samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The independence of the Banco de España’s senior management in relation to the political authorities and to influence from the sector supervised is reinforced, inter alia, by: i) a specific selection procedure for the posts of Governor, Deputy Governor and Council members, with the Governor’s appointment being made at the proposal of the Prime Minister, from among persons with recognised competence in monetary or banking matters and a prior appearance by the Minister for the Economy being required before the competent Parliamentary Committee to report on the candidate;4 ii) the terms of office of the Governor and the Deputy Governor are for six years (exceeding the electoral cycle) and are non-renewable; iii) the setting of specified causes for dismissal from the posts of Governor, Deputy Governor and elected Council members;5 iv) the incompatibilities rules to which the Governor, the Deputy Governor and the Council members are subject; v) the specific conflict of interest rules applicable during their terms of office that include restrictions on financial transactions and private investments; and vi) prohibition of pursuit of professional activity relating to credit institutions or to securities markets in the two years following stand-down from the post (see Annex 3). As regards the staffing of the institution, the Banco de España, by legal imperative, recruits its employees observing the principles of equality, merit, ability and openness. These principles prevail throughout their career within the institution. Job security for Banco de España employees rests on the protection afforded by labour market legislation, strengthened by various in-house policies (e.g.

Moreover, the Governor shall be heard by the Minister for the Economy about the appointment of six members of the Governing Council. Propose to the Governing Council the Council members that shall form part of the Executive Commission. Propose to the Executive Commission the appointment and dismissal of the Directors General, for ratification by the Governing Council. The Governor shall have the powers delegated by the Governing Council or the Executive Commission. 2 Powers of the Deputy Governor     Manage, at the highest level, the common internal services of the Banco de España. Stand in for the Governor when the post is vacant or in the event of the latter’s absence or illness. The Deputy Governor shall have the powers delegated by the Governor, the Governing Council or the Executive Commission. 3 Powers of the Governing Council   Approve the general guidelines of action of the Banco de España so that it may fulfil the functions entrusted to it.   Debate monetary policy matters and supervise the Banco de España’s contribution to implementation of the monetary policy of the European System of Central Banks by the Executive Commission, all in accordance with the ECB’s guidelines and instructions and observing the independence and professional secrecy obligation of the Governor as a member of the ECB’s governing bodies.
At the same time, we plan activities that should increase the awareness of the population about possible risks in the banking services domain as a very important aspect for the bank clients. We especially welcome the initiative for organizing the European Money Quiz for the youth of our country, which will be organized for the first time this year, hoping that it will become a traditional one. This way, we believe we will encourage greater commitment among young people on financial issues, and consequently, it will contribute to raise the level of their financial literacy. In 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  this context, I would like to emphasize that the National Bank supports the process of preparing students by supplying them with various educational materials, by holding today’s training for the teaching staff, and later by organizing special preparatory activities for the national winners. It is of great importance that the European Money Quiz, an initiative of the European Banking Federation, unites us all, the financial regulators and the banks, MES and the educational institutions in the country, in order to attain a very important goal, that is improvement of the skills of the youngest in the area of finance, which contributes to improving their knowledge and ability to face future working and life challenges. At the end, it certainly contributes towards having educated and capable youth, with wide knowledge in the contemporary era, ready to grow into a capable work force, a driver of the economy in the coming years.

