The rapid economic development of these economies as they have integrated into the global economic system has created a major engine of growth for the world economy. However, this period of intense globalisation has not been without its downsides. Over my time on the Monetary Policy Committee since October 2006, we have seen how a highly integrated economic and financial system can also generate instabilities and transmit economic shocks rapidly around the world. The debates and the decisions of the MPC while I have been a member of the Committee have been dominated by the impact on the UK of the turbulence created by a global financial crisis, a major world recession and the inflationary impact of movements in globally traded energy and commodity prices. There was very little inkling of the turmoil to come when I joined the Committee in October 2006. My time on the MPC started towards the end of its first decade, which was a period of relatively stable economic conditions – steady growth and low inflation, with unemployment around 5% of the labour force. For me, however, this honeymoon period did not last long. Less than a year after I joined the Committee, over the summer of 2007, we saw the first tremors of the financial crisis. And by the autumn of 2008 it was clear we were heading into a major world recession.
Barbro Wickman-Parak: New international regulations for banks – a welcome reform Speech by Ms Barbro Wickman-Parak, Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at a meeting with Tjänstemännens Centralorganisation (TCO), Stockholm, 26 November 2010. *  *  *  Over the past three to four years the world has undergone the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The scope of the crisis and its catastrophic economic consequences quickly led to the realisation that something had to be done to avoid this happening again. As soon as the worst phase of the financial crisis was over, extensive work began on correcting the inadequacies in the regulatory systems that had come to light. The reform work is conducted in many forums at both national and international levels. And not least at EU level. But today I shall focus on the reform work in the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, in which both the Riksbank and Finansinspektionen (the Financial Supervisory Authority) participate. This Committee is the international body that has established frameworks for bank regulation since 1974. In line with internationalisation that has taken place in recent decades, banks in different countries have become increasingly dependent on one another. This also applies to our Swedish banks, which to a great extent fund themselves on the international markets. Both Swedish banks and Sweden in general therefore benefit from banks around the world becoming more resilient.