samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The conversations I have had with leaders in the financial sector over the past few years make it clear that this issue is increasingly recognised as being central to business strategy, not just the confines of Corporate Social Responsibility departments. We have now entered the far more difficult second phase, where we must answer the question of how to turn aspiration into action. That means collecting data, building tools and frameworks that enable changes in strategy and risk management. The publication this week of the CFRF guide and the NGFS reference scenarios is a sign we are making good progress here. The third and final phase - which I hope we are fast approaching - is using these tools to make financial and business decisions that progress us on that orderly transition to net-zero. And developing the metrics that will assure us that collectively we are doing enough. 24 25  See research from BlackRock and Morningstar Morningstar reports total assets in global sustainable funds of $ at end 2019 9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  9  I’ve set out today how the financial sector can play its part in answering perhaps the greatest call to action in its history and the Bank’s role in supporting this. We have already taken the first steps. Now is the time to use what we have learned to make real progress on our journey. To be strategic not responsive.

Finally, the size and balance of future risks will be determined by actions taken in the next decade – probably in the next three to five years.4  So we need leaders like you to take bold steps and adopt a forward-looking strategic view of the risks - and the opportunities - from climate change. That means stretching beyond your typical business planning horizons and taking different decisions today, decades before the consequences of inaction become clear. Size of the challenge  I am not going to pretend this will be easy. The size of the challenge is enormous. To put it in perspective, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Global Energy Review estimates that as a consequence of the pandemic lockdown, global CO2 emissions will decline by around 8% by the end of this year.5 And yet to meet a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees in line with the recommendation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)6, we would need to reduce emissions by a similar order of magnitude every year for the next decade.7  The pandemic has thus brought sharply into focus the human and financial costs of disorderly adjustments in the economy. We cannot afford to repeat this experience. Rather we need to achieve net-zero emissions in a different, orderly way.
The integrity of the public sector rests on the strength of character of each and every public official, without any exception. This will require leadership, incentives and structures that will enable individuals to be clear-eyed and independent-minded. This is a spirit best summed up in Mahatma Gandhi’s words: “Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.” Integrity is best demonstrated through the transparency and thoroughness of disclosures. The publication of financial and non-financial information is the central means by which the public can truly hold its government and public institutions to account. Public sector accountants, tasked with the preparation and audit of such information, naturally take on an immense moral responsibility. It is critical that the public sector appreciates and respects the importance and impartiality of this role. Accountants and auditors must be provided with the platform and stature to pursue facts and voice any concerns in a meaningful and constructive manner. This includes follow-up on investigations or corrective actions, where necessary. As the demands and expectations of public service grow, the use of data and the mined information will take centre stage in the administration of the public sector. Accountants will be in the unique position to define, provide and interpret the facts and figures that can greatly influence and shape policy and strategy. Agility: New environment, new challenges and new set of competencies We live in a world that is constantly changing. One shaped by evolving factors influencing societal behaviors and norms.

Muhammad bin Ibrahim: Charting a path for the future Remarks by Mr Muhammad bin Ibrahim, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the National Public Sector Accountants Conference 2017 "Charting a Path for the Future", Penang, 15 August 2017. * * * Thank you for the invitation to speak today. My congratulations to Jabatan Akauntan Negara Malaysia and Persatuan Akauntan Sektor Awam Malaysia on the successful organisation of the 28th National Public Sector Accountants Conference. In two weeks’ time, we will be celebrating our 60th year of independence. Our nation has come a long away – economically, socially and politically. Faced with the challenge of the new and the unknown at the dawn of our independence, our nation has risen to the occasion time and again. We have persevered. We have adapted. We have transformed. We have grown from strength to strength despite the many challenges. This boldness of spirit is something that has driven us from the very first moments of our nationhood. Upon the proclamation of our independence in 1957, Tunku Abdul Rahman had imparted these important words: “From henceforth, we are masters of our destiny, and the welfare of this beloved land is our own responsibility.” These last six decades have been a journey committed to this endeavor. Where rubber and tin once dominated, we now have an integrated, open and diversified economy. Where roads once laid bare, now stands world class infrastructure.
What’s going on here is straightforward enough. QE doesn’t involve “printing money”, at least in the sense that people normally understand the word (i.e. something that doesn’t bear any interest). It replaces one, longer-term interest-bearing liability of the state held by the private sector (gilts) with another, much shorter-term instrument (reserves) that also bears interest. It therefore reduces the average maturity of the public sector’s liabilities, and with it the scope for “surprise” inflation to eat into their real value. Since the 1970s the combined effects of indexed debt issuance, and latterly QE, have materially reduced the fiscal returns to higher inflation. Some history: credible monetary regime matters more for inflation than government debt The absence of any clear target for monetary policy made the inflation of the 1970s more likely but, because the event was more spread out, its underlying causes harder to identify. There were probably several. Fiscal difficulties may have been one of them and, as we’ve seen, rapid inflation clearly had material effects on the real value of government debt (even if there was a subsequent price to pay). 14  See McLaren and Smith (2013) for further information on the impact of interest rate changes on the cash transfers between the APF and HMT. 15 See also Reis (2019) and Fukunaga et al. (2019) on the fiscal effects of higher inflation.

