samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
It bears keeping in mind that the Reinhart-Rogoff predictions of a slow recovery are based on historical averages of macroeconomic performances across many different countries at many different times. They highlight a challenge we face today, but from the standpoint of the underlying economic analysis, there is nothing pre-ordained about these outcomes. They are not theoretical predictions – rather, they are reduced form correlations. The economy can perform better than it did in these past episodes if policy responds better than it did in those  7  Reinhart, Carmen M. and Kenneth Rogoff, 2009. This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Princeton University Press. New Jersey: Princeton. 8  Reinhart, Carmen M. and Kenneth Rogoff, 2011. Remarks at the 2011 NBER Summer Institute. For similar analyses, see Reinhart, Carmen M. and Kenneth Rogoff, 2008. “Is the 2007 US Sub-Prime Financial Crisis So Different? An International Historic Comparison” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 98(2), pp. 339–344; and Reinhart, Carmen M. and Kenneth Rogoff, 2008. “The Aftermath of Financial Crises” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 99(2), pp. 466–472. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  situations. In my opinion, maintaining the Fed’s focus on both of our dual-mandate responsibilities is a necessary and critical element of an appropriate response to the financial crisis that can produce better economic outcomes.

Caleb M Fundanga: Growing investor confidence in Zambia’s economy Opening remarks by Dr Caleb M Fundanga, Governor of the Bank of Zambia, at the Afreximbank/PTA Bank Financing Agreements Signing Ceremony, Lusaka, 10 June 2008. *  *  *  • The President of AFREXIM Bank • The President of PTA Bank • Chief Executives and representatives of Financial Institutions Present • Distinguished ladies and gentlemen I am greatly honoured to be given an opportunity to make these brief remarks at this signing ceremony of two important financing agreements. I wish to extend a warm welcome to all of you gathered here today, particularly those who have travelled from outside the country. I hope that you will not only have a pleasant ceremony today but also have fruitful deliberations at the Euromoney Conferences starting tomorrow at this same venue. I also hope you will find time to explore the beautiful scenery and experience the warm hospitality that Zambia has to offer. Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen, over the recent past, the Zambian economy has performed relatively well. This is reflected in the overall macroeconomic stability which has been underpinned by positive growth rates in real Gross Domestic Product, low inflation, relative stability in the exchange rate of the Kwacha against major currencies, stable financial sector and improved banking services. However, although incomes have generally increased, the challenge that still remains is that of meeting the basic needs of the majority of Zambians in order to uplift their living standards.
Tarisa Watanagase: Enhancing Thailand’s resiliency against economic turbulence Address by Dr Tarisa Watanagase, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the 4th Annual Euromoney Thailand Investment Forum: The Economic Perspective, Bangkok, 6 July 2010. *  *  *  Prime Minister, Distinguished Speakers and Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, First of all, I would like to thank Euromoney for the invitation to speak to this gathering of prominent members of public and business sectors. I welcome this opportunity to share with you some thoughts on Thailand’s economic and policy issues at this very challenging juncture. As we all know, the Thai economy has been through one of the most turbulent periods due to the global impact from the US sub-prime crisis and the European debt crisis. Despite the difficult external environment compounded by political problem and weak sentiments at home, it is clear that the Thai economy has been able to cope with shocks quite well. Thus far, what the economy experienced has been a mere cyclical downturn, in tandem with the contraction of global demand. The good news is that nothing about our economy amplified the impact of these external and domestic shocks and I call that economic resiliency. Unfortunately, the less good news is that a small open economy like Thailand will be prone to more shocks, especially through international trade and financial market linkages. So, we need to accept this fact and make ourselves as resilient as possible to ride the waves.

