Patrolling financial markets may be no part of the job of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Luci Ellis, head of its financial stability department, said yesterday."Policies that seek to minimise variability in property markets, or asset prices more broadly, or some measure of credit," may not serve society's welfare, she said."Our objectives and our policy practice must be founded on the welfare of society, as best we understand it."Ellis, speaking at Adelaide University, said that "in Australia, we focus on the risk of a disruption in the financial system so severe that it materially harms the real economy.""We don't try to pre-specify the form that disruption might take. We focus on the ultimate goal."Recent research in Europe using household survey data shows that people don't actually care about financial imbalances for their own sake. "They care about incomes and unemployment - about output. At a deep level, a financial stability mandate is really an output mandate. "We want to avoid financial instability because it reduces output and harms human welfare through that channel. History shows that downturns are worse, and recoveries slower, when there has been a banking or broader financial crisis.""As policymakers, we do not - should not - care about asset prices or credit for their own sakes. "Nor do we care if banks are safe just for the sake of having safe banks.""Rather, we care whether a bank that did fail might do so in a way that harms the real economy."