samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Chief among these are supply bottlenecks such as a shortage of labour and public infrastructure, eroding competitiveness and productivity, and corruption. If not properly addressed, these could restrain the country’s growth potential in the medium term. The good news is that ongoing developments in Thailand are constructive. The current reform agenda holds promises for moving the country forward. The National Reform Committee, along with other task forces, has been founded to push forward muchneeded measures. (Slide 4) The Bank of Thailand is currently involved in the reform of stateowned enterprises, as this sector includes 8 State-Owned Financial Institutions (SFIs), whose asset size accounts for approximately a quarter of total assets in the Thai banking system. Starting from this year, we at the Bank of Thailand are appointed to be a “regulator” for such financial institutions, whilst the Ministry of Finance remains a “policy-maker” and an “owner”. This is one of the reform attempts to clearly separate the roles among those involved, in order to avoid potential conflict of interests and to ensure that SFIs are subject to a proper supervision akin to that of commercial banks. (Slide 5) While the reform efforts are welcome developments, to what extent reform plans will be put into action remains to be seen. One of the main challenges will be keeping the reform momentum going, as certain reforms may take years to complete. I think of sustainable reforms as running a marathon. You have to keep going steadily, slowly but surely.

Foreign participation in the Thai bond market decreased from a peak of 13 percent to the current level of around 10 percent of total outstanding public sector bond. The strong local institutional investor base was able to pick up from where foreigners left. Despite foreigners exiting the Thai bond market, total portfolio outflows last year (2014) amounted to a mere 1 percent of our international reserves. A flexible exchange rate, a relatively balanced external position and a modest external exposure, altogether acting as the first line of defence, contributed to the success. The Bank of Thailand is also equipped with comprehensive policy tools, along with ample international reserves, that can be used as a backstop to deal with disruptive capital flows and to  1  Examples of anti-corruption measures are 1) the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative (CosT) which promotes transparency in state enterprise projects and 2) Integrity Pacts which oversee purchase plans of government and state enterprise projects. Among the big projects already implemented are 1) Suvarnabhumi Airport Phase II 2) the Blue Line metro extension, and 3) Bangkok NGV bus purchase plan. 2  Total corporate debt / total corporate equity. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  safeguard financial stability. In fact, these are our multiple lines of defence available at our disposal. Ladies and gentlemen, We, should not be under the illusion, however, that good fundamentals can be taken for granted. In fact, the slowdown of economic growth in the recent years pinpoints to structural problems, holding back the economy.
Kristina Persson: Monetary policy and competition Speech by Ms Kristina Persson, Deputy Governor of Sveriges Riksbank, at Roslagens Sparbank’s annual general meeting, Norrtälge, 17 April 2002. *  *  * 1  Thank you for the invitation to come here to Roslagen Sparbank’s annual general meeting. Today, I do not intend to discuss current monetary policy, but rather to concentrate on an area that is of great significance for inflation and monetary policy, namely the competitive conditions in the Swedish economy. The objectives for monetary policy are clearly stated in the Sveriges Riksbank Act – to maintain price stability and to promote a safe and efficient payment system. The Riksbank has further defined the first of these objectives in an inflation target, i.e. that the annual rate of change in consumer prices shall be 2 per cent, with a tolerated deviation interval of ± 1 percentage point. Interest rate decisions influence price trends partly via the effects on resource utilisation, which means that the impact of the decisions has a certain time lag. It is partly for this reason that monetary policy is based on the total assessment of how the rate of price increase will develop one to two years ahead. There are a number of factors in the economy that affect inflation, but over which the Riksbank has no control. These include the exchange rate, fiscal policy, international economic developments, potential growth, the functioning of the labour market and competition conditions on the product markets.

