samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Actively choosing the very thing that businesses seem to fear the most is more likely to mean that investment projects that have so far been postponed will instead be cancelled for good. The point, rather, is that for a given duration of uncertainty, it’s better that people are aware of it from the start, rather than being repeatedly surprised at how long the process takes. 4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  4  One way of thinking about this situation is that periods of uncertainty – especially those with acute downside risks and that are expected to last only a short period of time – raise the required rate of return on new investments. They therefore have similar effects as a standard increase in the cost of finance: they incentivise firms to meet new demand with labour rather than capital. In the last section I’ll go through some crude arithmetic to get some idea of the scale of such effects and, in that context, comment on the recent strength of employment and, more generally, on the weakness of productivity growth since the financial crisis. The Value of Waiting for News In economic theory, the negative impact of uncertainty on investment depends centrally on the assumption that capital spending is costly to reverse.

This culminated in the development of a blockchain-based prototype for digital multi-currency settlement in Phase 5. Through this project, the benefit to the industry had become clear, along with private incentives for commercialisation. With Project Ubin having paved the way, industry players are now better placed to pursue commercialisation opportunities. DBS Bank, JP Morgan and Temasek are leading the development of a digital multi-currency payments network aimed at enhancing commercial cross-border clearing and settlements globally. Looking back, this has been a great collaboration journey. MAS and the industry learnt from each other, created new knowledge, and strengthened relationships, and we created a strong ecosystem that is willing to collaborate to build better together. We will utilise the same model to explore the opportunities offered by other promising emerging technologies in future. Addressing Two Key Challenges 9. Looking ahead, central banks can play an active role in two key challenges: supporting sustainable growth through green finance, and enhancing cross-border payments to facilitate trade and investment. Let me start with sustainable growth. Harnessing innovation to support sustainable growth 10. Green finance today is hampered by challenges that reduce the incentive for investors to invest in green projects. Technology can be an enabler to overcome two of these challenges. First, to accurately verify and monitor the carbon footprint and resource consumption across an entire supply chain. This is necessary to address greenwashing and to build trust.
I will not dwell on the benefits that citizens and firms gain from having a stable currency like the euro in such a financial crisis, even though they do not often realise them. It is important not to forget it. Let me just recall how the US recession in the early 1990s affected Europe in 1992-93, leading – in the presence of uncoordinated economic policies within Europe – to serious economic and financial turbulence. The ERM crisis and the exit of the Italian lira and the British pound in the autumn of 1992 as well as the widening of the fluctuation bands of the ERM led to large changes in competitiveness, with an overall contractional impact even on the stronger economies such as Germany. It is difficult to imagine what would have happened in recent months without the euro. If the past is a good guide to understand the future, we can be sure that Italian inflation and interest rates would be higher, with negative repercussions on consumption and investment. We can only guess what our oil bill would now be if we had a weak currency instead of the euro. Likewise, just imagine the situation for households having mortgage debt who would have to pay substantially higher interest rates. Monetary stability requires a monetary policy focused on medium-term price stability. Especially in a phase of higher uncertainty such as the one we are currently experiencing there must be no doubt about the priorities of the central bank, or about its strategy and independence.

