samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Further, the invasion is having a negative impact on the global supply chains for certain productive processes, with signs of a worsening of bottlenecks, after the partial improvement in the fourth quarter of 2021, although the lockdowns in China to check the pandemic may also have contributed to this. In any event, the latest indicators of export orders point to a slowdown in trade flows. Amid so much uncertainty, preparing macroeconomic projections is even more complicated than usual. The Banco de España’s latest forecasts,1 published on 5 April, confirm that the gradual recovery in activity has been blown off course by the invasion of Ukraine: GDP growth has been revised down and inflation up, compared with the previous projection exercise in December 2021. These projections were prepared on the basis of still-incomplete information for the first quarter of the current year. According to the data available, the recovery in activity continued in the period leading up to the war. This is reflected, for example, in the information on social security registrations, despite the effects of the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, probably due to the beneficial effects of the high rate of vaccination. However, the same social security registrations data also show that employment growth had already begun to falter in March and early April, following the invasion of Ukraine. Through the above-mentioned channels, the war has led the output growth projections for 2022 and 2023 to be revised downwards by 0.9 pp (to 4.5%) and 1 pp (to 2.9%), respectively.

In this regard, the Banco de España’s latest projections point to a substantial downgrade in GDP growth in 2022 and 2023, while the rate of inflation is expected to rise sharply this year. Second, economic policies have a pivotal role to play in this scenario. On the one hand, European economic policies and domestic fiscal policies must respond decisively, providing targeted support to the most vulnerable households, businesses and sectors affected, and offering certainty. It is important to ensure that such action is indeed selective and temporary in the case of the fiscal policy of a country like Spain, whose room for budgetary manoeuvre, already very limited before COVID-19, has been significantly further eroded as a result of the pandemic. Meanwhile, amid sharply rising inflation, the ECB has taken gradual steps towards normalising its monetary policy, already leading to a slight tightening of financial conditions. Looking ahead, monetary policy decisions will depend on the new data and, given the significant degree of uncertainty, flexibility, gradualism and optionality will be maintained. We are clearly committed to adopting all such measures as may be necessary to ensure price stability and safeguard financial stability. Lastly, amid the current upsurge in the price of energy and certain other commodities, it is vital to guard against the emergence of second-round inflation effects, particularly in the form of a wage-price spiral. In the short term, preventing this feedback loop is neither easy nor, above all, agreeable.
Today, there are a few areas I would like to focus on: First, I will very briefly recap our Op Res policy, including our expectations of firms and the links to other key policy areas such as outsourcing and Critical Third Parties (CTPs); Second, I will share with you some initial assessments of firms’ progress based on our supervisory work on UK banks and building societies so far; and Finally, I will cover what is coming up next in our Op Res roadmap; this includes our expectations around what firms should be doing, and the supervisory steps the PRA will be taking. 1. The PRA’s operational resilience policy 1/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  Starting with the first of those points, I will provide a short recap of our expectations of firms in the Op Res policy. I will keep this brief as I am aware that many of you will already be very familiar with our expectations. In particular, there are three particular policy expectations that I will draw out. i) Important Business Services The first is the requirement for firms to identify their IBS. Here we expect firms to take a holistic approach and consider all parts of their business in order to identify the full suite of services they offer, and then which of those should be deemed “important”. The definition of “importance” should be based on a service being provided to an external end user and having the potential to threaten regulatory objectives in the event of a disruption.

And ultimately, where we identify that firms have taken an approach which is not consistent with the aims of the policy, then we will certainly let those firms know. Findings on impact tolerances On impact tolerances it’s clear from our work that, whilst progress has again been made, firms have found this more challenging than identifying IBS. This is in part due to the complexity of defining tolerances for the different regulatory objectives of customer harm or market integrity 3/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  versus safety and soundness, and – for the largest firms – financial stability. For example, we have seen that several of the IBS that have been submitted by firms were accompanied by an impact tolerance for customer harm or market integrity but did not include one for safety & soundness, and an even higher number did not include one for financial stability. These are gaps which we expect firms to fill as a matter of priority. We also noted that the granularity with which firms defined their IBS impacted the tolerances they then defined.
A long list of lessons on financial stability has emerged, though how to put them in practice is subject to an intense debate. The cooperation at a global scale is the key to solve current problems and addressing the future ones, but to maintain the spirit of cooperation among nations is getting more challenging as the memory of the crisis starts to fade away. Outlook for emerging market economies As we all know, capital flows to emerging market economies have intensified recently thanks to better growth prospects, interest rate differentials, and relative stability of financial institutions in these countries that proved their strength and flexibility to extreme shocks. As liquidity in the global financial system increases thanks to rapid expansion of high powered money in major currency countries, central banks of small open economies face the risk of losing control over monetary conditions. Policy rate hikes to contain inflationary pressures and restrain credit expansion are likely to lead further widening in interest rate differentials, thereby fueling even more capital inflows, more borrowing, higher asset prices and inflation. As a result, emerging market economies today face a growing risk of asset bubbles, excessive borrowing and inflationary pressures – all of which are threatening the financial stability. The problems facing countries with current account deficits are much challenging than the surplus ones, since they have to deal with both financial stability problems arising from the strength of capital flows and the risk of sudden stops.