Nature’s education website declares: “Ignoring Population Structure Can Lead to Erroneous Predictions of Future Population Size.”[11] The lesson is no different in markets – underlying market structures matter. CCPs – who are in the risk management business – can help with this by understanding and managing the markets in which they operate. This includes client positions and the role of physical delivery. The recent events in the nickel market are a good example. The historic price moves I just spoke about can be the result of things completely outside of the financial system – weather, plagues, and invasions. But they can also be exacerbated or even driven by market structure. In the case of nickel, much of the price move was related to the build-up of a very large position in the form of a tangled and opaque web of derivative exposures involving a single client. We have seen these before: Archegos, Long Term Capital Management. This time, while the bulk of the contracts were bilateral, many were centrally cleared. There will be important lessons learned from the events in nickel – both with respect to the specific incident and more generally,[12] and I am sure I will have more to report following the conclusions of the independent review we have commissioned. Page 6  When it comes to this early lesson, CCPs could form part of the solution.
In order to avoid the misallocation of resources, these externalities have to be internalised either by aligning the incentives of the decision maker; introducing a more representative decision-making process; putting in place the appropriate institutional arrangements; having effectively enforced laws, rules and regulations; or occasionally, by societal norms. Secondly, sound financial governance encourages discipline in adhering to the budget constraint. All economic agents are bound by inter-temporal budget constraints, and adherence to it when making financial decisions is key to sustainability. This is particular relevant when the repercussions of financial decisions fall on parties who are not represented – for example, decisions that shift a large debt burden onto future generations. Thirdly, strong financial governance has robust external checks and balances. To ensure sound decision making, especially when externalities are involved, decision makers, and the decision making process, must be subjected to scrutiny by external parties. In this regard, accountability, transparency, and the empowerment of the external party to take consequential action are key to effective financial governance. All these principles apply fully to the management of public finances. Sound public financial governance is the legitimate use of authority in the management of a country’s financial resources with integrity to promote sustainable development. At the heart of it all, sound governance practices in the Government can be traced back to the concept articulated by French Enlightenment political philosopher (Baron de) Montesquieu in the 18th century.

You also ordered setting a minimum wage of Rls 3,000 for all Saudi government employees, allocated a monthly amount of Rls 2,000 for job seekers, and raised capital of the Saudi Credit and Saving Bank by Rls 30 billion. The number of family members covered by the social security was increased from 8 to 15 with an allocation of Rls one billion for that purpose. The government subsidies for charity associations rose by 50 percent to Rls 450 million annually, and needy families’ sons and daughters were supported to join  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  universities through allotting them a portion of seats, facilitating their admission requirements, and exempting them from some tuition fees. This package of honorable royal decrees will enhance the standard of living of the least-income segment of population and promote its ability of saving and, thereby, raise its future productivity and income, and reduce poverty, to which you always attach considerable attention. In the health care arena, you ordered supporting the Ministry of Health with Rls 16 billion in order to carry out the expansion of a number of hospitals and health centers. You increased the maximum limit of the Ministry of Finance’s financing program of private hospitals from Rls 50 million to Rls 200 million. This would hopefully enhance health care services in the Kingdom.
But additional equity capital is now very expensive and perhaps also difficult to procure. The alternative for banks may be to hold back on lending. If they do this on a large scale, it will have considerable negative effects on output and employment. It is understandable that  BIS Review 17/2009  1  credit growth is now slowing, both because demand for credit is lower and because fewer investments are profitable. But in addition, it appears that banks are applying stricter criteria in credit assessments and rationing credit. Norges Bank’s Survey of Bank Lending shows the banks’ own perception of this practice. The chart shows that over the past year banks have reported a tightening of credit standards. It appears that credit flows to households have improved somewhat, but banks are still tightening credit standards for corporate loans. An important lesson to be learned from this economic crisis is that compelling banks to increase their equity capital when the downturn has already started has a considerably negative impact. It is important that banks have sufficient capital to make them resilient even if the downturn should persist over a longer period. For this reason, we have proposed government capital injections in banks. The government bond fund will buy bank and corporate bonds. In Norges Bank’s view, it is particularly important helps to improve demand for corporate bonds. The fund shall primarily buy high quality bonds. The chart shows that it is on the whole borrowers with weaker ratings that are now being excluded.

