samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The degree of financial unease then varied during the course of the following year. The TED spreads peaked when the banks wanted to secure their liquidity ahead of the turn of the year 2007-2008. A further peak was reached in March 2008 when Bear Sterns suspended payments, but things calmed down again after the Federal Reserve mediated the takeover of the bank by JP Morgan. In mid-September 2008, when Lehman Brothers was forced to file for bankruptcy protection, the financial unease became an acute financial crisis. The TED spreads were driven up to very high levels. Many banks, institutions and funds were highly exposed to Lehman Brothers. Few had expected that such an important bank could fail. Previously the US authorities had let the shareholders take the consequences. Now the borrowers also had to take some of the losses. There was a great deal of concern that more players would end up in a similar situation. The remaining large investment banks in the United States also disappeared as independent investment banks. The TED spreads have risen and varied during different periods of time in Sweden, too, but they have been lower than in the United States and the euro area. Causes of the crisis – mortgages, imbalances and inadequate supervision The factor that triggered the financial crisis was thus the problems on the US housing market and mortgage market. An important element behind the prolonged rise in US housing prices was the rapid growth of lending for house purchases to low-income households.

This decision was taken on the grounds that the evidence continues to support the assumptions which have formed the basis of the derivation of the reference value since 1999, namely those relating to trend potential output growth of 2-2½% per annum and to a trend decline in M3 income velocity of ½-1% per annum in the euro area. We will issue a separate press release this afternoon explaining in greater detail the background to this decision. When comparing current developments with the reference value, it is important to remember that the reference value is a medium-term concept. Short-term movements of M3 do not necessarily have implications for future price developments. Moreover, deviations of M3 from the reference value must be analysed in conjunction with other real and financial indicators in order to understand their implications for price stability. Turning to the most recent data, in the period from August to October 2002 the three-month average of the annual growth rate of M3 was 7.1%, unchanged from the previous three-month average. M3 growth has been influenced considerably by portfolio re-allocations in an environment of general uncertainty and particularly by stress in financial markets. At the same time, it also reflects the low level of interest rates in the euro area which makes the holding of liquid assets relatively attractive. There is ample liquidity in the euro area. However, in the light of the sluggish economic growth, it is unlikely that this excess liquidity will translate into inflationary pressures in the near future.
To underpin the payment reforms undertaken by the Central Bank and enhance integrity and safety of such systems, a comprehensive legislation to govern payment, clearing and settlement systems in general and to provide the Central Bank with oversight and regulatory powers over various payment systems and money transfer service providers has been enacted through the Payment and Settlement Systems Act of 2005. The Act empowered the Central Bank to be the authority responsible for the national payment system, which requires oversight and continuous surveillance of all payment systems to ensure its efficiency and effectiveness. The systemically important payment systems will be reviewed periodically to ensure that the design and operation meet with international standards and best practice. Some of you may be aware that a couple of months ago, the Central Bank established a National Payments Council which is the highest decision making body with regard to payment systems. This committee represented by all stakeholders provides a forum for constant dialogue on payment issues to take place within the industry. The National Payments Council is responsible for developing the payment and settlements infrastructure in collaboration with all the relevant authorities and stakeholders. Currently, it is in the process of finalizing a road map for the development of the national payment system in the next five years, which will be in line with the vision of the financial sector.