The uncertainty there is evident, for example, in the banks’ difficulties with borrowing at longer maturities and in investors’ preference for safe government paper over what they perceive as more risky securities such as mortgage bonds. Even the short-term interest rate on the interbank market has risen sharply as a result of mutual distrust between banks, causing them to avoid lending to each other. As a result, the banks’ borrowing costs rise, access to loans decreases, and companies and households pay more for loans. At times, moreover, trading on certain segments of the fixedincome market has ceased completely. When such disruptions occur, the Riksbank has considered that special measures are required to restore the functioning of the markets so that the supply of credit is not jeopardised and the financial markets, and therefore monetary policy, can work more normally. The first sign: a shortage of treasury bills … The very first, very concrete sign of the financial crisis in Sweden was an acute shortage of treasury bills. The high demand for safe investments, especially in the United States, caused interest rates on American treasury bills to fall almost to zero. Even foreign investors then turned to European countries, including Sweden, to get treasury bills that gave a higher yield. The Swedish National Debt Office decided to implement additional issues of treasury bills. The funds from these extra issues are being used for reversed repo transactions with mortgage bonds (purchase of mortgage bonds with agreements to resell them within a specific period of time).
Jean-Pierre Danthine: The Swiss National Bank’s 2012 Financial Stability Report Speech by Mr Jean-Pierre Danthine, Vice Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Media News Conference of the Swiss National Bank, Berne, 14 June 2012. *  *  *  Introductory remarks by Jean-Pierre Danthine I, too, would like to welcome you to this news conference, which for me is also the occasion to present the 2012 edition of the Swiss National Bank’s Financial Stability Report. The report contains the SNB’s assessment of the risks to the stability of the Swiss banking system, and of the need for action. This promotes risk awareness among Swiss banking sector agents, thereby contributing to financial stability. Introduction Economic and financial conditions for the Swiss banking sector have deteriorated since the last Financial Stability Report. The sovereign debt crisis escalated, threatening to spill over from peripheral euro area countries to the core countries of the euro area. In addition, global economic growth lost momentum and tensions grew in the international banking system. There was, likewise, no easing of tension on the Swiss mortgage and real estate markets. The momentum observed in real estate prices and mortgages continued. As my colleague, Thomas Jordan, has already mentioned, under its baseline scenario the SNB expects a gradual improvement in economic and financial conditions over the next 12 months. Although this is considered to be the most likely scenario, the risk of a renewed deterioration in the environment remains high.

Anita Angelovska Bezhoska: Payments in the digital era - inside out Speech by Ms Anita Angelovska Bezhoska, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia, at the 13th Conference on Payments and Market Infrastructures, jointly organised by the National Bank of North Macedonia and the Netherlands Bank, Ohrid (digitally), 9 December 2021. * * * Dear Governor Knot, Minister Besimi, Dear speakers and participants It is my great pleasure to welcome you to our traditional conference on Payments in the Digital Era: Inside Out, hosted by our central bank together with the Dutch Central Bank, for which I express my deep gratitude to governor Knot and his colleagues. Our lives are becoming increasingly digital as a result of the proliferation of new technologies that transform public and private services making them more convenient and accessible to consumers. As our lives have gone digital, so have our payments. The digitalisation of consumer payment behaviour, which has been going on for years, has been accelerated by the pandemics that shifted it in a higher gear. Globally, last year cash payments declined by 16%, while the number of non-cash transactions increased by 6%. The pandemics has particularly accelerated the shift towards real time/instant payments that grew by 40%. In the euro area, according to the ECB survey on payment attitudes (2020)1, 40% of the respondents stated that since the onset of the pandemic they have used less cash and more cards (contactless in particular).
The relevant question is whether the global factors currently pushing up on goods prices are still there by the time a policy decision taken today could have any significant effect of its own. What is their prospective contribution to inflation in eighteen, twenty-four months and beyond? This is the horizon that matters for policy and against which the word “transitory” should be measured. As I outlined earlier, one key contributor to the big acceleration in traded goods prices has been the  Chart 7. Switch from services to goods has been a global phenomenon. Services consumption started recovering with the lifting of restrictions  big shift in consumer spending, across the  Durable Goods  developed world, away from services and towards  Level, 2019Q4 = 100 125  Other goods  120  Services  115  goods. Unable to spend anything like as much on consumer services during the pandemic –  110  restaurants, leisure and transport, for example –  105  consumers didn’t save all the proceeds; they  100  shifted quite a bit of them to goods. This was  95  already evident as early as the start of this year. In  90  the UK, for example, retail sales grew pretty  85  strongly through 2020, even as spending on services collapsed (if you can’t go to the cinema, why not spend those savings on a new TV?).

