samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Indeed, throughout this period of high inflation, one of the bright spots is that various measures of longer-run inflation expectations have remained remarkably well anchored and consistent with our 2 percent target.2  Imbalances Endure Our most important policy tool is the setting of the target range for the federal funds rate, which influences demand for goods and services by affecting borrowing costs. So far, tighter monetary policy from the Federal Reserve and central banks around the world is helping to bring a better balance between supply and demand. Inflation has declined in a number of sectors, particularly for many categories of commodities and goods. In addition, the supply-chain bottlenecks that had constrained the supply of goods have largely dissipated. For example, the New York Fed's Global Supply Chain Pressure Index has declined to a level that indicates supply pressures are now actually somewhat lower than normal.3 I hear the same from business leaders from around the Federal Reserve's Second District, who confirm that supply chains have improved considerably. At the same time, data on rents for new leases provide early signs of slowing inflation for shelter. This is important because shelter inflation had been a significant driver of higher inflation over the past year. However, despite the moderation of inflation, imbalances endure, with overall demand still exceeding supply in the economy. This is seen in the inflation rate for core services excluding housing, which has been running around 4-1/2 percent since last August.

Major progress has been made in terms of fiscal consolidation and the enhancement of the euro area governance framework. But we are not there yet. Governments need to urgently implement their fiscal consolidation programmes and to accompany these with well-designed structural reforms in the labour and product markets. The new fiscal and macroeconomic rules of the European governance framework need to be implemented to the letter. And the crisis management mechanisms at the euro area level need to be designed so as to ensure financial stability in the euro area. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches
The Central Bank will monitor such borrowings to ensure that highly geared leasing companies do not borrow excessively from the market and terms and conditions will be imposed to mitigate risks to the investors in debt instruments issued by leasing companies. In addition to business growth and fund raising, the viability of the finance and leasing companies should also be monitored and watched, although their asset base accounts for a mere 4.8% of total financial sector assets. Also, these institutions are engaged in granting credit to the more risky sectors in the economy absorbing higher credit risks which the conventional banking sector is not willing to take on. Their contribution to the capital formation in the economy particularly through the provision of leasing and hire purchase facilities is significant. A failure of one or two big companies would have a far reaching impact from a stability point of view, given the ripple effects it could have on the whole financial sector. There are several stakeholders involved in examining the viability of businesses of finance and leasing companies. The chief among them are shareholders, regulators, auditors, investors, depositors and creditors. All these stakeholders have functions and responsibilities assigned to, or assumed by them by law or practice. It is becoming increasingly clear that some of the functions and responsibilities will not be effective if done in isolation without consulting the other stakeholders. In particular, the regulators and external auditors should closely coordinate their roles and responsibilities.

Auditors are appointed by the shareholders, but their prime responsibility should be to ensure that the company can function as a going concern and pay back the depositors’ funds as and when needed. The auditors’ opinion lends credibility to the financial statements and promotes confidence in the system. Auditors generally cover their opinion with a statement in which they certify accounts of the company as true and fair on the basis of information made available to them. While recognizing this clarification, in the interest of wider financial system stability, it is important that external auditors find out the true position of the company and alert regulators, even though it is beyond audit ethics. The audit profession should be independent and they must win confidence of the investing community and the general public by providing accurate and timely audits. In that sense, external auditor also performs the “watchdog’s” and the “whistleblowers” role in the financial system. The new Companies Act, which came into being just a month ago, is somewhat explicit in the role of the auditor in the following areas: 1. Fair judgment: An auditor shall ensure that his judgment is not impaired by reason of any relationship with, or interest in the company or any of its subsidiaries. While regularizing the company under audit, as its client, the auditors must distance themselves in judging the true financial status of the company. 2.
Andrew Bailey: Speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet Speech by Mr Andrew Bailey, Deputy Governor of Prudential Regulation and Chief Executive Officer of the Prudential Regulation Authority at the Bank of England, at the City Banquet, London, 16 October 2014. *  *  *  Lord Mayor, thank you once again for inviting us round to Dinner. Events at the Mansion House never cease to be special, with an aura that sets them apart. It is a true story from some years ago that a very senior official from another country came to a lunch at the Mansion House, at which he spoke, and after which he came to visit the then Governor of the Bank. He had been impressed by the grandeur of the surroundings, the food and drink, the speeches (in plural), but he had just one question for the Governor. How does anyone make money in the City if that is how they carry on? The Governor was wise and slightly avuncular in his answer, to the point of remarking that it is not a question that anyone in the City would ask. Lunches may have become shorter, but dinners remain a place to take stock over good food and wine and with good company. And, for Martin and me it is a chance to take stock after just over eighteen months of the new arrangements. The PRA is responsible for the prudential supervision of banks, insurers and major investment firms.

