samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Ladies and Gentlemen, in order to achieve efficient allocation of resources and to promote savings and investment, there is need to achieve and sustain low and stable interest rates. As earlier indicated, it is worth noting that lending interest rates have trended downwards in the recent past owing to the reduction in inflation. Low and stable interest rates would create conducive credit conditions, which would improve accessibility and availability of credit to the productive sectors. This would result in expansion in investment, increased production as well as enhanced value addition. This ultimately leads to sustainable economic growth required to accelerate poverty reduction in our country. Mr. Chairman, another aspect of the Bank of Zambia mission is that of ensuring financial system stability. As you may be aware, financial system stability is very critical to the maintenance of macroeconomic stability. As a matter of fact, monetary policy would not be effective in pursuing the inflation objective if the financial system were not stable, as monetary policy actions are transmitted through financial institutions. In this regard, the Bank of Zambia will continue with its efforts of ensuring stability in the financial sector. A stable financial system plays a catalytic role for financial institutions to provide the financial products that will contribute to the development of the insurance business. In this instance, the Bank will continue to support local financial institutions in their efforts to mobilise increased savings particularly domestic, which should go towards sustained financing of the future productive activities in our economy.

Charles Bean: The Monetary Policy Committee’s policy dilemma Speech by Mr Charles Bean, Deputy Governor for Monetary Policy of the Bank of England, at the Association of British Insurers’ (ABI) Economics and Research Conference, London, 3 March 2011. *  *  *  Almost three years ago, in April 2008 when the financial crisis was still in its early days, I gave a speech entitled “Walking the Tightrope” 1 . In that speech, I noted that the United Kingdom was faced with an unenviable conjunction of developments. On the one hand, the dislocation in credit markets was weighing on demand. In due course, that could be expected to put downward pressure on inflation. On the other hand, rapid growth in the emerging economies, especially in Asia, had put upward pressure on oil prices, which went on to peak at nearly $ a barrel in July of that year. Higher oil prices were squeezing demand too, but were adding to, rather than reducing, inflation. In the face of these twin forces, activity began to fall, but consumer price inflation rose sharply, reaching 5.2% in September. For the first eight months of that year, the Monetary Policy Committee was faced with setting interest rates so as to balance the risk of downward pressure on inflation from a sharp slowdown in growth associated with the financial crisis, against the risk that the period of high oil prices and elevated inflation would result in a wage-price spiral.
To reach that wider audience, to close those trust and understanding deficits, central banks will need new tools and techniques. A New Frontier for Central Bank Engagement  Which tools and techniques? Were this simply a case of producing more, trust and understanding problems would have been long since solved. It is not. As philosopher Onora O’Neill has argued, simply adding to reporting does little for accountability and trust-building. 63  If reports are mostly unread or unreadable,  smothering people in more words and numbers could even detract from trust and accountability. In one sense, this is not a new point. Claude Shannon, the grandfather of information theory, did not define information by words or digits. Instead he defined it by whether uncertainty was reduced on the part of the receiver. 64  If receivers are overwhelmed by the depth, discouraged by the density and bamboozled by the  complexity, reporting can be disinformation on Shannon’s criterion. For a chunk of society, the very volume of reporting may be increasing uncertainty and impairing information, understanding and trust. Even the term “central bank communication” – a mainstay of central banking and a centrepiece of academic studies of central banks – may fail as a description of what is these days required to build trust and improve understanding. The quest to improve communications makes sense. But it has more than a hint of better sermons to the assembled congregation, enhanced education of an inattentive audience, a smoothlyswinging one-way door. Communication means mouths.