In the most recent monetary policy update, from December, we saw ahead of us fairly strong GDP growth for this year and the next two years (Figure 11). GDP is expected to increase by an average of just over 3 per cent per year during the years 2010–2012. Swedish exports will also increase at the same rate as economic conditions in the rest of the world improve. Despite the weak development of incomes, private consumption is expected to continue to rise over the forecast period, due to increased optimism regarding the future. Investment is also expected to contribute towards GDP growth during the forecast period – first housing investment and public investment, and then also investment in the business sector. However, despite this growth in GDP, the economy will take a long time to recover. GDP is not expected to return to its pre-crisis level until 2011 (Figure 12). As a consequence, resource utilisation will be low during the forecast period. The labour market will also remain weak during the entire forecast period. Employment is expected to continue to fall this year, but to increase again next year (Figure 13). Unemployment will amount to approximately 10 per cent by the end of the year, but will then decrease over the following two years (Figure 14). The most recent Labour Force Surveys indicate a slightly better development than we expected in December. The manner in which this may affect the forecasts is a matter we will return to at our next monetary policy meeting on 10 February.
When one compares it with other public enemies like drug abuse or terrorism, one would still find that those issues would also affect only a segment of the society at any given time. Since inflation affects everyone and people have limited prospects of escaping it, it is considered as the public enemy number one. Some amusing stories about inflation In the recent history, there have been many countries which have been hit by hyper inflation. Of them, the most prominent case has been the hyper-inflation in Germany after the First World War, where inflation accelerated to 1,000,000 % per annum. Other noteworthy examples are Bolivia (25000 % p.a. ); Russia (2000 %); Israel (1500 %); Turkey (again 1500 %) and currently Zimbabwe (3700 % and still rising). When prices rise at these high rates, the first casualty would be the currency of the country. No one would like to accept the domestic currency, because its value would fall by the minute. Instead, people would start to accept other types of hard currencies like the US Dollar. If there is a shortage of those hard currencies, people would invent their own currencies. In Germany, with that hyper-inflation in which prices rose by 2 % every minute, German Mark ceased to function as money. Instead, people started to use cigarettes, chocolate bars or empty bottles as the medium of exchange. Then, there is the story of those two brothers who inherited a sizeable wealth from their father.

Online shopping has surged during the pandemic, accelerating a pre-existing trend. The latest retail sales figures indicate that it accounts for 35% of total sales, up from 20% in February last year. Online retailing has the potential to be more productive than through physical stores, and there is some evidence from the last decade of this already happening. Higher productivity growth in retailing has not been fully matched by higher wage growth, and this lower unit cost growth may have contributed to the relative weakness of domestic consumer prices in recent years (Tenreyro, 2020). Covid has also caused changes in consumer spending patterns. Much of this has been of necessity, but if some changes to consumer spending habits persist – for instance if tastes change – the pattern of production in the economy is also likely to change. The question is how will such a process of more structural change in the economy happen, and what will be the impact? What are the implications of the changes we are seeing in the economy? This is a very big question, so what follows is necessarily quite high level. The answer to the question is surrounded by a great deal of uncertainty, given the scale and speed of the shock that has caused the changes. Let me start with employment and the labour market. In normal UK economic cycles, falls in output are accompanied initially by relatively small falls in hours worked and then later by larger falls in employment.
Mark Carney: Introduction to the Open Forum Introduction by Mr Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England and Chairman of the Financial Stability Board, to the Bank of England Open Forum, London, 11 November 2015. *  *  *  Thank you, Lord Mayor for your extraordinary service this past year and for your gracious hospitality today. Welcome, everyone, to the Open Forum. In a building that started its life in 1411 as “a little cottage”.1 And which has become the place to bring people together: Livery companies and businesses, Traders and market makers, World leaders and citizens. Today, we draw inspiration from this great tradition by gathering representatives from across civil society to discuss how to build the real markets of tomorrow. The Bank of England has a statutory responsibility to protect and enhance the stability of the financial system in the UK. Therefore, even if we don’t regulate markets per se, we have a close interest in working with others to create real markets that enjoy the trust of society whilst effectively allocating capital and risk. Markets can be powerful drivers of prosperity and security for all. Financial markets matter. By financing firms to hire, invest and expand, markets drive growth. By opening up cross border trade and investment they create new opportunities for businesses and savers. By transferring risks to those most willing and able to bear them markets help households and investors insure against the unexpected.

But I trust that those unable to be here in person are following us via the web, and will interact throughout the day. They’ll also be joined by some of the 5000 pupils from the 300 schools who watched our webinar earlier this week. After all, those students will reap the rewards and bear the consequences of financial reform. They will be the ultimate judges of our efforts. Our first speaker today has set out clearly the standards against which those judgements should be made. As he said five months ago: “Five years from now, UK financial services will be the best regulated in the world, with markets of unquestioned integrity and the highest standards of conduct. There will be more competition, more innovation and more players in retail markets – offering customers a better service. There will be new firms disrupting the status quo, and big firms raising their game in response, with Britain leading the fintech revolution.” 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Please join me in welcoming the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Right Honourable George Osborne to the stage, to begin the debate. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5
Alan Greenspan has suggested that consideration be given to simple rules of thumb such as that countries without a track record of international borrowing should maintain unencumbered foreign exchange reserves sufficient to meet all foreign currency liabilities over the following year, and that the average maturity of external liabilities should exceed three years. Rudiger Dornbusch has proposed the use of value at risk assessments of country balance sheets. Ideas such as these, precisely because they focus on the national balance sheet, are sure to be centre stage. (3)  Encourage inflows of equity rather than debt finance. This is an extension of the need to manage the national balance sheet. The imperative is the old adage: borrow long not short. A credible legal and institutional infrastructure for private investors would go a long way to encourage equity inflows. Reserve requirements on short-term debt inflows, as adopted in Chile, might help to modify the pace of vulnerable capital inflows, but will in themselves do little to help in times of rapid capital outflow. It is also time to reconsider the incentive to the provision of short-term finance provided by the Basel Accord risk weights. (4)  Promote the better design of debt contracts which provide a framework for negotiation between creditors and debtors when financing difficulties arise. The particular proposal – advanced initially by a G10 Deputies’ report in 1996 and subsequently endorsed by the G7 – for the use of collective action clauses in sovereign debt contracts has stalled.

