samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Such an approach would have to be designed to limit the moral hazard implications, incorporating strict conditionality. But it can be useful as a means of supporting a country as it takes remedial policy action through bridging finance. The issue of the standstill is, as many of you will know, controversial in the sovereign context, notwithstanding the fact that an informal standstill plays a crucial role in corporate workouts. Voluntary debt rollover agreements with creditors or bond restructurings are, I believe, useful aspects of effective PSI. But historical experience of involuntary sovereign debt standstills, in the form of payments suspensions, has not exactly been encouraging – the process has often been inefficient and inequitable. Nevertheless, there are circumstances in a sovereign debt crisis where the immediate payments relief provided by a standstill may make an important contribution. An example would be where capital flight is pervasive because immediate policy adjustment is insufficient to bring about adequate voluntary private sector refinancing. In these circumstances, a standstill may realise the same advantages as in a corporate workout if it provides breathing space for remedial policy measures to be evaluated and put in place; if it promotes creditor co-ordination and avoids unjustified creditor preference by treating creditors of the same type equitably; and if it provides incentives to both creditors and debtors to reach a voluntary arrangement sooner rather than later.

The second measure relates to responsible investment by the Exchange Fund. The Exchange Fund now adopts a guiding principle that priority will be given to Green and ESG investments, if the long term return is comparable with other investments on a risk-adjusted basis. 11. Our third measure is the launch of the Centre for Green Finance under the HKMA’s Infrastructure Financing Facilitation Office, focusing on capacity building to facilitate the equipping of financial institutions with the knowledge, skills, tools and other resources in green finance. 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  12. In fact, we’re now in our developmental plan to prepare banks for the upcoming changes. A working group on the assessment framework has been in place since August, and today’s seminar marks the beginning of the capacity building programme for the Centre for Green Finance. On the other hand, the assessment framework will help banks understand their readiness for change, while the capacity building events will equip practitioners with the necessary knowledge for the changes. 13. For today’s seminar, we will first invite the IFC to provide an overview of the opportunities and challenges to green banking, and introduce some case studies on their approach to assisting banks in “greening” their operations. This afternoon, several banks will share their initiatives and practical experience on their green journey, including governance, risk management, disclosure and green products and business policy. 14. And here I would like to extend our special thanks to the IFC for their dedicated support for this workshop.
Contrary to some recent proposals i, we shouldn’t, according to me, get rid of the numerical targets which are in the Treaty: they are useful anchors, including the 3% deficit which is – in the case of France – more or less the threshold that would stabilize the public debt ratio at its pre-covid level. But the revised rules, without changing the Treaty, should be based on a long-term debt trajectory and on a single operational target, namely a ceiling on the growth rate of public expenditure as proposed by the European Fiscal Board (EFB), chaired by the Danish economist Pr. Niels Thygesen. First, we can keep the 60% long-term debt anchor. But the 1/20 linear rule of yearly adjustment towards it is too demanding and should be made more country-specific. Second, for the operational target, relying only on the current interest burden, as suggested by some, would be at the same time short-termist and too partial: the levels of the total public deficit and of public debt remains key to assess the sustainability of public debt in the face of unexpected shocks. But interest payments could be included in a net expenditure rule, unlike the EFB proposal which excludes them. At constant taxation rate, a rule based on total government expenditure growth would make it possible to control both the public  deficit and the public debt, since, implicitly, it incorporates a fiscal response to changes in the interest burden.

