samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Through Hong Kong, they can enter Chinese markets on a platform that is proven and familiar, using English-language documentation and applying international norms and practices. 30. The opening-up of various channels into China’s domestic markets gives options to international investors. They can choose to have an onshore presence and trade directly in the local market. Or they can continue to use Hong Kong as their base if it makes sense for their strategy and resources. 31. The fact that the majority of foreign investors access the Mainland capital markets using the two Connect schemes speaks volumes about the unique value proposition of the Hong Kong platform. In recent years, that financial connectivity has been boosted by increasing ‘southbound’ traffic from the Mainland to Hong Kong. 32. It is well known that Hong Kong is the leading hub for Mainland enterprises looking to issue equity or debt in the international market. That activity continued to thrive in 2020, thanks to the secondary listings by home-coming Mainland corporates and IPOs by new economy companies. 33. But Hong Kong is much more than a capital-raising gateway for Chinese firms. Today, Mainland institutions and individuals use Hong Kong to put their capital to work. Southbound flows from the Mainland to Hong Kong through the Stock Connect schemes rose by 128 per cent last year. 34. The volume of capital flowing from the Mainland into Hong Kong is set to grow further. Very soon, we will be launching a Wealth Management Connect scheme.

When you put them all together and it runs like clockwork, you have a powerful ecosystem that would be very hard to replace. This kind of infrastructure is so sticky that it’s “hard to move” – to quote a senior executive at a leading global asset manager, who just reaffirmed that Hong Kong will remain their one and only Asian hub. 21. Because our system functions so smoothly, even under stress, it’s easy for people to take it for granted. At the HKMA, we can never do that. As a market facilitator, we are always looking for new opportunities for our financial sector. And, as a supervisor, we are constantly working to create policy headroom so that market players can seize those opportunities. Opportunity — China 22. As we speak of opportunity, the future of finance – from Hong Kong’s perspective – can be summed up in three words: China, green and technology. 2/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  23. By China, I mean connecting the Mainland and international financial markets via Hong Kong. Hong Kong is the only gateway of its kind to the Mainland’s capital markets. Only Hong Kong can play this role – because of a combination of advantages that only Hong Kong has. 24. We are part of China, supporting the country’s economic development for more than four decades. That’s why the financial infrastructure connecting Hong Kong with the Mainland has continued to grow. And we provide global investors with a familiar, trusted point of access to Mainland markets.
3 while the contracts for white rice are rarely traded. I cannot help but feel that the existence of the price support scheme may have contributed to this apparent lack of interests in rice futures trading. As of last Friday, only 3 contracts for white rice were traded and the open interests were only for 60 contracts equivalent to 300 metric tonnes. For a country that exported 7.6 million tonnes of rice last year-the highest volume in its history, I believe our rice futures market has high potential to grow, if conditions are right. The government guaranteed prices are set once a year and thus, do not incorporate new information into the price. On the contrary, futures contracts are traded on a daily basis and these prices are said to be the best predictor of prices in the future – pricing in all currently available information. Players should be encouraged to hedge their produce through the futures market rather than through a static price-support scheme. In the medium term, the price-support scheme should be eventually phased out so that our producers would be freed to stand on their own feet. It is crucial that we implement the change gradually to enable those involved to adjust. I feel that we should strive in this direction - it is only then would our producers be able to respond to competition in the global market place. These days, many agricultural-related products in Thailand are subject to price ceilings.

Expressing my sincere gratitude to the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Macedonia, the National Institution Stobi and the Embassy of the United States in the Republic of Macedonia, I invite His Excellency, the Ambassador of the United States, Paul Wohlers and the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Macedonia, Elizabeta Kancheska-Milevska to take the floor. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
A necessary condition for this is openness and clarity! But there are also other important reasons why most central banks, and not least the Riksbank, have moved towards greater transparency. One reason is that the effectiveness of monetary policy depends on how well we succeed in communicating our intentions to the financial markets and the general public. By being open and clear, the possibility to influence interest rate-setting in the way we desire increases, both in the short term and the slightly longer term. This gives better conditions for achieving the price stability objective which the Swedish people, via the Riksdag, have allocated to us. The Riksbank’s ambition is of course to live up to, in the best manner possible, the requirements of openness and clarity made of us, both in our role as public authority and in our dealings with the financial markets and the general public. But the fact that the world around us is constantly changing leads to new demands. In practice, it means that we must be constantly developing and improving our ways of working. One expression of this is, for example, that we have begun to publish our own forecasts for the development of the policy rate. And it is probably difficult for a central bank to be clearer than this with regard to its monetary policy intentions – we actually say what we consider to be a well-balanced monetary policy in the coming period.

