left to its fate and there was rapidly growing concern that other institutions would follow suit. credit flows dried up almost completely and investors essentially dared to invest only in government bonds. companies had already experienced a tightening of credit terms ; opportunities for loan financing now essentially disappeared. in this phase of the crisis, around mid september this year, the effects on the swedish financial system became clear. when banks'access to liquidity dried up on every market, this hit all banks, including those that are financially strong, like the swedish banks. many central banks around the world had been taking measures for some time to strengthen liquidity in banking systems but the riksbank had not needed to act. the interbank market and other short - term markets had worked, though interest rates had climbed sharply. when the crisis had a more tangible impact on sweden, the riksbank also implemented a series of interventions. meanwhile, central banks in the rest of the world continued with their interventions and governments approved crisis packages to guarantee financial stability. against the backdrop of this summary of events in the financial sector over the past year, today i will speak about the effects of this financial crisis on the riksbank's work of maintaining a safe and effective payments system. but first i would like to briefly describe how we carry out this work under normal circumstances. i will also conclude with a comment on the crisis ’ effects on monetary policy. work with financial stability under normal circumstances the task of maintaining a safe and effective payments system includes the role of the riksbank as the banks'bank. this task includes maintaining the rix payment system for payments in swedish kronor. participants in the system may borrow during the day and overnight to cover temporary deficits. the task also includes continuous oversight of the financial system. for some time the riksbank has had a well - designed analytical apparatus for early detection of changes and vulnerabilities that could develop into a serious systemic crisis. above all, its purpose is the timely detection of vulnerabilities in banks that are of central importance for the payments system, which requires knowledge of the status of the various institutions and how the market functions. this in turn presumes continuous follow - up, where frequent contacts with financial market participants play an important role. these established contacts are essential in a crisis situation, both to determine the type of measure that is needed and to ensure timely implementation. ten years ago we began to publish stability reports twice a year. these reports provide a basic

development in the consumer price index will not agree for a period of time with the actual development in the cost of living. it is difficult to make predictions what do we actually know about the future? what can we use to say something about what will happen? one thing we can use, is to look at how things have been before. the empirical national economist ’ s traditional method is to gather data, to structure data and to seek correlations between different economic variables. data is gathered from history, the correlations found are historical ones. for me, traditional forecasting is all about using history in various ways to tell us something about the future. but of course it is not always the case that things behave in the same way as before. sometimes developments take a new path, a path that we had not imagined. spring 2020 was a good example of this. when the crisis came, history was not much help to us. apart from being unexpected, each crisis is unique. the april monetary policy report therefore did not present any forecast. instead, it presented two scenarios showing two possible developments over the coming period. i consider that this was as far as we could go when we could not use history to help us. to me, it has been natural that monetary policy in recent months has been very much in the here and now. the problems arising required immediate measures. the measures taken have made monetary policy more expansionary. and we cannot rule out the possibility of setbacks. when we can once again interpret inflation statistics and when we can once again use history to say something about the future, monetary policy can also become more forward - looking than it has been in recent months. 5 references diewert, w. e and fox, k. j. ( 2020 ), “ measuring real consumption and cpi bias under lockdown conditions ”, nber working paper series, no. 27144. statistics sweden ( 2020 ), press release ( 2020 ), ” svarare berakna inflation under coronapandemin ”, ( more difficult to calculate inflation during the corona pandemic ) www, scb, se statistics sweden ( 2020 ), report to consumer price index board, ” hantering av effekter av corona - pandemin i kpi och hikp ”, ( managing the effects of the corona pandemic on the cpi and hicp ) www, scb, se appendix table 1. products affected by lack of consumption weight in cpi ( per cent