Mr King gives a speech on reforming the international financial system: the middle way  Speech delivered by Mr Mervyn King, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, to a session of the Money Marketeers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on 9 September 1999. *  1. *  *  Introduction  One of the roles which international financial officials are sometimes required to play is to describe disasters as triumphs and to make the dramatic seem bland. So, on 16 September 1992, following massive speculation against sterling and its withdrawal from the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont, opened his statement with the words: “Today has been an extremely difficult and turbulent day”. In the seven years since, several finance ministers have had cause to echo those words. Officials have spoken of the risks associated with capital flows. Well they might. Sharp reversals of capital flows to emerging markets have caused crises with a frequency and on a scale that threaten support for an open, market-led international economy. These crises have created millions of victims, whose circumstances and aspirations were totally unrelated to financial markets. In Korea unemployment tripled, in Indonesia several years of economic growth were wiped out leading to political instability and similar results have been visible in other parts of Asia as well as Latin America. Over the past century, governments in the industrialised world have, in the wake of domestic financial crises, taken steps to regulate and strengthen the financial system.
François Villeroy de Galhau: Numerous challenges for the international monetary system Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, at the High Level Seminar on International Financial Architecture, Paris, 31 March 2016. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, France, and the Banque de France in particular, has a long tradition of spurring high level reflections on the international financial architecture, such that we very much welcome the creation of the IFA WG by the Chinese presidency. This new working group echoes the IMS (International monetary System) Working Group that was launched under the French presidency of the G20 in 2011. At the time, the debates on the IMS were already very intense, as witnessed for instance by the profusion of proposals to amend the IMS, such as the Palais Royal Initiative, led by one of my predecessors as Governor of the Banque de France, Michel Camdessus. Before that, we all remember the work done by another former Governor of the Banque de France, Jacques de Larosière, who contributed a very influential report in 2009 on the European Union, which also had an international dimension. The Eurosystem, on its part, is committed to financial stability. We decided on March 10th a comprehensive and powerful package, aiming to provide favorable financial conditions for the economy. We will look closely at these financial conditions in the future and if needed, we could act further. The international monetary system is still facing numerous challenges.

Savings instruments that attract customers are even being provided, at least in Sweden, by food chains and petrol companies. In the case of loans, a growing proportion of credits is being arranged in the securities markets. Then there is more uncertainty about the social security system’s future ability to generate adequate pensions. The demographic trends are also entailing changes in saving behaviour; a growing proportion of people in the industrialised world are approaching retirement and are more prone to save than to borrow. BIS Review 81/1998  -2Cross-border investment is rising. People in Sweden, for example, are placing their longterm savings to a growing extent in assets issued abroad. At the same time, non-residents are increasing their holdings of Swedish financial assets. Furthermore, technological advances are making it possible to supply traditional banking services without the aid of a large branch network. This in turn makes new banking establishments less costly than before and a bank with just a few branches or a business concept based on telephony or the Internet can gain a competitive advantage in certain segments of the market. Products are also becoming more sophisticated and their construction and production are increasingly dependent on specialist knowhow that may become available outside the banks. The speed of these processes varies from country to country. The structure of bank earnings is already changing, with a growing share from a range of commissions compared with the traditional income from net interest.
This is done through psychological manipulation where the fraudster impersonates a bank officer or an officer of Bank Negara Malaysia, to deceive the victim. Such fraud cases can easily be avoided if consumers are made aware of such methods and informed of the precautions that they should take to avoid being fraud victims. As consumers, we should pay particular attention to the fraud alerts provided by our banks and the police and take the necessary precautions. Consumers should know as a basic fact that for instance, their banks or Bank Negara Malaysia will never ask them to disclose or validate personal details such as login ID, passcode and mobile phone numbers through SMS or emails. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  f.  Measures to be undertaken in 2015  We have set out an ambitious roadmap for Malaysia’s migration to e-payments. Moving forward, a strong focus on six strategic priorities is required to accelerate the pace of our country’s migration to e-payments. For 2015, I would like to suggest 6 key measures. i.  Firstly, we need to deploy an additional 50,000 Point-Of-Sale terminals in 2015, targeting in particular lower-tier merchants. The idea is to widen the acceptance of debit cards. To promote wide usage among consumers, we need to intensify efforts to conduct promotional activities to drive the usage of debit cards to reach 89 million transactions in 2015, compared to about 65 million transactions this year. ii.

