samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
One of the main components of this strategy is to landscape the Fintech ecosystem in the country and to identify the emerging financial services business models and the key barriers to entry for newcomers. A very important component of this strategy will be an analysis of the current national regulatory framework, trying to identify and consider whether it is sufficiently certain and flexible to apply in the modern digital context. A legal framework that is consistent, clear, and predictable is key to fintech innovation. More broadly, i.e. country wise, the fintech agenda has been put on the front foot, as well. In this 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  regard I will briefly mention that we are in the process of finalizing the new Law on Payment Services and Payment Systems which transposes the PSD2 as well as other relevant European Union regulations in the payment area. The very broad and ambitious scope of the new Law makes it one of the most significant and comprehensive pieces of financial services legislation. It embodies objectives that seek to make payments safer, increase consumer protection and foster innovation while ensuring a level playing field for all players, thus increasing competition. Also in the first half of this year, a set of new laws intended to foster the development of digital services was adopted.

Muhammad bin Ibrahim: Local currency trade settlement between Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand Opening remarks by Mr Muhammad bin Ibrahim, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Launching of Local Currency Trade Settlement between Bank Indonesia and Bank Negara Malaysia and Bank Indonesia and the Bank of Thailand, Jakarta, 11 December 2017. * * * I am pleased to join Governor Agus and Governor Veerathai at this momentous occasion to mark the launching of the Bank Indonesia – Bank Negara Malaysia and Bank Indonesia – Bank of Thailand Local Currency Trade Settlement Frameworks (Framework) and expansion of the Bank Negara Malaysia – Bank of Thailand Framework, here in Jakarta. This is an important point of our collaboration as we operationalise the Memorandum of Understanding signed between Bank Negara Malaysia with Bank of Thailand in 2015 and Bank Indonesia in 2016 – a testament of mutual cooperation and trust to further promote cross-border settlement for bilateral trade and direct investments. Intra-ASEAN partnership is critical for regional integration in support of our economies and financial systems. Having celebrated ASEAN’s golden jubilee in August 2017, we have certainly come a long way as a collective to achieve greater regional closeness and attainment of mutual benefits. Today, we have reached a new pinnacle of regional initiatives where cross-border settlements using local currencies to settle trade and direct investments had taken shape. We expect this to be strengthened further, supported by the strong growth of intra-ASEAN trade. The data look very promising.
It could amplify the moral hazard problem: if the bank wins, its shareholders - as well as its traders under their bonus packages - pocket the profit, and if it loses, the regulator/tax-payer ends up with the bill. A penalty would not act as a deterrent to a bank prepared to gamble its capital because that bank would not be affected by such a penalty when it was ‘down and out’. Furthermore, regulators could over time become less familiar with banks’ risk management systems, which might make them less effective in a crisis. Early supervisory intervention is more difficult if supervisors only become aware of problems ex-post, after the limit has been breached. It may be possible to devise an approach to pre-commitment which avoids these potential handicaps. But for the time being our attitude remains somewhat hesitant. Finally, a discussion about rules is not complete without touching on the question of a ‘level playing field’; an odd analogy, I think, since in field sports there is no such thing. If there were, why would teams change ends at half time? (In American football, of course, teams change ends three times - and in baseball they resolve the problem by running round in circles.) When banks and securities houses do similar business it seems only fair to apply similar capital rules. But while this is true at the margin, when we look at the total business of banks and securities houses, the picture is still vastly different.

