samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
And a few may view paper money – even the Bank of England itself – as archaic vestiges of an old centralised order of payments that will soon be swept aside by a digital, distributed future. And that’s my topic today: the future of money. Specifically, how developments in money and payments technologies could transform our economy in ways good and bad. And how, for the good of the people of the United Kingdom, the Bank of England is helping to manage the potential risks and to realise the promise of the future of money. What is money? In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith defines money by the roles it plays in society, in particular, how well it serves as:  -  A store of value with which to transfer purchasing power from today to some future time;  -  A medium of exchange with which to make payments for goods and services; and  -  A unit of account with which to measure the value of a particular good, service, saving or loan. These functions of money operate in a hierarchy (Figure 2). There are many assets that people view as stores of value — houses, for instance — that are not used as media of exchange. By comparison, an asset can only act as a medium of exchange if at least two people are prepared to treat it as a store of value, at least temporarily.

That paper £ note contains sophisticated counterfeit protections ranging from holographic images to ultraviolet features, which will be further enhanced when we switch to a polymer £ in 2020;  -  12  The foundation of the payments system, RTGS, which processes over £ billion of bank-to-bank payments per day to the highest standards of efficiency and resilience;  13  8  The data are for 2016. To note, banknotes accounted for 45% of transactions in 2015, and as such there was a 5 percentage point fall year-on-year which may be related to increased use of cards and online payments. 9 See McLeay, M., Radia, A., and Thomas, R., (2014), Money Creation in the Modern Economy, Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin 2014 Q1, which notes that the reality of how money is created often differs from that found in standard textbooks, and rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending creates deposits. 10 Although it does not target monetary aggregates per se, the Bank of England conducts monetary policy to ensure the amount of money creation in the economy is consistent with low and stable inflation. In normal times, the Bank of England implements monetary policy by setting the interest rate on central bank reserves. In exceptional times when interest rates cannot be lowered further, the Bank implements monetary policy by purchasing assets, which has the by-product of increasing the central bank reserve holdings of private banks.
François Villeroy de Galhau: The role of monetary policy Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, at the Global Interdependence Center – Central Banking Series “Inflation expectations, implications and policy response in a new paradigm for commodities”, Session I “Central bankers outlook”, Paris, 21 March 2016. *  *  *  Since the financial crisis, central banks have been tested on several levels: their ability to keep the transmission channels of monetary policy active; their ability to deliver on price stability; their ability to support the economy. Central banks in many jurisdictions have done a lot to reach their objectives. And their role has largely been hailed as positive in exiting the crisis. But faced with inflation remaining below the target, commodity markets going persistently through bear territory and growth momentum losing steam, central banks’ action is now called into question: how effective is monetary policy and how effective can it be in the future? Aren’t central banks running out of ammo? Monetary policy faces challenges, that is true; but these challenges can be mitigated. Central banks have proven that they were ready to do their part; but my conviction is that they cannot remain the only game in town. Let me focus my remarks today on the case of the euro area. Jeffrey [Lacker, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond] will certainly give you more insight into the US situation.

Since the start of the year, we have observed that market-based measures of inflation expectations have fallen. Nevertheless, the latest forecasts provided by the ECB continue to point to a gradual rise in inflation over the coming years: 0.1% in 2016, 1.3% in 2017 and 1.6% in 2018. c) Some argue that these challenges mean that the Eurosystem can no longer achieve its price stability mandate. I don’t think so. Current challenges do not call into question our mandate, but they change the way in which we fulfil it. Some argue that the Eurosystem should rather change its objective. I don’t think so either. For the credibility of monetary policy, this objective must be maintained: this 2% target is a medium-term “anchor”, at a time when there is so much volatility and short-termism affecting the economy. Most central banks in advanced economies share this medium-term 2% objective, including the United States and Japan. This has been the ECB’s objective since 2003, when it was proposed by the German former chief economist, Otmar Issing. II. This brings me to my second point: how effective is our monetary policy? a) Since the summer of 2014, we have implemented a series of non-standard monetary policy measures to complement cuts to key interest rates. These non-standard measures have produced tangible results. They have translated into a substantial easing in borrowing conditions for euro area companies. Since June 2014, the cost of borrowing for businesses has fallen by 80 basis points.
So our focus is on non-banks; on insurance companies, pension funds and investment funds of all sorts. The jury is out here too. I do not start from the presumption that there is an iceberg here. Our duty is to assess whether they could be one. 16  Carney, M. (2013), ‘The UK at the heart of a renewed globalisation’, available here. Even a user of derivatives to hedge another exposure – and thus having limited ‘VaR’ – could find themselves with significant ‘CaR’. It is the potential mismatch in liquidity, between the collateral called for and the assets held that is a source of firesale risk. In addition, as the IMF reports for a sample of funds, the majority of derivative exposures are entered into in order to boost returns rather than hedge existing risks. This would boost both VaR and CaR. 17  9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  9  But in order to assess properly the risks in this area we need much better diagnostic tools. So we are developing them. We are fortunate in being able to draw on data from Trade Repositories which now record all new derivative trades between counterparties and report each day on the outstanding positions between them. We are fortunate that these issues are the topic of international collaboration, with the International Organisation of Securities Commissions leading work to develop consistent measures of leverage – that incorporate derivatives usage – for investment funds.