Svein Gjedrem: Hearing before the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs Introduction by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at a public hearing before the Storting's Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs, together with Mrs Kristin Halvorsen, Minister of Finance, and Mr Bjørn Skogstad Aamo, Director General of The Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway, Oslo, 13 February 2009. *  *  *  Government finance fund and government bond fund The crisis in the banking sector was initially a problem of liquidity. In October and November, there was considerable turbulence and fear was spreading among banks. Credit premiums were high. The situation has improved. The improvement is to a considerable extent the result of action taken by the authorities. The swap arrangement whereby banks can exchange covered bonds for government paper has been important. The arrangement is oriented towards larger banks, and a number of banks have made use of this facility, in an amount so far totalling more than NOK 70 billion. Norges Bank has proposed an extension of the arrangement to provide banks with funding at 5-year maturities. Maturities so far have been up to 3 years. The extension is important to ensure that maturity dates do not all fall within a short period. The arrangement provides banks with Treasury bills. Banks have used these as collateral for loans, sold them or kept them as liquidity reserves. There has been high demand for Treasury bills.
5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  5  And its performance against that remit can be assessed month in month out with published inflation numbers. It can be held to account easily for delivering Parliament’s good intentions. If only it were quite so simple in financial stability. The creation of the Financial Policy Committee required two major challenges to be overcome to ensure we remained citizens in service. But overcome them we have. Let me describe how. Challenge 1: the difficulty of specifying a clear mandate  At the heart of this difficulty is a trade-off between stability and growth. A stable financial system is resilient to a range of bad shocks. It doesn’t respond to them by causing further material economic harm. But beyond a point at least, raising that resilience hampers the ability of finance to take risks and drive investment and growth in the good times. It’s possible to over-insure. So there is a balance to be struck. And it is right that Parliament should decide where it should be struck. However, a target like: “make sure the system can withstand a repeat of the 2008 recession and no more” wouldn’t work. Such a target wouldn’t be fit for purpose all the time or for all of the financial system. For some parts of the system, whose failure might not cause much economic damage, such a target might be too severe. At some times, such as after a credit boom, such a target might be too loose.

And so, when the downturn came along, it was turned into disaster as the financial system collapsed. A taxpayer bailout and a million more people unemployed up and down the country. Financial instability is something for which everyone, and especially the most vulnerable, pays the price. An independent committee to take the long view  Against that backdrop, few would disagree with an intention to build a stable, resilient, financial system. But the road to disaster is paved with good intentions. There will always be pressure to live for the moment. A little loosening of standards can bring many years of small gains before the big price is paid. So in the aftermath of the crisis, Parliament did not just declare its intention to build a stable financial system. It chose also to commit to sticking to that intention. And there was, of course, a model for how to commit not to live for the moment in economic policy. In 1997, the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England was established to deliver the clear intent of sustained low inflation. Successive governments had lived for the moment by pushing the economy to expand beyond its potential. Each time, that worked in the short term. But ultimately it brought no benefit and only a price: inflation and recession to get inflation back down again. Recognising that the pressure to live for the moment had resulted in serious costs, government and Parliament sought to entrench the long view in economic management. The results have been impressive.
The reforms of the past 10 years have also strengthened the resilience of the core banking system to liquidity shocks. 3  The illustrative scenario features a peak to trough fall in GDP of nearly 30%. Unemployment peaks at nearly 10%, house prices fall by 16% and Bank Rate is held at 0.1% over the three years of the scenario horizon. 5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  5  The major UK banks went into the COVID crisis holding around £ trillion in high quality liquid assets, over 4 times what they had going into the global financial crisis. Their aggregate loan-to-deposit ratio is now below 100%, compared to over 130% in 2007. And they have pre-positioned assets at the Bank of England against which they could draw down around £ of liquidity.4  A simple thought experiment is perhaps the best illustration of this point. A similar pandemic could well have struck in the years before the financial crisis. Had it done so, the overall impact of the FPC stress test would have wiped out nearly all of the aggregate capital in the system and taken banks below their minimum regulatory requirements.5  We would now be dealing with illiquid banks in life preservation mode, cutting back all credit to hoard capital and to remain solvent – in other words a credit crunch and possible bank failures that would make the current economic crisis deeper and the recovery more painful and protracted.