Whether inflation is actually an efficient tax – whether the economic harm it causes is worth the fiscal benefit – is far from clear. Certainly an extra bout of inflation that’s fully anticipated, and that therefore raises nominal interest rates and bond yields in advance, does very little to improve the government’s financial position, and even less now than in the past. That’s because the public sector has almost nothing in the way of zero-interest liabilities. If higher inflation and nominal growth pushed up the demand for physical cash the government might make a little more from that source. (The economic value of cash is higher than the cost of producing it. The difference, known as “seigniorage”, is a source of revenue for the public sector3). But the sums involved are 2 On their own, the instruments of policy are not a reliable way to discern whether there’s “monetary finance” of the government. But they may be more informative alongside other information. For example, if the central bank is easing policy in the face of clear inflationary pressure that might suggest it’s putting weight on some other objective: the joint behaviour of instrument and target can be informative. It might also tell you something if the central bank eased policy and, at the same time, the authorities introduced restrictions to limit or prevent people from selling the government’s debt. That way, the central bank might be able to reduce borrowing costs for the government alone – i.e.
Additionally, it incorporates a new policy tool for the Central Bank of Chile, which would be able to engage in repo operations with the Open Market Operations System member entities under exceptional circumstances where the stability of the financial system may be at risk. (iii)  A broader and more efficient large value payment systems that promotes market neutrality and financial stability  Payment systems are essential for the functioning of the economy and the financial system as they allow transactions of persons and companies to be undertaken. The contribution of payment systems to the economy is enhanced when there is adequate interoperability between different payment instruments and the infrastructures that process transactions. Currently, interoperability is somewhat restricted because non-banking institutions cannot participate directly in key financial infrastructures such as clearing houses and the RTGS system. Expanding the participation of the Central Bank of Chile’s RTGS system to nonbanking entities, so far almost exclusive for banking institutions, will encourage competition in the payment service provision markets, improving efficiency, market neutrality and financial stability. 11  In this context, the “Resilience Bill” beforementioned includes provisions that would allow the Central Bank to open settlement accounts and some liquidity facilities to Central counterparties, Clearing Houses, systemic Saving and Credit Cooperatives, and non-banking issuers and acquirers of payment cards. Having this access would, for instance, facilitate the provision of instant payment services for non-banking issuers of payment cards.

Jean-Pierre Roth: Demography and economic policy – the challenges ahead Summary of a colloquium by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, on “Chances et défis du vieillissement” (opportunities and challenges of demographic ageing), at the University of Geneva, Geneva, 10 November 2006. The complete speech can be found in French on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  What will Switzerland look like in 2050? The demographic changes under way will have a strong impact on the future demographic landscape, with regard to both the working population and the older age segments. The ageing society poses two major challenges for economic policy: ensuring the production capacity of the Swiss economy as well as the continuance of the social security scheme. To address these challenges, an economic policy that promotes productivity increases while guaranteeing economic growth must be implemented with immediate effect. In line with this economic policy, adjustments must be made to our social security system.
In the September Banco de España forecasting exercise I have referred to in my address today, the impact of this programme was not explicitly incorporated into the projections, since at that time there was notable uncertainty over many key areas in relation to the use of these funds. However, we did publish an analytical text in which, under different assumptions about the execution time of the projects requested, the types of projects and how they would be financed, an initial approach was made in respect of their potential macroeconomic impact.4 4  See Box 9 of the “Quarterly report on the Spanish economy”, Economic Bulletin 3/2020, Banco de España. 11  The results of this analysis suggested that the European programme, given the potential volume of funds it could mobilise, has the capacity to become a significant factor of support to the Spanish economy’s recovery in the wake of the impact of COVID-19. Also, and in particular, it could be a unique lever for raising our modest potential growth rate, especially if the design and prompt implementation of new public investment projects exerting a high multiplier effect on activity were pursued, accompanied by the introduction of structural reforms providing for the more efficient functioning of our economy as a whole. In this respect, the NGEU programme entails an upside risk to our September forecasts that I shall quantify later.

