backstrom : the monetary policy situation in sweden speech by mr urban backstrom, governor of the sveriges riksbank and chairman of the board of directors and president of the bank for international settlements, to the riksdag ’ s finance committee, stockholm, 16 october 2001. * * * the riksbank has a statutory duty to present the finance committee with a written account of monetary policy at least twice a year. the second account in 2001 was presented this morning. in my opening remarks i shall briefly describe the riksbank ’ s view of monetary policy and economic developments in sweden. i also look forward to the ensuing discussion with members of the committee and will do my best to answer your questions. first let me say that in the period since i last met the committee a great deal has happened, some of it very dramatic and tragic. what i have in mind above all is the terrorist attacks in new york and washington on 11 september. but much has happened in the economic sphere as well. the slowdown has become more pronounced at the same time as inflation has been surprisingly high. meanwhile, the riksbank has adjusted the interest rate. major political events are currently unfolding in connection with all that is happening in afghanistan. on top of this there was last week ’ s air disaster at milan airport, with many people from sweden among the victims in the wrecked sas plane. in the midst of all the human suffering, i and my colleagues at the riksbank still have the task of presenting our general assessment of the economy and inflation to the committee, an assessment that has to include consequences of these tragic events. but i want to underscore that in the coming quarters the economic future is unusually uncertain. i shall begin by briefly recapitulating developments in recent months and accounting for the riksbank ’ s monetary policy measures. developments in recent months shortly after the may report had been published the swedish krona depreciated markedly from a level that was already low. that meant that an even more marked appreciation would be needed for the exchange rate to reach the levels the riksbank had counted on. this seemed unlikely. the combined effect of relatively high resource utilisation, unexpectedly rapid price increases and greater uncertainty about the krona ’ s future path was considered to constitute an increased risk of rising inflation expectations. that was the background to the riksbank ’ s decision in mid june to intervene in the currency market. although interventions have proved to be a

radovan jelasic : key challenges for serbia and the surrounding region speech by mr radovan jelasic, governor of the national bank of serbia, at the conference of economist media group “ financial services in the south east europe ”, belgrade, 5 december 2007. * * * ladies and gentlemen, as serbia slowly but finally returns to europe, the issues we face are becoming more and more “ european ” and even “ international ”. allow me to share with you today my thoughts on some of the current topics which represent key challenges not only to us in the nbs, but to almost all neighbouring countries! stable and efficient banking sector represents the key prerequisite and a guarantee of macroeconomic stability in serbia today. however, no supervisory measure is more efficient in “ levelling off ” the margins or “ convincing ” institutions to cut down credit growth than a crisis situation in the financial sector. whereas bank supervisors are constantly vigilant and keep taking measures to avert a crisis, crises still happen all the time. and they all have something in common : 1 ) they are never planned though risk trends are more or less common knowledge, 2 ) they come as a result of operations that are almost impossible to predict, 3 ) their initial impact is always underestimated, but soon 4 ) goes into the other extreme, i. e. becomes overestimated! for seven years now, namely ever since i began attending annual meetings of the imf and the world bank in washington, g - 8 member countries and the imf staff have been giving their semi - annual reports on “ orderly winding down of global imbalances ”. almost everybody seems convinced that what we have been going through in recent months is actually the beginning of orderly winding down of global imbalances, though neither the length nor the depth of the process can be predicted with any precision yet! strong financial sector in terms of the volume of its capital and reserves, and / or ownership structure is more than indispensable against the background of growing external and internal risks. on the eve of 2008, we are faced with many more challenges and unknowns both in serbia and wider. allow me to name just a few : • risk revaluation in the world market – while most of us remained quite unaware, only a few, like the uk - based northern rock bank, realized that we had stepped from excess liquidity into the opposite extreme practically overnight. the terms on which serbia borrowed in the world financial