As the Prime Minister rightly declared recently, "the time has come for proof on the ground, rather than legislative cathedral building". xii I am well aware of the risk of appearing to give easy or excessively theoretical lessons, but I speak here with the conviction of the practitioner and even - if you will allow me in this last part of my speech with the passion of the public servant. Public management is not necessarily an easy task, but it is possible. Calling for the transformation of public services today means refusing to become resigned to a public service that is seen as outdated and unable to cope. I believe in the public service as a national asset: throughout our long history, from Bonaparte to Charles de Gaulle, public services have frequently been a catalyst for unity, modernity and even productivity. Transforming public services can and must serve to boost France’s competitiveness. xiii Pious hopes? No! There are perfectly good examples of modernisation of public services here in France, even in the very recent past. We could talk about our army, but I'll start with the current Public Accounts Directorate (Direction Générale des Finances Publiques), formed from the merger of the National Tax Office and the National Public Accounts Office (Direction générale des impôts and Direction générale de la comptabilité publique).
If one adds the insurance sector, that number is closer to 14 percent. That percentage has increased significantly since 1990 from a total of 10% of GDP or less than 7% for the banking sector only. Importantly, this does not take into account the many economic activities which are directly linked and in many cases dependent on a vibrant financial sector. In terms of employment, the financial and insurance sectors together employ approximately 185’000 people or 6% of total Swiss employment. The total federal and local tax contribution of the Swiss banking sector amounts to an estimated CHF 13 billion or 13% of total tax revenues. A mere perfunctory consideration of these figures should suffice to underline the importance of defending and maintaining Switzerland’s status as a leading global financial center. In a 1974 study, Charles Kindleberger traced the history of financial centers in Western countries. What is striking about Professor Kindleberger’s historical findings is that nothing should ever be taken for granted. Not unlike tides, cities and countries as international financial centers rise and fall. For the most part, this rise and fall seems to reflect dynamic criteria such as transportation infrastructure, political stability and regulatory patterns.1 Since the 1970s, the competition amongst international financial centers has of course become genuinely global with diverse places such as Luxembourg, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and, most recently, Shanghai joining the race. Switzerland has good reasons to be confident about its ability to defend its status. Most importantly, it sets out from a position of strength.

In addition, there has been an important shift from the traditional high net worth clients investing in individual hedge funds to funds being invested in hedge funds via diversified pools and formal fund of funds structures. These pooled assets, coupled with liberalizing regulatory developments have opened up hedge funds to a more diverse universe of investors, including a wide range of institutional and retail investors. Currently, the total size of funds invested in hedge funds via pooled structures is estimated to be approximately USD 300 billion or nearly a third of the underlying hedge fund industry. Remarkably, annual growth rate estimates of the pooled funds suggest that their expansion has proceeded at a more rapid pace than the underlying hedge fund industry. This implies that a significant portion of new assets flowing into hedge funds does so via collective asset management pools. In a competitive environment, the Swiss financial sector has succeeded in leveraging its position as one of the world’s leading asset manager to secure an dominant position amongst collective asset management pool operators in the hedge fund industry. Though many of the early formal funds of funds were registered under Luxembourg, Cayman Island or Bermuda law, Swiss financial firms today manage a significant part of the world’s alternative asset management pools.
Considering those characteristics, adopting any currency other than the euro would have serious drawbacks.8 Therefore, reforming the current regime appears preferable to a radical change should EMU membership be unattainable, at least for the next decade. The fact that the vast majority of small countries either use another country’s currency or pursue some type of rigid fixed exchange rate policy could indicate, however, that a floating currency may face difficulties over the long haul (Chart 3). Ladies and gentlemen: No monetary framework or choice of currency will solve Iceland’s economic problems once and for all. The set of solutions labelled “cure-for-all-ills” is an empty set. Protracted discussions of the contents of an empty set are not only empty in themselves; they are absolutely pointless. Irrespective of the framework, economic policy must be pursued with greater discipline than has been the case to date. However, imposing a framework that forces the authorities to adopt more long-term oriented policies could improve performance. One way to do this is to join a currency union. The experience of Greece and other countries on the periphery of the EMU shows, however, that if economic policies remain short-sighted and solving imminent fiscal problems is delayed for too long, the imposed discipline is anything but palatable. I think Iceland’s experience of its collaboration with the IMF indicates, however, that it would flourish under such discipline. But if EMU membership is not an option, that discipline must come from within.

