samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In this connection, I wish to emphasise the desirability and timeliness of independent public institutions having this type of ethical conduct framework, as a key element to proper performance by their high-level officials of their roles. From this standpoint, the aforementioned Code of Conduct for high-level European Central Bank Officials includes ethical conduct criteria that are particularly relevant to independence, impartiality, professional secrecy and public and private appearances by those high-level officials, in addition to specific obligations for avoiding conflicts of interest, for relationships with interest groups, for private financial transactions and for advantages, awards and invitations offered as a result of their positions (for more details, see Annex 5). As I reported to this very Parliament, early this year the Banco de España approved its Strategic Plan, whose essential content has been made public. Based on an analysis of the challenges facing the institution and its main strengths and weaknesses, the plan sets out the priority objectives for the coming years and the actions required to accomplish them. Aside from the importance of this exercise from the standpoint of internal coordination, I believe the drawing up and publication of this plan is a fundamental transparencyenhancing factor that will facilitate evaluation of the effectiveness of the Bank’s actions. Accordingly, under the Strategic Plan our activities will be subject to assessments. Should you see fit, we could report to this House on the content of the Strategic Plan, headway made in its implementation and the results of the assessments.

I will now turn to another aspect that is key to understanding the correct configuration of an independent authority: good governance. This is understood not only in terms of observing certain basic principles of public action (such as efficacy and effectiveness) or of impartiality and due diligence, but also of implementing procedures and collegiate decisions to ensure that the primary institutional course of action is to uphold the public interest. As I have already said, the Banco de España has collegiate bodies, such as the Governing Council and the Executive Board. These, along with the Governor and the Deputy Governor, make up its governing bodies. The fact that these collegiate bodies have broad powers in relation to the functions of the Bank and that a majority (six) of the members of the Governing Council are elected and have recognised competence in the field of economics, the financial system or the legal arena, reinforces the independence of our institution. 17  https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52019XB0308(01)&from=EN  12  A further good governance practice is having a structure of committees to support the governing bodies. These are able to appropriately assess and address the various matters that fall within the organisation’s remit, ensuring an overall view and that all the relevant areas of the institution participate in the analysis of the issue concerned.
Issuers, though, transferred much of the risk and did so comprehensively, as they needed to demonstrate that they had transferred risk irrevocably before they could get capital relief. But in the absence of adequate monitoring, originators could chase volume at the expense of lending standards. 5  See for example, the Bank of England Financial Stability Report, October 2007. BIS Review 93/2008  7  27 Therefore, two elements at the heart of the benefits of financial innovation – the ability to pool and transfer risk – contributed to an endogenous increase in the level of underlying credit risk. 28 There is also a potential incentive problem arising from the separation of legal ownership from economic exposure – although this is at the moment a possible difficulty for the future. Credit default swaps transfer the risk of economic loss to the seller of protection but the right to trigger covenants or put a firm into administration remains with the underlying asset holder. A protected asset holder, therefore, has little incentive to monitor a company closely and trigger covenants or force it into administration at the first signs that its business may have become unsustainable. And the seller of protection lacks an alternative legal remedy. Companies may therefore continue to operate for longer than they did in the past once they get into trouble. So, the use of credit default swaps may reduce the probability of default but increase loss given eventual default.

Conclusion The short-term outlook for financial stability appears to be favourable. In the long term, high and rising household debt is a source of uncertainty. Admittedly, household financial wealth has also increased, but debt and wealth are unequally distributed across different household groups. Low interest rates and stable macroeconomic developments indicate that the outlook for households is favourable in the short term. In the longer term, the higher household debt burden represents a source of instability in demand and output. 6  BIS Review 39/2005
Already, several factors, such as the search for yield driven by a low interest rate environment, new regulatory constraints on the banking system, and digitalisation, are changing the way in which financing is designed, produced, distributed and managed. This transformation is  leading to a more diversified financing structure for our economies. Is this diversification desirable? Is this diversification sufficient? 1. A desirable diversification of financing modes to spur growth and innovation, which must be further supported My answer to the first question is yes because too strong a reliance on bank financing may constitute a source of vulnerability for business development in the event of a shock affecting the banking system. However, the relatively slow pace of development of this diversification  shows that it is not so simple to achieve, and that it should be further encouraged. A. In the short term, the efforts made to adapt the regulatory framework and standardise the alternative sources of financing to bank lending should be pursued. In recent years, public authorities have made significant efforts to adapt the regulatory framework in order to support the development of alternative sources of financing to bank lending. These efforts must be pursued and matched by those of private players to standardise the market. Thus, since 2017, the European Union has established a set of new rules for the development of sound securitisation, i.e.