A further example connected with the same argument concerns the delegation of the management of the state finances to the Swedish National Debt Office – the state’s own internal bank. That "allocation of responsibility” is also important for monetary policy. I spoke earlier about occasions long ago when the central bank was forced to use its banknote printing presses to finance government deficits that for various reasons had got out of hand. This type of behaviour is of course incompatible with price stability. It is therefore important for the credibility of monetary policy that there are rules for how state borrowing should be handled and that monetary financing is forbidden. According to the law, the Riksbank shall not "…extend credit to or purchase debt instruments directly from the state, another public body or an institution of the European Union.” 1 In Sweden it is another authority, the Swedish National Debt Office, that finances the national debt and grants state guarantees and loans. Another reason why the political system has delegated monetary policy to an organisation with expertise in this field, is that it in many ways concerns technically complicated operations. This has also been done in the case of many other authorities, which are responsible for technical issues that are important to society. And this is in itself natural.
This is why in many countries the governments have tried to make the agents amenable to public’s requirements through the implementation of such devices as “people’s charters”. The result is the production of the agent remaining at low quality, becoming unreliable and failing to satisfy the users. The same fate has befallen the governmental organisations that produce and supply statistics to the public free of charge. Many have witnessed the increasing occurrence of the “misuse of statistics” by those who produce and supply statistics to the market. The Google search machine has documented some 2.5 million cases of the misuse of statistics from around the world. The misuse of statistics Why does the production of statistics become unreliable? There are many pitfalls to which statisticians fall when they produce statistics. Wikipedia, the cyber-encyclopaedia, has listed out these errors often committed by statisticians. According to Wikipedia, “a misuse of statistics occurs when a statistical argument asserts a falsehood”. It could be due to both accidental and purposeful. When it is purposeful, it is always perpetrated in order to gain an undue benefit to the perpetrator. The danger with the wrongful use of statistics is the creation of a statistical fallacy that would be costly to those who make use of the deliberately doctored statistics. Such statistics are damaging to the quest of knowledge in the sense that, once they are rooted in the minds of the people, it would take years to correct the falsehood that it would have created in the society.

That is the background to the common estimate that over a longer period the Swedish economy can now sustain an average annual growth rate of between 2% and 2.5%. There are certainly some encouraging signs in Sweden in the form of many new companies and young entrepreneurs in the new information technology. And people in Sweden rank high as Internet users. But this has not shown up in the macroeconomic statistics to such an extent that there would be grounds for supposing that the potential growth rate has moved up towards the US level. A good indicator of whether conditions are in place for stronger productivity growth in the future is the existence of a sufficiently high rate of economic transformation, for instance in the form of increased investment and a rapidly growing capital stock. There are few signs of this in the Swedish economy, at least if one compares the 1990s with the 1980s. BIS Review 6/2000  2  Neither do other countries in Europe yet show any widespread signs of what is called the new economy. One reason may be that Europe is still in an earlier cyclical phase than the United States, so that investment in new directions has not yet taken off. Given this optimistic interpretation, it should be just a matter of time before the positive effects also materialise in Europe.
This conference will provide an opportunity to reassess our traditional views on many of the issues before us. On this note, I wish you a very engaging and substantive conference. 2  BIS Review 20/2009

