2  A banking crisis every thirty years With this historical retrospective, I would like to remind you that as long as there have been banks, there have also been financial crises. And when financial crises have arisen, the state has often had to rush to the rescue in one way or another. In Sweden alone, severe banking crises have occurred no less than nine times in the past 250 years. 3 This entails, on average, one crisis every thirty years. 1 Thank you to Johan Molin, who has helped me write this speech. Valuable comments were received from Mats  Anderson, Christina Nordh Berntsson, Sara Edholm, David Forsman, Mattias Hector, Martin W. Johansson, Gabriel Söderberg and Anders Vredin. 2 See Wetterberg (2009). 3 See, for example, Hagberg (2007). 1 [14]  This speech is about how Sweden can counteract and mitigate the effect of such crises, and not least the significance of having an appropriately-designed foreign currency reserve to succeed in this. Johan Palmstruch’s banknotes were an innovation in their day, but now, 350 years later, we in Sweden are heading towards a cashless society, primarily due to new financial technology in the payments field. What this and some other development trends may entail for society and for the Riksbank is the subject of my speech today. The banks’ business models entail risks What is so special about banks that the government sometimes intervenes to counteract banking crises? Nothing like this happens when, for instance, a manufacturing or construction company collapses.
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