At the same time, a number of new, more structural risks are also emerging, brought about by digitalisation and global warming Digitisation first gives a systemic dimension to cyber risk. The expansion of digital practices contributes to the propagation of cyber risk and amplifies it, through the interconnections between financial institutions, but also between them and their service providers. The fact that some of these providers are Fintechs and Bigtechs, which are unregulated and not easily substitutable, is an additional vulnerability factor. To cope with these risks, we must resist the temptation to set up a bunker-style security system, which is a dead end, but rather imagine a system which combines openness and innovation. This is why we, at the Banque de France and the ACPR, are working with the other supervisors of the Eurosystem to ensure that the entities we supervise take cyber risk into account and to set up a broad programme for protecting the infrastructures that we operate. Cyber security is one of the key priorities of the French Presidency of the G7 in 2019. The Banque de France also contributes to the work conducted in this wider framework by coordinating the preparation and implementation of a cyber resilience test for the global financial sector. As regards the risks associated with climate change, they can no longer be ignored. Physical risks – which correspond to the rise in the frequency and severity of extreme weather phenomena – are obviously the most visible and immediate for the financial sector.
Previously, we’ve seen transactions spike prior to the end of stamp duty holidays, followed by a brief trough before transactions start to recover, consistent with a large share of the impact coming through shifts in the timing of transactions, rather than an aggregate increase in demand.20  But there may also be some reasons to believe that the recent increase in demand for housing, and perhaps the composition of that demand, which has driven the UK market in recent months reflects some more persistent drivers and that the market will not fall back to its pre-pandemic decade performance when the tax incentives have gone. A survey conducted by Nationwide in April found that, amongst homeowners moving or considering a move as a result of the pandemic, three-quarters of them said they would still be moving or considering moving even if the stamp duty holiday hadn’t been extended. Moreover, the stamp duty holiday in Scotland has already come to an end with no material drop-off in demand. There has been a clear shift in attitudes towards remote working – both by employees and employers - as a result of the pandemic. According to the Understanding Society Covid special survey, half of respondents who have been working from home during the last year report wanting to work from home often or always once social distancing measures end, compared to just over one in ten prior to the pandemic.

Chart 1: House price: earnings  Chart 2: Flow of new mortgage borrowing  House price to earnings ratio Whole UK South and East London  Quarterly mortgage lending £  14  80000  12  70000  10 8  60000  Value of new lending if transactions remained at pre-crisis levels  50000 40000  6 4  97 99 01 03 05 07 09 11 13 15 17 19  30000 20000  2  10000  0  0  Value of new mortgage lending  99 00 01 03 04 05 07 08 09 11 12 13 15 16 17 19 Quarterly value of new mortgage transactions, excluding pure remortgaging. Counterfactual assumes that the number of mortgage approvals remains at its pre-crisis peak, while house prices and LTVs follow the realised out-turn. This exercise therefore doesn’t take into account potential feedback from transactions to house prices. 4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  4  What lay behind this relatively “quiet” decade for the UK housing market? Housing is a very complex market with multiple drivers on both the supply and the demand side. There is a great deal of debate in the academic literature about the drivers of house prices and the role played by credit conditions. These provide a number of lenses through which to look at the UK housing market over this period. Housing supply is for obvious reasons an in-elastic market in most countries.
The range for this year has been upgraded from June, based on actual data above projections in the first half and more dynamic figures available for thirdquarter demand and output, which are foreseen to continue into the first half of 2011, prompting output gaps to close in this latter period (figure 7). For the year 2011 GDP is expected to grow by 5.5%–6.5%. Moderation of world growth towards 2011, the dissipation of one-time effects of the crisis and 27-F, plus the gradual withdrawal of monetary policy stimulus will result in both output and domestic demand slowing down by the second half of 2011. It is worth noting that y-o-y GDP growth figures in the second quarter of 2011 will be high due to the low basis for comparison associated to the earthquake. Similarly, once the swelling of domestic demand is finished, it should expand next year at a rate the half of the strong growth it should post this year. This will come accompanied with more dynamic export volume growth that will revert the tough 2009 and 2010 years, when exports were affected by the global recession and by the disruptive effects of the earthquake (table 2). The rebound of the Chilean economy is also apparent in a dynamic labor market, where employment is growing strongly and the rate of unemployment has dropped (figure 8).

