Bank of Finland 200 years II: Parliament's bank
Juha Tarkka helsinki.academia.edu
Bank of Finland 200 years II: Parliament's bank
The first volume of this work spans the period from its foundation in 1811 to the outbreak of war in 1939. It tells how Finland obtained its own monetary system half a century before independence from Russia. It also describes the fate of the Bank of Finland under the revolutionary People’s Delegation in spring 1918, and how the young governor Risto Ryti struggled to protect the markka during the Great Depression.

The Bank of Sweden (Riksbanken) is the world’s oldest existing National Bank and probably one of the world’s oldest existing banking institutions. It was founded in 1668 as the Bank of Parliament, or rather the Bank of the Estates: Rikets Ständers Bank. Throughout its history the activities of the Bank, like those of any other central bank, have been the result of politics. There is still a debate about the moment when the Bank can be said to have become part of the Nation with goals serving the general interest rather than those of a few influential groups. A related, but somewhat different question is when can we consider the Bank of Sweden to have started acting like a central bank taking responsibility for the well being of the financial system and the economy as a whole. In this chapter I show that the role of the Bank as a central bank actually began in the mid-nineteenth century as a result of the growing system of commercial and savings banks. That is before it formally became the Bank of the Nation with note issuing monopoly.

Russian banking sector has experienced enormous growth rates during the last 6-7 years. Rapid growth of assets has however contributed to a decrease in capital adequacy ratio, thus influencing the ability of banks to cope with risk. Using quarterly data span-ning from 1999 to 2007 on all Russian banks we investigate the relationship between bank characteristics and risk taking by Russian banks. The analysis of financial ratios reveals that, on average, the risk levels are still below those observed in Central and Eastern Europe. Combining the group-wise comparisons of financial ratios and the re-sults of insolvency risk analysis based on fixed effects vector decomposition, three main conclusions emerge. First, controlling for bank characteristics, large banks have higher insolvency risk than small ones. Second, foreign-owned banks exhibit higher insolvency risk than domestic banks and large state-controlled banks are unlike other state-controlled banks more stable. Third, we find th...

The Finnish political system is normally categorized as semi-presidential, with the executive functions divided between an elected president and a cabinet that is accountable to the Eduskunta, the unicameral national legislature. This chapter analyses parliamentary administration in Finland. The Eduskunta employs around 500 persons, roughly two-thirds of whom are women. The Eduskunta administration is not regulated by the constitution. Instead, the relevant provisions are in the parliamentary rules of procedure. The Committee Secretariat provides secretarial services for the committees as well as handles the preparation of matters to be brought before the committees and the arranging of related support functions. The Information and Communication Department is responsible for parliamentary communication, including via digital and social media channels. In order to understand the functions of the party group staff and MPs’ assistants, it is necessary to provide contextual information about party-political dynamics and the electoral system.