In this context, the ECB cannot commit itself to move its interest rates in a certain way in response to specific actions or plans of other policymakers. Monetary policy has to take the overall economic situation into account in its assessment of the risks to price stability. For a monetary union to be viable, the fact that monetary conditions may not be tailored to the specific needs of each individual component of the euro area has to be accepted. Explaining this properly to eleven countries with different economic, political and cultural backgrounds is also one of the challenges we are facing. It will probably be better understood over time, subject to further progress being made towards a positive attitude regarding European integration. Such a positive attitude – that is seeing Europe as a positive opportunity – will also help to cope with the challenges posed by the accession of new countries to the EU. This leads me to the second part of my presentation. 3  BIS Review 116/1999  2. Looking ahead – the accession of new countries to the EU and, eventually, the euro area  European integration as well as monetary union is an ongoing process and will continue to be so in the future. Four EU countries have, for different reasons, not yet adopted the euro. Without elaborating on that, let me simply state that they may well join in the coming years.
It would make much more sense to implement the best possible measures within a suitable time frame, in order to achieve a significant reduction in the risk to our country as early as possible. I consider that the best possible measures are those which take account of the specific characteristics and risks inherent in our banking structure and have a high impact without incurring too high a cost. The package now before Parliament fulfils these criteria. On the one hand, the proposed measures are rigorously based on tried-and-tested approaches and instruments11 which have been in existence in all developed countries for decades and whose effectiveness cannot be doubted. On the other hand, measures with great potential for unintended consequences have been decisively rejected by the committee of experts and the Federal Council, and not included in the package. Conclusion I am now drawing to the end of my remarks. The failure of a big bank would have enormous and incalculable negative implications for Switzerland – not least because a state bail-out would be unavoidable. This risk is no longer acceptable. That is why strenuous efforts have been made over the past eighteen months to find a solution to the “too big to fail” problem. The Federal Council has recently presented a carefully thought out, balanced package of measures for Parliament’s consideration. 11  6  Regulations on capital, liquidity and risk concentration. BIS central bankers’ speeches  Implementing these measures in full will make an effective contribution to significantly reducing the problem in Switzerland.

As global capacity utilisation increases to a more normal level, demand for Norwegian exports might remain buoyant. A growing number of export enterprises are facing capacity constraints, particularly in the production of metals and refined petroleum products. Export growth in the years ahead will probably occur in industries such as the engineering and shipbuilding industries. Production growth is now high in these sectors, and employment is rising after declining for several years. High growth in the global economy has also pushed up prices for non-oil commodities. Rising commodity prices and buoyant activity in markets that are important for Norway have generated growth impulses to the Norwegian economy. Since May this year, commodity prices have varied  BIS Review 80/2006  3  widely, but on the whole edged up since end-June. International equity markets have stabilised since the turbulence in May, and have edged up since the previous monetary policy meeting. The benchmark index on the Oslo Stock Exchange is now about 15 per cent higher than at the beginning of the year. Interest rates are still low among many of our trading partners, in spite of the increases in several countries as a result of rising energy prices and higher consumer price inflation. In the US, there are now expectations that the rate tightening cycle is nearing an end, and that the policy rate will be lowered in the course of next summer. A rise in key rates is expected over the next year in the euro area, Sweden, the UK, Australia, Japan and Switzerland.
Overall, lending capacity recovered, to 1.9% of GDP in 2021, although the net debtor position vis-à-vis the rest of the world remains high (70% of GDP at end-2021). As regards the labour market, the recovery in employment was particularly vigorous. Thus, in March 2022 effective social security registrations stood 2.1% above their pre-pandemic  1  Thus, the level in 2022 Q1 was still 9.7% off the 2019 Q4 level. 2  In December 2020, tourist arrivals and expenditure were down to 15.1% and 13.9%, respectively, of their December 2019 levels. However, by March 2022 those figures had climbed to 71.4% and 84%, respectively. In April, the number of overnight hotel stays by foreign tourists reached 89.4% of their pre-pandemic levels. 3  Only exporters with sales abroad exceeding € are considered, given the particularities of firms whose exports fall below this threshold. In any event, the latter account for a negligible share of total exports. 2  level, albeit with notable cross-sector differences.4 In the public sector, employment was around 10 pp higher than the pre-pandemic level, while in the private sector the difference stands at approximately 1.5 pp.5 Nevertheless, total hours worked performed somewhat less favourably, leading to a 4 pp gap at end-2021, although this gap narrowed significantly in 2022 Q1, to 0.5 pp. One discernible characteristic since the crisis began has been employment, measured in numbers of persons, performing markedly better than GDP.6 Various explanations for this have been offered, none of which are easily verifiable. These include the pandemic restrictions (e.g.