In France, in December 2012, the Government approved a draft Law on the reform of the banking sector that, among other things, envisages the establishment of an equivalent authority, the “Conseil de la Stabilité Finacière” (CSF). At the Bank of Spain we are also currently looking at the way a Spanish Macroprudential Authority should be set up. Changes in bank regulation Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to turn now to the changes that have occurred in the regulatory field  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  The crisis we are still going through was triggered, on the one hand, by the extraordinary loose monetary and financial conditions – and the expansion of credit – of the period between 2000 and 2007. On the other hand, inadequate rules – result of two decades of deregulation, and sometimes bad deregulation – compounded the problem and facilitated high leverage. The Basel capital ratios of the time were low or, in some cases, not applied. There was excessive reliance on internal bank models. The way VaR models were defined by Basel and applied by banks underestimated what we call tail risks, that is, risks associated to events with low probability of occurrence but extremely high cost. Therefore, there was a need for a regulatory response after the crisis. Since the main elements of this response are well known, I will limit myself to a few remarks. First, the response took a predictable pattern: the strengthening of capital requirements, both as regards levels and quality of capital.
At the same time, we have to be mindful that the countries within this group are at various stages of economic development, ranging from poor developing nations with annual per capita incomes of about US Dollars 160 to very wealthy industrialized nations with per capita incomes of about US Dollars 36,000. Hence, although we may, in general, say that we derive our strength through diversity, we still have to take serious note that the great disparity in living standards is an issue that needs to be uppermost in our minds if we are to move forward in harmony and brotherhood. In that context, I think it is very appropriate that, this year, the Commonwealth Finance Ministers have decided to focus on several dimensions and options that impact on this issue, which is borne out of the fact that they have selected “Agenda for growth and livelihood”, as this year’s theme for the meeting. Your Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, In order to critically examine the issue of wealth disparity in perspective, let us take our minds back to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Singapore in the year 1971. At that meeting, the declaration of Commonwealth Principles was adopted. These Principles acknowledged that wide disparities in wealth existed between different sections of mankind. The Heads of Government also acknowledged that such disparities were too great to be tolerated and that such disparities would create world tension. Accordingly, the Commonwealth resolved to work towards the progressive reduction of these disparities.

On the other hand, growth in advanced economies was weak and euro area GDP fell towards the end of the year. Central banks abroad announced that the key rates would be kept at a low level for a prolonged period. At the monetary policy meeting in March, Norges Bank underlined that weak growth prospects abroad and the strong krone were keeping inflation at a low level and curbing activity in some sectors. The key rate was reduced to 1.5 percent at that meeting. Europe is now in a downturn. Many countries are struggling with large deficits and mounting government debt. Structural reforms are being implemented, pension schemes are being tightened and tax systems are under review. At the same time, tighter credit standards and increased capital requirements will limit the supply of bank credit. In addition, a number of countries must restore competitiveness after a period of high cost growth prior to the financial crisis. In the short run, the tightening measures pull down activity and push up unemployment. Central banks in other countries are using strong measures to prop up activity and inflation. As shown in the chart, key rates among many of our trading partners are close to zero and are expected to remain low for a long period. In the US, UK and Japan the central banks have made large-scale government bond purchases in order to push down long-term interest rates. The European Central Bank (ECB) has also stretched itself, for example by providing long-term loans to banks.
Mr. Heikensten considers inflation and the interest rate in Sweden Speech given by the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Sweden, Mr. Lars Heikensten, at the Sweden Financial Forum, Örebro, on 15/10/97. What I have to say is based in the main on the Riksbank’s latest inflation report, which was published less than a month ago. In some respects, I shall be developing what we said there about the outlook for inflation, though our assessment of the situation is essentially unchanged. I shall begin, however, with some remarks about why monetary policy is constructed as it is, with the objective of safeguarding the value of money. 1. Monetary policy’s foundations Experience advocates a stable environment The reason why the Riksbank’s objective is to safeguard the value of money is basically simple: low, stable inflation contributes to a good environment for the growth of production and employment. Support for this view is readily found in the pattern of economic developments in different industrialised countries. In those countries where inflation has been allowed to accelerate, growth has normally been weaker and more erratic. We have seen this in Sweden. In the first two-to-three post-war decades Swedish economic policy was characterised by stable rules and inflation was low. Economic growth in those years was good and new jobs were created to a greater extent than in the past two decades, when inflation shot up and there was a series of devaluation cycles. There is really nothing odd about this.