Here in the Federal Reserve’s Second District, many households in both our urban and rural communities are vulnerable financially. And since the onset of the pandemic, access to quality, nutritious food has been greatly impeded. After many businesses were forced to shut down in the spring of 2020, food banks were quickly overwhelmed. In addition to an abrupt increase in need, there was also the challenge of distribution. I’m sure many of you remember the long lines to food pantries that stretched through neighborhoods. And many of our schools shifted from providing free lunches to students to offering grab-and-go meals to entire families. Now, we are facing another economic challenge: higher food prices. Transportation and labor costs—along with supply-chain disruptions—are driving up the price of many staples, such as beef, poultry, eggs, peanut butter, and produce. Food is not only becoming far more expensive for families, but also for food banks—which, at the same time, are reporting fewer donations. The result of all of this is that food insecurity is becoming more widespread—and more difficult to resolve. The ripple effects expand across the economy, as food insecurity drives economic inequality, which in turn is a barrier to cultivating a healthy workforce. And a healthy workforce is what we need to keep our economy strong. At the New York Fed—and across the Federal Reserve System—one of our key areas of focus is to better understand the economic drivers and social determinants of health.
BIS Innovation Summit – 22 March 2022 Central banks in a DLT world  Speech by François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Banque de France  Press contact: Mark Deen (mark.deen@banque-france.fr)  Page 1 sur 3 Ladies and gentlemen, It is a great pleasure and honour to give this opening speech of the second BIS Innovation Summit, which illustrates central banks’ commitment in new technologies, notably through the BIS Innovation Hub. Since their creation almost fifteen years ago, distributed-ledger technologies (DLTs) have evolved and opened up new possibilities, building alternative circuits and removing intermediaries, supporting new solutions and use cases. Are these disruptions as powerful as those brought by the invention of internet three decades ago? It may be too early to tell, but DLTs are expanding at a fast pace, and have the potential to bring about far-reaching changes. The invention of bitcoin, the first crypto-asset, stemmed from the desire to build a new “currency” – I emphasise the quotation marks here –, outside the remit of states and central banks. That was back in 2008, and what we have observed since then is that the use of bitcoin as a means of payment remains very marginal, because it does not feature any of the fundamental characteristics of currency. Nor is it a store of value, but rather a speculative asset, somewhat similar to the Dutch tulip bulbs from the 17th century.

In the five years to 2004, the annual growth rate averaged only 1.2 per cent in real terms, well below that of many of our EU partners; and while this year’s growth rate up to September, at 1.7 per cent, may be encouraging, it is too early to know whether the implied acceleration will be sustained. And yet the need to achieve a faster pace of economic growth has probably never been as urgent as at the present time. Growth is not only necessary in order to satisfy society’s legitimate aspirations for higher living standards. Beyond that, an expansion in the economy’s supply capacity and an enhanced degree of international competitiveness are essential to overcome the daunting challenges the country is currently facing. A threefold challenge: globalization and its implications The first challenge derives from the pervasive process of globalization, which, powered by rapid advances in technology and trade liberalization, has given rise to an unprecedented mobility of resources between countries in pursuit of the best cost-quality combinations. Suffice it to say that over the past two decades exports and foreign direct investment have been growing twice and three times faster than global output, respectively. Globalization is undoubtedly creating numerous profitable business opportunities. At the same time, however, it represents a potential threat for open economies like Malta’s because of the concurrent intensification of competition.
That led in December 2005, and in March and June 2006, to respective quarterpoint rises in official interest rates from the historically low level of 2% at which they had held since  BIS Review 60/2006  3  June 2003. Despite these rises in official rates, the Eurosystem's monetary policy stance has remained propitious to the firming of the pick-up in activity and job creation. Nonetheless, the ECB is closely monitoring developments in the euro area to ensure inflation expectations remain in line with price stability over the medium term. Budgetary policies adopted a moderately contractionary stance in the area as a whole, although the persistent fiscal imbalances in several Member States continued. Consequently, the current firming of higher growth rates should drive more resolute action to correct these imbalances, the persistence of which may, in some Member States, have dented agents' confidence and may thus affect their spending decisions. The reform of the Stability Pact appears to have successfully concluded a phase of uncertainty over the application of regulations relating to the fiscal policy discipline of the euro area countries. However, preserving the credibility of the new framework requires an unequivocal and ongoing commitment by the national authorities to strict compliance with the Pact. The recent persistence of sluggish growth rates, despite highly favourable financial conditions, highlights the pressing need to see through the European structural reform agenda with firmer resolve. The revision of the Lisbon strategy in 2005 may contribute to driving this process.