First, as we learned 10 years ago, we need to look at how the system as a whole has performed under stress and whether and how it might be strengthened. Focussing on the resilience of one or another element without understanding its broader effect will give us a false picture. Second, such a comprehensive assessment, cannot be done by one jurisdiction or one international standard setter. And in this respect, one of the other, major planks of the post financial crisis reforms, the creation of the international Financial Stability Board (FSB) – has put us in a far better position than ten years ago. The FSB has been active and in crisis mode from the outset of this crisis. It has enabled jurisdictions and international standard setters to work together, under its umbrella to share experience, to assess risks to financial stability, and in to discuss ‘what works’ (and what doesn’t work) in addressing those risks. The FSB’s assessments also provide input to the political level of the G20. And to ensure national authorities respond in a consistent way, the FSB agreed Principles, adopted by the G20, which reiterate commitment to common international standards, using their inbuilt flexibility including buffers, while leaning against regulatory rollback. Going forward, and just as after the global financial crisis, the FSB can and should enable us to bring together the various perspectives in the central bank and regulatory communities to determine whether we do indeed need more resilience in the system and, if so, how to achieve it.
In collaboration with other parties in society, we need to discuss which characteristics should be prioritised for an e-krona and make costbenefit analyses of various alternative solutions to the problems we see that the e-krona could solve. For example, if we conclude that the e-krona is needed for contingency purposes, this may lead to characteristics such as offline functions being prioritised, while other characteristics may be prioritised if other aspects turn out to be more important. As the payment market is an infrastructure that is fundamental for Sweden’s economy to function, questions of this type must ultimately be determined by our legislators in the Riksdag. In our talks with agencies that make state disbursements, we have noticed that these could be rationalised with the help of an ekrona. It is possible that the best route would be to build the e-krona together with others. The Riksbank also intends to review the legislative amendments that may need to be implemented to provide us with a clear mandate in the issue. If the e-krona is to be realised, I believe that the best solution would be for the Riksbank to provide the e-krona via our balance sheet but that the private sector then be involved in its distribution. Private companies are better at handling customer contacts and finding the tailor-made solutions that the general public demands.

We have also discovered that it is possible to design an e-krona that would not have excessive consequences for monetary policy or financial stability. 5 On the legal side, we interpret this as meaning we have a mandate to issue a simpler, value-based variant of the e-krona that we will develop as a pilot version. We also intend to approach the Riksdag to propose legal amendments that will clarify our mandate and make it possible to issue an account-based e-krona. We need to prepare ourselves for a cashless future As regards the rapid rate at which cash usage is declining, the Riksbank Committee has submitted an interim report with a few proposed measures to brake this development. 6 The decline in cash usage that we are now witnessing is going too fast for certain vulnerable groups who are unable to use digital technology or who do not even have access to it. The Riksbank therefore welcomes the proposals that the Riksbank Committee has submitted. The Riksbank has been requesting protection for cash usage since 2016, when the Payment Accounts Directive was introduced. I therefore consider it a welcome step that there is a broad political will to speak with a clear voice in this matter and that the legislator intends to increase its influence over this structural transformation so that it is not steered by the private sector alone. The Riksbank Inquiry’s proposal, supported by representatives of all parties in the Riksdag, would ensure access to cash.
External asset managers are used to benchmark internal portfolio management and obtain more efficient access to certain asset classes. The SNB was also among the first central banks to adopt a structured approach to managing non-financial aspects, such as ESG risks. How does the SNB factor ESG risks into its balance sheet management? I would like to start with our bond portfolio, which accounts for 80% of our foreign exchange reserves. Most of this portfolio is made up of government bonds. Other bonds, such as corporate bonds, represent 12% of our reserves. Our bond portfolio is actively managed in terms of country selection and weighting. In other words, while we use a combination of broad bond indices, we deviate from these – within pre-set limits – in order to generate a higher return. Our portfolio managers use all the information at their disposal to guide their investment decisions. This comprehensive assessment essentially includes all types of financial risk that may arise in one form or another. Factoring climate risks into risk assessment is therefore an integral part of good portfolio management. In this context, it is worth mentioning that, for some years now, the SNB’s bond portfolio has included green bonds. As their name suggests, these are bonds whose proceeds are used to finance environmental projects. What about our equity portfolio? In our equity investments, we pursue a passive and neutral approach (index-linked management).

As such, the global recovery will be based on trust and solidarity between nations. Is such cooperation possible? Europe is a case in point. Let´s take again the example of vaccines. When the prospect of a common vaccination pool and 2/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  the purchase of vaccines on an uncoordinated basis was aired, European institutions took the decision to cooperate. That has allowed vaccines to be provided at the same time for countries with very different production or vaccine-purchase capabilities. It is an example of cooperation worth exporting to global vaccination programmes. Another example is the case of the policies needed to tackle climate change. The European Union has pioneered a system of cross-country carbon emission rights. This mechanism, according to recent studies, has led to a reduction of more than 10% in the emissions of regulated companies.3This coordinated effort has seen the EU commit to a binding target of a net domestic reduction of at least 55% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990. It far exceeds the commitment to cut emissions by at least 40% under the Paris Agreement. Again let us view the European Union as a laboratory for what the multilateral effort can – ideally – achieve. European economic institutions: unfinished work However, in order for Europe to play this role properly, Europe should deepen its own integration project. Only by addressing the remaining challenges of our political and economic integration process, we – European – can aim to contribute decisively to global objectives.