Under the second phase of the FSDP, access to finance by the various strata of society, including access based on gender is identified as a key weakness to be addressed. The development of the FSDP and its implementation, therefore, reflects the priority attached by the government to this subject. The Bank of Zambia as the lead coordinator for the Financial Sector Development Plan (FSDP) has also incorporated Financial Inclusion as one of the key objectives under its Strategic Plan for the period 2012 – 2015, namely; to increase financial inclusion to 50 per cent of the population by 2015. The strategies under this objective include the following: 1. Develop an index to measure the depth and breadth of financial services in Zambia. 2  Promote agency banking and mobile banking. 3  Develop guidelines for branchless banking framework. 4  Establish a unified collateral registry framework. 5  Establish Financial Education Coordinating Unit (FECU). 6  Undertake financial education interventions specific to BoZ mandate. 7  Revise legal and regulatory framework to promote financial inclusion. 8  Develop incentive mechanisms to encourage outreach of financial services to rural areas and other financially excluded citizens. In order to ensure that persons who are excluded, both in urban and rural areas do not encounter difficulties in opening bank accounts, the know your customer (KYC) procedures for opening and operating accounts has been simplified.
More generally, the views of businesses around the country about the state of trade are passed directly to the MPC through the intermediary of the Regional Agents who attend the monthly preMPC briefing meetings. This may not be quite “One 2 One” but it is a rapid and direct communication. The Bank of England has never had an Agency office in Northern Ireland. It is time to put that right. I am very pleased, therefore, to announce that in January next year the Bank of England will open an Agency in Belfast. It will increase our contacts with, and knowledge of, the economy and people of Northern Ireland. Nigel Falls, one of our most experienced Agents, will be the first Agent for Northern Ireland. He is here tonight, and you will be seeing a great deal of him in future. The second challenge for the future is to build a constituency for low inflation. There is I believe, a good deal of support in this country for monetary stability. Those who experienced the high and unpredictable rates of inflation of the 1970s and 1980s – the “inflation generation” – have ensured that all major political parties are now committed to stability. But there have been times in the past when low and stable inflation was abandoned by those who succumbed to the temptations of monetary laxity. Some of you here tonight are, I hope, taking a break from revision for your final examinations. Thirty years ago this month I was in your position.

The regional economies recognize the importance of developing these markets thus co-ordinated efforts through various initiatives have been undertaken to remove impediments to these developments. With further lowering of trade barriers under the ASEAN Free Trade Area and ASEAN+3 initiatives, intra-regional investment flows would further increase. The intensification of regional co-operation has been enhanced in recent years. In the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, there has been an increase in the level of financial co-operation among the Asian countries. These efforts have revolved around swap facilities to provide emergency liquidity assistance, regional surveillance and peer review to enhance regional financial and monetary co-operation, regional capacity building and the enhancement of skills and capabilities of regional financial regulators and policymakers. Regional surveillance and peer review in particular is an important step forward as it will contribute to confidence building and would complement the implementation of the various regional financing schemes. Significant progress has been made in achieving the objectives of the Chiang Mai Initiative to create swap facilities to provide emergency liquidity assistance for the region. Closer co-operative efforts in the standardisation of systems and documentation procedures would also contribute to facilitating intra-regional trade and investment among economies within the region, as well as with the rest of the world. Effective co-operation in these areas will augment the foundations for realising the tremendous potential that this region possesses for future growth and prosperity.
By reducing concerns over the liquidity situation faced by banks and by cutting banking sector systemic risk (which is reflected, for instance, in a sharp decline in EU bank CDS premia), the LTROs contributed to reopening funding markets. In money markets, the EURIBOR-OIS spreads have reversed their widening trend from last year, by narrowing substantially, thereby suggesting that the operations have successfully lowered risk premia. More generally, the whole euro money market curve has flattened. In the secured segment, repo rates in selected euro area government bonds, which had been progressively increasing since August 2011 compared with those based on collateral from AAA countries, declined and continued to remain low, indicating that the funding of Italian and Spanish government bond positions in the repo market has become much cheaper. Although turnover in the repo market has remained relatively subdued, there are signs of a moderate pick-up in the volume in Spanish and Italian markets from their levels at the end of 2011. The widespread perception of lower liquidity risk and improved capital adequacy thanks to the European Banking Authority capital exercise also brought a welcome reduction in US dollar funding costs via the FX swap market. US prime money market funds increased their exposure to euro area banks in January 2012 for the first time since April 2011, with an additional increase of 21% between the end of January and mid-March, and exceeding 12% of total assets under management.

