The MPC has proved to be one of those rare “instantly invented precedents” that seem to have worked. It may not achieve the cult status of the Nine Worthies who, in the Middle Ages, inspired poetry, sculpture and stained glass windows. As one writer has remarked, “If one reviews the list of virtues that contemporaries found valuable in a knight - courtesy, loyalty, prowess, hardiness, largesse, and frankness - the Nine Worthies seem to meet the standard”. If that level of achievement is no more than an aspiration for its nine members, at least the MPC can claim a record of reasonable competence during its first five years. As Stephen Bayley remarked in 1986, “civilisations are remembered by their artefacts, not their bank-rates”.
Mr Bäckström reports on the significance of risk management  Speech given by Mr Urban Bäckström, Governor of Sveriges Riksbank and Chairman of the Board of Directors and President of the Bank for International Settlements, at the Risk Management Forum, organised by Ernst & Young, in Stockholm on 3 February 2000. *  *  *  First a word of thanks for the invitation to attend this forum and discuss future risk management. I shall be talking about the socioeconomic aspects of financial risks and what the authorities are doing in this field. Why is the financial sector so important? What makes the authorities so concerned about the financial sector? Why don’t they focus to the same extent on, say, the forest industries, car manufacturing or even on other service industries? The reason, of course, is that the financial sector - banks in particular - performs such special and central functions in a modern economy. It is not the case that parliaments, governments, supervisors and central banks around the world are particularly concerned about individual banks. What matters is the part that financial institutions play in sophisticated modern systems for credit and payments. Virtually every economic transaction involves a payment service of some kind; it can take the form of banknotes, payments on account or the provision of credit. It follows that if the facilities for payments by households and firms are seriously disrupted, the consequences for the real economy may be disastrous.