samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Although it is common today to use mobile phones for many other things than just making phone calls, our survey shows that private individuals in general are not familiar with the  9  A payment effected directly and which can be confirmed for both issuer and recipient, without delay. 10  Real Time Gross Settlement. 6  BIS Review 7/2010  concept of using their mobile phones to make payments. However, they value convenience highly and if a new payment method emerges that is more convenient than those that already exist it may have a major impact. We only have to look at payments through Internet banks, which almost 80 per cent of the interviewees in our survey use today. Another new development concerns the return of the Cash Card following its lamentable disappearance a few years ago. The new Cash Card has been developed by ICA Banken under commission of the Swedish National Debt Office and will primarily be used to make those payments that public authorities previously made in cash. There are, of course, individuals who lack access to cards and, occasionally, even to bank accounts and who are, consequently, entirely dependent upon cash. This new card differs from the previous Cash Card in that it cannot be topped up by the holder, only by the issuing party. Otherwise, it can be used like a normal debit card and will be equipped with a PIN code.

It will be interesting to follow whether Swedish banks, card issuers and telecom operators will further develop this payment method, for example by means of real-time payments 9 initiated from a mobile phone. Real-time payments are already available in the UK. The British company VocaLink has introduced Faster Payments, a service that processes payments in real time. VocaLink has also been commissioned by the Swedish payment system BGC to take over the operation and development of its system. As part of this work, BGC and VocaLink have also examined the possibility of introducing Faster Payments in Sweden. The banks are already able to make larger payments in real time via the Riksbank’s RIX system, which is an RTGS 10 system. In order to enable real-time payments for smaller amounts, discussions are currently being held between the Riksbank and BGC concerning the provision of special BGC accounts in the RIX system, which can be used even when the system is closed. The advantage of this solution is that it would make real-time settlement in central bank money possible. This in turn would make it possible for private individuals and companies to make payments to be effected immediately around the clock, seven days a week, using the Internet banks and, perhaps within a few years, even their mobile phones.
As we have shown in the past, monetary policy has a high capacity to adjust to changes in the macroeconomic scenario. This flexibility, combined with a financial system prepared to deal with risk scenarios, allows monetary policy to play a key role in mitigating their impact of these changes on the national economy. Let me begin by reviewing the most likely scenario for the next to years in our view and its implications for inflation and monetary policy. Macroeconomic scenario To assess the future course of monetary policy, the implications of both external and internal developments have to be taken into account. Worth singling out are the reaction of local financial markets to the external turmoil, the response of the economy to the earthquake and tsunami of last February and the trends of output and demand in the coming quarters. The world economy has turned more volatile. After several quarters of gradual normalization and relative financial calm, the international scenario presented significant tensions during the second quarter of 2010. The weak financial situation in some European countries spread to other economies and banking systems, and at the same time raised doubts about the effectiveness of existing crisis resolution mechanisms. As underscored in the IEF, the intensity and speed with which these events have occurred reflect the economic and financial fragility that still persists in advanced economies following the crisis of 2008. In many of these countries, banks’ balance sheets still include deteriorated assets, while facing major refinancing needs for 2010.

Banks’ sight deposits held at the SNB will be remunerated at the SNB policy rate of 1.75% up to a certain threshold. Sight deposits above this threshold will be remunerated at an interest rate of 1.25%, and thus still at a discount of 0.5 percentage points relative to the SNB policy rate. Inflation forecast  I would like to address the development of inflation. Inflation has declined significantly in recent months, and stood at 2.2% in May. This decrease was above all attributable to lower inflation on imported goods, in particular lower prices for oil products and natural gas. Our new conditional inflation forecast is based on the assumption that the SNB policy rate is 1.75% over the entire forecast horizon (cf. chart 1). Through to the end of 2023, the new forecast is below that of March. The lower oil and gas prices and the stronger Swiss franc are having a dampening effect over the short term. From 2024 onwards, the new forecast is higher than in March, despite today’s increase in the SNB policy rate. The reasons for this are ongoing second-round effects, higher electricity prices and rents, and more persistent inflationary pressure from abroad. The new forecast puts average annual inflation at 2.2% for 2023 and 2024, and 2.1% for 2025 (cf. table). In the forecast period, inflation is likely to be increasingly driven by higher prices of domestic goods and services. Without today’s policy rate increase, the inflation forecast would be even higher over the medium term.
Most empirical studies indicate that countries with floating exchange rates have greater possibilities to dampen the effect on their own economies of global financial and monetary forces than countries with fixed exchange rates do. 5 In this sense, the trilemma still stands. 3  See Rey (2013). 4  See Rey (2013). 5  See, for example, Aizenman et al. (2015) and Obstfeld (2015). For a current review of empirical research, see Anaya and Hachula (2016). 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  There may also be reason to reflect over what is actually meant by monetary policy autonomy. A high degree of covariation in countries’ interest rates may be an indication that small countries must follow the monetary policy of larger countries. But it could also mean that all central banks, large and small, react to synchronised economic conditions – that the covariation is largely due to fundamental factors that all are exposed to. In the latter case, it would be misleading to suggest that monetary policy in small countries is not autonomous – it does react to circumstances in the home country, even if these greatly coincide with international developments. A more relevant definition of restricted autonomy would be a situation in which monetary policy in large countries forces small countries to respond in a way that is not compatible with their own economic development.

