Nessén, Marianne (2016), Discussion of ”The case for unencumbering interest rate policy at the zero bound” by Marvin Goodfriend”, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 25-27 August. Rachel, Lukasz and Thomas D. Smith (2015), “Secular drivers of the global real interest rate”, Staff Working Paper No. 571, Bank of England. Rogoff, Kenneth (2016), “It would be wrong to abandon the policy of negative rates”, Financial Times, 11 October. Rosengren, Eric S. (2015), “Changing economic relationships: Implications for monetary policy and simple monetary policy rules”, speech on 16 April, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Skingsley, Cecilia (2016), “Should the Riksbank issue e-krona?”, speech at the FinTech conference in Stockholm, 16 November, Sveriges Riksbank. Turk, Rima A. (2016), “Negative interest rates: How big a challenge for large Danish and Swedish banks?”, IMF Working Paper WP/16/198, International Monetary Fund. 13 [20]  Figure 1. Good GDP development in Sweden after financial crisis Index, 2007 Q4=100  Sources: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Eurostat, Office for National Statistics and Statistics Sweden Figure 2. Inflation fell early in Sweden Annual percentage change  Note. The CPI for the US and the HICP for others. Sources: The Bureau of Labor Statistics, Eurostat and Statistics Sweden. 14 [20]  Figure 3.
2 The long period of low inflation has also started a debate regarding the grounds for the Riksbank’s monetary policy and the inflation target, which as far as I can tell is more intense than in most other countries. In this sense, too, one can therefore in some ways say that we are pioneers. What I intend to do today is first to say a few words about this debate. Most often, the criticism merely states that the “monetary policy of the Riksbank is wrong”. The reasons for this vary: because a negative policy rate is not healthy, because housing prices are rising, because the krona is too weak or because the economy is already developing well. There is usually no detailed reasoning as to what the consequences would be if the policy was shifted in another direction. In particular, what is often missing, but I argue is crucial, is a discussion on why the advantages of the inflation target should no longer apply and what the consequences would be if the Riksbank abandoned it. After discussing the debate on monetary policy, I intend to conclude by looking ahead and examining the problems and possibilities for monetary policy in the future. Here, I focus in particular on a scenario where monetary policy is not made more expansionary despite a delay in reaching the inflation target. In Sweden, the policy rate has been negative since February 2015. This has not been an uncontroversial policy. The criticism can be divided into two types.