samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Il Sole 24 Ore: We are at the very heart of democracy: no taxation without representation. Trichet: I repeat: peer surveillance on government and parliament as regards fiscal policy is a bold political endeavour. I do believe that by going back with great determination to the letter and the spirit of the Stability and Growth Pact we will make a jump in terms of governance of the 16 members of the euro area, and that jump is overdue. Moreover, the 2020 Agenda is also extremely important to reinforce economic governance in the EU as a whole, at the level of the 27. Il Sole 24 Ore: A last word: are you optimistic that EMU will survive the current crisis? Trichet: Absolutely. Sometimes, we don’t realize how much Europe has achieved in the last half a century. The founding fathers could not even imagine the creation of a Parliament elected by universal polling, of a European Court of Justice determining jurisprudence for Europe as a whole, of a fully integrated single market and of a single currency, today for 330 million fellow citizens and 16 countries. Europe has also proved in the past two years that it was able to cope with the worst global crisis since World War I. This has been in particular true for the central banks, the ECB as well as the National Central Banks, in Italy Banca d’Italia.

The scale of the floods and the knock-on effects of natural catastrophes on global supply chains came as a rude surprise. The floods damaged more than 7000 industrial and manufacturing plants in 40 separate provinces. This affected countries with significant manufacturing capabilities in Thailand, most notably Japan. The majority of the insurance losses therefore came not from property damage, but from business interruption claims arising from the disruption to manufacturing and supply chains. It is therefore important that insurers have senior experts in the region who understand Asia’s multi-faceted and inter-connected risks. This will enable the industry to better price and underwrite regional risks, and achieve sustained growth. MAS will seek to increase the depth of expertise in Singapore by continuing to work with existing players to build up their specialty and reinsurance underwriting and broking capabilities as well as expand their regional hubs. MAS will also seek to increase breadth in the industry by promoting growth in emerging business lines, such as cyber risks. Lack of data is a key hurdle for cyber insurance in Asia. MAS is working with industry to create a test-bed for cyber risks where insurers and potential clients can come together to simulate loss events. •  Cyber insurers will be able to generate sets of valuable loss data and raise awareness about the value of specialty cyber insurance cover.
See the notes to Chart 2 for how excess current account balances are calculated. And since all countries cannot become more competitive at the same time – it is a relative concept – there is no avoiding it: higher global growth will require comprehensive measures to boost productivity and with it, real wages and demand. This means domestic policies to spur innovation, technology adoption, and the reallocation of resources. Particularly important will be measures to re-start the stalled ‘diffusion machine’. 18  While the most productive  companies have continued to innovate, others have become slower at adopting those innovations. Speeding up the rate of take-up of new inventions and processes – for example through greater product market competition or challenges to management to benchmark against best practice  19  – would provide a  significant boost to overall productivity growth. And higher growth requires a new approach to trade policy. Consider that Bank of England research estimates that up to one half of the post-crisis productivity slowdown could be related to the deceleration in global trade growth. 20  It will not be enough for the G20 to “resist protectionism.” The G20 now needs to make “trade work for all.” That includes using e-commerce platforms to promote free trade for SMEs across the G20,  21  and it requires  an urgent and critical examination of trade in services. 18  See https://www.oecd.org/eco/growth/OECD-2015-The-future-of-productivity-book.pdf.

