In this way, all those who wish to closely follow our reasoning can do so and it creates a basis for assessing our evaluations and decisions. I can also mention that the Riksbank Governor appears before the Riksdag Committee on Finance twice a year to answer questions on monetary policy. On the first occasion every year we publish an Inflation Report that contains a special appendix with material for assessing monetary policy over the past 2-3 years. This contains, for instance, comparisons of our forecasts with other forecasts and with outcomes. In addition, we Executive Board members hold around forty published speeches every year, where we can describe our joint or our individual view of economic developments. We also publish information in our quarterly journal and other publications issued by the Riksbank. The Riksbank thus publishes a substantial amount of information that enables the general public to examine our analyses and to understand how monetary policy decisions are made. At the same time, it creates the conditions for a serious debate on monetary policy. This is a major change compared with central bank history. Monetary policy is assessed regularly in Sweden. In 1999, the Riksdag Committee on Finance made the assessment that the Riksbank’s increased independence meant that there was a greater need to examine and assess monetary policy. Since then, the Committee has annually examined the monetary policy conducted over the past three years in connection with a more in-depth review of our activities.
We have been intervening since the beginning of 1990 to develop the Hong Kong dollar debt market, again because the market was considered essential for effective financial intermediation, and, regrettably, the private sector was not able to develop one that is properly structured. The linked exchange rate system is also a product of the policy of positive non-interventionism. The Government intervened to fix the exchange rate because we found out in 1983, and since, that there is a need for a monetary anchor. In the absence of such an anchor, the value of our currency will be, in mathematical terms, an indeterminate. In other words, it is not something that the free market can determine in the best interest of the community without intervention. We have had four speculative attacks on our currency since the outbreak of financial turmoil in the region in the middle of last year. BIS Review 67/1998  -3It is very well known to almost everyone in the market that a handful of hedge funds have on each occasion conducted a double play in the stock futures market and the currency market. We have come to realise how this double play works, although it has only become apparent, at least to us, in the third and fourth attacks in June and August this year respectively. On each occasion, interbank interest rates were pushed higher, to varying degrees, with a view to engineering a sharp fall in the stock index futures.