However, the successful battle against inflation and the related reduction in macroeconomic volatility – also known as the “Great Moderation” – were not able to prevent serious instabilities within the globalised financial system. Alongside its evident benefits, the “Great Moderation” thus seems to have produced a number of damaging by-products. In combination with low real interest rates, financial  BIS Review 121/2010  1  innovations and liberalised capital markets provided enormous credit-creation potential. Together with a reduced perception of risk, this fostered a rapid rise in asset prices which ultimately led to excesses and imbalances in some markets. Through contagion effects, the bursting of a credit and asset price bubble can bring the entire global financial system to the brink of collapse within a very short period of time. In view of the interaction with the real economy, this also has serious implications for the world economy and global growth. This raises a number of questions about the future role of central banks. Can and should monetary policy be used to actively counter the development of imbalances or financial bubbles? Does it make sense to use monetary policy instruments for this? Will the new instruments used during the crisis also play a more important role in monetary policy in the future? To answer these questions, I would like to look specifically at two aspects. First, I will examine the measures used by central banks during the crisis and briefly outline the possibilities and limitations on their future use in monetary policy.
It turned out that the customer satisfaction level was much higher than in the call centres across Europe. The next step involved customer services of higher value added (such as, e.g., lost cheques, where the employee’s own invention is required – such a customer call cannot be fully described with procedures). The subsequent step consisted in taking over phone investment consultancy from Europe, which was even more demanding in terms of qualifications. This was possible due to much higher educational standards represented by the employees (often at the level of PH.D. degree, holding appropriate licences) than those of typical employees of call centres across Europe. 10  See e.g. Landefeld R., Mataloni R. “Offshore Outsourcing and Multinational Companies”, BEA working paper WP2004-06. 11  Baily M., Lawrence R. “What Happened to the Great U.S. Job Machine? The Role of Trade and Electronic Offshoring”, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2004. 12  Conference of the Financial Times “Global off-shoring and outsourcing”, London, 17 May 2006. BIS Review 64/2006  7  Companies whose business activity consists in the implementation of off-shoring processes are growing rapidly. For the majority of companies in India, this growth amounts to a few dozen percent per annum. The scale of the activity is also growing, as it is not confined to simple call centres any more, but it also includes outsourcing of ever more advanced business processes (e.g. related to IT, logistics, etc.).

To give you and example, according to the estimates of PricewaterhouseCoopers 5 , by the buying power parity, in 2050 the Chinese economy will be over 40% larger than that of the US, India will catch up with the US, the economies of Mexico and Indonesia will outgrow that of Germany, and the Brazilian economy will exceed Japan. We must ask the question whether the present economic policy in Poland takes these facts into consideration. 5  See the study by Hawksworth J. (2006), “The World In 2050. How big will the major emerging market economies get and how can the OECD compete?”, PricewaterhouseCoopers, March 2006.
These lean balance sheets meant that they had an almost entirely risk-free financial position as the central bank receives interest payments on the assets while the liabilities are cost-free. In this way and if the interest rate is sufficiently high and the banknote demand sufficiently large, the central bank can fund its own operations and deliver a surplus to the state. The Riksbank and the Swiss National Bank also had relatively minimalistic balance sheets where the liability side was dominated by cost-free capital, but, apart from banknotes, these central banks had accumulated equity on the liability side. The asset side was dominated by gold and foreign exchange reserves, and the Riksbank held no government bonds at all. Despite these similarities, the Swiss National Bank had a significantly larger balance sheet than the Riksbank. This was due to both a substantially higher demand for cash in Switzerland and the fact that the Swiss National Bank had more equity. In other countries, such as Japan and New Zealand, central banks had balance sheets that were larger than was justified by the cost-free capital. The Bank of Japan had already implemented quantitative easing before to the financial crisis in order to bring up inflation. As a consequence of this, Japanese banks had liquidity reserves on the central bank balance sheet. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand had  2 [16]  a balance sheet with several large items on the liability side.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Asian money, bonds and derivatives in the new global economy Keynote address by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the 13th Annual Conference of Fixed Income, Money Market and Derivatives Association of India (FIMMDA) and Primary Dealers Association of India (PDAI), Kuala Lumpur, 27 January 2012. *  *  *  It has been more than half a decade since the beginning of the global financial crisis, and its ramifications continue to reverberate across the world. Currently, the global financial and economic landscape continues to be confronted with stress and uncertainty, stemming from the prevailing structural weaknesses, deleveraging of the private financial and non-financial sectors, and the escalating strains in public finances in the advanced economies. Despite these significant near-term challenges, the fundamental global economic and financial transformation that commenced prior to the crisis has continued unabated. A new global economy is emerging. The rise in significance of the emerging economies is resulting in a fundamental realignment in the global landscape as the balance of global economic strength shifts to the emerging economies, with its consequent implications on long-term global economic and financial flows. With the rapid growth in domestic demand, reinforced by the vast productive investment opportunities within and across the emerging economies, it is projected that the emerging world will account for 60 percent of total world output by 2030, higher by 20 percent from its current level.
A rise in labour costs of more than 5 per cent will only be consistent with the inflation target if the krone continues to appreciate. In our projections for the Norwegian economy in the next two years, we expect 5 per cent wage growth. As long as wages increase this much, the business sector’s competitiveness will decline, thus contributing to a reduction in employment in goods-producing industries. When manufacturing and other industries exposed to competition are scaled back to the extent that there is room for a larger service sector, competitiveness will once again stabilise. In the long run, wages must be compatible with the value added that is generated by workers, i.e. labour productivity. Over time, the increase in real wages is therefore determined by developments in labour productivity. 2  BIS Review 20/2002  In mainland Norway, annual productivity growth has averaged 1½ - 2 per cent over the last 20 years. If this continues to be the case, an average increase in labour costs of around 4 - 4½ per cent in the long term will be consistent with the inflation target. The guidelines for economic policy may affect the krone exchange rate in two ways. On the one hand, increased use of petroleum revenues may lead to a deterioration of the business sector’s competitiveness. With low and stable inflation, this may at times be reflected in a strong krone. On the other hand, our inflation target is slightly higher than our trading partners’ inflation targets.