13 While monetary and financial stability policies are often seen as the fulcrum of central banks, they do not fully define their responsibilities. A survey by the Bank of International Settlements identified a further 16 responsibilities undertaken by at least some central banks (BIS, 2009). 4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  4  accompaniment to increased central bank responsibilities and autonomy. With increased delegated powers came increased societal responsibilities to explain how those powers were being discharged. This shift in transparency practices took time. In 1981, Karl Brunner was still speaking about the “mystique” of central banking. 14  In the early 1990s, “mystique” was still the one-word advice offered by one prominent  central bank governor (Paul Volcker) to another (Mervyn King). 15  For most of their history, opacity has been  deeply ingrained in central banks’ psyche. And for much the greater part of its history, the Bank of England was at the forefront of that opacity agenda. For its first three centuries, the Bank appears to have kept its public utterances to a minimum. It was effectively mute. The prevailing ethos was well-captured by the job description provided to the official who became, in effect, the Bank’s first press officer: “keep the Bank out of the press and the press out of the Bank”. 16  The Bank was good to its word. During the period 1920 to 1945, the Bank’s communications strategy was far from expansive.
The issues now range from the choice between the use of rule versus discretion on bank capital, to the use of leverage ratio, and to the implementation issue that includes how to exercise the measures effectively in the context of a financial system that is non-complex, as is the case of the SEACEN economies. On this, I have a view that vigorous stress-testing by supervisors and banks can help keep the effects of procyclicality manageable. I hope this conference will further discuss this issue. Finally, the complexity and cross-border linkages of financial systems will continue to increase, not decrease, following this crisis. On the other hand, the right and effective global regulatory and supervisory structures to handle cross-border implications are still evolving, while information flows and cooperation among regulators and supervisors, at this time, continue to be limited. It is clear that without significant improvements in both information flows and cooperation among supervisors, it will be difficult to prevent or contain future financial crisis spillovers effectively. Ladies and Gentlemen, this eleventh SEACEN conference provides us with an excellent opportunity to discuss these current and important issues. Our challenges are similar, and through our coordinated views and collaborated efforts, the SEACEN economies collectively will be in a stronger position to address these challenges. I wish all of you a successful conference with a fruitful exchange of ideas and a wonderful collaboration.

In the current crisis, the securitization boom and the easing of monetary policy in the US helped fund the loan growth, while in the case of the Asian financial crisis, it was the large capital inflows in the form of direct borrowing that funded the credit boom. In both cases, however, poor underwriting standard by banks was an important common contributing factor. Looking back, the Asian financial crisis has been an important turning point for policymakers in the region, as the lessons learned from the crisis had led to many important policy reform initiatives, all of which aimed at strengthening the robustness and the risk management discipline of the domestic financial systems, and this brings me to my second point. BIS Review 96/2009  1  In the case of Thailand, after having restored financial stability in the early 2000s, financial reform became a top priority, with emphasis on instilling prudent regulations and strong risk management. We adopted a macro-prudential approach in the early 2000s, in recognition of the systemic linkages between the financial system and the increasingly opened macroeconomic conditions; utilizing our natural institutional advantage as we continue to oversee both monetary policy and financial institutions supervision. Hence, from 2003 to 2006, a series of macro-prudential measures were introduced, aiming at restraining then the rapid growth of credit, especially credit card loans and mortgage loans.
I don’t know, and I do not have to know, national initiatives in a national context in this respect. On the central bank side we have sanctions at national but also at European level. You’re referring to the case of the Latvian bank ABLV... The Latvian subsidiary. I read in the media that the supervisory side of the ECB informed the 2/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  national authorities of what happened and suggested to them to use the tools they have at their disposal. Since the way the national tools were used is now the subject of a court case, I cannot comment further on it. Let the court decide. The national central bank for its part took its own measures. And they suspended the bank. The ECB did not suspend the whole group [from monetary policy operations] until later. The Banque centrale du Luxembourg (BCL) suspended the group before the ECB because they have the possibility to do so at national level. Would you have another example? There are some investment funds which ought to provide information and statistics to the national central bank, which then reports to us. But some funds don’t do it. We have asked the BCL several times to initiate sanctions because we consider that the local authority has clear knowledge of the matter. I think they are now ready to do it. I would not say centralisation is better per se. Sometimes proximity leads to higher efficiency.

Under the law, the New York Fed does not have the authority to provide what I would characterize as a “naked” guarantee – one that would be unsecured and not limited in amount, and would put the U.S. taxpayers at risk for the entirety of Lehman’s trading obligations. As Chairman Bernanke has observed, “the Federal Reserve has done, and will continue to do, everything possible within the limits of its authority to assist in restoring our nation to financial stability and economic prosperity….” 6 In this case, Lehman had no ability to pledge the amount of collateral required to satisfactorily secure a Fed guarantee, one large enough to credibly withstand a run by Lehman’s creditors and counterparties. As events subsequently played out, several weeks after Lehman weekend, on October 2, 2008, Congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA), which provides the U.S. Treasury Department with legal authority to issue a guarantee. 7 Again, the Federal Reserve did not then, and does not now, have such authority. Even if it had been legally possible, a Government guarantee would have also placed the taxpayer at enormous risk because it would have undermined deal certainty. It is important for the acquirer – and not a third party – to issue the guarantee because it gives the acquirer a strong incentive to close the deal and assume control of the target. For example, J.P. Morgan Chase, which proffered the guarantee needed to merge with Bear Stearns, negotiated a host of provisions from Bear Stearns that assured deal certainty.
These strains have increased drastically in 2022 with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and have spread to food. 7  Third, the recovery of supply has also been delayed by the emergence of bottlenecks. The speed with which demand has recovered, and higher goods consumption as a result of the pandemic, have put excessive strains on global production chains, which were still affected in 2021 by the pandemic restrictions. This has led to input supply problems in industries such as semi-conductors, plastics, wood and industrial metals, which have been compounded by serious disruptions in goods transport. In any event, despite the importance of global factors, the impact of the current inflationary episode on the main world economies has been uneven. The variation in the extent of the rise in inflation reflects various idiosyncratic factors that differ in nature, such as the differing speed of the recovery in demand in each region. It also reflects other factors related to the composition of the consumption basket, productive specialisation, positioning in global and regional production chains, labour market slack, the anchoring of expectations and exchange rate fluctuations. Indeed, demand has been particularly vigorous in the United States, which has resulted in more intense and earlier underlying inflationary pressures there. At the end of 2021 private consumption stood more than 4% above its end-2019 level, with a very significant contribution to this rise coming from consumer durables. In the euro area, meanwhile, it stood around 3% lower.

