13  Note that it may sometimes instead be a case of refraining from cutting the rate where this might otherwise have been justified. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  developments, but it is rather the communication in itself that has the dampening effect. In this case, the impact on the rest of the economy need not be so great either. The fact that communication on monetary policy can play an important role in this context is emphasised by, for instance, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada and soon to be Governor of the Bank of England: “[P]rivate agents may choose to accumulate less debt if they understand that a broad-based build-up of debt is likely to cause the central bank to raise interest rates.”14 Monetary policy is expansionary It should be fairly clear that it is precisely this type of "signalling strategy" that the Riksbank has used. Monetary policy since the crisis has not entailed using sky-high interest rates to stop an upswing in lending and housing prices, at any cost. What we have tried to do is to find a suitable balance to be able to support the recovery, without “pressing too hard on the accelerator”, thereby contributing at least at the margin to a calmer development in house prices and lending to households. It can hardly be claimed that the policy conducted by the Riksbank during the recovery from the crisis has been tight or that the current policy rate level does not contribute to boosting economic activity.

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