The Bank of England also must concern itself with the resilience of CCPs in other European and non-European jurisdictions that are used by firms that we supervise. These CCPs must be subject to robust regulatory standards and deep reciprocal supervisory cooperation. To address such issues, we can and should build on current models to develop a new form of regulatory and supervisory cooperation. The European Commission’s proposals announced last week recognise the importance of effective cooperation arrangements between the relevant EU authorities and their overseas counterparts. They include potential provisions for deference to the rules to which a CCP is subject in its home jurisdiction in line with the intent of the G20. 26  The Bank welcomes this. The Commission’s proposals, driven in part by Brexit, address an increasingly important and more general issue in the regulation of the international financial system. 25  Requiring up to another € of capital. See, for example, the G20 Leaders’ communique, Brisbane Summit, 16 November 2014, available at http://www.g20australia.org/official_resources/g20_leaders_communique_brisbane_summit_november_2014.html. 26  12  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  12  Elements of these proposals could therefore provide a foundation on which to build robust cross-border arrangements for the supervision of CCPs. This should be based on deep cooperation between jurisdictions and authorities who defer to each other’s regimes where they meet international standards and deliver similar outcomes.
For reasons already explained, progress towards the attainment of a balanced budget over the medium term must at the same time also be a priority. Financing  8  Report entitled The 2009 Ageing Report: Economic and budgetary projections for the EU27 Member States (2008-2060), published by the European Commission and the Economic Policy Committee. BIS Review 60/2009  5  the necessary investment, therefore, represents a complex task. This is because some 65% of budgetary revenues come from cyclically-sensitive sources, essentially direct and indirect taxes, and current projections show that the recovery in Malta’s export markets, and therefore also in the domestic economy, is likely to be very slow. This means that the tax base will expand only moderately. As a result, the need to allocate more public funds to investment while at the same time reducing the deficit can only be satisfied if a major effort is made on the expenditure side. Here too, however, the task is complicated. This is mainly because about 69% of total budgetary outlays are in the shape of fixed commitments such as wages and salaries, interest on the public debt and welfare payments. Since increased taxation must be ruled out as an option, the solution must be centered on efficiency improvements in the use of budgetary resources and a reordering of spending priorities. In this context it should be noted that beyond 2013 Malta is unlikely to be eligible for EU funds to the same extent as at present.

Aldous Huxley who wrote the "Brave New World" in the 1930s believed technology and automation would put workers on the fast track for better pay, better hours, better relationships with bosses, and a better workplace environment. (I will let you be the judge of how far that is true today). Science-fiction writer and futurist, Sir Arthur Clarke, predicted in the 1960s, "a world in which we can be in instant contact with each other, wherever we may be, and that it will be possible for a man to conduct his business from Tahiti or Bali just as well as he could from London." This is certainly true today. In the 1980s, many predicted jobs that would be extinct and replaced by robots, such as cashiers, bank tellers, receptionists, servers, floor workers. Today, automation has changed these roles for sure, but it may interest you to know that only one occupation appears to have been fully eliminated in the last 60 years – and that is the elevator operator! 1/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  Roy Amara, American scientist and researcher, in 1982 predicted that the greatest changes to come in the workplace would be cultural. He said, "the workplace would be more cooperative than adversarial, and workers will want intellectual and psychological fulfilment, not just financial reward". Certainly, it could be said of hiring today that being part of a team that creates a positive impact on society and encourages emotional and intellectual growth, has strong appeal for job seekers.
The evidence suggests that foreign exchange markets exhibit excess volatility and that exchange rates diverge from fundamentals for protracted periods. In some sense, the existence of carry trade can be construed as evidence of this, as it involves betting that interest rate differentials are not fully compensated by exchange rate movements; i.e., that uncovered interest rate parity does not hold, except at long horizons, and then often through sharp and disorderly corrections. This, in turn, gives rise to two concerns: first, regarding detrimental effects on the traded goods sector , and second, on financial stability where volatile capital flows, currency mismatches, and rollover risk of foreign currency debt are among the key players. Adverse effects on financial stability can be particularly severe when a blocked interest rate channel and an erratic exchange rate channel interact badly with other economic and financial risks that can face small, open, and financially integrated economies – such as the global financial cycle, domestic financial vulnerabilities, and policy conflicts. We saw trends before the GFC that were consistent with this story. Data on longterm interest rates and spreads in small advanced economies and in many emerging markets economies showed strong and growing correlations with longterm rates and spreads among core rate setters (mainly the US and the eurozone), although still some way from the theoretical limiting case. The GFC reversed this process somewhat, as risk premia skyrocketed, cross-border banking partly retreated to home base, and restrictions on capital movements were in some cases reintroduced.