Those who wish to go into this subject in more depth can read our most recent Financial Stability Report. As we know, the property sector consists of two parts: the housing market and the commercial property market. The Riksbank studies the property sector for two main reasons. One reason is that property companies comprise the largest individual borrowers from the banking groups approximately 15 per cent of the banks’ lending is to property companies. Properties are also the dominant form of collateral for loans. Loans with property as collateral comprise almost 50 per cent of the bank’s lending against collateral. The health of the companies in the property sector therefore has repercussions for financial stability. The growth rate for credit has remained at an average level of just over 6 per cent a year for the past four years, which exceeds annual GDP growth by a few percentage points. It could be considered cause for concern to have a higher growth in credit than in fundamentals, i.e. GDP, and it is easy to recall developments at the beginning of the 1990s, but since then there has been a change in the focus of monetary policy and fiscal policy towards macroeconomic stability. At the same time, the effects of earlier as well as new structural reforms, such as the tax reform, the pension reform and deregulation, have also contributed to the Swedish economy becoming less sensitive to disturbances now than it was in the 1980s.
The Government has indicated in the National Budget that monetary policy should be the first to react when the outlook for the economy changes. A situation may nevertheless arise where an active use of fiscal policy is required, either because capacity utilisation is particularly low, or because pressures in the economy are very strong. Under certain conditions, the interplay between monetary and fiscal policy may fail to function. Interplay functions well when the decision-making bodies recognise that one body's decisions  4  BIS Review 65/2002  influence the decisions of the other. In the absence of such recognition, a decision will not produce the intended result. The economy might move in a highly unfavourable direction, with high interest rates, sluggish economic growth and a deterioration in the state’s financial position. The best contribution Norges Bank can make is to clarify our response pattern within the framework of our mandate. When the response pattern in monetary policy is known and remains unchanged over time, the social partners can also take any monetary policy response into account when wages are being determined. The outcome of this year’s wage settlements, which resulted in average wage growth between 5½ and 6 per cent, may indicate that there is not an adequate anchor for wage formation in Norway. Under the traditional wage formation model, manufacturing industry negotiated first. Wage growth in Norway was to be on a par with wage growth among our trading partners in order to maintain competitiveness.

16 We must continue to safeguard the inflation target, and learn the major lesson from developments in the 1970s and 1980s, namely to ensure to retain the credibility of the nominal anchor. And we must also learn the major lesson from the financial crisis, namely that financial stability is a condition for low and stable inflation and good economic developments in general. The global dimensions of the financial and debt crises affect the conditions for Swedish monetary policy As I mentioned earlier, the Swedish economy, despite good conditions, has been greatly affected by the financial and debt crises. One question that has arisen once again is how much monetary policy in a small, open economy like Sweden’s can deviate from that conducted in other countries. 17 The correlations between Swedish and international (KIX-weighted) GDP growth and inflation since the 1980s are both above 0.8, which indicates that a very large part of the variation in economic activity in Sweden stems from  14  See, for instance, Aiyar, S. Calomiris, C. W. and Wieladek, T. “Does Macro-Pru Leak? Evidence from a UK Policy Experiment”, NBER Working Paper no. 17822, 2012. 15  In my speech here last year I gave a detailed description of my thoughts on monetary policy and macroprudential policy. 16  See also Billi, R. and Vredin, A., “Monetary policy and financial stability – a simple story”, Economic Review 2014:2, for a description of monetary policy and financial stability that reflects this opinion.
The Kingdom achieved a surplus in its budget amounting to 5.2 percent of GDP, and recorded a surplus in the balance of payments for the twelfth year in a row which stood at Rls 250.3 billion. The inflation rate rose slightly from 5.1 percent in 2009 to 5.3 percent in 2010, and stood at 5.2 percent in October 2011. It is noteworthy that the inflation in recent years resulted from a rise in food prices and rents. The pace of growth in the national economy is expected to accelerate during the current year. Several factors contributed to such growth in GDP, including increased government spending to unprecedented levels, a large part of which was devoted to various development projects, and an increase in domestic banks’ finance to both the public and private sectors. Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, In continuation of your care to fulfill the needs of the citizens and provide the requirements of a decent life, you issued a number of royal decrees, which will, Allah willing, contribute to enhancement of the citizens’ standard of living. You ordered the establishment of the Ministry of Housing and approved the building of 500,000 housing units in all regions of the Kingdom over the coming five years with allocations of Rls 250 billion. The limit of housing loans extended by the Real Estate Development Fund was increased from Rls 300,000 to Rls 500,000 which will hopefully provide more houses for citizens and constrain the inflationary pressures stemming from the increase in house rents.

