samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The article was intended to serve as a basis for public debate; in our opinion it provided the best foundation that was then available for discussing the krona’s long-term value. The krona’s equilibrium value is naturally something that the Riksbank considers continuously and the analysis is constantly being developed. Accounts of various aspects of the exchange rate have been presented in the Inflation Report. The material that will be produced in the event of Sweden deciding to participate in ERM2/EMU will have to incorporate the additional information since 1996. It should also be noted that the levels and intervals that were presented in the article refer to the krona’s trade-weighted exchange rate and are therefore not directly applicable to the question of a reasonable central rate for the krona against the euro. Furthermore, the euro is a new currency. Arriving at just the right future exchange rate for the krona against the euro is therefore not exactly easy. Although the financial markets are naturally eager to know, at this stage it is too early to allow the discussion of the krona’s path to focus on specific intervals or levels. But the course is clear—in the event of a euro peg, the rate for the krona will be stronger than the current level. Current monetary policy In conclusion I should like to say something about the monetary policy situation in Sweden. International economic prospects gradually deteriorated during 1998.

Mr Heikensten discusses the new currency and the Swedish economy Speech by the First Deputy Governor of the Bank of Sweden, Mr Lars Heikensten, before the Swedish Shareholders’Association in Sölvesborg, Bromölla, on 23/1/99. On New Year’s Day, ten currencies in Europe were replaced by a single, common currency. The changeover went well, no doubt exceeding some expectations. The elaborate systems that were used in earnest for the first time to transmit cross-border payments functioned properly, with no serious technical hitches. This made it possible to establish a uniform instrumental rate for monetary policy throughout the euro area. The new currency also had a favourable reception in financial markets, accompanied by falling interest rates. EMU has thus got off to a successful start. But the challenges posed by monetary union and any risks connected with the project are mainly of a different nature. They are economic and political, affecting the participants as well as non-euro countries. With eleven countries subscribing to a single monetary policy, the conditions for economic policy in Europe have changed. So have the terms for Sweden and economic policy here. These matters have not yet been discussed at all fully in Sweden. Under these circumstances, I shall be opening our debate today by touching briefly on four issues: the new challenges posed by the euro to economic policy in Europe; the consequences for Sweden; the path of the krona’s exchange rate; and current monetary policy. Challenges to EU economic policies The euro’s successful launch was underpinned by intensive preparations.
Between 1999 and 2006, housing debt more than doubled.3 So it’s not so surprising that we got an anemic rebound. The financial crisis unleashed powerful forces that have damped spending and sapped the recovery of its vigor. I’ll mention three. First, it destroyed a huge amount of household wealth. Second, it flattened the housing market. Third, it made it hard for businesses and households to get credit. Let’s look at each of these. First, when house prices collapsed, the wealth of American households plunged by about six-and-a-half trillion dollars. That equals more than 40 percent of the total size of the U.S. economy. Many people went from feeling rich to feeling poor, with neither the means nor the will to spend. Instead, they became intent on repairing their finances by increasing their saving and trimming their debt. In other words, they deleveraged. During the recession, the household saving rate climbed to about 6 percent of income from about 1 percent. It’s still about 4-1/2 percent. In the long run, higher saving is healthy. But, in the near term, it puts a brake on spending and slows growth. Second, the depressed housing market has been a drag on growth. Home construction plays an important role in the economy, of course. When you add in items that often go with a new home – things such as furniture, carpets, and appliances – you’re talking about a significant fraction of overall economic activity.4 Today, there are still millions of homes in foreclosure, and millions more on the verge.

