the policy framework’s architect, Otmar Issing, still served at the institution. Given that the ECB was a young central bank that needed to establish its inflation-management credentials – and there was a need to navigate both the North Atlantic and euro sovereign debt/banking crises – the delay was not unreasonable. But, following the ECB’s decade-long failure to get ‘close to 2%’ and then