information on aggregate changes and mean values with regard to household indebtedness, for a review of how different studies evaluated the housing market in the united states prior to the crash, see gerardi, k. s., c. l. foote and p. s. willen, ( 2010 ), “ reasonable people did disagree : optimism and pessimism about the u. s. housing market before the crash ”, public policy discussion papers no 10 – 5, federal reserve bank of boston. bis central bankers ’ speeches how much of their income goes on paying interest, etc., this type of data can disguise a substantial underlying variation. if we view it uncritically, there is a risk we will be lulled into a false sense of security. it may be enough for some households to be so much in debt that a fairly modest increase in the mortgage rate forces them to sell their homes. if a sufficiently large number are in this situation, it may start up a spiral of falling prices forcing further sales and leading to further price falls. but as i said, we do not know how many households are in this situation. we also need to gain a better idea of the extent to which households amortise their loans. we hope to achieve this now. together with finansinspektionen, we are currently working on producing better and more detailed statistics on the mortgage market with the aim of gaining a better insight into potential causes of future problems. because although – as i mentioned earlier – we will never obtain a clear, objective indicator that tells us when it is time to take action, there is every reason to reduce the uncertainty in our assessments of the situation. the second priority concerns a serious discussion of the level of risk weights for mortgages in sweden. 3 our risk weights are actually among the lowest in europe ( figure 3 ). the risk weight of a loan determines how much capital a bank needs to hold per krona lent. lower risk weights thus mean that the banks need to hold less capital. but the less capital a bank holds, the less resilience it has to loan losses. the low risk weights also contribute to some extent to the credit boom in the mortgage sector, as lending to buy housing thus becomes cheaper for the bank in relation to other lending. why do we have such low risk weights? the reason is that the current risk weights are based on actual data on historical losses on mortgages. and these were not particularly high even

, monetary policy, and reviewing the legal issues to which a possible e - krona would give rise. after two years, i can say that we have come quite far within all of these areas, but also that we still have some way to go until we reach our goal. we have discovered that it would be possible to develop an e - krona using existing technology, but we will have to start constructing and testing a finished product to learn more and to establish different alternatives for the riksbank in the future. we have also discovered that it is possible to design an e - krona that would not have excessive consequences for monetary policy or financial stability. 5 on the legal side, we interpret this as meaning we have a mandate to issue a simpler, value - based variant of the e - krona that we will develop as a pilot version. we also intend to approach the riksdag to propose legal amendments that will clarify our mandate and make it possible to issue an account - based e - krona. we need to prepare ourselves for a cashless future as regards the rapid rate at which cash usage is declining, the riksbank committee has submitted an interim report with a few proposed measures to brake this development. 6 the decline in cash usage that we are now witnessing is going too fast for certain vulnerable groups who are unable to use digital technology or who do not even have access to it. the riksbank therefore welcomes the proposals that the riksbank committee has submitted. the riksbank has been requesting protection for cash usage since 2016, when the payment accounts directive was introduced. i therefore consider it a welcome step that there is a broad political will to speak with a clear voice in this matter and that the legislator intends to increase its influence over this structural transformation so that it is not steered by the private sector alone. the riksbank inquiry ’ s proposal, supported by representatives of all parties in the riksdag, would ensure access to cash. however, as the acceptance of cash in commerce is not legally required, the inquiry ’ s proposal will not ensure that cash will remain usable in society. consequently, even if the measures proposed may help slow down this development, i do not think that it will come completely to a halt. streamlining within the banking industry, for example via cashless bank branches, may certainly have re - 5 see armelius, h., boel, p, claussen, c. a. and nessen