It is thus important to try to find out to which degree an observed covariation in interest rates depends on restricted monetary policy autonomy in small countries according to this definition or on synchronised economic circumstances. Unfortunately, this is also difficult. 6 Weaker interest rate channel but stronger exchange rate channel? One interesting hypothesis in research into monetary policy and globalisation is that globalisation has not necessarily led to a weakening of the monetary policy transmission mechanism, as could spontaneously be suspected, but rather that the impact has changed character. More specifically, monetary policy’s interest rate channel can certainly be expected to become weaker as financial integration increases, as domestic actors find it easier to smooth their consumption over time by borrowing abroad. On the other hand, the exchange rate channel may become more effective. One reason for this is that the increased integration has also made it more common for domestic actors to hold foreign assets. When the exchange rate changes, the value of these assets also changes. The central bank can therefore also influence demand in the economy this way. An interest rate rise that strengthens the exchange rate leads to a decrease in the value of these foreign assets – a wealth effect that strengthens the normal exchange rate channel with reduced exports and increased imports. Some analysts claim that it cannot be ruled out that the net effect of a weaker interest rate channel and stronger exchange rate channel has been to make monetary policy more efficient, rather than less.
During the same period, the number of foreign banks with subsidiaries or branches in Turkey increased from four to 20. As of November 1998, 60 banks out of 74 are universally commercial banks and the remaining 14 are development and investment banks. Thirty-six of these banks are commercial banks whose majority shares are privately owned; 20 are foreign banks established in Turkey or having branch offices in Turkey; and 14, as noted above, are development and investment banks. As of November 1998, Turkish banks now operate though their 7,062 local branches. More than 165,000 persons are employed in the banking sector. In addition, the Turkish banking system is aggressively modern, adopting every banking innovation rapidly. Turkish banks, operating in parallel with the process of internationalization and globalization, have gone one step further by starting to invest in foreign financial establishments as well. Turkish banks are now able to form joint ventures with foreign banks to open financial subsidiaries and branches abroad. As of November 1998, Turkish banks had 63 financial subsidiaries in 19 different countries, and 26 branches in 10 different countries. As of November 1998, the size of the consolidated balance sheet of the banking sector was $ billion. According to our peer group classification by ownership, public and private banks both have significant shares in the sector.