Payment system forum programme Today’s forum aims to promote awareness and build confidence among merchants to accept payment cards. Among the various topics that will be discussed today are:  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  •  Payment card acceptance infrastructure and cost;  •  Success stories on payment card acceptance;  •  Card fraud and security management; and  •  Innovation in payment cards. These are all relevant issues for businesses to consider in accepting payment cards and in making choices that would be in their best interest. There is also an exhibition held in Conference Hall 1, where banking institutions and payment card companies will showcase their latest product offering on payment cards and other e-payment services. Businesses have an opportunity to learn more about payment card acceptance and sign up for the attractive packages being offered. Conclusion Our country is at a critical juncture in its migration to e-payments. The various reform measures and the substantial infrastructure investments have created an enabling environment to transform Malaysia’s payment landscape into one that is highly efficient, reliable and competitive. To ensure a successful transformation, the support from all stakeholders for a bold reform is needed. An efficient and competitive payment system is an important strategic advantage in today’s highly challenging and rapidly evolving world. Consumers and businesses alike should re-invent themselves and take full advantage of innovations in payment systems in order to capitalise on the benefits and opportunities that it brings. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches
For each wage adjustment episode in a country, the data sample starts at year T0 (the peak year) and it ends when a new peak is detected (at year T0 new – 1). We apply this only if the cumulative real wage gap has been closed before reaching the new peak. If the cumulative wage gap has not been closed, then we continue to consider the new peak as part of the same adjustment episode. A wage adjustment episode within a larger wage adjustment episode is not considered. This approach prevents data overlapping and it secures research consistency and integrity. In the analysed period, there were three historical episodes of wage adjustments. Data shows that the cumulative real wage gap was closed in all countries which experienced the first wage adjustment episode, with the exception of two countries (Japan and Korea). In the case of the second wage adjustment episode, the cumulative real wage gap has not yet been closed, with the exception of other two countries (Mexico and Latvia). These latter two countries entered a new wage adjustment episode, the third one. For simplicity reasons, the wage adjustment episodes are numbered with reference to the time periods and not to the country-specific episodes. We considered as the first wage adjustment 5  episode any episode which started in the last decade of last century (1990-1999) and the second wage adjustment episode any episode which started after the year 2000.

Reference wage values, social preferences, jobs’ characteristics, skills’ endowments and even Central Banks’ targets, they all change over time – hence, the impact of cumulative wage gaps on inflation cannot be the same in different time periods. In fact, even Phillips (1958) mentioned that he ignored years in which import prices rise rapidly enough to initiate a wage-price spiral. He stated that his hypothesis that the rate of change of money wage rates can be explained by the level of unemployment is supported except in or immediately after such years. In doing that, he effectively acknowledged the non-stationarity of his curve. He referred to those years as events that occur very rarely except as a result of a war. Our approach embraces these events, except that in modern times it is not war that makes the difference, but recessions; and recessions happen more often than wars. We try to explain what happens during and after recessions – which is exactly what is omitted by the original Phillips curve. Wages, as the most important source of income for most households around the globe, stand at the basis of any consumption theory. The main problem with the prevailing consumption theories (Keynes’ consumption function (1936), Modigliani’s life-cycle hypothesis (1966) and 2  Friedman’s permanent income hypothesis (1957)) is their long-term approach. This puts them at odds with our rather short and medium-term perspective on inflation, especially in times of crisis.