Some $ billion or more could flow into regional markets to tap diversification benefits. This presents an opportunity for the asset management companies and capital markets industries here to develop investment funds and structured products, including Islamic financial products, to manage a portion of this wealth. Maintaining excellence in a riskier environment Our second priority is maintaining excellence in our core central banking functions in a riskier environment. In recent years, the external environment has become more volatile and complex. At the same time, our economy has been undergoing significant structural adjustments. We must ensure that the formulation and conduct of monetary policy continue to be robust and flexible. We will further strengthen our monetary policy formulation process by enhancing our forecasting, surveillance and research capabilities. We intend to reinforce our macro-econometric model by introducing new features that will enable us to better assess the impact of risks on key sectors and relationships in the economy. In the area of surveillance, we have started an intensive industry consultation process as part of our exchange rate policy review. We will continue to fine-tune this process. To enhance our understanding of the economy, we are constructing a flow-of-funds framework to get a better understanding of financial flows across different sectors of the economy. Changes and increased volatility in financial markets also pose challenges for the implementation of monetary policy. Singapore dollar capital markets have grown enormously over the last five years. Foreign participation has gone up.
4, part 2 (November 2000): 1007–35; Miles Kimball, “How and Why to Eliminate the Zero Lower Bound: A Reader’s Guide,” Confessions of a Supply-Side Liberal blog, September 20, 2013. BIS central bankers’ speeches  privacy. If these aren’t enough however, let me suggest another, very important benefit of currency that I explored in a paper with Charles Kahn and William Roberds. 3 The anonymity afforded by currency transactions prevents a buyer from suffering from any actions taken after the transactions that could exploit the knowledge gained by the seller of the buyer’s identity. For example, identity theft, or theft of credit or debit card information, is avoided through the use of currency. This is an economic benefit that is distinct from valuing privacy from a civil liberties point of view. If currency cannot be used in transactions, buyers are at a disadvantage, and many otherwise beneficial transactions (not related to buyers seeking to engage in tax evasion or otherwise illicit activity) would not take place. It is important to consider whether the move to eliminate currency, or to alter radically how currency works, represents a degradation or an improvement in technology. Should society voluntarily abandon a widely used technology that has enormous benefits and features that are currently irreplaceable, such as the privacy that comes with an untraceable transaction? While some of those features are used by criminals to facilitate socially destructive activities, the vast majority of currency uses are legal and productive.

