this direction. ° ° ° the efforts being made in europe and in the countries worst hit by the crisis can succeed only if all the parties involved keep full faith with their commitments. in the end, budgetary adjustments without structural reforms would inevitably be counterproductive. however, the reforms will be unable to work their effects in full if doubts and uncertainties about the future of the single currency were to keep sovereign spreads far above the levels consistent with each country ’ s economic fundamentals. monetary policy can constitute an effective bulwark against such distortions. but its benefits can be lasting only if budgetary discipline and national and european reform proceed with the necessary determination. bis central bankers ’ speeches

swedes would not be able to resist the attraction of the euro. as an emu supporter, i can of course see the advantages of the euro, but to believe in a general, spontaneous transition would be going too far. this meant that the idea of a'euroisation'was also a bad argument in the debate prior to the start of the emu. if the swedes are to be won over to the idea of the emu, we should be emphasising the facts. personally, i believe that it will be easier to arouse interest in a discussion based on facts, when the euro banknotes and coins appear next year. globalisation requires stable game rules after this in - depth foray into the world of the euro, i shall return to the more general issues following on from the current internationalisation process. this creates, as i said earlier, the right conditions for a more rapid economic growth, but it does not offer any guarantee that this will be the case and it is important to remember this. the swedish economic crisis at the beginning of the 1990s is still fresh in most of our memories. that experience provided a clear illustration of the importance of pursuing a long - term, credible economic policy. however, it also showed the importance of building up properly functioning institutions to oversee the financial markets when deregulated. in sweden it was evident that the supervisory authorities were not prepared for the reality that would prevail after the deregulation of the credit markets in the 1980s. similar conclusions can be drawn from the crises in for example mexico and asia. these also show clearly that countries wanting to participate on the international capital markets must meet the requirements for openness and provision of information. this is positive, not only because it facilitates access to international capital, but also because the requirements make it more difficult for the governing elite and pressure groups to line their pockets at the expense of the majority of the population, if they want to take part in international society. the crises during the 1990s have also demonstrated that problems in one country can spread to other countries at a much greater speed than before. for this reason, some people would like to see an inbuilt time lag in the markets, for instance by introducing a tax on financial transactions, to reduce the damage to individual countries when capital moves rapidly across borders. this idea is based on most of the transactions on the international financial markets being pure speculation. naturally, there is some harmful speculation that needs to be counteracted