The policy actions the Fed takes will depend on how economic conditions develop. If circumstances change, our policies will adapt. No matter the circumstances, I assure you that we at the Fed are doing everything we can to achieve the goals of maximum employment and stable prices. Thank you very much. References Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. 2011. “Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee”, June 21–22. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. 2012. “Press Release”, January 25. Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 2010. “Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit”, August. Feroli, Michael E., Ethan S. Harris, Amir Sufi, and Kenneth D. West. 2012. “Housing, Monetary Policy, and the Recovery”. Presentation to the 2012 U.S. Monetary Policy Forum, New York, February 24. Jordà, Òscar , Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor. 2011. “When Credit Bites Back: Leverage, Business Cycles, and Crises”. NBER Working Paper 17621. Mian, Atif, Kamalesh Rao, and Amir Sufi. 2011. “Household Balance Sheets, Consumption, and the Economic Slump”. Presentation at American Economics Association meetings, Atlanta, GA, January 8, 2012. Reinhart, Carmen M., and Kenneth S. Rogoff. 2009. This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 7  For more information, see Board of Governors (2012). BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  Williams, John C. 2012. “The Federal Reserve’s Mandate and Best Practice Monetary Policy”. Presentation to the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum, Claremont McKenna College, February 13. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches
In many parts of the world, and not least in the euro area, low inflation over a long period of time has come as a surprise to central banks and others. The European Central Bank (ECB) has expressed concern over falling inflation expectations and recently cut its policy rate to 0.05 per cent, at the same time as declaring that this is the lowest possible policy rate for them. Moreover, they have announced several measures aimed at stimulating lending to households and companies. But it is still uncertain exactly what the measures will be and how extensive they will be. Moreover, there is little or no previous experience of these interest rate levels and measures in the euro area. It is therefore difficult to assess what effects the ECB’s measures will have on GDP and inflation in the euro area and thus, ultimately, what they will mean for inflationary pressures here in Sweden. One complicating factor is that the central banks in the United Kingdom and the United States appear to be taking a different direction with their monetary policy than the ECB. Their monetary policies are diverging. One reason why we are interested in expectations of policy rates and supplementary measures in other countries is that they influence interest in assets denominated in Swedish krona and therefore ultimately the development of the krona exchange rate.

One often sees forecasts as mean forecasts. This means in principle that the risk that the economy will develop less well is as great as the chance that it will develop better. A mean forecast for GDP growth abroad, for instance, balances everything that could give rise to lower growth against everything that could give rise to higher growth. Another way of expressing the same thing is that the forecast is a form of middle way of all the different roads the economy could take in the coming period. This way of working with forecasts means that one acts as though one has succeeded in quantifying the possibilities and effects of all of the different potential courses of events. A year or so ago there were frequent discussions of the risk of a split or disintegration of the euro system – what was the probability that this would happen and what effects would it have for Sweden? Today there may be reason to ask these questions with regard to an escalation of the Ukraine conflict or to a substantial fall in housing prices in Sweden. If one considers these difficulties in quantifying various possible sequences of events and probabilities that they will occur, it may not be as simple a matter to make decisions on monetary policy and make forecasts for future interest rates as it is sometimes made out to be.
Speaking of the past, I cannot help remembering that in the early nineties, when I took over as Governor of the National Bank of Romania, a tremendous effort was needed – not only in Romania, but also in the other former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe – to go from a monobank-type system to a two-tier system. The effort was even bigger in a country like Romania, where – after some attempts to implement reforms in the sixties and seventies – the economic and financial system had become ever more centralised, more Stalinist-like in the final decade of the communist regime. In hindsight, now that things have settled, these changes may seem like a piece of cake, but please try to imagine how difficult it was to take the reins of an institution that had operated in the context of centralised state planning of the entire economic activity. There was no trace of monetary policy and commercial banking operations needed to be separated from central bank operations. The former were taken over by Banca Comercială Română, later part of the Erste Bank group, while monetary policy became the responsibility of the National Bank of Romania. The “parting of the waters” occurred pretty quickly, but the new NBR only accounted for less than 5 percent of the former central bank employees, most of them in cash management and accounting.