On the health front, combating the virus obviously continues to be a priority objective until an effective medical solution has been developed. This may require continuing to adapt the capacity of the health system to ease the effects of the second wave on public health and to manage potential and subsequent fresh outbreaks. At some point further ahead, the objective must be to purchase the necessary doses of the treatment or vaccine, for distribution to the population at large. Beyond the health sphere, the short-term priority must be to continue to support households and firms until a sound and sustained recovery is in place. This is something we will very likely not see until a medical solution is available that will render restrictions on people’s movements and on certain sectors of economic activity unnecessary. Until this is the case, budgetary support for private economic agents is crucial to minimise the risk that the present health and economic crisis may trigger a financial crisis, which would entail much higher and longer lasting costs in terms of production and employment. However, these support measures must now be more selective, concentrated on the population groups and businesses most affected by the crisis, to maximise their effectiveness in a setting in which public funds are necessarily limited. This was the backdrop for the extension of the furlough schemes up to January 2021 agreed between the Government and the social agents.
-  6  this applies to the instruments used to provide liquidity: the MRO and LTRO  BIS Review 120/2007  -  this applies to minimum reserve features  -  this applies to the number of counterparties with direct access to central bank money  -  this applies finally to the range of eligible collateral  Let me say a word about each of these features of the Eurosystem operational framework: 1. At moments of term structure difficulties and shortening of the liquidity constraints, it is of advantage to have both: one-week and three-month liquidity providing tenders conducted weekly and monthly. Fine tuning operations and extraordinary additional tenders, according to standard procedures, allowed a commensurate response within a familiar context, rather than adding to prevailing uncertainty by introducing, in an emergency context, untested new facilities, instruments or procedures. 2. In monetary policy operations, the Eurosystem grants direct access to liquidity to a large number of credit institutions. All euro-area institutions subject to minimum reserve requirements and which fulfil the relevant contractual or regulatory arrangements applied by their respective NCB, may access the standing facilities and/or participate in open market operations based on standard tenders. At the end of August 07, 1 676 counterparties had access to the open market operations, 2 809 to the facility, and 2 141 to the marginal lending facility. 3. The combination of relatively high reserve requirements at 2% and the monthly averaging principle allowed banks to dip into their reserves to meet their liquidity needs.

BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  Table 1 International baseline scenario assumptions 2014  2015 (e) Dec.15 Report  2016 (f) Dec.15 Report  Mar.16 Report  2017 (f) Dec.15 Report  Mar.16 Report  Mar.16 Report  Terms of trade Trading partners' GDP World GDP at PPP World GDP at market exchange rates Developed ec's GDP at PPP Emerging markets' GDP at PPP External prices (in $  -1.8 3.4 3.4 2.7 1.7 4.8 -0.9  -4.2 3.0 3.1 2.5 1.9 4.0 -9.3  -4.5 2.9 3.1 2.4 1.9 4.0 -9.7  -3.8 3.2 3.4 2.8 2.1 4.4 -2.8  -4.2 2.9 3.1 2.4 1.8 4.0 -5.8  1.7 3.3 3.5 2.9 2.2 4.6 1.5  0.7 3.1 3.3 2.7 1.9 4.5 1.0  LME copper price $ WTI oil price $ Brent oil price $ Gasoline parity price $ Libor $ (nominal, 90 days)  311 93 99 731 0.2  249 49 53 466 0.3  249 49 52 467 0.3  220 43 45 373 1.0  220 40 41 398 0.7  230 49 52 384 1.6  230 45 46 420 1.5  (e) Estimate. (f) Forecast. Source: Central Bank of Chile.
This applies regardless of whether one measures Swedish inflation in terms of the CPI, the CPIF or the internationally harmonised HICP.2 Inflation in several of the crisis-torn countries in Europe has been pushed up by the increases in indirect taxes implemented to improve public finances. And this explains some of the difference with regard to inflation in Sweden. But even taking this into account, it is clear that inflation has been more subdued in Sweden than in Europe in general since 2011 (see Figure 2). 2  2  The HICP is calculated in detail for the countries within the EU and at aggregate level also for a couple of countries outside of the EU. BIS central bankers’ speeches  The fall in inflation is broad A closer examination of developments in Sweden shows that the fall in inflation is broad and not caused by any individual component. We have already noted that inflation measured in terms of the CPI, the CPIF and the HICP is low, compared with both the inflation target and other countries. This also applies to measures of underlying inflation, that is, measures where one tries by various means to take into account that some prices vary a lot and may temporarily influence the CPI.3 Regardless of which measure one looks at, it is clear that underlying inflation has shown a falling trend since 2012 or earlier.

