To judge a given situation, we must therefore consider the fundamentals behind the imbalance. For producers of non-renewable resources, it is important to remember that although extraction of a depletable resource is counted as income in the national accounts, these revenues are of a special kind. It would in many ways be more meaningful to view them as transformation of wealth – from natural resources underground to financial assets abroad. We would expect such producers to run substantial current account surpluses during the production period. As the graph illustrates, this has also been the case, in particular in the 2000s, when oil prices were high. In recent years these countries as a group have actually been in deficit, while Norway has had a small surplus, barely visible in the graph. HOW MUCH SHOULD OIL PRODUCERS SAVE? Exactly how much producers of non-renewable resources should save is a more complicated question. One potential yardstick is that savings should be sufficient to avoid the so-called “Dutch disease”. The phrase was originally coined to describe the strong decline of the manufacturing sector in the Netherlands following the exploitation of natural gas resources in the 1960s and 1970s. The classic paper by Corden and Neary (1982)3 describes the key mechanisms behind this development. They describe two effects in an economy experiencing a boom in an extractive industry, like oil or natural gas. The first effect is the spending effect. An oil discovery will increase export revenues, allowing higher imports over time. Normally, demand for non-tradable goods will also increase.

Before the crisis, the National Bank had repeatedly drawn attention to the high leverage of the big banks and warned that their ability to absorb losses was not adequate. These caveats did not result in any voluntary change in behaviour. For this reason, it is essential that our set of preventative instruments for financial stability be improved in three areas; namely, improved access to information, closer involvement in regulatory procedures with regard to financial stability issues, and direct macroprudential decision-making powers. I would now like to take a closer look at these. First, it is crucial that we have all the necessary information quickly to hand in order to identify the build-up of risks in the financial system at an early stage. While the SNB’s statutory authority to compile statistical data is both necessary and helpful, the latest crisis clearly demonstrated that the National Bank must be able to request additional information. With this I mean, for example, quantitative, non-standardised data on banks’ risk exposure. BIS Review 173/2010  1  Unlike FINMA, Switzerland’s financial market supervisory authority, the SNB’s stance is primarily a macroeconomic or systemic one. This is why we must be able to act independently in certain situations when gathering information. At the same time, we also want to keep our access to information to an absolute minimum and avoid a duplication of activities with FINMA. Second, clarification of the SNB’s participation rights and obligations is needed in the area of regulation essential for financial stability.