The Bank of Albania deems that though the cautious consumer behaviour has not made any direct impact on economic growth over this period, it has helped keep risk premia on track and has led to low long-term interest rates, thus contributing to boosting private investments. Looking forward, we deem that the fiscal policy should retain its orientation toward fiscal indicators sustainability, supporting Albania’s economic and monetary stability and being an important pre-requisite for a stable and long-term growth. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Foreign demand continued to support the growth of exports and economic activity throughout 2012. Trade deficit narrowed by 7.9% in the third quarter, reflecting mainly the good performance of exports. The latter increased by 17% in the third quarter, retaining the previous quarters’ positive trend. On the other hand, imports performed poorly, reflecting the low demand for consumption and investment. In the third quarter, imports recorded positive annual growth of only 0.7%. Performance of monetary indicators attests to moderate pressures on monetary inflation. The annualised broad money growth rate decelerated to 6.8% in September. Reflecting the sluggish domestic demand, economic agents’ demand for money has been low. The weak demand for money has been associated with a constantly falling contribution of funding from public and private sectors to increasing the monetary supply throughout 2012. Private sector’s contribution continued to slow during this month; its annual growth rate reached 4.2%, recording one of the lowest historical levels.
The banks solvency (shown through the capital adequacy ratio, which equaled 16.4% on June 30,2009) is evidently beyond the prescribed minimal level of 8%, which provides enough capacity to absorb the possible negative shocks from further increase in the risks in their operating. However, the banks in the Republic of Macedonia face with several challenges. The consequences of the global economic crisis, which was felt in the Republic of Macedonia through the real sector, had negative influence also on the banking system. First, the reduced economic activity and the enhanced psychological pressures arising from the uncertainty regarding the duration and the consequences of the international economic crisis, reflected on the banks' balance sheets. In the first half of 2009, the banks' total assets reduced by 0.9%, with the annual growth rate reducing to only 3%. The decrease in the assets was reflection of the deposit core contraction, which went down by 2.4% in the same period, because of which the annual rate of change obtained negative value and on June 30, 2009 it equaled 0.1%. Only the banks' credit activity continued to expand, although with very slower dynamics relative to the preceding years. In the first quarter of 2009, the credit growth equaled only 1.7%, while the annual growth rate on June 30, 2009 reduced to 14.4%. Parallel to the lower volume of activities, also the currency propensity of the banks' depositors was changed. They were apparent through their enhanced interest for saving in currency component.

Should this trend continue, Thailand will not be able to maintain its competitiveness and output level. Fortunately, many technological advancements available at much lower costs today hold huge promises for raising productivity. Cloud computing, robotics and automation have allowed businesses to save significant costs. Big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities can now offer insights that enable more targeted services. I urge you all to seize this opportunity and leverage on new technologies to improve the productivity of your firms, your industries, and eventually our country. Second, on immunity: for growth to be sustainable we must have sufficient immunity to withstand unexpected shocks. We are living in a time of great changes, where outcomes can be sudden, unpredictable, and volatile, bringing 3  with them new forms of risks. Not only will firms face risks related to strategy, finance, and operation, but they will also face risks associated with driving digital transformations. Managing the transformation process in the digital environment requires fostering an organizational culture that is agile and nimble—to gain flexibility and speed that drives productivity and innovation. But, at the same time, a strong culture on risk management must also be instilled to safeguard firms’ resilience. As industries increasingly rely on data and data-driven technologies, cyber security must be considered a top priority. Globally, the number of threat incidents have been rising, with increased frequency, sophistication and scale of their impacts.
The drivers of the deceleration back then appeared, to some extent, to be idiosyncratic and short-lived, relating to the effect of emissions standards on the euro area car industry and a normalisation of world trade from its very strong growth rates in 2017.1 Yet it was clear that the loss of growth momentum could become more broad-based and persistent if two risks were to materialise: first, if external demand were to remain weak; and second, if this were to spill over into domestic demand. In the meantime, the first risk has by and large been realised. The weakness in world trade has continued, which has significantly affected the manufacturing sector. Global goods import growth2 in January reached its lowest level since the Great Recession, on the back of rising uncertainty about trade disputes and a slowdown in emerging market economies, especially China. As a result, growth in extra-euro area goods exports was negative at the end of last year for the first time since January 2016, and industrial production fell by 4.2% year on year in December – its largest decline since 2013 – before recovering somewhat in January. Indicators such as new export orders, which have historically been closely associated with industrial production3, remain in negative territory. So we are now seeing a more persistent deterioration of external demand. But a “soft patch” does not necessarily foreshadow a serious slump.

But for now expectations for investment remain relatively robust. Though professional forecasters have slightly downgraded their projections for investment growth this year – from around 3% to around 2.5% – the fundamentals are in place for investment to rebound, if global growth stabilises. Capacity utilisation stands close to its long-term maximum, financing conditions remain very favourable and corporate leverage5 (as a percentage of total assets) has fallen to levels last witnessed in the early years of EMU – although gross corporate indebtedness6 (as a percentage of gross value added) still stands above its pre-crisis level. The latest surveys also suggest some recovery in business sentiment. While consumption is typically less affected by external developments, its growth rate has slowed over the last year. Higher uncertainty may have played a role, as reflected in the rise in the household saving rate over the course of 2018. But the main drivers were idiosyncratic factors unrelated to the global economy, coupled with country-specific factors in France and Italy. The most important issue for the consumption outlook is the labour market, since higher employment has been the major driver of consumption during the current expansion. So far the labour market has been resilient to the growth slowdown.
The global fall in interest rates reflects the emergence of a considerable savings glut, especially after the countries in Asia joined the world market in earnest after 2000. The decline in interest rates is thus an international phenomenon, driven by falling inflation, lower growth and increased global saving. Interest rates in Norway cannot diverge too far from global rates. An excessively strong krone would then lead to a fall in activity and deflation. The main task of monetary policy is to maintain the value of money by keeping inflation low and 5/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  stable. Inflation targeting is forward-looking and flexible so that it can contribute to high and stable output and employment and to counteracting the build-up of financial imbalances. Monetary policy cannot assume primary responsibility for financial stability. But as we are now in the process of raising the policy rate somewhat, this could also help curb debt growth. Will debt be reduced? It is easy to imagine that house prices will just continue to rise – as they have done for more than 25 years. Rising income and government wealth have gone hand in hand with rising house prices and higher household debt. But Norway’s experience from the years after oil was discovered, and in particular from the years following the banking crisis at the beginning of the 1990s, cannot serve as reliable guidance for what we can expect in the future.