We have also developed over the years and have been equipped with a broader and more in-depth surveillance that now covers household, financial, and real estate sectors. This is important for early detection of imbalances and enables preemptive policy action to prevent costly bursting of bubbles. Importantly, the process of monetary policy decision itself has been institutionalized, and independent from political influence. I therefore have no concern today whether who will become the next governor since a good system for policy decision making is already in place. Going forward, one of the important policy challenges facing us is the sizeable and volatile capital that flows to emerging economies, including Thailand. This is due to their better growth prospect and earlier policy normalization vis-à-vis G3 countries. Apart from the policy measure to try to shield ourselves from the adverse impact, the private sector also needs to remain vigilant about risk by not building up excessive risk exposure and by employing more risk protection tools as well. I turn now to the third part of my presentation that is what we can possibly do more to enhance Thailand’s resiliency over the medium term. On this issue, I would like to reiterate briefly what I said earlier in my annual statement regarding the urgency to elevate Thailand’s  BIS Review 94/2010  3  fundamental strength to cope with the changing structure of the global economy. Specifically, there are three issues that should be considered priorities.
Spencer Dale: The UK’s economic recovery – why now; will it last; and what next for monetary policy? Speech by Mr Spencer Dale, Executive Director, Monetary Policy, and Chief Economist of the Bank of England, at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) East of England Midwinter Lunch, Newmarket, 13 December 2013. *  *  *  I would like to thank John Lewis, Matt Trott and Gavin Wallis for their considerable help in preparing this speech. The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of other members of the Monetary Policy Committee. I thought I would start today with a short reminiscence about the late Eddie George, who was Governor of the Bank of England between 1993 and 2003. Soon after becoming Governor, Eddie gave an interview in which he was asked how he would judge the success of his Governorship. Now this was before the advent of the Monetary Policy Committee, so he couldn’t frame his response simply in terms of hitting the inflation target. Instead, Eddie replied that “My personal ambition is that the rate of growth of output should be above the rate of inflation for three years in a row”.1 At the time, this seemed a fairly tall order: prior to Eddie taking over, this hadn’t been achieved even once since the Second World War. But as it turned out, growth was stronger than inflation in every single year of Eddie’s 10-year reign. And that continued for the next few years after he’d retired.

There are also real economic costs when inflation is too low. To utilise resources most effectively, relative prices must be changed in pace with changes in production conditions and preferences. Some inflation will ensure that relative prices can be changed easily without substantial real economic costs. In the 1990s, the Norwegian economy expanded sharply, with considerable restructuring and substantial changes in relative wages and income, while inflation was low and stable, averaging about 2½ per cent. The wheels of the economy run smoothly when monetary policy is oriented towards an inflation target of 2½ per cent. Deflation may intensify periods of economic contraction. With deflation, the interest rate will no longer be an effective instrument for bringing the economy out of a cyclical downturn. As developments in Japan show, fiscal policy instruments are not necessarily effective either. Unemployment can remain high over a long period. Therefore, the best contribution monetary policy can make to the economy in the long term is to provide a nominal anchor. It is equally important to avoid an inflation rate that is too low, or deflation, as it is to avoid an inflation rate that is too high. In the short term, monetary policy can contribute to smoothing fluctuations, that is, fluctuations in demand and employment. If there is confidence in the nominal anchor, monetary policy will be a more effective instrument in short-term stabilisation policy. In the short term, there is a trade-off between variation in output and employment and variation in inflation around the inflation target.
Alternatively, it can be said that an additional axis and thus an additional dimension are required that correspond to the sum of squared changes in the interest rate, so that the modified Taylor curve becomes a three-dimensional, bowl-shaped Taylor surface. Taylor curve for analysis ex ante applies instead to the sum of squares of the inflation-gap and output-gap forecasts ex ante. BIS Review 29/2009  7  A major difficulty in this analysis is that it may be unclear what is meant by stabilising the real economy. From a monetary policy perspective it is the stabilisation of resource utilisation rather than GDP growth that is relevant. This means stabilising resource utilisation around a normal level. The problem is that resource utilisation can be measured in several ways. A reasonable and commonly used measure of resource utilisation is the so-called output gap; that is the difference between actual production and potential production. However, potential production is not a magnitude that can be observed directly – it must be estimated. There is considerable uncertainty, both theoretically and empirically, about the best way to estimate and forecast potential production. The output gap shown in the figures is the so-called HP gap, which has significant weaknesses. 7 It is important and desirable from several points of view that the Riksbank and other central banks develop better and clearer measures of resource utilisation and potential production and that they publish their measurements and forecasts. Such work is underway at the Riksbank.