John Gieve: The City’s growth – the crest of a wave or swimming with the stream? Speech by Sir John Gieve, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, to the London Society of Chartered Accountants, Bank of England, London, 26 March 2007. *  *  *  Introduction Over the past few months there has been renewed talk of London overtaking New York as the world’s leading financial centre. And it has reflected fears in the US as much as self congratulation in this country. We should take some of this with a pinch of salt. Talk of an external threat may be helpful to those building a case for change in the US financial system. The US market remains the biggest in the world by many measures. More fundamentally this is not a zero sum game. Even if London establishes a comparative advantage and gains market share, New York (and Paris and Edinburgh for that matter) can prosper too. Yet something interesting is going on. The report by McKinseys commissioned by Mayor Bloomberg concluded that “London is transforming itself into an increasingly sizeable and attractive talent hub for people with … skills that used to be available only in New York …” and “… superior conditions for innovation, capital formation, risk management and investment in these markets [derivatives and debt financing] are beginning to emerge (or have already done so) in London, which is building momentum relative to New York”.
Caleb M Fundanga: The Bank of Zambia – placing a high premium on education Speech by Dr Caleb M Fundanga, Governor of the Bank of Zambia, at the signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Bank of Zambia and the University of Zambia, Lusaka, 23 November 2007. * * * The Vice Chancellor The Deputy Vice Chancellor The Registrar The Deans of various schools Heads of Departments present Faculty Members Invited Guests Ladies and Gentlemen I feel greatly honoured to once again participate in the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Bank of Zambia (BOZ) and the University of Zambia (UNZA). The Bank of Zambia and UNZA have a long standing relationship which is intertwined in more ways than one. I am sure that the majority of employees in the Bank that possess a first degree have this University to thank for that achievement. It therefore gives me pleasure to stand here and undertake this function of signing the MOU between our two institutions. Vice Chancellor, the Bank places a very high premium on education. It is for this very reason that it has this day decided to renew its financial support to the University of Zambia’s Department of Economics. Under the new agreement, the Bank has increased the level of support to UNZA to include setting aside a special fund specifically for research purposes and procurement of personal computers (PCs) and software for the same purpose.

We in the Bank consider research as very important because it forms the basis upon which we formulate our policies and execute our operations. To underscore this point, the Bank of Zambia launched the BOZ Reader series a few years ago as a means of having articles of economic interest being published for the benefit of the Zambian public. The three publications of the BOZ Reader that have been published so far have largely contained articles prepared by BOZ members of staff. However, our intention has always been to have a wider network of contributors. With the signing of this agreement, we hope to see more economics related research being undertaken by faculty members in the Department of Economics on behalf of the Bank. We further urge the University of Zambia to be a key and keen contributor to the publications. The University of Zambia Economics Department should coordinate with our Economics Department on this matter. In addition to the research fund, the monthly salary supplementation for faculty members in the Economics Department has been adjusted up by 64%. Meanwhile, the Bank has continued to recognize academic excellence among economics students at UNZA. For this reason, the bank has been providing fully funded scholarships to five outstanding economics students at third and fourth year levels. This support is also expected to shift to postgraduate economics programmes as soon as the modalities are agreed between the two institutions.
6 In a nutshell that is why, over long periods of time and across wide ranges of countries, well-functioning finance has supported wealth-creation and well-being. The other, more obvious, way of capturing why finance matters is to see what happens when it goes wrong. Then it can quickly take large chunks out of the capital our societies have, over time and at great cost, painstakingly accumulated. That crumbling of capital, in its broadest sense, is the reason financial crises have been about as costly as any event societies have ever faced historically, war and revolution excepting. Capital, for these purposes, has more than one face. The collapse of capital during financial crises shows up, most obviously and immediately, in measures of financial capital (the values of bonds and shares) and physical capital (the accumulation of buildings, houses, plant and machinery). And because we assign monetary values to these concepts, and obsess about them in the media, these losses of capital are clear and visible. Yet it is another form of capital that may matter every bit as much to wealth and well-being in society – social capital. There is neither a standard definition, nor a simple means of measuring, social capital. In general, social capital refers to the relationships, trust and  3  Carney (2015). 4  For example, Levine (2005) and Beck (2012). There is also evidence finance fosters entrepreneurship (Guiso et al (2004)) and reduces poverty and inequality (Beck et al (2007).

