6 I would also like to mention that the deposit guarantee, which is managed by the Swedish National Debt Office,  is also important in avoiding bank runs. 7 See, for instance, Söderberg (2018). 4 [35]  One can say that the Riksbank functions as the hub of the Swedish financial system. We can also note that the financial system that has grown up around the world is based on countries or currency areas having state money and state control over the payment system. Quite simply, state institutions are needed to guarantee that the requirements in these points are met. 8  Payment markets are changing – motives for an e-krona Almost all economic activity is linked to some form of payment, so without functioning payment systems the economy would grind to a halt. It is therefore important that the central banks adapt to the technical innovations that are now rapidly changing the payment market. There must be transactional efficiency in Swedish and by that I mean that they should be cheap and easy to use for both domestic and international payments. This is also what households, quite rightly, expect in today’s digital society. By keeping apace with technological developments, we ensure that the safety net I mentioned earlier, which preserves the value of money and ensures it is easy and cheap to use, remains in place.
In other words, we are facing a gap between food demand and food supply. Prices have to adjust to restore equilibrium. Since the price elasticity of food demand is low as compared to,  2  BIS Review 109/2008  say, durable goods, there needs to be a drastic rise in food prices, which is what we are facing today. Dear Guests, Until recently, the common view among central banks of developed countries was to give priority to problems in financial markets, ignoring the signs of inflationary pressures. Certainly, there are structural reasons behind the recent run-up in food and energy prices, as I have just briefly discussed. However, it is also undeniable that there are significant demand-driven pressures over commodities. Loose monetary policies adopted at the turn of the century certainly played a key role, together with excess liquidity in the financial system. Fast-forwarding to the recent period, the central banks of developed countries still keep real interest rates negative in the face of financial risks may hamper a correction in commodity prices. The commonly accepted practice in inflation targeting regime is that monetary policy should not react to supply-driven shocks that are temporary in nature and should allow temporary increases in inflation in the short-term, unless they create deterioration in inflation expectations. Otherwise, undesired fluctuations might arise in economic activity and relative prices. The increase in commodity prices would trigger a self-correcting mechanism. By changing the relative prices, it would provide valuable information on how the resources of the economy should be distributed.