The European Central Bank should consider overshooting its inflation goal for a while to make up for a long period of near-stagnant prices, Governing Council member Erkki Liikanen said. “You can never have average inflation close to 2 percent if you are never above 2; it’s arithmetic,” Liikanen, the Bank of Finland governor, said in an interview in Helsinki on Friday. “We must be consistent in both ways. My approach is symmetric in both directions.” One of the Governing Council’s longest-serving members, the 65-year-old Liikanen is seen as a centrist on the ECB’s decision-making body and hence a bellwether for the ... (full story)