Gent Sejko: Address to the Parliamentary Committee on Economy and Finance Address by Mr Gent Sejko, Governor of the Bank of Albania, to the Parliamentary Committee on Economy and Finance, Tirana, 23 February 2022. * * * Honourable Chair, Honourable Members of the Committee, Thank you for this public hearing organised in the framework of my nominee for the renovation of the term as the Governor of the Bank of Albania. At the beginning of my address, please allow me to highlight that I am very honoured that the Parliament of Albania re-affirmed the confidence to continue to contribute in the field of Albanian economic and financial area management, as a member of the Bank Albania’s Supervisory Council. In the same spirit, I would like to point out that my nomination for the position as the Governor is motivated by an internal incentive: finalising the thoroughly transformation of the Bank of Albania and turning it in a modern central bank. In my vision, the Bank of Albania should converge towards the conjures of a modern central bank, suitable to be part of the European System of Central Banks; able to deal with the challenges lying ahead in the path of the sustainable economic development, for the comprehensive modernisation of the financial system, for the European integration, and in its function as a reliable partner of Albanian public, civil society and academic world.
The structural reforms, that we are badly in need of, must be implemented as rapidly as possible if we want Europe to be up to its historical challenges. The Chinese say “It is later than you think” has never been so true. In any case, history itself does not wait for us. And when I look back, over the last twenty years, it seems to me that an unfortunately well-founded criticism could be that we have constantly under-assessed the rapidity of the stream of history: the rapidity of the deterioration of the situation in the USSR, the rapidity of the collapse itself, the rapidity of the enlargement process, the depth, the strength and the intensity of the “desire of Europe” which is spreading in the countries in transition. Second word: stability. Economic and financial stability, in a period of excessive volatility and of wide boom-bust episode, financial and real stability appear to be a very precious asset. Over the last twenty years, we have constructed a new world: technology has permitted instantaneous communication and incredibly powerful real-time computation. Globalization has created new cultural, conceptual, commercial and financial links between all economies including previously centrally planned systems; together technology and globalization are progressively driving us to a unified planet of universal rules and regulations, code of conduct and practices, market procedures and market instruments, accounting standards, etc.

In the year to the first quarter total output grew by just over 3% while prices rose by 2.7% measured by the overall GDP 1  BIS Review 50/2000  deflator or by 2.1% on the Chancellor’s RPIX target measure. That is the fifth time in the past seven fiscal years that output growth has exceeded the rate of inflation. Since the recession of the early 1990s both output growth and inflation have averaged around 2¾%. The number of people in employment - as we saw from yesterday’s figures - is at an all time high. The rate of unemployment, on a claimant count basis is as low as it has been for 25 years. And interest rates over the past few years have been more stable and just about as low as anyone can remember. Now it’s true that there are uncertainties ahead - as there always are - which could make for a bumpier ride. The welcome weakening of sterling - which had risen to quite unrealistic levels against the exaggeratedly weak euro - will tend to reverse the downwards pressure that it had previously been exerting on retail prices. Domestic demand growth will need to moderate to compensate for that although there are some tentative signs in the recent data that it may be beginning to do so. The sustained tightness in the labour market could still put upwards pressure on earnings growth and pay settlements - though the latest data are somewhat reassuring for the time being.
Banks’ average risk weight (risk-weighted assets per unit of assets) has almost halved, falling from over 70% in 1993 to below 40% at end 2011 (see, also, Blundell-Wignall and Atkinson (2011)). There are three possible interpretations of this trend. One is that banks’ assets, in aggregate, are around half as risky today as they were 20 years ago. A second is that banks are twice as good at managing these risks as they were 20 years ago. In the light of the crisis, which unearthed huge risks on banks’ balance sheets accumulated over this period, neither proposition rings especially true. To see why, consider the evolution of an alternative measure of risk – simple bank leverage. In the pre-crisis boom, bank leverage rose steadily to reach historically unprecedented levels. This signalled high and rising bank risk (Chart 2). Indeed, bank leverage and bank risk weights moved in opposite directions over this period, with a correlation coefficient of minus 0.6. While the risk traffic lights were flashing bright red for leverage, for risk weights they were signalling ever-deeper green. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The subsequent financial crisis has made clear which traffic light signal was at fault.1 The boom was leverage-fuelled and so too has been the subsequent bust. At least at an aggregate level, bank risk weights appear to have borne, at best, a tenuous relationship with risk. At worst, they were a contrarian indicator.

