The article is a review that attempts to present recent research held abroad. It summarizes, among others, the issues that seem useful for better understanding of discussions held amongst Polish economists and dilemmas faced by Polish decision-makers. The first part is of an introductory nature. The second part discusses the impact of globalization processes on the effectiveness of the monetary and fiscal policies. The third part quotes Balls' four principles of the macroeconomic policy in the open economy. It also discusses the classification of monetary systems proposed by Cottarelli and Giannini, and findings of their empirical analysis proving a clear evolution of monetary systems into more elasticity of the instruments applied. This part refers also to the approaches that are more skeptical about the efficiency of a traditional, so called legal and reputational model of a central bank independence, and that attach much importance to search for an optimum rule of the monetary policy pursuit. It is obvious that financial crises have made economists to focus again on the impact of distrust and transparency on the efficiency of the monetary policy. Therefore, the fourth part of the article is devoted to such issues. It focuses, among others, on sub-optimum behavior of banks observed in practice that consists in maintaining a certain direction of the monetary policy for a longer time perspective than it would be justified by existing conditions. The fifth part presents an outline of Caplin and Leahy's model that attempts to explain why the policy of more frequent, however, inconsiderable interest rate changes may be much less efficient that more aggressive policy. The sixth part discusses new, unconventional arguments made by Stiglitz and Furman in the discussion about the role of high interest rates in financial crises. The last part of the article points to some important monetary phenomena in Poland that - up till now - have been merely recognized both in terms of theory and empirical research, and questions whether the National Bank of Poland's adoption of direct inflation targeting has not been premature and whether this decision affects adversely a strong anti-inflationary reputation built during recent years.