a stable d - mark. the legendary meeting took place in the chancellery in bonn, by the way. to that extent - for that meeting, it should be noted - geographical proximity to policy makers has not done any harm. on the whole, though, the logic behind an unpolitical monetary and financial system implies protecting oneself from the all - too - hearty embrace of politics by not being too close to the policy makers. iv without a doubt, the year 1998 is a special one for the central bank council. it will hold its thousandth meeting in the autumn. incidentally, we have not pulled any tricks in order to reach the 1000 figure in time before the end of the year. at the end of the year, as you all know, the central bank council of the deutsche bundesbank will surrender its monetary policy decision making powers to the ecb governing council, in accordance with the maastricht treaty. ( the place where the ecb governing council ’ s meetings are to be held is only a few hundred metres from here, by the way. ) it is occasionally said that the european central bank is a copy, a clone, of the deutsche bundesbank. in actual fact, there are major features which the future european and the present german central banking systems have in common - particularly independence and the combination of centralised and decentralised elements, of course. nevertheless, it is precisely in the decentralised elements that differences exist which cannot be overlooked. admittedly, the fleshing out of the structures defined in the treaty, the practical handling of monetary policy powers, are not things that can be xeroxed and thrown into the european central bank ’ s mailbox. these are things which have to evolve there themselves, much as they evolved in the bank deutscher lander and then in the bundesbank. the ecb governing council should also soon arrive at a truly collegial principle. in that way, the european general public will be able to recognise it as a credible, completely objectively - oriented specialist body with responsibility for all aspects of the single currency. the accountability of individual members of the ecb governing council to national bodies or the european parliament must not aim at sowing the seeds of division among the members or gearing monetary policy to special interests. that would jeopardise the collegial principle, and thus actual independence. within the european parliament, too, there are obviously those who feel that there should be

crisis, unlike in many other countries. but the swedish banks have nevertheless experienced problems with funding and this has required that a number of measures be taken by swedish authorities. the riksbank has implemented a large number of measures to safeguard financial stability and mitigate the negative effects of the financial crisis. these measures have largely related to the provision of liquidity. liquidity can be supplied generally to the market or in the form of specific assistance for individual financial institutions. the riksbank has used both of these alternatives. the general liquidity assistance has been designed so that the riksbank has supplied the banks with loans in kronor and dollars at longer maturities than the market has been able to offer. in total this lending has amounted to over sek 450 billion. lending in kronor has increased by more than sek 250 billion and lending in dollars by almost sek 200 billion. this means that the riksbank's balance sheet for the second half of 2008 has increased from sek 200 billion at the end of june to sek 700 billion at the turn of the year. the loans from the riksbank together with swedbank's borrowing under the government's guarantee programme mean that the state provided or guaranteed more or less all of the banking sector's borrowing in the last few months of 2008. the riksbank has also set up a temporary credit facility based on commercial papers in order to improve the supply of credit for non - financial companies. these companies can fund their operations by issuing commercial papers and selling them to the banks. the commercial papers can then be used by the banks as security for loans from the riksbank. however, the scope of these activities has been fairly limited. the icelandic bank kaupthing experienced problems in iceland and the riksbank granted the swedish subsidiary kaupthing bank sverige ab liquidity assistance in october 2008. carnegie investment bank ab also received liquidity assistance in october when it had problems finding funding. given the financial market turbulence, the riksbank ’ s assessment was that a suspension of payments by one of the banks could entail a risk of a serious disruption in the financial system and could undermine confidence in the payment system. finansinspektionen ( the swedish financial supervisory authority ) later revoked carnegie ’ s licence to conduct banking activities. the swedish national debt office took control over carnegie and finansinspektionen therefore changed its decision regarding the revocation of the licence to