Such a step would be a natural development of the Single Market and would benefit all EU Member States. We believe that one area that deserves particular attention is the development of a wellfunctioning market for simple, transparent and real asset-backed securities (ABS). This would allow banks to still originate loans – notably to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – while preserving their balance sheet capacity. In order to achieve a well-functioning ABS market, it is important that the regulatory treatment of securitisation is proportional to the risk of ABS. In this respect, the ECB welcomes efforts to have a differentiated regulatory treatment of simple, transparent ABS built on real assets. Moreover, the provision of public guarantees should be considered to support lending to SMEs, as other countries do, such as the US. A further integration of corporate bond and equities markets is also essential to overcome the present fragmentation in the euro area and to ensure more robust cross-border lending and investment flows. To achieve this, we will have to streamline differences between countries, for instance, in the legal protection of borrowers’ and lenders’ rights as well as in national taxation and insolvency procedures. To sum up, structural policies are more multifaceted than they are often perceived to be in the political debate and can have a very significant impact on investment in a variety of ways. Growth-friendly fiscal policy Yet this is not the only area where governments can make a difference.
The Government has launched a variety of technology initiatives. It set up a $ billion dedicated Innovation and Technology Venture Fund. It injected $ billion into the Research Endowment Fund of the Research Grants Council. And it is funding the Hong Kong Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park, which will enable Hong Kong to tap the supply chain capabilities and talent pool across the border. 33. The administration has boosted incentives for the Fintech industry by increasing the tax deduction for R&D expenditure. And government support has also helped seven local universities launch Fintech undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. 34. In particular, I would like to mention that in collaboration with the HKMA, the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks will set up a new Fin+Tech platform to organise accelerator programmes and hackathons. There will also be a new Innovation Hub at the governmentfunded InnoCentre, where the HKMA will host its latest proof-of-concept studies. These two initiatives will provide open platforms for different stakeholders to collaborate on Fintech development. Bracing for New Trends 35. I hope I have outlined what all of us in different sectors in Hong Kong have achieved in developing Fintech in Hong Kong, under the joint effort as “Hong Kong Inc.”. I would like to wrap it up with you some thoughts about three macro trends that I believe will influence the future of Fintech. 36. First, financial services will increasingly integrate with social platforms and other lifestyle channels.

Are we headed in the right direction? Have we made any wrong turns – and what have we learned from them? This is a new journey for everyone, and after riding on this super highway for the last few years, I have three reflections that I would like to share with you. Technology adoption is a bumpy road 10. First, we must bear in mind that technology adoption is a bumpy road. It is definitely not a smooth and straight path. To innovate, we have to do things that others have not done before – or have attempted, but failed at. We have to go through processes of trial and error, and make adjustments along the way. We might run into dead ends at times, because some really exciting ideas may simply be unfeasible. We might run into problems even when adopting mature technologies, whether from a programme glitch or a clash with established work processes. 1/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  11. This is certainly our experience. Soon after the launch of the FPS in September last year, we started to see a few fraud cases coming in. These have nothing to do with the security design of the FPS itself – it’s about creative fraudsters exploiting the speed and convenience of the system. They stole money from bank accounts using fake e-wallets opened with stolen identity documents of victims.
Although foreigners, including non-EU nationals, are present in all sectors and at all levels, their employment has increased mainly in professional and administrative support services, and not as is sometimes claimed, in sectors characterised by lower skill levels. The increased employment of foreign nationals across occupations has enabled organisations to grow and venture in new areas. A sudden reversal of this pattern could stall activity in several sectors. Efforts to upgrade the country’s infrastructure should therefore be complemented by measures that prevent a disorderly depletion of foreign human resources and enhance the skills of Maltese nationals. *** Favourable economic developments, although easing somewhat, are expected to continue to buttress financial stability. Lending volumes remain supportive of interest income but pressures on margins persist due to the low interest rate environment. Notwithstanding, profitability remains a challenge for traditional banking models such as those of our banks. In fact, though still comparing favourably with their European peers, the profitability of domestic banks has been slimming. In addition to the limitations on their ability to generate more interest income, banks have to contend with ‘no-fee’ alternative products being developed by fintech players which operate with a lower cost base and hail from a less intrusive regulatory environment. Concurrently, banks are facing a more rigorous and intrusive supervisory approach coupled with more rigorous standards of Anti Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism. This is absolutely necessary and has our full and active support.