Trust in banking had, by turns, suffered a double-whammy: first a slow puncture of personalised trust as banks retreated from the high street, then a high-speed blow-out of generalised trust as the crisis broke. That loss of generalised trust is not confined to the financial elite. Many other entities rely on generalised trust on the part of the public, from governments to businesses to the media. They too appear to have suffered a loss of generalised trust over recent years, joining banking at the bottom of the league table. Their crises have been different – from expenses to remuneration to mis-reporting – but the result the same. These trust-busting events have generated, as in finance, a growing perception gap between the elites and the general public. In 2016, the trust gap between the “informed public” and the “mass population” hit a new high of 12 percentage points at a global level. The UK results were even more striking. Not only was the trust gap, at 17 percentage points, higher than in any other country, bar the US. But this gap has widened progressively since 2012, when it stood at only 7 percentage points. 28  26  Sapienza and Zingales (2011). 27  European Central Bank Statistical Warehouse, available at: https://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/  28  2016 Edelman Trust Barometer. For more information, see http://www.edelman.com/insights/intellectualproperty/2016-edelman-trust-barometer/global-results/. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The Bank of England has not been immune to this generalised loss of trust.
Since the number of transactions in Swedish kronor between panel banks has decreased, the STIBOR framework states that the banks' submissions can be based on judgements of their borrowing costs in foreign currency. The Riksbank considers this unfortunate and that a reference rate in Swedish kronor should be anchored in transactions in Swedish kronor only. The definition of SWESTR is similar to those in euro, British pounds and Danish kronor. Like the ECB, the Bank of England and Nationalbanken in Denmark, the Riksbank has chosen to use deposit transactions with overnight maturity, and with a counterparty group that is wider than just the panel banks. The main reason is that this part of the money market tends to exhibit good and relatively stable transaction volumes, even in difficult times. The transition to SWESTR should begin now – it is a process that will take several years and some adjustments are required As SWESTR is now available, there is an alternative to STIBOR. We therefore call on market participants to step up their efforts for a transition to SWESTR. 5 [8]  However, in order for us to reach a point where transaction-based reference rates dominate in the market in Sweden and internationally, certain adjustments are required in the financial markets. This process needs to run over several years. The greatest need for adjustment probably concerns maturities. The traditional interbank rates are available at several different maturities, for example three and six months. However, SWESTR and its international equivalents are only calculated at the shortest maturity, overnight.

It is therefore positive that various sector forums have begun to discuss issues related to SWESTR. The Riksbank will continue to support the transition. We will have an ongoing dialogue with the market and will also shortly be sending out a survey to gather the views of different participants on issues related to the transition. However, it is important to emphasise that the role of the Riksbank is limited to, through SWESTR, providing the conditions for a new form of reference rate and contributing to analysis. It is the market participants who are responsible for the transition taking place. They will therefore have to drive forward the issue of a transition in order to ensure that a reference rate with a high degree of confidence also dominates in the Swedish financial market. 7 [8]  Of course, the Riksbank expects financial market intermediaries to take a great deal of responsibility in this process, but you too – who are to a large extent the end-customers of such participants – have a very important role to play. If you show your interest, it will facilitate a transition to a more transparent reference rate. Ask your bank contacts how they plan to introduce SWESTR into their operations. Request loans and other products that use SWESTR as an interest rate. Once the products are in place, start using them and thus help to create liquidity in the market.
These initiatives demonstrate that Shanghai is a role model in pioneering financial innovation in China. 12 Going forward, I see strong potential for Shanghai and Singapore to synergize and collaborate in a few areas:  (i) Collaborating with Shanghai Authorities on Free Trade Zone and/or Pilot Financial Policies During their meeting in Hangzhou, President Xi remarked to Prime Minister Lee that Singapore could play “a useful role” in China’s newly announced FTZs. Singapore could also be a strategic partner to pilot financial policies implemented in the Shanghai FTZ. As a key offshore RMB centre, Singapore has always been supportive of China’s financial liberalisation and internationalisation policies. Singapore financial institutions are keen to work with Shanghai authorities and financial institutions. Their deep international and ASEAN experiences could contribute to effective calibration of the pilot schemes. Some good examples of Singapore’s involvement in implementing pilots include the following: In February 2014, shortly after PBOC announced its support for more cross-border RMB transactions in the Shanghai FTZ, ICBC Singapore made two cross-border RMB loans to firms based here in the Shanghai FTZ. In October 2015, DBS China was among the first batch of banks selected to participate in the Shanghai-based Cross-Border International Payment System (CIPS). Beyond banking, Singapore capital market players can also work with Shanghai authorities to pilot financial policies related to the asset management and securities sectors. (ii) Belt-and-Road Partnerships China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI) offers another important area of collaboration between Shanghai and Singapore. This will also contribute to the fulfilment of China’s national objectives.