Should there be a greater fiscal adjustment, for example if the structural primary balance improves by 0.5 pp of potential output each year until reaching equilibrium – a path more consistent with the Stability and Growth Pact rules –, public debt could fall to 82% of GDP by 2040. Were this adjustment also accompanied by an ambitious package of structural reforms, the government debt ratio could be around 79% of GDP by 2040. In short, in order to bolster the sustainability of public finances, a multi-annual fiscal consolidation plan will have to be implemented once the pandemic is over and the adverse economic effects of the war in Ukraine have diminished. Although the necessary fiscal adjustment should be carried out gradually, the definition and early communication of this plan – in which all tiers of general government should participate – would be desirable, as this would help boost confidence and certainty about Spanish economic policies. Such confidence is particularly important amid the current context of monetary policy normalisation and the consequent tightening of financial conditions. As part of this plan, government expenditure policies must be subject to an exhaustive review to increase expenditure efficiency and to optimise the distribution between items in order to promote more robust and equitable economic growth. For instance, the weight of education and public investment expenditure in Spain is below the EU average,18 despite the broad consensus regarding the importance of these items to drive economic growth and mitigate inequality.
This will both increase our economic resilience and decrease our reliance on the traditional markets for our export growth. Encouragingly this trend of export market diversification has already started before the onset of the crisis. A decade ago, the share of Malaysia’s exports to emerging and developing economies were below 50% of our total exports, but now, the figure has exceeded two-thirds. Going forward, it is important that this trend is reinforced. However, to achieve a more balanced growth, we need to not only leverage on our competitive advantage in the external sector, but also expand the strength of our domestic sector. Since 2003, domestic demand has been a main contributor to our economic growth, especially private consumption, in which growth has consistently outstripped that of the overall economy. Going forward however, a more sustainable balanced growth would require higher contribution from private investment. It is important to recognise that no country has ever managed to consume its way to prosperity. Both economic theory and the history of economic development point to the lesson that high-level of consumption does not guarantee higher rate of economic growth for a sustained period. 4  BIS Review 158/2009  Investment, on the other hand, is a prerequisite for a dynamic economy that is moving towards a higher level of income and development.

Those technological giants (Alipay and WeChat pay) grew so big to build their own ecosystems, a walled garden where fragmentation of the market happened. The terms platformisation and super-apps were coined there. The state then intervened to retain control over the system and to build a one, common, integrated payments system accessible to everyone. To level the playing field. In countries where cash is almost out of use, and the private sector provides digital payments at scale, the financial stability concerns paved the way for the CBDC entry. This is why Swedes started it - to provide a backstop to private payment rails and to render it as a central point of conversion between private digital currencies – a monetary anchor. But what are the main drivers for developing the CBDC here in the eurozone? What drives the ECB and the CNB to follow this path? Because, in essence, and let me be honest here, if we want to pursue our monetary goals, we do not need a new form of money. By affecting the cost of funds, we can do our monetary job well. So, what is it that drives us towards the CBDC, or better to say, towards the digital euro? THE DIGITAL EURO The main reason behind the digital euro project is the declining use of cash. Cash was the most frequently used payment method at the point of sale (POS) in the euro area in 2022 and was used in 59% of transactions, down from 79% in 2016 and 72% in 2019.
As growth prospects have weakened we have cut the repo rate over the last 12 months in order to attain the inflation target and support economic activity. However, a lower repo rate also increases the risk associated with household indebtedness. The decisions to cut the repo-rate have therefore not been self-evident. Low repo rate in Sweden over the last 12 months In connection with the financial crisis the repo rate was lowered all the way to 0.25 per cent, where it remained for almost a year - from mid-2009 to mid-2010. During the strong recovery that followed the financial crisis we moved towards a normalisation of monetary policy, and during the autumn of 2011 the repo rate reached 2 per cent. However, the financial crisis then became a debt crisis in Europe, which has undermined economic prospects once again. We therefore had to call a halt to the normalisation process. This year, the Riksbank has instead cut the repo rate in a number of stages to stimulate the Swedish economy and prevent the rate of inflation becoming too low. Historically speaking, the repo rate is now very low (see Figure 1). Let me now go back a little and describe how we ended up in the position we are now in with regard to monetary policy. I also intend to take up some of the important lessons learned from the international financial and debt crisis of recent years. The financial crisis became a debt crisis in Europe… The global financial crisis began about four years ago.

