Bank of Sweden Detail

About Bank of Sweden Detail

The Bank of Sweden, now Sveriges Riksbank, was founded by the Swedish parliament in 1668 after the failure of Stockholms Banco, which had issued Europes first banknotes. Stockholms Banco, run by Johan Palmstruch, collapsed when it issued too many notes without sufficient backing. The Swedish parliament created the Riksbank as a public institution to avoid the problems of private banking. The Riksbank pioneered central banking concepts including lender of last resort and monetary policy. The bank issued the first government backed banknotes in Europe. The Nobel Prize in Economics, technically the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established by the Riksbank in 1968 to celebrate its 300th anniversary.