This does not mean that the Riksbank’s tasks would disappear, however, as claimed time and again by one of my predecessors Lars Wohlin. The majority of the Riksbank’s tasks would remain relatively unaffected by our participation. As I just mentioned, this applies to our work on financial stability, which would essentially remain a national responsibility for the foreseeable future. The Riksbank’s operational tasks such as monetary policy transactions, the management of the Riksbank’s assets, the collection of statistics, the management of banknotes and coins and various administrative tasks would also remain. I also object to the claim that the Riksbank would become a branch office of the ECB. In actual fact, the national central banks of the Eurosystem own the ECB. If Sweden were to join the Eurosystem, we would become a member of the board and be able to influence how the system as a whole develops in the future. That is hardly an opportunity available to local offices of other organisations. In addition, the Eurosystem is a decentralised system, in which the vast majority of tasks are carried out by the  BIS Review 29/2003  7  national central banks. Many tasks are also performed at national level completely outside the framework of the Eurosystem. The main change if Sweden were to participate in monetary union would be that decisions on the interest rate level in Sweden would be taken by the ECB Governing Council instead of by the Executive Board of the Riksbank.
We have taken the option though that central banks should be trying to put up a good system for people to operate in rather than having another prime function of catching thieves and criminals, and in this legislation therefore a new independent government office has been put up dedicated solely to the pursuit of the articles of the legislation. We sit on the committee under the legislation as I have just said, and cooperate wherever we can to make sure its execution is effected and effective. This is another occasion where central banks contribute directly to peace in that criminal activities which by nature are not peaceful is kept to a minimum. Speaking of criminal activities, vote buying in an election is also a criminal activity and although legislation makes it difficult for us to tackle this problem, we cooperate with the Neutral National Election Commission in tracking down movement of funds and we have assigned an assistant governor to directly coordinate with this Commission. The banking laws in Thailand at present though is that banking activity is secret and this inhibits us from doing as much as we could to help in curbing this criminal activity.

By trading in foreign exchange, in local currencies, by credit extension, by rule making, and by setting interest rates, the general level of economic activity can normally be influenced by the central bank. In so doing, central banks used to try to contribute to peace and prosperity by making sure that the less advantaged or the more useful activities or social class and such like have better access to funds in general or to the funds of the central bank, and in the extreme case even go so far as financing projects and infrastructure. In the modern world, it is now normally agreed that each national economy is so vast and complex that central banks could be considered to have done very well if it just keeps the country stable and let government build infrastructure and help the poor and private sector trade and invest to economically develop the nation. The recent trend is that, central banks are now given the sole task of keeping price stability, and is given the independence to do that since if they have no independence, government will, at time ask it to do things that are in conflict to that sole function.
The FR 2420 data is used to support the implementation of monetary policy and the analysis of money market conditions. 5  The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is responsible for setting the rate of interest on reserves. Since December 16, 2008, the interest rates on required reserve balances and excess reserve balances have both been ¼ percent, but the rates need not be the same. More information can be found in Regulation D. See http://federalreserve.gov/bankinforeg/reglisting.htm#D. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  transaction I just described is not riskless. As a result, many lenders limit their risk exposure to any individual bank, reducing the force of competition in the market for funds. 6 In addition, while banks do not need economic capital to conduct this arbitrage, they do face regulatory balance sheet costs from expanding their assets, even in the form of excess reserves, that is, cash. Some of these costs are direct, such as the FDIC fees paid by domestic banks on their liabilities less capital and transactions costs in brokered markets, while others relate to the costs associated with regulatory requirements on capital and liquidity ratios. Even if the market for funds were perfectly competitive, these costs should drive a wedge between IOER and other money market rates. As a result, the IOER rate does not directly establish a firm floor under money market rates, but instead can be thought of as a magnet, with the strength of its pull determined by these balance sheet and competitive frictions.

As described  10  In addition to improving competition in money markets, by conducting a daily operation with a known, fixed rate, the Fed can reduce uncertainty and absorb day-to-day variations in the supply of and demand for funds and collateral. An eligible lender that cannot earn the IOER rate and that has an unexpectedly large amount of funds to invest would be able to place the funds in the ON RRP facility rather than sell them in the market at an unusually low rate. This should reduce downward pressure on money market rates. 11  See the discussion in the minutes to the June and July FOMC meetings, http://www.federalreserve. gov/monetarypolicy/fomcminutes20140618.htm and http://federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcminutes 20140730.htm. 12  See the Survey of Primary Dealers and the Survey of Market Participants. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  earlier, if the magnetic pull of IOER alone is insufficient, ON RRPs should help to form a floor on rates by providing a risk-free, overnight asset to a broad range of non-bank investors. As a result of these forces, the effective funds rate should generally print within the target range. That said, as the Chair noted during her September press conference, the Committee expects that the effective fed funds rate may vary within the target range and could even move outside of it on occasion. For example, the effective rate could move outside the target for a day or two around key financial reporting dates, such as quarter-ends, when some banks’ marginal balance sheet costs are particularly high.