When banks' access to liquidity dried up on every market, this hit all banks, including those that are financially strong, like the Swedish banks. Many central banks around the world had been taking measures for some time to strengthen liquidity in banking systems but the Riksbank had not needed to act. The interbank market and other short-term markets had worked, though interest rates had climbed sharply. When  BIS Review 140/2008  1  the crisis had a more tangible impact on Sweden, the Riksbank also implemented a series of interventions. Meanwhile, central banks in the rest of the world continued with their interventions and governments approved crisis packages to guarantee financial stability. Against the backdrop of this summary of events in the financial sector over the past year, today I will speak about the effects of this financial crisis on the Riksbank's work of maintaining a safe and effective payments system. But first I would like to briefly describe how we carry out this work under normal circumstances. I will also conclude with a comment on the crisis’ effects on monetary policy. Work with financial stability under normal circumstances The task of maintaining a safe and effective payments system includes the role of the Riksbank as the banks' bank. This task includes maintaining the RIX payment system for payments in Swedish kronor. Participants in the system may borrow during the day and overnight to cover temporary deficits. The task also includes continuous oversight of the financial system.
The Monetary Policy Council will keep a close eye on other indicators, including all leading indicators of changes in prices, such as capacity utilization rates, production costs, developments in incomes and commodity prices. The Monetary Policy Council will also monitor long-term interest rates and the current account balance. * *  *  These decisions call for two remarks. First, on a technical level, the Monetary Policy Council has decided to monitor several narrow and broad money aggregates simultaneously in order to obtain a concise estimate of all monetary developments. As we have seen, certain data, and particularly, but not exclusively, M3 data, have been severely disrupted recently by several factors, such as the very substantial fall in short-term rates and the ensuing large-scale reallocation of investment flows towards non-monetary assets, higher taxes on money market mutual funds, and the continuing very high level of interest paid on housing saving plans. We will therefore keep a very close eye on the M1, M2, M3, and M3+P1 aggregates as expressions of the underlying growth of the money supply. Particular attention will be paid to the growth of the M3+P1 aggregate covering monetary assets and contractual savings. A very large proportion of the outflows from M3 in the past year was directed towards investments covered by P1, and particularly housing savings plans with a residual maturity of one year or less. In fact, this type of investment at present constitutes a very close substitute for monetary assets.