Common for all of the Riksbank's tools is that they in one way or another affect the  36 See P. Gustafsson and T. von Brömsen (2021). 37  See also Committee on the Global Financial System (2019). 38 See also the European Central Bank (2020) and the International Monetary Fund (2020). 17 [35]  balance sheet. In brief, no balance sheet, no central bank, and rate-setting is just empty talk if one is not willing to use the balance sheet. However, changes in the policy rate don’t always have a major impact on the balance sheet, but this is because the financial market participants know that the Riksbank can use its balance sheet if needed, and that the Riksbank does so from time to time. Extensive asset purchases and direct liquidity support more or less always cause the balance sheet to grow substantially. 39 Since the inflation target was formally introduced in 1995, the Riksbank has mainly used these tools on three occasions. The first occasion was during the global financial crisis 2008-2009, when we offered the banks liquidity support, for instance, in the form of loans in SEK at longer maturities, and loans in USD, and also approved a larger number of securities as eligible collateral. These measures secured the liquidity of the financial system, and this facilitated credit granting and reduced various risk premiums that limited the impact of monetary policy.
This includes the banks’ deposits in the Riksbank overnight through the Riksbank's deposit facility and fine-tuning transactions in RIX, shown in the chart as MP debt (debt related to monetary policy transactions, see the Riksbank's Annual Report 2015). During the day, the banks have pledged assets and received liquidity in RIX. The average value of the collateral provided was SEK 112 billion during the second four months (see RIX four-month report 2, 2016). These are reported as funds in accounts in the chart. 4 If we look at the value of the payments between households, companies and a uthorities, it amounts to a total of SEK 14,000-15,000 billion a year, of which perhaps SEK 200 billion is in cash. In shops, almost one in seven payments is made in cash. More than half of the adult population has the Swish payment app. 4 [10]  the chart (Figure 1) and it shows clearly how cash in relation to GDP has declined substantially since 1950, when it comprised almost 10% of GDP, compared with around 1.5 per cent today. The blue line is the nominal demand for cash outside of the banking sector, that is, the cash held by companies, households and authorities. Demand from the general public has fallen from SEK 97 billion in 2007 to around SEK 61 billion today. This is a marked decline in just a few years. Similarly, the withdrawals from ATMs give some indication.