We introduced the core elements of the new series – hand, globe, real location and object – when we launched the 50-franc note; naturally, these feature prominently on the 20-franc note, too. There are many additional design elements, such as line structures in the background and renderings on the security strip, all of which play on the note’s theme and key motif. Everyone will interpret these design elements in their own way. But let me make one or two purely descriptive points. The hand on the front of the note holds a prism through which light is dispersed into various colours. On the globe, the motif of light is echoed in the constellations. The background line structures on the front of the note are reminiscent of a kaleidoscope in which colourful patterns are produced through reflected light. The real location on the back of the note depicting a film festival is emblematic of Switzerland’s creative and cultural scene. Light plays an important role here as well. By projecting it onto a screen, we create a kind of second – ‘artificial’ – world. The object on the  Page 2/3  Berne, 10 May 2017 Fritz Zurbrügg  News conference on new 20-franc note  20-franc note – a butterfly with its scale-covered wings that diffract light into iridescent colours – symbolises the rich diversity of colours and shapes in nature. Let me conclude by looking to the future. We will start issuing the new 20-franc note on 17 May.
Margaret Thatcher swept into office in 1979, bringing with her a strongly held and clear political philosophy: to reduce the role of the state in the economy and rid the country of its "wasting disease". Thatcher embraced the free-market views of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. She resolved to break the monopoly of nationalised industries and curb the oppressive power of the trade unions. She revamped policies, cut back the role of government and the extent of the welfare state, and privatised inefficient public enterprises. She confronted the unions and defeated them, notably in a prolonged miners' strike. In short, she succeeded in changing the prevailing economic paradigm from a socialist welfare state to a much more laissez-faire system. Thatcher had to tackle strong vested interests, and could only reshape Britain's economy and society with the support of the people. This was by no means an easy task after three decades of heavy state welfarism. Yet she won four successive elections and, with them, the mandate to make fundamental changes to the country. Her reforms outlasted her - even the Labour Party, to be elected, had to reinvent itself as New Labour and espouse policies not so different from what the Conservatives stood for. The remaking of Singapore Singapore too has had to remake itself to get to where we are today. Since independence, we have always been on the move, adapting to an ever-changing environment. Being a small and open economy, we are constantly subject to the vagaries of the external environment.

Robert Ophèle: Diversity and harmonisation of deposit insurance Closing speech by Mr Robert Ophèle, Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, at the International Association of Deposit Insurers (IADI) International ERC Conference, Paris, 26 May 2016. *  *  *  I wish to thank the IADI and the FGDR for inviting me to deliver this closing speech. Bruno Bezard opened the conference for the French Treasury, and a central banker will close it. This is a perfect arrangement. Deposit insurance or deposit guaranty is a fascinating tool. History and geography have demonstrated the variety of schemes and how they are a powerful force for the better, or perhaps for the worse. I can’t indeed refrain from quoting the American Bankers Association, in 1933, i.e. more than 100 years after the introduction in the US of the first deposit insurance scheme, by the State of New York in 1829: “these historical experiences show that the guaranty plan is inherently fallacious and based on erroneous premises and assumptions. It has proved to be one of those plausible, but deceptive, human plans that in actual application only serve to render worse the very evils they seek to cure.” Today 113 Deposit Insurance Funds are in place, but I should stress that the jury is still out as to their effectiveness. Indeed, recent history shows how tricky deposit insurance can be. Just remember a few years ago, when schemes avoiding moral hazard by not providing a 100 percent coverage of even the smallest deposits were favoured.