James McAndrews: Negative nominal central bank policy rates – where is the lower bound? Remarks by Mr James McAndrews, Executive Vice President and Director of Research of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, 8 May 2015. *  *  *  The views expressed in this speech are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or of the Federal Reserve System. The Swiss National Bank (SNB), the European Central Bank (ECB), Danmarks Nationalbank (DNB), and the Swedish Riksbank recently have pushed short-term interest rates to levels below the “zero lower bound.” The current extent and depth of negative policy rates is unprecedented; previously only Denmark had a modestly negative policy rate in 2012 through 2014. The actions of the four central banks have led a number of commentators to ask, Is the concept of a zero lower bound on interest rates valid? If not, what might be the lower bound, if any, on nominal interest rates? Indeed, some economists have suggested that with changes to the monetary system, we could in fact eliminate the lower bound to interest rates altogether. I’ll first review the reasons given by the central banks for setting negative policy rates – in all cases, the negative rates were seen as a means of advancing the banks’ macroeconomic objectives in the current environment.
Headwinds in the aftermath of the financial crisis are still in evidence, particularly the diminished availability and tougher terms for residential mortgage credit. How fast the normalization process will proceed depends mainly on two factors: how the economy evolves and how financial market conditions respond to movements in the federal funds rate. If financial market conditions do not tighten much in response to higher short-term interest rates, we might have to move more quickly. After all, the point of raising short-term interest rates is to exert some restraint on financial market conditions. In contrast, if financial conditions tighten unduly, then this will likely cause us to go much more slowly or even to pause for a while. At the end of the day, we will move short-term interest rates to generate the set of financial market conditions that we deem is most consistent with our employment and inflation objectives. How high will short-term rates ultimately need to go? I think this issue is very difficult to judge for a number of reasons. First, it depends on how financial market conditions evolve in response to our monetary policy adjustments. Second, it depends on other factors, such as real potential GDP growth, which, in turn, depends on the growth rates of the labor force and of productivity. My current thinking is that the long-run nominal federal funds rate consistent with 2 percent inflation is somewhat lower than in the past. My point estimate is 3½ percent, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on this.

•  A McKinsey study estimates that Myanmar will need to invest $ billion in infrastructure up to 2030 to achieve an annual growth of 8%. •  Foreign capital, intermediated through a well-developed banking industry and wellfunctioning capital markets, is a necessary complement to meeting this infrastructure need. And it is not only financing that foreign participation brings, but critical expertise in structuring projects and managing risks. Most important, foreign financial institutions promote competition and innovation, providing the impetus for local institutions to upgrade their capabilities. This has been Singapore’s experience. •  We had protected our local banks from foreign competition in retail banking for many years. •  In 1999, MAS embarked on a programme to liberalise access to Singapore’s domestic banking market. •  The aim was to strengthen our local banks through competition and provide Singaporeans with quality banking services. The strategy worked. •  The local banks built up strong management teams and made significant infrastructural investments to expand their range of business activities and enhance operational effectiveness. •  They are now stronger and more dynamic, with much improved systems of management, risk controls, technology, and expertise. •  Liberalisation provided the spur for our local banks to raise their game and compete with some of the world’s largest banks while maintaining high prudential standards. Why liberalise at a measured pace This leads me to my second point.
The debate on the “secular stagnation” of mature economies is one manifestation of this. 2 Given the tendency of regression to the mean, even rapidly growing emerging economies may eventually face similar challenges. 3 In the light of these discussions, whether Asia can sustain its robust economic growth over the coming decades may not be a particularly comfortable question, but it is nonetheless a question worth asking. In the following presentation, I will first consider a number of stylized facts regarding economic growth in Asia. Then, I will move on to a discussion of how economic growth in Asia might be sustained. I. Three stylized facts  The first stylized fact that I want to consider is that Asia has grown almost constantly at a very rapid pace over a number of decades. Chart 1 shows per capita GDP by region. It is quite impressive that Asia, which was at the lowest level in 1950, has outperformed the other regions in terms of growth. In this long-term context, the Asian crisis of 1997–1998 seems to have been just a slight hiccup. The average growth rate over the last 60 years or so is about 4 percent per year. Thanks to the power of compound interest, this makes Asian per capita GDP now 12 times as large as that in 1950. No wonder Asian economies are often characterized as “dynamic Asia.”  1  Robert E. Lucas Jr., “On the Mechanics of Economic Development,” Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 3–42, 1988.

But with more autonomous units, an internationally-active and  BIS Review 42/2004  1  complex bank has to expend more effort to identify, measure, and control the risks arising from its diverse and far-flung activities. Traditional rules of thumb used by management and supervisors to assess risks and to ensure the adequacy of capital to buffer risks are no longer adequate. And continuing financial success depends critically on how a bank responds to the risk management challenges. In response to these challenges, the successful banks have developed enhanced tools for measuring risks. These can be grouped into two broad categories. The first category of tools are those that give a bank the ability to discriminate among risks by differentiating the riskiness of customers, and of various banking facilities and products. The second category of tools includes those that give a bank an enhanced capability to quantify risks. The end of the road for Basel I In and of itself, the enhanced capability of institutions to differentiate and measure risks has been a welcome development. But, the increasing sophistication of institutions in risk management meant that the crude system of risk weights under Basel I became less meaningful in ensuring the adequate capitalisation of large, complex banking institutions. By the mid-1990s, less than five years from the official implementation of Basel I,1 it was apparent that Basel I was becoming less relevant for some banking institutions.