The answers to this question as provided in the Inflation Reports published in 2006 were as follows: •  JANUARY 2006: “... a short-term interest rate path remaining constant for the first couple of months in 2006 and displaying a gradual decline thereafter...”  •  APRIL 2006: “...where the Central Bank continues to cut policy rates gradually...”  •  JULY 2006: “... in addition to the measures of June, the Central Bank will implement measured monetary tightening in the rest of 2006 and cut policy rates gradually in 2007...”  •  OCTOBER 2006: “under the scenario that the Central Bank maintains its tight stance until the last quarter of 2007 and cuts policy interest rates afterwards...”  As it is clearly seen above, as long as there was not a significant shock in the economy, the Central Bank acted in parallel to its earlier statements. However it had to revise its monetary policy stance after important shocks such as the market volatilities of May and June. It is more evident in light of these this example that, as it is frequently emphasized in our announcements, the interest rate path, which is used by the Central Bank in producing forecasts, should not be perceived as a commitment to be followed in every case. Hence, the interest rate risk should be assessed by considering the fact that the outlook presented in the Inflation Report is subject to change depending on the data flow, and thus, the policy perspective can be updated whenever necessary.
As a representative of a country that has had floating exchange rates for over thirty years now, I can only underscore the importance of an exchange rate regime that reflects the realities of the market. During the past three decades, the Swiss franc has been an essential factor in the development of the Swiss economy. However, it was never a reason for our exporters to sit back and relax. On the contrary, the franc put pressure on them to become more efficient and to specialise in those product areas in which we have a real competitive edge. Consumers also profited from the strong Swiss franc in that the prices for imported goods have fallen significantly. A currency that is accurately priced enables the economy to benefit from improvements in its terms of trade triggered by productivity increases. If a country’s currency is undervalued, products are sold on the market at give-away prices, and productive resources are inefficiently allocated. The functioning of a currency system, therefore, plays a pivotal role in the development of a country’s prosperity, and monetary reform, as China is currently expected to tackle, is a very delicate undertaking. Unless new monetary rules and mechanisms can immediately convince the market of the appropriateness of the new regime, a risk of speculative pressure will emerge. Switzerland has experience in this regard as well. We ultimately opted for flexible exchange rates, i.e. a system in which the Swiss franc’s value is continuously in line with market forces.

Even though Switzerland is a modest player on the international scene it carries more weight than one would imagine. The country’s edge lies in its small size, leaving it no other option than to open up to international trade. Moreover, its liberal philosophy and sound financial standing have given it the necessary tools to conduct a policy of openness and to have a strong presence abroad. Having chosen the option of free trade and free movement of capital, Switzerland is, in many respects, better prepared than others to take advantage of the greater opening of the borders brought about by globalisation. To be sure, this is not an easy ride, as international competition always necessitates painful adjustments, and Switzerland is no exception in this respect. When we take stock of the last few years, however, the bottom line looks favourable. We would certainly be in an even better position now, if we had built up a stronger presence in emerging economies. As you can see, contrary to what  2  BIS Review 45/2005  some people believe, globalisation is not the cause of the weak growth of the Swiss economy; indeed the opposite is true. Foreign trade is the engine driving our economy. It has expanded in recent years in step with the global economy. By contrast, our domestic market has stagnated and registered only limited gains in productivity. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where our problem lies. BIS Review 45/2005  3
Amidst many critical transitions, the speed of these changes, and a number of structural issues that we are facing, what has got us here will definitely not get us where we want to be in the future. Indeed, we will not know with certainty what the Thai economy will look like in 2025, but we know the major trends that will have significant implications for the 1  future landscape in which we operate. Today, I will highlight five major trends: demographic change, climate change, changes in value chains, digital transformation, and global excess liquidity with historically high leverage. These trends will have big implications for Thailand. While most people would think of these trends as threats to existing business models, they are indeed business opportunities for those who look ahead and get ready for them. 1. Demographic Change The first trend I’d like to highlight is demographic change. Thailand is aging and is aging fast. We were the third Asian country to become an aging society, and by 2035 we will be the first developing country to become a hyperaged society by the definition of the World Health Organization—meaning 20 percent of the population will be over the age of 65. This change will have implications on at least two fronts, both very important to the business sector: labor force, and consumer spending. Impacts on labor force Let me first start with implications on the labor force. The Thai labor force has already passed its peak in 2013 and will only keep declining.

