Prior to these periods, the manufacturing sector’s competitive position had weakened. The fiscal rule is useful in that it gives weight to long-term considerations when addressing day-to-day economic policy challenges. The fiscal rule stabilises enterprises’ expectations as to competitiveness and the krone exchange rate. This can prevent abrupt and pronounced swings in the structure of the economy. If the government authorities disregard the rule, enterprises will lose an important reference. A policy rule can make matters worse if economic agents have drawn up long-term plans on a faulty basis.1 The current cost level in the Norwegian business sector is adapted to an expansion of the petroleum sector and a steady phasing-in of petroleum revenues into the mainland economy. Costs rose sharply from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s and reached a very high level. In subsequent years, costs have varied around this level. After a period, we will be able to cover a smaller share of our imports using current petroleum revenues and drawings on the Petroleum Fund. Competitiveness will then have to be improved – perhaps to around the level prevailing at the end of the 1960s prior to Norway’s emergence as an oil nation.2  The labour market Compared with other European countries, income formation in Norway has been fairly flexible. Wage growth has declined rapidly when unemployment has risen. This is why unemployment has not taken hold at a high level. The favourable results partly reflect the considerations underlying the wage settlements at a centralised level.
Similarly, if you went to your personal lawyer and overheard him refer to you in conversation with his associate as a “counterparty,” rather than as a “client,” would you worry? You should. My point here is not that banking is a profession like medicine or law. My point is about how you see your customer and the service provided to that customer. A counterparty is not someone needing your help; “it” represents a profit opportunity – something to be exploited. Their loss is your gain. A customer, by contrast, is someone to be served. It is right to charge a fee to a customer, client, or patient, but the transaction is driven by the other person’s needs. Many financial services firms, however, refer to the people they do business with as counterparties. This is no accident. It characterizes the way in which the organization views the person it is facing in its businesses. Viewing customers as profit opportunities is inconsistent with a strong ethical culture. In my experience, firms that consider their operational model as service provider tend to have a better culture than those firms that consider their operational model as money maker. The second item that I would leave out is a conception of a bank as a money making machine. This is not to say that I would ignore profitability; that would be foolish and would destine a firm to a short life.