It is assumed in the really negative scenario of the Financial Stability Report that developments in the Baltic countries and the rest of eastern Europe will be much weaker, although that is far from the only reason behind the poor development. Here, too, approximately 40 per cent of the loan losses are expected to come from operations in these regions. In this scenario all of the banks meet the statutory requirement of Tier 1 capital adequacy of at least four per cent. However, it may be necessary to have higher capital adequacy to avoid negative consequences such as funding problems and downgraded credit ratings. In the unlikely event that this very negative scenario were to occur, several banks might therefore be forced to act to strengthen their capital bases. If this could not be achieved solely through private capital injections, there is a possibility for the government to inject capital by virtue of the Government Support to Credit Institutions Act of last autumn. The Riksbank’s assessment is that we, together with other Swedish authorities, are also well prepared to be able to manage the problems that could arise if the situation were to deteriorate to the level of the stress test described in the Financial Stability Report. Let me just clarify that the Financial Stability Report’s test of the financial system’s resilience cannot be compared with the alternative scenarios of a “more probable” nature that are usually presented in the Monetary Policy Reports.
Also, if we were to sell assets in a rising rate environment, we could also experience some capital losses on these sales. In combination, depending on the future trajectory of short and long rates, remittances could even fall to zero for a period.13 There are several important points to make here. First, the potential impact of the purchase program on future Fed remittances was known at the onset of the program – we have no new information here. The outcome depends on how the economy evolves, how we respond, and whether we decide to sell long-dated assets in the portfolio or not. Second, it is important not to put excessive weight on the possibility of a period of zero remittances. Our mandate is economic not fiscal – our job is to return the economy to full employment and price stability. Moreover, in considering the fiscal consequences of our actions, what matters is not what happens to our remittances – that is far too narrow a perspective – but how our actions affect the federal debt-to-GDP ratio over time. This is the metric we should be focusing on in assessing the potential fiscal consequences of our actions. In this respect, it is important to note that the narrow impact of Fed remittances on the federal debt-to-GDP ratio depends on the cumulative amount, not the timing of remittances. Cumulative remittances to date have been hundreds of billions of dollars higher, all else equal, compared to if the Federal Reserve had not expanded its balance sheet.

Interest rates are quite low by historical standards, while the equity component of household net worth is improving, as shown in Figure 7. And we have seen some positive improvement in real disposable income. Given all that, one would normally anticipate that housing would be improving. However, lower interest rates are only helpful if credit is available. Figure 8 shows that the number of purchase loans to prime borrowers has been declining, while the subprime market  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  is dormant.2 The left side of Figure 9 shows the distribution of all home-purchase loans by credit score in 2006 (before the financial crisis) and in 2010.3 It is striking how the distribution of purchase mortgages has changed. Credit standards have tightened, as evidenced by a shift to borrowers with higher credit scores. Given what has happened to housing prices, and unemployment, lenders are presumably more cautious in lending. Far fewer loans are going to borrowers with credit scores below 625, and many more purchase loans are going to borrowers with credit scores above 750. In 2006, about 15 percent of the purchase loans were to borrowers with credit scores below 625, but by 2010, this fraction had fallen to only 3.5 percent. The decline in loans to borrowers with sub-625 scores has not completely resulted from the decline in subprime lending. The right side of the figure shows the credit-score distributions among prime loans, and a similar rightward shift in the distribution is apparent.
2  The World Bank projected Developing East Asia (including China) to grow by 5.3% in 2009; South Asia by 3.7% and Middle East and North Africa by 3.0%. BIS Review 57/2009  1  force an acceleration of structural economic change in Asia. The drive towards greater domestic consumption, as well as greater Asia intra-regional trade, investment and consumption, will take on greater urgency. The growth of intra-Asia trade and investments will be driven by both bottom-up initiatives as businesses expand their ties, as well as top-down policy measures as governments enter into agreements on free trade and economic cooperation. A recent survey by the ADB Institute found that a higher than expected 22% of responding firms use preferences accorded by free trade agreement (FTA) and more are planning to do so. 3 China, Japan and Korea have implemented their FTAs with ASEAN. The ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand FTA was signed in February 2009. Singapore has signed FTAs with the GCC and Jordan, and we can expect more of such pacts within Asia in the future. Cross-border capital flows between the GCC and East Asia will grow significantly in the coming years. With this forced pace of global re-balancing, the relative economic weight of Asia will rise. This would be a positive development for the global economy, as more engines of growth provide greater resilience. Financial services and Islamic finance However, it is crucial that our optimism does not turn into hubris. Economies in our region face many important challenges.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Legal & Shariah issues in the Islamic financial services industry Opening remarks by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the Third IFSB Seminar on Legal Issues: Surveys on Legal & Shariah Issues in the Islamic Financial Services Industry, Kuala Lumpur, 28 March 2007. *  *  *  Professor William Blair QC, Chairman of the International Monetary Law Committee of the International Law Association (MOCOMILA), Professor Rifaat Ahmed Abdel Karim, Secretary General, Islamic Financial Services Board, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to join Professor Rifaat in welcoming you to this 3rd IFSB Seminar on Legal Issues. I would also like to take this opportunity to extend a special welcome to the many of you who have travelled long distances to join us for this important event. Ladies and Gentlemen,  A strong legal and Shariah framework as a pillar to Islamic finance The need to continually strengthen the legal framework for the financial services industry is imperative given the powerful forces of change continually transforming the functioning of the global economy and the international financial system. A legal framework which is aligned with market developments lends certainty and predictability to financial transactions and innovative products and instils public confidence in the financial system. The legal and Shariah framework is a vital pillar in the sustainable development of Islamic finance. It provides the legislative framework that unambiguously defines the conduct of Islamic financial institutions.
Resolution regimes: rolling back the implicit subsidy from the state The most fundamental effects prospectively flow from making orderly resolution credible for the largest and most complex firms. Funding costs for any banks where bailout was STILL confidently expected would be heavily subsidised, as in the past. Where there was uncertainty, there would tend to be somewhat subsidised funding combined with a bias to shorter-term financing which could run at signs of trouble. But such “regimes”, if they merit that description, are unsustainable. Policy is clear: taxpayers should not provide solvency support to banks. Instead, losses exceeding a bank’s equity base should fall on bondholders and other uninsured creditors, in line with the creditor hierarchy that would apply in bankruptcy.1 Other things being equal, exposing the holders of bank bonds to risk will tend to increase the overall cost of finance for banks during normal times compared with the past. Earning a fixed return but exposed to downside risk, investors in, especially, longer-term debt will be a source of market discipline. That is likely to incentivise banks to be better capitalised than in the past – through some combination of less levered balance sheets and less risky business activities. For society at large, the counterpart is that, with a lower probability of failure and credible plans in place to resolve banks without recourse to public funds, government bond yields should be lower than otherwise and the public finances more resilient.