What is particularly pleasing to me about the preparations of the European Money Quiz is its massiveness. It is noteworthy that the number of registered classes is much higher than expected. It is assessed that about 3,000 students aged 13–15 years will participate in the internal testing phase. Such an approach envisaging testing of entire classes, enables all these students to become familiar with the issues of financial education, with aspects related to the operations of the central bank, commercial banks, securities markets. It is a significant benefit, which is probably, the goal of the initiator – the more massive scope, the wider education. Of course, some will be more successful and continue in the next stages of the competition, however it is a great benefit that all participants will have the opportunity to expand their knowledge in finance and economy, which is our common goal. In the end, let me once again express the readiness of the National Bank to actively support the overall process of preparation, both for the national and international competition in Brussels. I wish you the mentors, a successful work with the students, best luck to all, and of course, let the best students win! Thank you! 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
The Executive Board described the background for the decision as follows: •  Underlying inflation has been lower than projected in recent months. Nevertheless, several factors point to higher inflation ahead. Capacity utilisation is high and there is little spare capacity in the Norwegian economy. Employment is rapidly rising and unemployment has exhibited a marked decline. There are signs of higher wage growth and expectations of rising inflation. At the same time, the krone exchange rate has depreciated from strong values. •  The interest rate path presented in Inflation Report 3/06 will provide a reasonable balance between the objective of bringing up inflation towards target and the objective of stabilising developments in output and employment, conditional on the information currently available to Norges Bank. •  Monetary policy influences the economy with a lag. Over several years, interest rates have been considerably lower than what Norges Bank considers to be a neutral level. The interest rate may gradually be raised to a more normal level at a somewhat faster pace than envisaged earlier, although it is unlikely that rates will be raised at every monetary policy meeting. Based on Norges Bank’s current assessment, the interest rate will thus continue to be raised in small, not too frequent steps if economic developments are broadly in line with projections.

Housing investment is expected to grow through this year, albeit less rapidly than last year. Housing investment growth will thereafter moderate further, and may fall somewhat towards the end of the projection period. House price inflation is expected to slow. 2  BIS Review 108/2006  Household indebtedness has increased in tandem with high activity in the housing market. Growth in household debt (C2) has abated somewhat in recent months, but remains at a high level. Higher interest rates and lower house price inflation will curb growth in household debt in the next few years. Intensified competition and adaptation to new capital adequacy rules in the financial sector have squeezed banks’ lending margins. This may have curbed the impact of higher policy rates on house price inflation. Growth in credit to mainland enterprises has also shown a sharp increase over the past year, partly reflecting increased fixed investment. With prospects of continued high capacity utilisation in the Norwegian economy, solid profitability, ample liquidity and a high level of optimism among enterprises, strong growth in investment is expected again this year. As economic growth gradually slows, investment growth is also expected to moderate. Property management companies account for nearly 40 per cent of banks’ lending to the corporate sector. Activity in the commercial property market reached a very high level in 2005. The vacancy rate in Oslo has diminished steadily for two consecutive years and stood at 8 per cent in January 2006.
The actions that we took were intended to protect the economy from the consequences of risks to the financial system that could have decreased the availability of home mortgage and other credit, put further downward pressure on home values, eroded retirement savings and ultimately led to a loss of jobs and incomes as businesses faced added difficulties in financing expanded operations and job creation. Policymakers – both in the Federal Reserve and in the federal government – must continue to be proactive in their response to rapidly changing circumstances. Finally, I want to express my admiration and appreciation to members of my staff who have performed with great skill and care under extreme pressure. And I would like to also thank Chairman Bernanke, Secretary Paulson, Chairman Cox and my many other colleagues in the Fed and the supervisory community. Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to appear before you today. BIS Review 39/2008  9

Mr Sudhir Amembal the principal resource person is a renowned authority in leasing, having undertaken various leasing consultancies and training worldwide and being an author of various leasing publications and books. I am very grateful that he has found time to come to Zambia and share his vast experiences with us. I am glad to note that this seminar has brought together key players in the economy and other stakeholders. I thank you for your attention. BIS Review 17/2007  3
The debate over the use of personal information in the area of payment services has heightened with  6/7  the new Directive known as PSD2, which institutionalises the so-called TPP (Third Party Providers). TPP encompass “payment initiation service providers” and “account information service providers”. The former offer an alternative to the use of cards when making electronic purchase payments. The latter provide consolidated information on the status of the various accounts the customer has with entities, thereby facilitating financial planning. Payments account holders are entitled to authorise these third party providers to order payments on their behalf and/or to consult information associated with their accounts. Against this background, and irrespective of the usefulness of these services, it is important that customers should strive to understand the real scope of the authorisation granted, which may entail access to their account by a third party on the same footing as if it were the customers themselves accessing the account. Faced with risks such as the foregoing, magnified by the development of new technologies, I believe that financial education has a role to play. It may help, for example, make people aware of the change in reality that the digital arrangement of agreements entails or increase the digital competences of the public at large. The Financial Education Plan Mindful of the foregoing, the Banco de España and the CNMV continue working on their commitment to financial education through the Financial Education Plan.