As an example, take lending to the real economy – for example, to finance infrastructure, SMEs or trade. These asset choices are likely to be positive for medium-term growth and hence, indirectly, for credit risk in the financial system. In other words, this portfolio allocation is likely to deliver positive externalities for the wider economy. By contrast, lending within the financial system may have the opposite effect. It raises interconnectivity in the system, thereby amplifying systemic risk (Haldane (2009)). In other words, this portfolio choice may drive negative externalities for the financial system and wider economy. In an ideal world, these risk externalities would be taken into account in the setting of risk weights – for example, by raising risk weights on intra-financial system lending and lowering it on growth-positive lending. In practice, there is scant evidence of this having happened. Indeed, if anything the current risk-weighting system appears to generate the opposite set of incentives. Chart 7 looks at the average risk weight assigned by UK banks to different counter-parties, some in the financial system, others in the wider economy. The differences are stark. Mortgage risk weights are double those on lending to financial institutions. For large companies, risk weights are treble those on lending within the financial system. For SMEs, they are quadruple. Those are probably not the risk weights a benevolent dictator, charged with supporting the economy and armed with a PhD in welfare economics, would choose.
In 2016, Shariah-compliant trade finance accounted for 24.1% of total trade finance provided by the Malaysian banking sector. However, our Islamic finance industry only financed about 5% of total exports in Malaysia, again, signifying an untapped growth area with large potential. Increasing bank financing for SMEs would also encourage more market based solutions to meet the funding needs of the halal sector participants, which are now largely reliant on government initiatives. There are however a number of challenges that may impede trade finance facilitation by Islamic finance players. I would like to highlight two. First is – “process inefficiencies” – that can contribute to higher operational risks such as fraud. This can be mitigated through use of technology that reduces reliance on traditionally document-intensive and multi-tiered manual processes. In Malaysia, I am happy to note that six Islamic banks have embarked on digitalisation of trade finance processes – through an integrated web-based platform that offers trade finance and working capital management solutions. The second challenge is, – the need to improve connectivity between the Islamic finance industry and the international trade community – to facilitate effective intermediation of trade finance needs. Again, the use of technology can ease the application and submission of trade-related information and documents which can expedite the whole process. If these challenges are not addressed, industry players are at risk of becoming irrelevant in the trade finance space.

If petroleum revenues were to be used as they accrue, this would lead to wide fluctuations in demand in the Norwegian economy and thereby amplify cyclical fluctuations. Third, the use of petroleum revenues will have an impact on competitiveness in Norwegian business and industry. A high level and wide fluctuations in the use of petroleum revenues will have a negative impact on the operating parameters for internationally exposed industries. The challenges associated with the emergence of the petroleum sector have contributed to the development of the four main pillars of Norway’s economic policy, which were established in the 1990s and in 2001. The pillars are: the oil fund mechanism, the fiscal rule, a floating exchange rate and inflation targeting. The Government Petroleum Fund was established in 1990 with a view to safeguarding long-term considerations in the use of petroleum revenues. The first allocation to the Fund was made in 1996, and the market value of the Government Pension Fund – Global, as the Fund is now called, had reached over NOK 1500 billion at the end of June this year. Under the oil fund mechanism, increased government petroleum revenues are invested abroad. This curbs the impact of oil price fluctuations on domestic demand and output - and on inflation and the krone exchange rate. A floating krone exchange rate also has a stabilising effect, and the exchange rate normally appreciates in favourable periods and depreciates during adverse periods. A flexible exchange rate can reduce fluctuations in employment and output.
This can be illustrated by the following example: If a perception that oil has made us so wealthy that we can to some extent relax leads to a reduction in annual productivity growth of a quarter percentage point, i.e. a reduction in trend GDP growth from the current level of about 2 per cent to 1¾ per cent, the income base would be reduced by more than the entire return on petroleum wealth. Societies that suddenly gain access to wealth deriving from natural resources have a tendency to spend the money and then fall into decline. A very clear example of this can be found in Spain already in the 1660s. The colonisation of South and Central America gave this country access to a wealth of natural resources, and to gold. Spain chose to spend a large portion of the windfalls on luxury and war. The attitude to working that this led to did not make it easy for these countries to get back on their feet again when the gold came to an end. Many countries have had similar experiences in more recent times. The expression “Dutch disease” comes from the turn of events in the Dutch economy in the 1970s and 1980s after the revenues from the large gas finds in the Groningen field were used to finance strong growth in public spending. When the gas revenues declined, economic growth came to a halt and economy policy had to be tightened.

This means: maintaining the right approach in areas like labour flexibility, low taxation and regulation; and continuing to foster open markets and to welcome foreign firms. Among such firms, we hope that many of the largest Japanese financial institutions will continue to see London as their natural European home. London is determined to remain internationally competitive as a centre for innovation and excellence in the 21st century. And we hope that it will also continue to be Japan's gateway to the euro. *  4  *  *  BIS Review 11/2001