It has recently become slightly easier for the banks to issue at longer maturities both in Sweden and other parts of Europe. In the United States, too, the issue volumes in the commercial paper market have increased. The Swedish mortgage spreads have also declined. We can thus see positive effects of the measures taken, although there appears to be a long way to go before the crisis has run its course. However, looking ahead to future crises – and I do not believe that we can entirely avoid crises occurring in the future – it is desirable that we acquire a better preparedness. If there is one thing we have learned from this crisis it is that we need to have in place regulatory frameworks for managing banks in distress. Such regulations should include several different aspects, everything from a deposit guarantee system to insolvency procedures for banks. 4  BIS Review 149/2008  Above all, the crisis has pointed to the need for cross-border cooperation. We have seen examples of this in Europe. This type of cooperation on crisis management should begin in “peace time”. Contacts that have been cultivated already and a common parlance may be decisive factors in determining how efficiently a crisis in a cross-border institution is handled. It is also important to hold joint crisis exercises, using different scenarios.
Lars Nyberg: Will cash replace cards? Speech by Mr Lars Nyberg, Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at the Cards and Cash Payments Forum, Stockholm, 3 May 2011. *  *  *  I would like to thank Björn Segendorff for his contributions to this speech. Since the latter half of the 19th century, the theory of evolution has gained general acceptance. It is considered to be self-evident that better-adapted species will outcompete those that are less-well adapted. Environmental changes may even lead to some species becoming extinct. There are no longer any sabre-toothed tigers or mammoths because the Ice Age is over. A new species may also be superior to another species in a crucial way. This is why we no longer see Neanderthals walking the streets. Nevertheless, some other amazingly old species are still with us. Crocodiles have been around for 85 million years and the coelacanth, if I am correctly informed, can be traced back 400 million years! An evolutionary process, although of a slightly different kind, is now also taking place on the payment market. Rapid technological development is changing the world around us. New payment methods are arising. Bank cards and credit cards have become a natural part of our everyday lives, as has Internet banking. In Sweden, cheques have been outcompeted and are hardly used at all. The number of paper-based giro payments is falling rapidly and it also appears that the use of cash is declining.