20 In March 2016, the China Internet Finance Association was established in Shanghai by the People’s Bank of  China. This is the highest-level national self-regulatory organisation for the burgeoning internet finance sector in China. 21 3 of the top 5 FinTech companies globally (ranked by FinTech Innovators) are based in or near Shanghai. Top-  ranked Ant Financial is based in Hangzhou, while 4th ranked Lu.com and 5th ranked ZhongAn Insurance are based in Shanghai itself. 22 For example, one strategic thrust is to help businesses digitise their processes and integrate them with electronic  payments solutions, so as to maximise productivity and efficiency gains. 23 Based on Deloitte’s report released in September 2016 titled “Connecting Global FinTech: Hub Review 2016”. 6/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  7/7  BIS central bankers' speeches
Már Guðmundsson: Iceland’s economy and monetary regime – a series of crossroads Speech by Mr Már Guðmundsson, Governor of the Central Bank of Iceland, at the 50th Annual General Meeting of the Central Bank of Iceland, Reykjavík, 7 April 2011. *  *  *  Honourable President; Prime Minister; other Ministers; Speaker of Parliament; Chairman of the Board; Party Chairmen, Bank Directors; Directors of Public Institutions; Ladies and Gentlemen: This year’s Annual General Meeting of the Central Bank of Iceland is held on the Bank’s 50th anniversary. But it would hardly be accurate to say that the Bank is facing halcyon days at this milestone. Quite the contrary: times are turbulent. Furthermore, Iceland’s economy and monetary regime are standing at a complex series of crossroads, and the paths we choose could have a profound impact on future developments. This is reminiscent of the situation that reigned when the Bank was founded, but I will come to that later. What exactly are these crossroads, then? The first fork in the road lies in the changing economic situation. Instability and recession are giving way to better equilibrium and recovery. The current account deficit from Iceland’s overheating period has been turned around to an underlying surplus that has supported the króna, which is now over 7½% stronger than it was at the beginning of last year. At the same time, the Central Bank has bought foreign currency in the market for about 33 b.kr., as part of its plan to accumulate non-borrowed reserves.

Norman T L Chan: SME Financing Guarantee Scheme Opening address by Mr Norman T L Chan, Chief Executive of Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Deputy Chairman of the Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation Limited, at the SME Financing Guarantee Scheme signing ceremony, Hong Kong SAR, 13 December 2010. * * * Good morning, I am very pleased to welcome all of you to today’s Letter of Intent Signing Ceremony for the launch of the SME (small to medium-sized enterprise) Financing Guarantee Scheme by the Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation (“HKMC”). SMEs are an important pillar of the Hong Kong economy and employment. In 2008, the collapse of Lehman Brothers caused credit crunch and market dislocation around the world. To mitigate the impact of the global financial crisis, the Hong Kong SAR Government swiftly rolled out a series of measures to “stabilise the financial system, support enterprises and preserve employment”. A key measure to help the SMEs was the launch of the $ billion Special Loan Guarantee Scheme in December 2008. By October this year, the scheme has helped more than 20,000 companies, with the approved loan amount exceeding $ billion, and helping to secure more than 330,000 jobs. With the recovery of the local economy and the improved financing and cash flows for SMEs, the Special Loan Guarantee Scheme will cease to receive applications from early next year.