statistical information independently for purposes such as macroprudential work, meaning the interplay between the real economy and the general health of the financial sector. it will further more be possible for the nationalbank to use the collected data for individual respondants in its general work and thus not only for general statistical purposes. this work will be strengthened considerably in the coming years in cooperation with the danish financial supervisory authority and international players such as the ecb and the new european systemic risk board. several of the new statistical measures were too late to be of any essential use in the analytical work during the crisis. hopefully they can contribute to a better understanding of the crisis and perhaps to preventing similar crises in the future. looking ahead, the point of interest is how to improve the identification of economic imbalances with negative consequences for growth and employment. this area is also in focus at the international level. the international monetary fund ( imf ), the bank for international settlements ( bis ) and others have constructed indicators of economic imbalances. but their usefulness remains to be seen. the observation, that it is not only necessary to have more data, but certainly also to achieve better analysis of the data available, as illustrated by the danish banks ’ accumulation of a large customer funding gap – or “ the deposit deficit ” as we call it. the customer funding gap means that the banks did not have enough deposits to cover the strong expansion of lending, forcing them to turn to the international money and capital markets. this is no problem as long as the markets are functioning smoothly. but the banks will be more exposed, if the markets are not functioning smoothly, as evidenced during the crisis. we knew the figures, but underestimated the risk. the most recent figures show that the customer funding gap is widening again. but this presents a bit of a dilemma. as we have seen, it increases the vulnerability of the financial system. on the other hand, we are also keen to prevent tighter lending policies from resulting in a credit crunch. the quarterly national accounts, play the leading role in danmarks nationalbank ’ s assessment of cyclical developments. what is required here are timely, accurate and reliable compilations. the lesson we are learning at the moment is, that countries with unreliable – or downright incorrect – statistics will be punished by the markets. not necessarily gradually, but often abruptly. the punishment is downgrading of the sovereign debt, resulting in substantial widening of interest - rate spreads. an economic cycle is defined

to confusion in the public debate. however, a positive feature is that gross unemployment statistics are now compiled, meaning statistics for unemployment including people in activation schemes. i think it is worthwhile to consider a new and more comprehensive publication of our unemployment statistics. with the aim of giving a more nuanced picture of the unemployment situation and a higher degree of comparability internationally. danmarks nationalbank prepares forecasts for the danish economy. the frequency will be increased from semi - annually to quarterly releases. forecasting the future is a great challenge, which multiplies many times if the point of departure is not even known, as illustrated by the revisions of the supply balance and employment. naturally, this is not an isolated danish phenomenon, although the danish quarterly national accounts tend to be more volatile than those of the major economies. this is also the case in other small, open economies. there is one aspect of forecasting that i haven ’ t mentioned yet – psychology. how can it be measured and modelled? well, that is next to impossible, i think. nevertheless, it still applies that psychology plays a very large role, and also did so during the most recent crisis. the total freeze of the financial markets after the collapse of lehman brothers was strongly driven by psychological factors. this can also be said about consumer behaviour in the wake of the financial crisis. consumers have kept, and are still keeping, their purse strings tight, despite solid growth in disposable incomes. consequently, psychological factors contributed to the crisis spreading from a purely financial crisis to a full - blown economic crisis. this mechanism can also be observed in the housing market. regular questionnaire surveys are conducted in denmark as regards household expectations of house prices in the years ahead. there is a high correlation between household expectations and the actual development. but it may be problematic that the exact present position is subject to uncertainty also in this area. one contributing factor is the considerable lag of house price statistics from statistics denmark. over the summer, prominent economists have debated fiscal policy in the financial times. one school advocates easing of fiscal policy on the grounds that the economies are still too fragile to stand on their own two feet. the other school advocates fiscal tightening on the grounds that increased indebtedness will only make the households hold back. again, this is a question of psychology and expectations : will the households realise that the debt that is increased today has to be repaid with interest later, and will they also realise that they have to