Future changes will not be simple at all, but all of us together, by exchanging experiences and necessities for change, will build a safer environment, which I hope will make future challenges somewhat easier. Granting independence to central banks represents one of the most relevant steps in the financial system reform in the countries of our region, as an important precondition for maintaining inflation under control and becoming an ESCB member. However, our endeavours for the consolidation of the institutional and real independence should be coordinated carefully by taking into consideration the specific features of our economies in transition, and not as a mere implementation of what may seem to be a successful model for the ESCB countries. In this framework, I consider today’s meeting as very important, since the Bulgarian economy and the Bulgarian National Bank have been going through substantial reforms in the context of EU accession. I believe that the challenges that we have faced and those that we will face in the future are more or less the same with those experienced by the Bulgarian authorities, including the Bulgarian National Bank. As a consequence, I think that the bilateral cooperation between our banks carries a high potential, and in the name of my institution, I avail myself of this opportunity to offer maximal guarantees with regard to the fruitful development of these relations. 1/2  Passing into a multilateral framework, I will return once more to the idea that focuses on the institutionalisation of the inter-regional cooperation between central banks.
Just as we have had to adapt to these changes, to fulfil our mission going forwards we need to look ahead to the structural shifts we face over the coming years and decades. That will mean hearing central bankers like me speak about things that we have not in the past – terms like central bank digital currencies, cyber risk, and climate change are now firmly part of our lexicon. This is not about us adding new things to our mission, nor is it about doing that which is rightly for others. It is about taking these new things into account alongside the old as we go about fulfilling our mission, delivering monetary and financial stability through time. Climate change Climate change is an obvious, and indeed urgent, example of this. The physical effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and more frequent severe weather events, as well as the transition to a net-zero economy, through changes in government climate policy, technology and consumer preferences, create financial risks and economic consequences. The question is not if but where, to what extent, and how should we respond. Answering all three of those questions has been at the heart of our work on climate change over the past 6 years. Ignoring them is not an answer. Indeed the longer we wait, the greater the costs of adjustment.

To take one example of the complexities involved in making such an assessment, the natural rate of interest might face both downward pressure from expectations of severe weather events10 and upwards pressure from demand for investment to replace carbon-intensive capital stock (such as replacing petrol cars with electric ones). This dynamic is not unique to climate change. We see it in other structural shifts such as the post financial crisis trend of weak productivity, and the growth in intangible capital.11 To improve our understanding and better inform future monetary policy, we need more research on this topic. I am pleased to say that the Bank plans to do more in this space, both in its own capacity and through working with other central banks and international bodies. 3/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  As well as being relevant to the setting of monetary policy, climate change and the transition to net-zero are also relevant for the implementation of it. The Bank recently became the first central bank to set out a comprehensive framework for greening a monetary policy asset portfolio – the £ stock of sterling corporate bonds acquired via our Corporate Bond Purchase Scheme (CBPS).12 This will remain a monetary policy tool, with its overall target stock of assets set by the MPC in order to achieve its primary inflation objective.