Repairing the single market for capital is a collective endeavour in which the ECB has a role to play – but to be fully effective that role needs to be coordinated with the European Commission, European Supervisory Authorities and market participants themselves. Breaking the feedback loop between bank and sovereign credit should also be a priority. To this effect, steps should be taken towards a unified regime for bank resolution and beyond that, towards establishing a single European banking resolution authority. Finally, the “Financial Compact” should also include the completion of the single euro payment area. Payments are at the very heart of a corporate’s activity and I am not sure that they always get the attention they deserve. Nowadays, more than 50% of the trade of the 27 EU countries takes place within the EU – and that trade is mainly based on cashless payments. With the introduction of the single currency there could no longer be any differentiation between national and cross-border euro payments: they should all be “domestic”. The Single Euro Payments Area project, in short “SEPA”, came to fill this void; its aim is to establish a single market for retail cashless euro payments by overcoming technical, legal and market barriers, so that people can make euro payments throughout Europe as easily, securely and efficiently as within their own countries. Using the SEPA payment instruments, companies can make all euro-denominated payments centrally, from a single account, using the same format.
We applied what we understood to be the lessons from Japan, though with hindsight, perhaps not in every respect as completely as we could have. In particular, Japan’s experience reinforced the lessons of the Great Depression here in the U.S. and made us sensitive to the disinflationary force of an asset price bust and financial  4  However, research suggests that the purchases did reinforce the forward commitment. See, for example, “Policy commitment and expectation formation: Japan’s experience under zero interest rates” Kunio Okina and Shigenori Shiratsuka North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Vol 15, No 1, pp 75–100. 5  See, for example, “Deleveraging and Monetary Policy: Japan Since the 1990s and the United States Since 2007”, Kazuo Ueda, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol 26, No 3, Summer 2012, pp 177–202. 6  Some commentators prefer the term “North Atlantic financial crisis” as the failure and near-failure of financial institutions was concentrated in the U.S. and Europe. However, the crisis was global in the sense that financial markets transmitted the shock throughout the world and this resulted in a severe global economic downturn. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  crisis. We recognized that we had to be very aggressive to prevent deflation and deflation expectations from becoming well entrenched. The Federal Reserve reduced short-term interest rates to nearly zero by late 2008 – a little over a year and a half after the initial shock hit in August 2007.

The Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (SCAP) in early 2009 identified and addressed the potential capital shortfalls of the major U.S. bank holding companies in a stressed scenario. The SCAP forced the banks to recapitalize either through the use of private funds or the injection of government convertible preferred equity from the TARP program. However, our policy approach was far from perfect. Comparing actual growth to the growth projections by FOMC participants in the Summary of Economic Projections shows that we were consistently too optimistic about growth over the 2009–2012 period. As a result, with the benefit of hindsight, we did not provide enough stimulus. Perhaps, if we had paid more attention to the persistent divergence between growth forecasts and outturns in Japan in the 1990s, we might have been more skeptical about the prospects for a strong economic recovery, even with a more aggressive monetary policy regime. Also, we could have done better in communicating our intentions and goals. We put too much emphasis, too early, on the exit. At an earlier stage, we should have put greater emphasis on our commitment to use all our tools to the fullest extent possible for as long as needed to achieve our dual mandate objectives. Our policies also had a “start-stop” aspect to them that may have undercut their effectiveness. For example, until September 2012, our large-scale asset programs generally specified the total size of the program, with a purchase rate and an expected ending date.
Here is how Norman described the relationship between the Bank of England and the Government in the 1930s: AUDIO INSERT: “The Bank of England has always been constitutionally a private body... but what matters is not the position on paper but the position in practice. In monetary as in other matters the Government of the day must have the final word and this is fully recognised.” Today, the position on paper and the position in practice are the same. Our job is given to us by the Government and by Parliament. But for me, the story of the modern independent Bank of England began exactly fifteen years ago in early May 1997. It was a Bank Holiday Monday, immediately following the general election. After an early morning tennis match, I returned home to find a message from the Governor, Eddie George. He wanted to meet me in the Bank as soon as possible. An hour later we met in his office, alone in the imposing building known to most of you only by the facade shown on television. Eddie told me of his meeting that morning with the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, who had explained the proposal for Bank independence. It was something for which Eddie and I had worked for five years since Britain’s departure from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992. Now we had a chance to show what an independent central bank could do.

