The outcome was almost one percentage point lower, that is, one and a half percentage points below the target. 4 That there may be a good deal of truth in this interpretation is supported by a number of critical newspaper articles published around that time, see, for example, “Nya direktörer men samma gamla riksbank” [New directors but same old Riksbank], Aftonbladet (2013), 22 May and “Ta tillbaka makten över Riksbanken” [Take back control over the Riksbank], Dagens Nyheter (2014), 15 June. 2 [17]  The important lesson to learn here is, as I see it, that it is absolutely key to show that you always do have your eye on the ball and do not let other factors come into the picture in a way that risks economic actors starting to doubt that this is the case. I have been reminded of this lesson on a number of occasions lately, most recently at the monetary policy meeting in October. The picture we painted at that time of monetary policy going forward, in which we predicted that the repo rate will be raised very slowly to take it back into positive territory in the longer term, was one that I largely considered to be well-balanced. However, I expressed considerable doubt over the next increase in the repo rate happening as early as around the turn of the year, most probably at our next meeting in December, as implied by our forecast for the repo rate.
One often sees forecasts as mean forecasts. This means in principle that the risk that the economy will develop less well is as great as the chance that it will develop better. A mean forecast for GDP growth abroad, for instance, balances everything that could give rise to lower growth against everything that could give rise to higher growth. Another way of expressing the same thing is that the forecast is a form of middle way of all the different roads the economy could take in the coming period. This way of working with forecasts means that one acts as though one has succeeded in quantifying the possibilities and effects of all of the different potential courses of events. A year or so ago there were frequent discussions of the risk of a split or disintegration of the euro system – what was the probability that this would happen and what effects would it have for Sweden? Today there may be reason to ask these questions with regard to an escalation of the Ukraine conflict or to a substantial fall in housing prices in Sweden. If one considers these difficulties in quantifying various possible sequences of events and probabilities that they will occur, it may not be as simple a matter to make decisions on monetary policy and make forecasts for future interest rates as it is sometimes made out to be.