5  Since 2007, when wealth tax was abolished, no authority has had the assignment of collecting data on individual’s debts and assets. 6  The eight largest banks are Danske Bank, Handelsbanken, Länsförsäkringar Bank, Nordea, SBAB Bank, SEB, Skandiabanken and Swedbank. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  loans these borrowers have registered with UC, not just those granted by the eight largest banks. The amount of data is therefore substantial and the loan volume covers approximately 80 per cent of household loans from monetary financial institutions and 94 per cent of all mortgages. 7 This should be compared to the random samples in the mortgage surveys, which cover 1.6 percent of households loans from monetary financial institutions. The data includes monthly data for a three-year period 8 on various types of credit, taxed earned income after tax, number of co-borrowers, taxation values for detached houses, the parish in which the borrower is registered and other information. The material contains information on almost four million indebted adult individuals, which corresponds to 52 per cent of Sweden’s total adult population. 9 The individuals in the data can be linked to over 1.8 million households. On the basis of this material we now have the possibility to conduct an in-depth study of total household debt and not only of new loans – a possibility that we have never really had before. Using this individual data, it is also possible to examine how debts are distributed, for example between different income and age groups and geographically.
Mervyn King: Monetary policy developments Speech by Mr Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, to the CBI, Institute of Directors, Leeds Chamber of Commerce and Yorkshire Forward at the Royal Armouries, Leeds, 21 October 2008. *  *  *  My first memories of Leeds are from a wet summer in 1958. I was ten years old, we lived on the moors above Hebden Bridge, and my father took me to my first Test Match –England against New Zealand at Headingley. It rained all day on both Thursday and Friday, and, when play started in mid-afternoon on Saturday, on a drying wicket New Zealand were bowled out by Laker and Lock for 67. So I became a slow bowler. I was taught to bowl – slow left arm – at Old Town primary school by the headmaster, Alfred Stephenson. During the morning break he would mark the wickets in chalk in the playground, and draw a small circle exactly on a length. If we could pitch the ball within that circle he would give us a farthing. As we improved, and the payout of farthings increased, the morning break became shorter and shorter – my first lesson in economic incentives, or what is known in the trade as “moral hazard”.