Economic Tendency Survey of the National Institute of Economic Research Index, average = 100, standard deviation = 10 120  120  110  110  100  100  90  90  80  80  The Economic Tendency Indicator Mean +/- one standard deviation  70  70 00  02  04  06  08  10  12  Source: National Institute of Economic Research  10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Figure 9. Labour force, employment and unemployment 1000s and percentage of the labour force, 15-74 age group 5 200  12  Labour force (left) Employed (left) Unemployment (right)  5 000  10  4 800  8  4 600  6  4 400  4  4 200  2  4 000  0 01  03  05  07  11  09  Source: Statistics Sweden  Figure 10. Repo rate, mortgage rates for households and bank interest rates for companies Per cent 7  7 Average bank interest rate for companies Average mortgage rate  6  6  Repo rate  5  5  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0 06  07  08  09  10  11  12  Note. Per cent, monthly averages.
In Sweden CPI inflation has fallen from around 5 per cent in 1994 to approximately 2 per cent in 2003. Even in a more long-term perspective, inflation shows a downward trend, which is illustrated in a figure showing inflation in OECD countries. Other parts of the world have experienced a similar development. The IMF’s previous chief economist Ken Rogoff has demonstrated in an article that global inflation has fallen from 30 per cent to 4 per cent between 1993 and 2002. Which factors could lie behind this remarkable slowdown in the rate of price increase? I believe that it is mainly a combination of three factors: (1)  A change in monetary policy with independent central banks applying inflation-targeting,  (2)  IT investments enabling large-scale cost savings and  (3)  Globalisation that entails, among other things, increased competition from new low-wage countries and pressurises producer countries towards greater productivity. 1. Independent central banks with inflation targets  At the beginning of the 1990s, in the aftermath of the years of overheating and crisis, a process of reorientation of economic policy began in Sweden: the tax system was reformed and combating inflation was given priority. The Riksbank decided at the beginning of 1993 to introduce an inflation  BIS Review 21/2004  1  target, defined as 2 per cent with a tolerated deviation interval of plus/minus one percentage point, and fiscal policy was increasingly oriented towards budget consolidation. Similar developments took place at around the same time in many other countries.

Monetary policy: achievements and review? Már Guðmundsson, Governor of the Central Bank of Iceland. Monetary policy meeting of the Iceland Chamber of Commerce, held at Harpa in Reykjavík on 17 November 2016  Madame Chairman, honoured guests, The Iceland Chamber of Commerce has a long-standing tradition of holding a meeting like this one on economic developments and prospects and monetary policy. The meeting is held following the publication of the Central Bank’s autumn forecast and, in latter years, the Monetary Policy Committee’s interest rate decision. In recent years, it has been the practice to select a particular topic for the meeting, and in keeping with this, today’s topic is: Is independent monetary policy too costly? This departs somewhat from the contents of the Central Bank’s Monetary Bulletin and current tasks of monetary policy, but I will touch on these towards the end of my speech today. Yesterday the Bank published Monetary Bulletin 2016/4, which contained the Bank’s new macroeconomic forecast, and announced the Monetary Policy Committee’s interest rate decision. The big picture of the current state of the economy is that things have seldom been better. Icelanders have received a significant boost from improved terms of trade and growing goods and services exports, particularly due to strong growth in the tourism sector. It is this that underlies the vast increase in Icelanders’ real income and the country’s high employment level. In addition, Icelanders have proven more cautious this time than often before during an economic boom.