I am aware of the debate between those who believe that central banks should take financial imbalances into account in their monetary policy decisions and those who do not. A basic structure, where monetary policy focuses on monetary stability and where other policy areas – not least the decisions taken by Finansinspektionen – safeguard financial stability is reasonable. But there will be times when interest rates are low for such a long time that risks build up that mean that 28 See Ministry of Finance (2023). 29  See Stein (2013). 30 See also the discussion in Nessén (2016). 17 [30]  monetary policy should take account of financial imbalances. I do not want to belong to any of these camps that quite categorically believe that "leaning against the wind" is always right or always wrong. However, I believe that it may nevertheless be reasonable and wise to allow monetary policy to take into account the build-up of financial imbalances in certain special situations. Some central banks, such as Norges Bank, have a clear mandate for this.31 The Riksbank considers risks associated with developments on the financial markets as long as the credibility of the inflation target is not threatened, and the fulfilment of the target for price stability and macroeconomic stability in the longer term is improved. But to prevent unbalanced developments in asset prices and indebtedness, a well-functioning regulatory framework and effective supervision are needed in particular.
Silicon Valley Bank was the 20th largest bank in the United States.8 Although the bank was large by Swedish standards – about 70 per cent of Swedbank’s size – it was small in the US market. I see the importance of small and medium-sized banks as a clear lesson from the crisis. As an authority with a financial stability mandate, we cannot ignore such banks. Even if the problems occur in relatively quiet periods, they can have unwanted spillover effects. When the problems became acute in Silicon Valley Bank, the concern spread quickly to other similar banks. The reason was probably that they had similar business models, risk profiles and so on. This led to a loss of confidence in these banks, too. The contagion risks became obvious. One lesson is that we should not only look at the size of individual banks, but also whether certain groups of banks are similar and thus exposed to similar risks. This means that even smaller banks as a group can become important for financial stability.9  8 In terms of total assets, see FDIC https://banks.data.fdic.gov/bankfind-suite/financialreporting. 9 The global standards only apply to larger internationally active banks. The regulations applicable to smaller do-  mestic banks vary from country to country. In the EU, by and large the same regulations apply to all banks, but this is not the case in the United States, for example.