Under your wise leadership and continuous guidance, the Supreme Economic Council continued to accomplish a number of development steps aimed at restructuring and reorganizing the economy and streamlining regulations and legislation in order to promote the rise of the level and competitiveness of the economy, achieve the optimum operation of the production factors and provide an attractive environment for domestic and foreign investment. As a result, the investment environment has improved. According to the “Doing Business Report 2012” issued by the World Bank, the Kingdom ranked twelfth among 183 world countries in terms of ease of business performance. The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund noted that the Kingdom was well posed to encounter the global financial crisis. However, the sound supervisory and regulatory frameworks significantly contributed to strengthening the capacity of the financial sector to withstand the crisis. The Board stressed that the sound economic management of oil wealth provided the necessary financial resources to confront the global financial crisis in addition to reducing the public debt from 104 percent of GDP in 1999 to 7 percent in 2011 and strengthening the position of net foreign assets of SAMA. The IMF Executive Board also commended the strength of the Kingdom’s banking system, which is well-capitalized and has high liquidity levels. It has noted that the banking system has showed an ability to encounter a set of regional and global shocks.
Andrew Gracie: Cyber in context Speech by Mr Andrew Gracie, Executive Director of Resolution of the Bank of England, at the UK Financial Services Cyber Security Summit, London, 2 July 2015. *  *  *  It is the prerogative of the keynote speaker to take an Olympian view. I am not sure what the gods on Olympus would have made of cyber. Indeed from the goings on in Greek mythology, it could well have been that they were cyber perpetrators rather than protectors. So perhaps it is fitting that there are hacks now like ZEUS that carry their names. But my Olympian view will try and put the work that we are doing as authorities and with the sector in context. The sector’s role is important. After all, it is the responsibility of firms first and foremost to ensure that they are resilient to cyber attack. From an authorities perspective, cyber is somewhat different, but it relates to the same underlying goals that drive our policy interventions elsewhere in relation to operational resilience. I want to describe this relationship before turning to the specific steps that we have taken in the UK over the last two years under the aegis of the Financial Policy Committee (FPC). Cyber is relevant to many of the functions of the Bank of England as a financial authority. We are responsible as prudential supervisor for the safety and soundness of banks, large investment firms, insurers and financial market infrastructure.

BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Basel III implementation has been proceeding on a comparable basis in advanced and emerging market countries. The Financial Stability Board has been monitoring the unintended effects of reforms on EME banks and EMEs report no significant adverse effects. 4 However, potential differences in reform implementation across jurisdictions could create challenges, particularly in countries where foreign banks are active. This underscores the importance of continued home and host coordination. I would like to briefly touch on two U.S.-specific financial regulatory issues with international implications, namely enhanced prudential standards for foreign banks, including intermediate holding company requirements for the largest institutions, and issues surrounding correspondent banking, U.S. anti-money laundering rules, and “de-risking”. Of these, the latter may have the most relevance for the EMEs broadly. The adoption of enhanced prudential standards for foreign banking organizations (FBOs) is a key element of U.S. regulatory reforms, and a significant change in supervision of FBOs. 5 The largest FBOs (with U.S. non-branch assets greater than $ billion) must hold their U.S. subsidiaries under an intermediate holding company (IHC), and meet various capital, leverage, liquidity, stress testing, risk management and corporate governance requirements. These requirements respond to a mandate in the Dodd-Frank Act for enhanced standards for the largest domestic and foreign banks.