But even before all these trade tensions started, value chains around the world had begun to change in even more significant ways, thanks in part to the advancement in technology. To this point, I’d like to highlight a few observations by McKinsey Global Institute report earlier this year. 5  First, services are becoming a larger part of the global value chain. Cross border services are growing more than 60 percent faster than trade in goods. The valueadded share of services is increasing as firms around the world today are spending more on brands and intellectual property. Manufacturing firms in many areas start providing leasing services, which add value to downstream processes and blur borders between products and services. In addition, as people’s standards of living increase, they shift their consumption towards services, which could range from tourism, medical services, financial services, and educational services. Unlike trade in goods, trade in services are not the focus of the ongoing trade tension, which makes service-related value chains less vulnerable. The second observation is that global value chains are becoming more knowledge-intensive and are relying more on high-skill labor. This is partly attributed to the first observation, as service-related tasks generally require higher skills than manufacturing tasks. The introduction of technologies such as automation and the rising wages in developing countries diminish the importance of labor-cost differences. Contrary to the common perception that the global value chains are driven by cheap labor in developing countries, today less than 20 percent of global trade is driven by labor-cost arbitrage.
The aim in doing so was exactly in line with the May Inflation Report – to reduce modestly the degree of monetary policy accommodation, given a tight labour market and gradually mounting pay pressures, to return inflation to target sustainably. Some context is important here. Voting for a 25 basis point rate rise, a full decade after monetary policy was first placed on an emergency setting, is hardly either surprising or radical. A Bank Rate rise of 25 basis points would still leave monetary conditions in the UK extraordinarily accommodative by any historical metric. And the aim in doing so is to lower the risk of needing to tighten policy less gradually in future and cause a sharper adjustment in the economy. Truth be told, I would have voted to raise Bank Rate at the MPC’s May meeting had data on the economy held firm. What we saw ahead of that meeting was a string of weak data suggesting consumer spending might be faltering. I believed there was option value in waiting to see if these data signalled the start of a lasting retrenchment by households, or were instead a temporary snow or statistical blip. With only a modest policy tightening needed over a number of years to return inflation to target, there was “no rush”. In the event, data on the consumer since the May MPC meeting has, virtually without exception, bounced back strongly. That includes measures of retail spending, consumer confidence and consumer credit.

It is worth noting that the transmission mechanisms under study do not stem from the traditional recommendation of Friedman (1959) in his famous A Program for Monetary Stability, where the focus is on money demand stability and the role of money as a price anchor, and whose analytical base is the quantitative theory of money. Actually, recent works that assign a role to money, and to credit in general, do so because it can reveal future inflationary pressures or because it can contribute to achieve increased stability (Christiano et al., 2007; Goodfriend and McCallum, 2007; Kilponen and Leitemo, 2008). Nonetheless, the empirical evidence on the ability of money to provide information to forecast inflation is not so favorable to monetary aggregates. 5 It is more promising to conceive monetary and credit aggregates as indicators of potential distortions in financial markets, an issue I will discuss in the next section. In this review of inflation targeting regimes it is worth to bear in mind that they are subjected to stress when inflation is of external origin and corresponds to a cost (or supply) shock. A cost shock that increases inflation may require a restrictive monetary policy in order to prevent relative price increases from snowballing into an inflationary spiral. In any case, and to avoid costly repercussions in terms of output losses, a horizon is established to correct deviations, which permits relative price changes to occur without requiring sharp monetary policy adjustments .
Institutions like the Oxford Union were established “as a forum for discussion and debate at a time when the free exchange of ideas was a notion foreign to the restrictive university authorities.” Arguably we need such institutions in all parts of society more than ever where thesis can meet its antithesis and hopefully create a new synthesis. All of us as individuals have a responsibility to be more open and to engage respectfully with different views if we are to have a constructive political debate about the issues that matter to all of us. 5. Manage the boundary between Technocracy and Democracy carefully  How can we get the balance right between that which needs to be decided by experts versus politicians? Not surprisingly, the growth in the space occupied by experts, in part because many decisions are increasingly technical, can foster resentment of unelected individuals making decisions that have huge social consequences. Problems often arise when experts try to be politicians or when politicians try to be experts. Clarity about these roles and accountability to reinforce that clarity are essential. I have spent much of my career managing that boundary.

And while the global population has 5  grown from about 5 billion in 1990 to about 7 billion today , the number who go to bed hungry has fallen from 6  about a billion to 795 million . The application of expertise has given us not just aqueducts, sanitation, roads, education and wine, but much, much more. With these achievements in mind, it is not surprising that many decisions have been delegated to experts – by which I mean those who have invested time to develop a deep knowledge of a particular subject, usually with credentials and ongoing professional development to maintain their skills. Since the time when Caesar introduced the Julian Calendar based on expert advice to prevent the pontifex from manipulating the dates to 7  favour their political allies, politicians have turned to experts to help them make better decisions. The mechanisms for doing this have varied: trusted advisors; independent commissions tasked with solving a particular problem; expert witnesses appearing before parliament or the courts; or creating expert institutions with well-defined mandates to deliver a policy objective. A well-known example of such technocracy in action in the UK is the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) which is tasked with making the difficult trade-offs around which treatments will be funded by the National Health Service. This ensures those decisions are made on the basis of medical science and rigorous cost benefit analysis, and insulates politicians from lobbying by different interests.