In my view the reasons include the increased role of services in the economy, the importance of labor costs in such an economy, the reduced share of oil consumption relative to GDP, and as I mentioned earlier the improved conduct of monetary policy versus the 1960s and 1970s.5 Figure 10 shows that the service sector has grown from a little over 60 percent of private sector employment in 1970 to a little over 80 percent in 2010. As the economy has come to emphasize services versus manufacturing, it may be that commodities (and thus their prices) have become somewhat less important to the production of goods and services. And goods prices are more volatile than services prices, and more likely to be priced like commodities. Figure 11 shows the per capita consumption of oil declining in the United States. Conservation measures by consumers and businesses have made the economy less dependent on oil than in the 1970s. While oil remains a very important commodity, the trend towards reducing dependence on oil provides greater insulation from oil-induced supply shocks. Figure 12 shows the U.S. share of world oil consumption (in blue) ticking down, but also clearly shows (in red) the steady climb in the share consumed by three of the so-called emerging-market economies – China, India, and Brazil. Figure 13 shows the growth in oil consumption in those three countries, in the upper three lines. Both charts depict quite strikingly the heightened demand for oil emanating from emerging markets.
Today, the euro accounts for 20% of international reserves, second only to the dollar. An internationally recognised currency generates economic gains: financial markets are more attractive to domestic and foreign investors, more liquid, and thus more efficient. But it also carries a political weight: when Mario Draghi speaks at the G20, the whole world listens to Europe attentively, just as when Janet 2/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  Yellen speaks for the United States. Overall, this list of benefits is impressive, particularly when you think that the euro is only 18 years old. More importantly, we have come this far despite the global financial crisis, which triggered the deepest recession in three generations, and despite the euro area sovereign debt crisis a few years later. 2. Let me now turn to monetary policy: the euro has passed the stress test of the crises. a. Monetary policy Successful crisis management The Eurosystem has deployed an innovative and resolute monetary policy strategy, which has helped stabilise the euro area economy and reduce the costs of crises. Let me briefly recall what we have done [slide]. We had first to face, like you, the consequences of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Like many other central banks, we reacted promptly by offering unlimited liquidity to financial intermediaries, sharply lowering our main refinancing rate and providing international swap lines. Yet, this was only our first challenge. The Lehman episode paved the way for the euro area sovereign debt crisis and its amplification through the “bank-sovereign” nexus.

This means that we will assess the effects of these measures and adapt them, if necessary: (1) to confirm that they continue to fulfil their monetary policy objectives; (2) to ensure – within our mandate – that the relevant measures continue to support the decarbonisation path to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement and the EU climate neutrality objectives; (3) to respond to future improvements in climate data and climate risk modelling or changes in regulation; and (4) to look beyond climate and address additional environmental challenges, within our mandate. While I understand it is not a specific topic covered in today's conference, a similar commitment to fully incorporate climate-related and environmental risks applies to our banking supervision tasks and responsibilities. In addition to the climate stress test that was concluded by ECB Banking Supervision earlier this year, we will soon publish the results of our thematic review. As part of this exercise, our core banking supervision teams – Joint Supervisory Teams – thoroughly assessed to what extent banks' risk management practices for climate-related and environmental risks live up to the supervisory expectations we published in 2020. We conducted this exercise to assess where banks stand with regard to our expectations and to highlight any gaps they urgently need to close. We will also take the opportunity to identify and share best practices to help banks close any gaps identified.