They are well within the reference limits that the IMF, for example, applies in classifying countries according to whether the use of foreign currencies is important for them or not. Accounting in foreign currencies is confined to a handful of companies with multinational operations and generally speaking the króna is overwhelmingly predominant. However, it is true that among the advanced economies, Iceland has one of the highest levels of external debt and exchangerate sensitivity. Bearing all this in mind, there is hardly any question about the solid position of the króna in the Icelandic economy. Nothing gives us any reason to expect that to change. As in other countries that earn considerable revenues from tourism, foreign currencies are always used to some extent, but this is probably a much more common practice in countries with long borders with other currency areas, such as Canada or Switzerland. It seems highly unlikely that the króna’s position as a trading currency would be so severely undermined that other currencies would be preferred in domestic transactions. Continual movements in the exchange rate of the króna would create a broad risk in using other currencies, unless all liabilities - and that includes wage settlements - were to be converted into the same foreign currency at virtually the same time.
•  One major process that left its mark on the 1990s is the breakthrough in technology, above all for computers and telecommunications. This had been on the way for a number of decades and began to flourish in many parts of the world as it became increasingly clear what the microchip had to offer. It can be likened to the development of the steam engine in the late 18th century or the combustion engine and the electric motor a century later. As we know, those earlier technical breakthroughs had far-reaching consequences for the development and transformation of our society. The process is not - either then or today - a simple progression. But the setbacks are manageable and pave the way for new advances. Many of the setbacks originate in faulty expectations of the new technology’s impact. •  The other major process has to do with the financial system’s deregulation in recent decades. As a result, we now have a world where capital markets and capital flows are about as free as they were before the outbreak of World War One. With the Great Depression and World War Two, the idea of returning to a less restricted financial system failed to catch on. It was not until the 1980s that deregulation reached Sweden, after starting somewhat earlier in many other industrialised countries, including the United States. A free financial system is needed in order to promote the development of new technology and a genuine social transformation.