It performs its main objective, as it is written down in the law – to keep the national currency stable – and also the functions relating to its exclusive right to release banknotes and coins into circulation and to maintain the currency circulation in Bulgaria. One year after the BNB was founded, the Law on the Right of Minting Coins in the Principality was adopted, whereby the national monetary unit was created and named ‘LEV’ and the coins were named ‘stotinki’. In 1881 the first Bulgarian coins – copper coins in denominations of 2, 5 and 10 stotinki – were minted in England, and in 1882 silver 1 and 2 leva coins were minted in Russia. Soon the Bulgarian lev became widely accepted, facilitating trade payments and fostering the country’s economic development. At the same time the new national currency began to play the role of a ‘national unifier’, a symbol of the independence and sovereignty of the new Bulgaria. For many years the production of Bulgarian coins used to be assigned to specialised mints in Europe – Birmingham, St Petersburg, Brussels, London, Vienna, Paris, Belgrade, Kremnica, Budapest and Berlin. For over six decades now, since the Bulgarian Mint opened up in 1952, Bulgaria has been producing its own circulation coins, and since 1965 commemorative coins as well. In 1994 the BNB Printing Works was established as a structural unit of the central bank, and four years later the printing of Bulgarian banknotes began.
This means that the financial sector is of considerable importance to the national economy and it is thus reasonable that the State should intervene in the workings of the financial system. In the wake of the crisis, one element of the discussion has been that regulation and supervision have to date focused too much on individual institutions and too little on the risks that were generated in other parts of the system. There is a lot of talk about the need to build structures that can prevent systemic risks, a so-called macroprudential framework. Exactly what a macroprudential framework contains is still unclear. It seems to mean somewhat different things to different people. I have therefore simply decided not to use this term today. Instead I intend to discuss the content of future efforts to prevent systemic risks without even mentioning the term macroprudential or its Swedish equivalent – a word that we have not yet invented. About the crisis: something old, something new and something borrowed Running a bank is about creating and maintaining confidence. When a bank makes losses – or it is feared that it will make losses – capital is required to cover these losses so that  confidence is not undermined. When the crisis became really serious, the banks did not have sufficient capital to retain confidence. This resulted in a liquidity crisis. The liquidity crisis became so severe because the banks had become increasingly dependent on short-term market funding.