[...] The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps […] (it) in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization […] (as a) process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” When confronted with this state of affairs – a state of affairs that is admittedly disquieting and unsettling – the worst possible reaction is to retreat into nostalgic denial, and to pretend that we are living in temporary blips of disequilibrium, in exceptional situations, that will at some unspecified point in time revert to a blissful state of economic, social, cultural, political and institutional equilibria. The only reasonable approach is to endeavour tirelessly and to the best of our technical ability to navigate a reality that is complex, characterised by change and prone to crises. If there is no going back, then going forward we can only go forward. Navigating this reality requires us to be constantly vigilant to the risks involved, a task that requires us to understand reality and to deal with it to best of our technical competences. Change brings with it challenges and opportunities, which challenges and opportunities easily morph into each other, and generate further challenges and opportunities. Page | 10  Of course, the financial system, like any other, cannot reduce risk to zero.
And if it were possible there would be no real reason to let the monetary policy decisions be made by a Board with six members. It would be enough to have a single wise decision-maker. In recent decades, however, the trend has been in the opposite direction. All over the world, it has become more and more common to let monetary policy decisions be made by a group of individuals – a committee or board – rather than by a central bank governor alone. Probably the most important explanation for this is that many central banks have become more independent in this period. This has made it seem more natural to delegate the right to make decisions to a group of people rather than to one individual. This development has meant that research on monetary policy decision-making in groups has accelerated. 1 One result that has emerged is that groups tend to make better decisions than individuals. 2 This may be because the members of the group have different backgrounds, knowledge and experience that they can bring to the monetary policy discussion. These differences mark the decisions that the group makes in different ways so that these decisions tend to be better than the decisions that an individual would have made alone – the whole becomes greater than the parts. This applies irrespective of how the decision is made – by voting, as at the Riksbank, or in some other way.