for anyone who will be faced with managing a household budget, making financial investments, finding reliable information about buying a car or house, and preparing financially for retirement and other life goals. accordingly, in addition to ensuring that students graduate with the financial literacy skills they need to navigate in the modern financial world, we, as a society, must also make sure that adults have opportunities to gain these skills or to refresh what they have learned. many of you are, or will be, practitioners in the financial services industry – perhaps serving retail clients – and in that capacity i hope you will make the promotion of financial and economic education a part of your mission as rise is redefining investment strategy education. for more information, see www. udayton. edu / business / rise. see ben s. bernanke ( 2005 ), “ remarks by governor ben s. bernanke, ” speech delivered at the redefining investment strategy education symposium, dayton, ohio, march 30. see the federal reserve education website, www. federalreserveeducation. org. bis central bankers ’ speeches well. these skills not only help people provide a better life for themselves and their families, but, by deepening their understanding of the world economy, having such skills also helps equip them to be engaged citizens and informed voters. let me close by congratulating the university of dayton for its leadership in hosting the rise forum. i hope this innovative program, which i ’ m told is the world ’ s largest student investment conference, succeeds in its ambitious goal of bringing together the current and future leaders of finance to focus on creating a better economic future. bis central bankers ’ speeches

. lower interest rates will normally result in higher inflation, partly because the krone depreciates, and partly because of a rise in demand. enterprises will thus be able to increase their earnings. business sector activity is stimulated most effectively by low interest rates and a weak krone. due to the past few years ’ wage settlements, households have strengthened their financial position at the expense of private and public enterprises. house prices have edged up after stagnating earlier this year. household borrowing has moderated somewhat, but is still high. against this background, growth in private consumption is expected to be fairly high in the period ahead. consumer spending on goods is rising, pointing towards growth in private consumption this year on a par with our projections in the june inflation report. mainland gdp is projected to rise less than trend growth this year and to reach trend levels in 2004. in 2005, gdp growth is projected to be higher than trend growth. investment activity in mainland norway is low. investment in the petroleum sector is rising, but a large share of the increase in demand is being met by imports. public consumption increased sharply in 2002, but there will be little stimulus to the economy from the public sector this year. growth will mainly be fuelled by private projection in inflation report 2 / 03 based on assumptions concerning forward rates and a gradually declining krone exchange rate. consumption in the second half of this year and into 2004. we expect that investment in mainland enterprises will gradually pick up from a low level. in order to set an appropriate interest rate, it is important to be be able to form a reasonably accurate picture of the economic situation. economic statistics are the most important source of information, but they are published with a lag and some of the figures are revised frequently. in autumn 2002, norges bank established a regional network as a tool to gauge the level of activity in the norwegian economy. the network consists of companies, organisations and municipalities throughout norway. in the two rounds of talks in connection with inflation report 2 / 03, 450 contacts were interviewed. we will be having six rounds of talks each year with business and community leaders concerning financial developments in their enterprises and industries, with about 200 visits in each round. the selection of contacts represents the production side of the economy, both industry - wise and geographically. in the course of 2003, the number of contacts in the network will rise to about 1000 persons, who will be contacted once or twice a year. the department of economics at the norwegian university