However, it is important that there are also good forms for discussion, cooperation and consultation between the authorities and the Financial Stability Council is one useful forum for this. The Riksbank's voice on liquidity issues should carry particular weight For the Riksbank, with its central role in providing liquidity to society, the management of liquidity among participants in the financial system is particularly important. The first sign of a financial crisis – regardless of whether it concerns an individual institution or the financial system as a whole – is namely often a shortage of liquidity. By acting as lender of last resort and using its balance sheet, the Riksbank is therefore usually the public authority that first takes action in a financial crisis. In the same way as the fire brigade tries to work on prevention by reducing the risk of fires, it is reasonable that the Riksbank should in various ways contribute to reducing the risks of a financial crisis. It is therefore natural that the Riksbank should analyse and comment on regulations that affect the probability of Sweden suffering a financial crisis, and also the cost of the crisis if it should  10 [12]  come to that. My view is that the Riksbank's voice should carry particular weight with regard to liquidity issues, given our central role in supplying liquidity. There are many different ways of formalising this.
This principle relates to the dichotomy between the ECB’s monetary policy and its liquidity policy or, in other words, between the formulation and implementation of monetary policy. During the turmoil, the separation principle proved to be very effective. Supported by the flexibility of its operational framework, the ECB was able to react in a flexible and quick manner to a changing market environment, and it allowed the steering of interest rates close to the policy rate by means of temporary quantity adjustments, albeit without increasing the aggregate supply of euro liquidity to the banking sector. The main objective of the ECB’s immediate and lasting responses to tensions in the money market was to keep under to control the very short-term interest rates as the first step in the transmission of monetary policy. Broadly speaking, the ECB’s liquidity policy response consisted of three elements: First, it changed the timing of the liquidity provision within the maintenance period (the so-called “front-loading policy”), and thereby allowed banks to build up temporary liquidity buffers. Second, it lengthened the average maturity of its tender operations: before the turmoil, the bulk of liquidity was supplied through one-week operations, and only about 30% was auctioned for three months. As the turmoil unfolded, the ECB gradually increased the share of the three-month operations and moreover introduced a six-month maturity operation. Finally, it participated in the joint coordination effort of an increasing number of central banks around the world within the context of the Term Auction Facility.