But the problem with prices falling is often said to be that demand will then collapse as households are postponing consumption while waiting for prices to fall so they can buy more cheaply.19 This reasoning is not necessarily wrong, but is really only a reformulation of the problem I mentioned above; that low inflation limits the scope for making monetary policy more expansionary. There is a risk that households will postpone their consumption – that is, that they will increase their saving – if the real interest rate becomes unjustifiably high. Here it is necessary to put price developments in relation to developments in wages and the return on saving. There is therefore scarcely reason to believe that anything dramatic will begin to happen just as the general rate of inflation becomes negative. One should also remember that substantial differences are hidden in the price trends for different product groups that lie behind the general rate of inflation. One example is developments in prices for technology-intensive goods such as TVs, computers and mobile  15  According to Drehmann et al. (2012), an average financial cycle, in which the credit cycle is a central element, is 16 years long. The length of an average business cycle is much shorter, perhaps five years. 16  Inflation expectations have fallen in recent years in the surveys conducted by the National Institute of Economic Research and Prospera. Short-term expectations are now just below one per cent, but long-term expectations are still close to the two per cent inflation target.
BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  properly – adequately weighting labour and import costs – a significant change in the Phillips curve slope is harder to detect. 13 Given the importance of imports to UK inflation, accounting for around one third of the CPI basket, the Bank of England must consider both secular and cyclical dynamics. As has been highlighted at previous symposiums, from a secular perspective, globalisation has dampened the relative prices of traded goods via a steady expansion in the pool of available labour. The entry of China, India and the ex-Soviet bloc into the world economy in the 1990s effectively and progressively doubled the global labour pool from 1.5 to 3 billion workers. 14 By taking the implication of this sustained, cumulative relative price shock into account, monetary policy has been able to deliver desired inflation outcomes. For the UK, Chart 7 shows that between 1998 to 2006, when core goods inflation averaged around –1.5%, the stance of policy supported 3.7% average services price inflation (which was largely determined by the evolution of domestic costs) in order to meet the inflation target. The questions now are how soon this process of integrating a global reserve army of labour will have run its course and whether, as services become increasingly tradable, this balancing act between domestic and global costs will become even more complex. Today, on top of these secular relative price trends, policymakers also have to take into account the cyclical disinflationary impulse from the weakness in overall global demand.

And over the past month some of the key spending and activity indicators have been strong. The balance of risks to output growth and inflation has shifted towards the upside. As those risks began to materialise, the MPC acted. The Committee started to raise interest rates to deal with the changing balance of risks last August, and has now raised rates by 75bp in total to keep inflation on track to hit the target. But, by responding early to changes in the inflation outlook, the MPC ultimately needs to raise interest rates by less than would be the case if we delayed. Looking forward, some of the factors responsible for the pick up in inflation through 2006 are likely to unwind during 2007. Oil prices have fallen by around a third since August, and will feed through to petrol and utility prices. The rise in the exchange rate will dampen the impact of higher import prices. It is also important not to exaggerate the effect of stronger demand on inflation. As we pointed out in our November Inflation Report, the ability to recruit migrant labour continues to offer a safety-valve for demand pressures in the economy, and is, no doubt, in some part responsible for the continued muted level of wage pressures. That is a particular help in present circumstances, and has reduced the extent to which interest rates have needed to rise. But how quickly and by how much inflation will fall over the next year or so is difficult to judge.