23 In the Monetary Policy Report published in April 2020 (Riksbank 2020d, p. 9), we justified the purchases, among other things, as follows: ”The fact that credit conditions are tightened and interest rates on lending to households and companies are increasing in relation to interest rates on safe assets is of course natural when credit is assessed as more uncertain. But at the same time, tighter credit conditions and higher interest rates mean that the economic downturn will be deeper and more prolonged. The Riksbank's monetary policy aims to ensure that increased uncertainty and reduced risk appetite do not become a self-fulfilling prophesy. This helps avoid the downturn worsening and being prolonged unnecessarily.” 24 See, for example, the Riksbank (2020a). 13 [30]  to have contributed the housing market in particular developing strongly (see Figure 10). To summarise, the Riksbank's purchases during the pandemic functioned differently from those before the pandemic. This is not surprising. During spring 2020, the Riksbank entered as buyer into markets which, due to the high level of uncertainty, were functioning poorly when many wanted to sell and few wanted to buy. Moreover, the Riksbank began to buy bonds issued by private agents (mainly banks). The Riksbank thus took over risk from market participants. This is unlike the situation prior to the pandemic, when the Riksbank's purchases meant that one government asset (government bonds) was removed from the market but was replaced by another asset with a similar risk profile (reserves at the Riksbank). Figure 10.
Given this, the Riksbank focused its measures on ensuring that there was good access to liquidity and that the financial markets continued to function. We did not see it as meaningful to stimulate demand in an economy that was largely closed;  11 [30]  instead, the ambition was to avoid tightening financial conditions and, in the long run, to avoid the great uncertainty causing a financial crisis. Among the measures we decided at a number of ordinary and extraordinary meetings were broader and substantially extended asset purchases.20 At the monetary policy meetings in April and June 2020, these measures were consolidated in a programme where assets worth SEK 500 billion would be purchased by mid2021. The purchases now included not only government bonds, but also covered bonds, municipal bonds and corporate bonds.21 Since many actors at the same time put in place a variety of support measures, it is almost impossible to evaluate the effects of an individual measure. However, I do draw some conclusions. The support measures during the pandemic were important and worked very well First, I think it is clear that the overall measures worked very well. Risk premiums in the financial markets began to fall rapidly in April, and the pandemic did not lead to a financial crisis either in Sweden or abroad.