18  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  18  The Bank introduced last year “Knowledge Bank”. This is largely intended as an educational device, covering how the economy works and how central bank policies may be affecting it. It contains cartoons and videos as well as prose. It is targeted, explicitly, at younger age cohorts. Its reading score of 8 means it is capable of reaching almost half of the UK adult population. The Bank, in common with many other central banks, is making greater use of social media. As a two-way personalised, socialised, distributed communications medium, with high penetration among the young, it has real attractions. The Bank has a Twitter account with over 200,000 followers. Individuals do not have Twitter accounts and nor does the Bank have a cohort of Bloggers and Vloggers providing daily diaries of time spent at the central bank coalface. But it is early days. These are examples of layered and targeted content, the like of which a number of other central banks, including the Federal Reserve System, are investing. The Bank’s existing publications are now more flexible and layered in their length and content, potentially making them accessible to a wider audience (Chart 18). But this is clearly just the start. I shall resist the temptation to say it is going to be great. (b) Minding your Language  The changing nature of public language means central banks will need to adapt their own language to increase its penetration and reach with the general public.
This was evident from Sweden’s history of uncertainty about government finances and high inflation were Sweden to choose the outsider alternative on the grounds of the insurance argument, this could be perceived as a signal that Sweden’s economic policy would again become accommodating. This risk was also mentioned in the report. The Riksbank fully agreed, on the other hand, that unemployment is a serious problem in the Swedish economy. But we did not consider that this problem could be resolved by remaining outside the monetary union. As the report had indeed pointed out, other measures were needed to improve the workings of the labour market and wage formation. The Riksbank underscored that the necessary structural measures for the labour market would be easier to implement if we had established the credibility of an economic policy for sustainable growth. Does the stronger economy warrant different conclusions? In the light of all that has happened in the past two or three years, the assessments presented in the report and by the Riksbank should perhaps be modulated. The case for an insurance policy and freedom of action was argued at a time when public finances were weak and unemployment was still at a record level. The measures of economic policy had admittedly begun to build up public confidence in a more stable future after the profound crisis in the early 1990s but the outlook was still uncertain. Today the situation is better, with a central government budget surplus and high ambitions for fiscal policy.