Besides these measures, aimed at getting the credit market to function more efficiently, the Riksbank has taken more conventional monetary policy measures. The repo rate has been lowered during the autumn by a total of one percentage point – starting with 0.5 percentage points on 8 October in a joint action with the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the ECB, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Canada, followed by another 0.5 percentage points on 22 October. The purpose of these interest rate cuts was to mitigate the ongoing financial crisis’ effects on output and employment in Sweden while continuing to target 2 per cent inflation. With the autumn’s serious disruptions to financial markets, however, we probably should not expect that policy rate adjustments will have the usual effects. The adjustments have not affected market interest rates in the same way as they do under normal circumstances. 9  ”Policy rate setting and the monetary policy steering system”, speech by Riksbank Governor Stefan Ingves at Handelsbank, 28 April 2008. BIS Review 153/2008  7  Conclusion Let me now conclude. Major changes are in progress in the securities markets and in the financial infrastructure. The systems for securities transactions in the Swedish financial infrastructure are becoming increasingly integrated with systems abroad. This places new demands on cross-border cooperation. Two problems to do with the infrastructure have, moreover, come to the fore this autumn: counterparty risks and insufficient market transparency.
Turning now to market transparency, what is the situation in Sweden? MiFID entails the introduction of rules for transparency before and after share trading. The requirement applies to all trading facilities and involves the publication of prices and volumes. So for shares there are no deficiencies concerning transparency in these respects. There may, however, be shortcomings in over-the-counter trading in interest-bearing securities and derivatives. A large proportion of fixed-income trading in Sweden is done by telephone rather than on a market. Derivative instruments can also be traded off-market. 8 If trading is arranged instead with an electronic facility, each order is matched against the best price and market access can be improved for new players. Still, there may be financial markets whose functioning is not improved by increased transparency. It should therefore be up to each market, including the Swedish fixed-income market, to decide which approach is most effective. What are the lessons from this argument? Well, in times like these, coloured by financial market uncertainty, there is much less propensity to take risks. Financial market participants are more interested in low-risk assets, low-risk markets and counterparties that they know and are safe. In a severe situation, this can mean that in certain cases trading ceases altogether because even small risks are perceived as too large. This is because the problems associated with counterparty risks and a lack of transparency become more tangible when markets are turbulent. Every measure by which the financial markets can be made to function even in turbulent times is welcome.