The aim is to assess whether the interviewee understands: (i) that money loses purchasing power when prices rise; (ii) that the changes in an amount saved in an account over five years depend not only on the annual interest rate applied to the amount saved the first year, but also on the interest accumulated thereafter; and iii) that the risk of investing in equities diminishes if a broad range of shares is acquired instead of only one type. The replies, obtained from a broad sample of randomly selected individuals representing Spanish territory as a whole and each of its regions, and provided by INE, reveal, inter alia, 3/7  the following results: (i) 58% of interviewees understand what inflation is; (ii) 46% understand the concept of compound interest; (iii) 49% understand the concept of risk diversification; and (iv) the percentage of correct replies increases with educational level and household income level. Given that the Survey includes questions from an international project to measure financial competences, it is possible to compare these results with those obtained in other countries, in particular with OECD countries and EU countries that have information available in this connection. The comparison shows that the percentage of correct replies in Spain regarding the concepts of inflation and risk diversification is below the average, particularly in the case of risk diversification, in which the averages for the OECD and EU countries stand at 62% in both groups (compared with 49% in Spain).
In making our streets clean and free from litter, it is not enough to station one health inspector at the corner of every street to catch offenders (there are simply not enough health inspectors to go round anyway), nor is it enough to raise the fines against littering to a draconian level because people will still litter if they think they can avoid being caught. The best way to keep our streets clean or cleaner, in my view, is to nurture the value among our citizens that littering is morally bad and should not be indulged in even when no health inspector is around and there is a low chance of being caught. In the context of the financial-services sector, the best way to uphold the integrity of the markets and trustworthiness of the industry is for the stakeholders to nurture and cherish a culture and values that encourage and support honesty of the practitioners and  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  restrain the institutions from placing the maximization of profit above the interests of the customers. This may all sound very idealistic and is “easier said than done”. We all understand that it will take a long time, years and even decades, to change people’s mindset and values. However, no IFC is built overnight. It has taken London and New York many, many decades to become what they are today. The race to become among the top IFCs in the world is a long term endeavour.

More specifically, the financial services industry, the regulators and policy makers can and should work together to upgrade the 3Cs, which is essential in maintaining our competitiveness against other financial centres. Now I would like to name a few initiatives that the HKMA is pursuing in this regard in collaboration with the stakeholders. (a)  Competence: in conjunction with the SFC, the industry and professional bodies such as the TMA, the Hong Kong Institute of Bankers and the Hong Kong Securities and Investment Institute, we are seeking to revamp and formalise the professional qualifications and training for market practitioners in the fields of private banking and wealth management in general. The HKMA has also stipulated in its supervisory circular that banks must ensure that their staff have the necessary qualifications and professional training in the relevant fields. We are making good progress in this regard and we hope to be able to introduce an enhanced qualification and training framework in a few months’ time. (b)  Control: under the Banking Ordinance, directors and senior management of banks must be “fit and proper”, given the important roles they play in ensuring that their banks are run prudently and properly. In order to enhance the control and governance functions of individual institutions, the HKMA has recently refined the procedures for approving the appointment of bank directors and senior management. In addition to the usual vetting, we now convene face-to-face meetings with some of the nominated candidates.
This was remarkable in that according to the efficient-market hypothesis, it is only changes in fundamental factors, for instance profits or dividends, that ought to affect share prices. Further studies later in the 1980s indicated that future developments can be explained by historical price movements. A look at the share prices of two groups of firms – extreme losers and extreme winners – reveals that the group with the worst share performance in the first period gives a better return in the coming five years than the group that did best and vice versa. In the second period the undervalued shares recovered their fundamental value and the overvalued fell correspondingly. Studies with a shorter horizon confirm that shares which have begun to rise continue to do so and conversely, shares which have started to fall often continue to do so in the short run. The intuitive  1  Markowitz, H.M. (1952), Portfolio selection, J. of Finance, VII:1 (March), pp. 77–91. 2  Fama, E. (1970), Efficient capital markets: a review of theory and empirical work, J. of Finance 25, pp. 383–417. 3  This point has been made by, for instance, Milton Friedman and Eugene Fama; see Friedman, M. (1953), The case for flexible exchange rates, in Essays in Positive Economics, University of Chicago Press, and Fama, E. (1965), The behavior of stock market prices, J. of Business 38, pp. 34–106.