As a rule, these estimates coincide. Norges Bank places considerable emphasis on the transparency and communication of monetary policy. Norges Bank’s analyses and the background for the Bank’s interest rate decisions are published regularly. The inflation outlook is presented three times a year in Norges Bank’s Inflation Report. Further assessments are presented every six weeks in connection with the Executive Board's monetary policy meetings. The Bank also reports on the implementation of monetary policy in its annual report. If there are significant deviations between actual price inflation and the target, the Bank will provide a thorough assessment in its annual report. Particular emphasis will be placed on any deviations outside the interval +/- 1 percentage point. Transparency about the intentions, strategies and implementation of monetary policy make it easier for economic agents to evaluate monetary policy. If monetary policy is predictable, an important source of uncertainty is reduced and the interest rate that is necessary to achieve the inflation target - all other thing being equal - is lower. A predictable monetary policy can thereby contribute to enhancing the efficiency and impact of monetary policy. Even though there is not necessarily a one-to-one relationship between transparency and predictability, some degree of transparency is probably a precondition for achieving monetary policy credibility. BIS Review 74/2001  9  In Norway at least it appears that transparency in Norges Bank's interpretation of the mandate and in the implementation of monetary policy has contributed to a somewhat more predictable monetary policy.
Conclusion Roughly eight years of extremely accommodative monetary policies on both sides of the Atlantic might lead to the notion that the ECB and Fed have been confronted with similar or even homogenous challenges. This would be a misapprehension. Major institutional and structural differences at the onset of the financial crisis explain why the clean-up efforts in the US were faster and more effective and the recovery was more sustainable. After the institutional short-comings of Monetary Union had been painfully exposed, much progress has been achieved on the road to completion and further integration. However, this institutional reform package took time. Now, economic recovery, although still timid, is under way in the euro area. But this finding cannot be taken as an excuse to rest on our laurels. More determined structural reforms need to be implemented to lift the growth potential and overcome the ultra-low interest rate phase. A more determined approach to tackle the problem of non-performing loans is necessary to tackle the remaining legacy of banking crisis. When the macroeconomic ship is engulfed by a major storm, all hands – not just monetary policy – need to man the pumps. This, indeed, holds true on both sides of the ocean. 1 Lang, J. H., Peltonen, T. and Sarlin, P., “A framework for early-warning modeling with an application to banks”,  Working Paper Series, ECB, forthcoming. 2 Ghysels, E., Idier, J., Manganelli, S. and O. Vergote, (2014), “Ahigh frequency assessment of the ECB Securities  Market Programme”, ECB Working Paper No. 1642.

The US had a trusted process through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, backed by a credit line from the US Treasury. By contrast, prior to the crisis many member states of the euro area did not even have a national resolution framework. Since 2008, the FDIC has resolved over 500, mostly smaller banks in the United States. While determining the exact definition is tricky in the euro area, the number appears less than a hundred.1 All this explains why the recovery of the banking sector took longer in the euro area, which our monetary policy had to work to mitigate. And what is more, when public authorities in the euro area did intervene to backstop their national banking sectors, the fiscal implications naturally differed: the onus fell entirely on national budgets. This in turn contributed to the second area where the euro area and the US diverged: the emergence of the so-called “vicious loop” between banks and sovereigns, which further delayed the financial repair process. Importantly, this vicious loop not only further impaired monetary transmission, but it also had implications for the stance of monetary policy. The need for accelerated fiscal consolidation to quell the sovereign debt crisis constrained the ability of fiscal to carry out macroeconomic stabilisation in the euro area and hence the overall policy-mix. Whereas the US could consolidate its budget against the backdrop of a firming recovery, some euro area governments were forced into a pro-cyclical fiscal stance. That in turn worsened the macroeconomic environment in which monetary policy had to operate.