The problem we face is that unemployment’s critical level cannot be identified for certain and we do not know when shortages and rapid wage increases will actually arise. Estimating these matters is difficult and the results cannot be taken for granted. It is therefore hard to tell how much scope there is for a temporary phase of economic growth above the long-term trend. The ability to look ahead and formulate monetary policy cautiously is particularly important when an economy is moving further and further along an upward phase. Otherwise there is a risk of price and wage increases accelerating so that the brakes have to be applied more abruptly later on, leading to a situation that is worse than would otherwise have been the case. Thus it is in this phase of rising activity that we can be said to influence the depth of the next slowdown. It was the overheating in the late-1960s, the mid-1970s and the end of the 1980s that set the stage for the subsequent deep troughs. And each recession was worse than its predecessor. Looking back, it is easy to see that economic policy ought to have been tightened much earlier than was the case on those occasions. At the same time, it has tended to be difficult, not least in fiscal policy, to take such measures sufficiently early, particularly as that needs to be done before the problems are clear to everyone.
On other occasions there may be an obstacle in the form of a disruption, such as the Asian crisis the other year. In both cases, monetary policy must be adjusted to the economic laws but also to the conditions that apply for the current phase of the journey. What I mean is that interest rate hikes and cuts are a natural ingredient of a monetary policy for price stability - a policy that ultimately aims for a stable development of production and employment. The favourable economic trend in Sweden in recent years is in fact a good illustration of price stability’s affinity with a stable expansion of output and jobs. Since the upturn after the crisis in the early-1990s, the annual GDP growth rate has averaged around 3%, the number in employment has risen by almost 150,000 persons and the rate of inflation has been more or less around the target. This has called for repo rate increases on some occasions and cuts on others. 1  BIS Review 6/2000  Rapid GDP growth during 1999 So at what speed is the Swedish economy currently travelling? What are the speed limits? And what repo rate is appropriate for a safe journey? According to the latest national accounts, published just before Christmas, the GDP growth rate for the first three quarters of 1999 was over 3.5%. It is still difficult to tell just what happened in the fourth quarter but demand growth seems, if anything, to have accelerated.