Consequently, it does not seem right to me to call Spanish banks “traditional”: Spanish banks bend over backwards for the customer, obtain information and management advantages from their detailed knowledge of their customers and have demonstrated their innovative capacity in the marketing of different products, in their risk control and management mechanisms, and in the application of organisational developments and technological processes, enabling the sector to become one of the world's most advanced and efficient. What will happen to banks in Spain over the next few years? The road travelled so far has thus seen the entrenchment of a banking system with a proven capacity to manage risk and high levels of profitability, efficiency and solvency. This system has contributed decisively to the Spanish economy’s continuously strong growth since 1994 and has withstood the first two phases of the international financial crisis well. At the onset of what I have called the third phase of the crisis, the sector is in a strong position. Moreover, the Banco de España has the ability and experience to resolve the most complex situations without damaging savers or the economy as a whole. However, although there is no sign of problems at Spanish banks in the short term, there is a temptation to which we bank supervisors must never succumb: complacency. Thus, I feel obliged to conclude by identifying the challenges that the Spanish banking system is going to face and suggesting the action necessary to overcome them with the greatest guarantee of success.
This has also been the case if we look at developments in Sweden compared to developments in the euro area since 2000. Wages  2  See for example L. Calmfors, ”Kris i det svenska avtalssystemet?”, Ekonomisk debatt no. 1, 2008 and P. Braunerhjelm et al., ”Krisstämpeln på det svenska avtalssystemet – en överdrift”, Ekonomisk debatt no. 5, 2008. BIS Review 154/2008  7  have increased more rapidly in Sweden than in the euro area, but the development of productivity has also been stronger in Sweden while inflation has been approximately the same (see Figure 12). For the manufacturing industry, the situation is largely the same in an exchange rate regime with a floating rate as in a regime with a fixed rate in the sense that the wage agreements must look to the future with regard to the development of costs abroad. Normally, it may be reasonable to assume that the exchange rate remains unchanged, which is illustrated by the stable development of the krona against the euro from 2002 until this autumn. A hypothesis of an unchanged exchange rate provides the same conditions under fixed and floating exchange rate regimes. The krona has weakened significantly in the course of the ongoing financial turbulence, although in the long term we expect it to return to roughly the same level it was at before the crisis. Hopefully, the krona will have stabilised at a higher level than the present level before the round of collective bargaining in 2010.