Given a well-established measure of this kind (with a status equivalent to that of the consumer price index, for instance), financial products ranging from forward traded instruments to loan agreements with terms based on a real-estate index, would enable households, for a reasonable sum, to reduce exposure to the risk of a large fall in property prices. This process is already under way. Banks have made varying progress in their customer orientation. Independent financial consultants have also begun to some extent. Increasingly composite financial products are being constructed and distributed. The range of mutual funds offered by banks includes funds owned by others. So perhaps one can say that the development towards more consumer orientation has already begun but the decisive steps still lie ahead. Re-regulations of the financial system, perhaps accompanied by amended tax regulations, may be needed, of course, to produce the course Merton points out but there is also a need for new structures in the financial system. Another requirement is appreciably more knowledge about how, for example, the systems’ productive components can identify and spread the risks that may have to be taken. Still, I am sure you will agree that this opens up new and truly interesting perspectives for the future in many fields of the life cycle as well as for the development of the financial system. Such a development might also lead to some savings finding their way back to the financial institutions and to markets being dominated by more professional players.
Whether the set of banks that continue to be subject to annual DFAST supervisory stress testing represents a large enough share of the overall banking industry and sufficiently spans the range of banking activities to provide a comprehensive perspective is something that merits monitoring and analysis. Consistency The second element we identified as contributing to the SCAP’s macroprudential effectiveness was consistency. In the SCAP, as in the current supervisory stress testing regime, all banks were subject to the same hypothetical stress scenario—that is, the same set of assumptions about the path of economic activity, interest rates, asset prices and volatility over the future stress test horizon. In SCAP, the scenarios were defined in a very parsimonious way, using just three variables (GDP growth, unemployment and housing prices). In contrast, the current supervisory stress test scenarios involve more than two dozen variables describing U.S. and foreign economic activity, interest rates and asset prices. Then, as now, the common scenario provided a consistent framework for assessing the vulnerability not just of the individual banking companies, but of the banking system as a whole. This consistency is especially important to address cyclical macroprudential objectives, as it provides a unified assessment of the performance of the overall industry. And of course the stress scenarios are themselves an important cyclical macroprudential element, as they are designed to impose more stress—in particular, a larger increase in the unemployment rate— during periods of strong expansion. But a single scenario will not be equally stressful for all firms.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam: Singapore – a widely respected centre of Asian and global finance Keynote address by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) Annual Dinner, Singapore, 30 June 2015. *  *  *  Chairman and Council Members of the ABS, Ladies and gentlemen, 1. Thank you for inviting me to join you this evening. 2. We meet at a time of renewed uncertainty in global finance. Greece has imposed capital controls and declared a banking holiday to stem a full-blown financial crisis. 3. No one has been able to predict each step in the game of brinkmanship that we have seen over the last few weeks. But the underlying reality of a sharply deteriorating economy in Greece, and the prospect of bankrupt Government, has not been a surprise. It is too early to say if some form of Grexit becomes a reality, but it is a contingency that Eurozone governments and financial institutions have been preparing for. 4. The direct impact of a collapse of the Greek economy is not significant, even in the Eurozone. The ECB and the EU are also likely to take all steps necessary to safeguard the Eurozone financial system in the coming weeks. Markets have hence not shown great panic, with credit spreads widening only slightly in the Eurozone periphery. 5. But there are downside risks we should be mindful of.