Some wit remarked that Greece is a country full of ruins well, time and conflict can accept responsibility for the architecture and the anarchists, unions and socialism are now doing a huge demolition job on their finances imho It's music to the ears of a united Europe supporter with who in charge .......... the Germans of course with their stronger economy. Adolph's dream coming to fruition. Not only his but Stalin's as well. He tried to ruin The West by breaking their capitalist banking system. Well it seems the greedy pig bankers have done it for him and got paid astronomical amounts of money. Makes Joe Average favour a windfall tax on the bums in suits Plenty of villains to get angry with Roubini is prophesying a" a perfect storm " I think we may be witnessing the beginning of the endgame for capitalism/democracy. It seems unable to cope with the world's problems and will collapse. Politicians are currently elected by quantity of votes rather than quality of policies and that is the achilles heel
The actual number that is consistent with the Treaty definition of "price stability" is set by the ECB Governing Council, which, I imagine, means is "discretionary", according to your definition. http://www.ecb.int/mopo/strategy/pricestab/html/index.en.html
I think the USA will struggle on for a while with their outdated system but others will change to the Chinese 1 party system. A sort of Mad Max anarchism may prevail in outlying areas for a while. A sad loss of freedoms enjoyed by many but perhaps not appreciated enough till lost.