And I believe that the future of Regtech in Hong Kong is very bright, and there are opportunities for everyone. 25. Thank you for joining us on our Regtech journey. Before I finish, let me take this opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks to so many distinguished speakers who have taken time out of their respective busy schedule to contribute towards the discussion sessions today. I should of course also thank everyone of you participating in this event from around the world. I’m confident that the event will deliver rich rewards for all of us. Thank you very much. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches
Since then, the financial sector has been liberalized while simultaneously strengthening the regulatory framework. Concerned with the limited contribution of the financial sector to economic development, the Government devised and formulated policy mechanisms for addressing a number of identified obstacles within the framework of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) whose implementation started in 2002. In line with the PRSP framework, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund undertook an assessment of the financial system through the Financial Sector Assessment Programme (FSAP) which was complimented by our own review. Some of the principle areas of concern identified included: •  Low financial intermediation with limited access to financial services, especially for the rural and peri-urban population and the low-to-middle income earners;  •  Poor credit culture in the market;  •  Multiple and potentially conflicting roles of the government in the financial sector;  •  Weak regulatory framework for non-bank financial institutions, insurance and pension funds;  •  Undeveloped money and capital markets; and  •  Limited long-term development and housing finance. In recognition of the strategic importance of the financial sector to the country’s development and poverty reduction efforts, the Zambian government launched the Financial Sector Development Plan (FSDP) in 2004 to address weaknesses that had been identified in the financial sector. The FSDP is therefore a comprehensive strategy that is aimed at achieving a financial system that is sound, stable and market-based, that would support efficient resource mobilization necessary for economic diversification and sustainable growth.

Apart from the cost in net worth, intervention requires withdrawing money used to purchase foreign exchange by placing debt. This debt has an impact on market interest rates, affecting firms’ financial costs and arbitrage conditions, which could end up undoing the direct effects. At the same time, repeated or frequent interventions lose effectiveness: it is essential for intervention to be an exceptional occurrence in order to transmit the relevant information to financial markets. Nevertheless, it is a valid tool, effective in changing the exchange rate and strengthening the international liquidity position. The board of the Central Bank of Chile constantly evaluates the timing and the size of any intervention and in the past few weeks it has certainly been present in our discussions, based on weighing the benefits, costs and the present context. In the Central Bank of Chile we use a variety of methods for assessing the real exchange rate level with regard to its long-term fundamentals and thus we have an ample range of estimates. Our aim is not to determine which is the equilibrium – that is the task of the market –, but rather to detect any anomalous deviation. These discussions led us to the conclusion in our latest Monetary Policy Report that the real exchange rate is within the adequate range of levels, albeit in the lower part of it, and this is confirmed by the most recent appreciation.
Implications to BNM as a regulator These scenarios I have painted are drawn to show the distinct characteristics of a financial sector across four possible scenarios. It could be one of them, a combination or none of the above. Regardless of which scenario might eventually emerge, perhaps the most important realisation for stakeholders today is to be aware, ready and prepared for all the scenarios. In reality, what is even more likely though, is that the dynamic interplay between these scenarios will end up shaping the future of finance in ways that we cannot even fathom today. Interestingly, we are already seeing some elements of all four scenarios in our financial system today. To my mind, scenarios one and four are remotely possible, while scenarios two and three are considerably probable. For regulators, as the four scenarios highlighted, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that banks, in its current form, might no longer exist. This phenomenon not only negates the main intermediation channel of central banks’ monetary policy, it will also challenge central banks in terms of rethinking the means to regulate, supervise and safeguard overall financial stability and the manner in which scarce economic resources are allocated and intermediated. As data becomes the driving force of financial services, the central bank must keep abreast with 4/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  the latest thinking to harness the power of big data.

Fintech startups leverage on banks for regulatory compliance and access to customer base, while banks allow them to ‘plug-into’ their business as a swift means of acquiring technology; c. This collaborative model is made possible by the application of new technologies such as distributed ledger and open API across a wide range of financial services; d. Consumers and businesses will have access to highly competitive and efficient financial 3/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  services, driven by both scale and adoption of technological innovations; and e. In this scenario, greater financial education and literacy is important to ensure that the benefits of technology and innovation in the financial sector are fully realised. The third scenario is “New Kids on the Block” a. In this scenario, both technology adoption by incumbent banks and fragmentation among finance providers are relatively low; b. Consumers continue to accord a premium to regulated institutions and the existing idea of financial services being offered by a bank; c. Factors such as security, privacy and reliability remain at the forefront of the value proposition of traditional banks.