. when all is said and done, poor - country debt cannot be waived unless people in rich countries are prepared to give up something in turn. it is only we — not some international organisations — that can transfer resources to the poor countries. the heavily indebted poor countries ( hipc ) initiative. conclusion a crucial aspect of globalisation is unquestionably our increased interdependence. this has been largely beneficial in terms of increased prosperity, more widespread democracy and so on. but it has also had negative consequences, ranging from environmental destruction across national borders to higher interest rates and currency crises generated by circumstances in some distant region. the management of such problems calls for increased international cooperation. for sweden today this amounts in practice to collaborating to a growing extent with our european colleagues and then acting with greater weight in the global arena. we can also learn more and more from the experiences of others, as was in fact the direct purpose of my stay in peru. whereas the number of people in absolute poverty ( living on less than a dollar a day ) rose up to the early 1980s, in the past two decades the number has decreased. moreover, life expectancy in developing countries has lengthened from 40 years in 1950 to 65 years in 1995. another example is literacy, which increased in this period from 40 to 70 per cent. however, the positive trend has not spread to all parts of the world. poverty is still widespread in countries such as peru. but this does not have all that much to do with globalisation as such. it is essentially bound up with internal conditions, for example various power relationships, corruption, a lack of education, harsh climatic conditions and other obstacles to development. so providing money is not enough. political as well as economic reforms are also needed. the most important step the rich countries can take is to open their markets to imports from developing countries. let me take a topical example. additional support for argentina has been discussed in recent weeks, in reality to support banks in industrialised countries, among other things. how much better would it not be, both for them and for us, if instead we opened our borders for their exports of beef and other products on reasonable terms? in addition, there are sound reasons both for debt relief and for greatly increased assistance, particularly for the poorer developing countries. these measures should, however, be accompanied by demands for reforms. a reasonable ambition is that all industrialised countries at least achieve the assistance target of 0. 7 per cent

irma rosenberg : monetary policy, house prices and household indebtedness speech by ms irma rosenberg, deputy governor of the sveriges riksbank, at sparbanken finn ’ s customer meeting, lund, 20 september 2004. * * * introduction let me begin by thanking you for the invitation to come here and speak at sparbanken finn ’ s customer meeting. tonight i intend to talk about something that has been much debated in the media recently ; namely the increase in house prices and household indebtedness and its significance for monetary policy. house price trends, combined with increased indebtedness, could for instance cause significant problems in the future if households have not taken into account in their calculations the fact that interest rates will rise from their present low levels. is this something we should take into account when making monetary policy decisions? to answer this question, i shall begin with a few words on how we conduct our monetary policy and the aims of our policy. i shall then go on to describe developments in household borrowing and house prices and the most important driving forces behind them. i shall also mention how household wealth is included in our forecasts and whether there is reason to pay particular attention to developments in debts and house prices in the monetary policy stance. in conclusion, i shall also briefly comment on the present economic situation and the inflation outlook. the aims of monetary policy the riksbank has been assigned two tasks by the riksdag ( the swedish parliament ). the first entails maintaining price stability and the second involves promoting a safe and efficient payment system, i. e. contributing to financial stability. in addition, if it is possible to do so without creating a conflict with the other aims, we shall also take into account other aims of economic policy, such as economic growth and employment. maintaining price stability means in more concrete terms that the riksbank has set an inflation target for its monetary policy. the rate of price increase in terms of the consumer price index, cpi, shall be limited to 2 per cent a year with a tolerated deviation interval of + / - 1 percentage point. the fact that deviations from the target are tolerated, within a set interval, is because monetary policy is not sufficiently precise to be able to bring inflation to exactly 2 per cent all of the time. however, the deviations must not be too large, nor of long duration. the riksbank mainly endeavours to influence inflation by raising and lowering its key rate