also contains explicit wording to the effect that the riksbank's measures shall be fit for purpose and that the intended result shall be in reasonable proportion to the costs and risks to the riksbank and to central government finances. it has in fact always been a general principle that authorities should act proportionately. but the fact that this is now explicitly stated in the sveriges riksbank act may also require us to justify our decisions more clearly. clear motives make it easier, for instance, to examine and evaluate the riksbank. with regard to our independence, particularly concerning monetary policy, it is important that our principal, the riksdag, as representative of the swedish people, follows up and evaluates the riksbank's activities in an efficient manner. with the new act, the finance committee will have more resources for this. exceptional reasons for the riksbank to buy private securities one change in the new act concerns the conditions for the riksbank to trade in private securities. the riksbank can buy and sell swedish government securities and private, i. e. non - government, securities. our monetary policy toolbox in this respect remains the same as before. but now there is a more restrictive view of when trade in private securities can be relevant. the riksbank may buy and sell such securities if there are exceptional reasons, as stated in the act. in principle, this means that we must make the assessment that other measures would not have the desired effect on the economy. the new act now also gives the riksbank an explicit mandate to trade in securities within the framework of our task of contributing to the stability and efficiency of the financial system. for instance, the riksbank may buy and sell securities to temporarily support financial markets for the purpose of counteracting a serious disturbance in the financial system, if there are exceptional reasons. the riksbank's mandate remains strong 3 / 10 bis - central bankers'speeches i will not go through all the details of the new act that have a bearing on monetary policy. the overall picture is that some things have changed. but the important thing is that we can do what we need to do to fulfil our tasks, in normal times and in times of crisis. the riksbank has a strong and clear mandate to conduct flexible inflation targeting, where the overriding objective is for inflation to be lastingly low and stable. this is important now that the inflation target is being serious

would remain below the target in the near term, and was not expected to stabilise at 2 per cent until late 2022. of importance here was also the fact that i could not see any appreciable upside risks for the inflation forecast either. second, as i saw it, an increase in the interest rate in the near future could hardly be expected to lead to a greater probability of the downward trend in inflation expectations reversing. this worried me quite considerably as it can affect the inflation rate on which the labour market organisations base their forthcoming wage negotiations. third, i felt there was reason to worry about the consequences of both the federal reserve and the ecb increasing their monetary policy stimuli while in sweden, if the announced rate rise were to be implemented, we would be going in the opposite direction. many analysts also interpreted the signals from the meeting in october as the riksbank viewing the abolition of negative rates as an end in itself. this applies not only to analysts in sweden but also internationally. a couple of examples are articles from bloomberg and in the financial times, in which the authors argue that the riksbank has now realised the problems of negative interest rates and is therefore keen to get away from them. 5 a number of analysts have also speculated that the riksbank sees the zero level as so important in itself that it would be wary of lowering the repo rate over the coming years even if the economic outlook and inflation prospects were to deteriorate. my view is that, as a result of this, there may be a risk of several people starting to make the interpretation that we have indeed taken our eye off the ball to a certain extent, or at least don ’ t have it as sharply in focus as we usually have. too low average inflation creates problems let me elaborate a bit on this. if the repo rate were to be raised as soon as around the turn of the year, the serious aspect is not in itself that the interest rate would then be 0. 25 percentage points higher, although for someone who prefers an unchanged rate, there is of course no advantage in this either. the problem is instead that it might be perceived as the riksbank deviating from what it normally gordon, skolimowski and stirling ( 2019 ), and milne ( 2019 ). an alternative view is that the riksbank has simply become difficult to interpret, see, for example, boije ( 2019 ). 3 does : designing monetary policy so that