More stable inflation expectations shift the Taylor curve in Figure 3 closer to origin and make the balance between the stability of inflation and the stability of the real economy more favourable. As the central bank's inflation forecasts in the short and medium terms may deliberately deviate from the target, it is also interesting to compare inflation expectations with the central bank's inflation forecasts. If the economic agents share the central bank’s view of how inflation will approach the target, inflation expectations at different time horizons should be close to the central bank’s forecasts. The degree of correspondence between inflation expectations and the central bank's inflation forecasts then becomes a measure of how credible the central bank's inflation forecasts and analyses are. Such a correspondence between expectations and forecasts is of course also desirable for forecasts for the real economy and, not least, for forecasts for the policy rate, which I will now discuss. Was the implementation of monetary policy effective? I have spoken earlier about what characterises efficient monetary policy decisions. This was in relation to the balance between stabilising inflation and stabilising the real economy given the information available at the time of the decision. Another important aspect is to investigate how effective the implementation of monetary policy has been, in the sense of affecting the economy in the desired direction and to the right amount.
In this WG, key players will reflect on ways to provide access to private data while maintaining and promoting ethical principles. In fact, I consider there is a need to break the quasi-monopoly which some big techcompanies have on personal data, something which requires a co-ordinated international effort. The European data strategy announced by the European Commission a few months ago, aimed at public/private-sector collaboration in data-sharing, is a good example in this respect. It is also important to recall the usefulness of statistical information for public opinion. Central banks’ information is quite often of a very technical nature. But, at the same time, some variables –such as interest rates- have a strong impact on household finances and SMEs, whereas information about recent developments on key economic and financial variables are also very relevant for public opinion. Therefore, accessible (transparent, clear) statistics are also needed. 6  In our case, we are continuously striving to improve how statistics are conveyed to society and to adapt our communication to different types of users. A couple of years ago we conducted a survey of the users of our statistical information. The results offered a useful guidance about some key issues. Following the input from this survey, we have in recent years tried to exploit new technologies to display data, including more charts, interactive menus, dashboards, etc. And just a few days ago we launched an application which will allow users to have our statistical information readily available on their mobile devices.

In all these tasks I believe that the role of external analysts and researchers can be pivotal In this regard, I see only advantages from making information produced by authorities public to the scientific community. Evaluation of public policies should not be the sole preserve of analysts from policymaking institutions. Data availability paves the way for evaluations by independent researchers with a clear potential for enriching our knowledge on the impact  4  of public policies. This in turn increases the number of cross-checks to ensure more robust results by looking at the same question from different angles. My impression is that the more ambitious we are in this field, the better the assessment by researchers we are going to have. Indeed, it is a fact that countries with more open data typically enjoy larger than average high-quality economic evaluations. That’s why we have created a data laboratory at the Banco de España (BELab) and intend to gradually open up our data to the scientific community. We have started offering the annual financial statements of about one million companies per year, made available thanks to the agreement signed with the Mercantile Register Association (Colegio de Registradores Mercantiles). As part of our medium-term strategic plan, we are currently analysing the legal and technical conditions to broaden the databases disseminated at this laboratory and to ease access to the data. Currently, it is only possible to access the data lab using the “dataroom” located on our premises.
That is why you can discount claims that disagreements can be used reliably to predict future movements in rates. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Much of the commentary on the MPC has been subject to what I call the “small sample” problem. Descriptions of diversity of view within the MPC have ranged from the Committee allegedly acting as “the North Korean politburo” during periods when most of the votes were unanimous, to the view that it was “a bunch of squabbling senior common room academics” during an earlier period when split votes predominated. In fact, as chart 7 shows, there is no obvious pattern over the lifetime of the MPC. There are times when the state of the economy is difficult to read and there are naturally differences of interpretation leading to split votes. Equally, there are times when the nature of the economic shocks is not in dispute and the response of the MPC is agreed by all members. For example, a sequence of nine unanimous decisions starting in the summer of 2004 reflected a shared view within the MPC that Bank Rate at 4% was too low and that some of the monetary stimulus it provided should be withdrawn. Differences of view tell you more about the nature of the uncertainty confronting the MPC than the nature of the MPC itself. Similar arguments apply to the question of whether the MPC has become more or less “activist”. Large committees can be subject to inertia.

Not just the euro, but the Swiss franc, too, had been losing ground against the US dollar. In contrast to summer 2011, when the Swiss franc had been significantly overvalued against all other currencies, by the time of the discontinuation, Swiss franc strength had given way to euro weakness. The increasingly divergent monetary policy stances of the Federal Reserve and ECB were also putting pressure on the minimum exchange rate against the euro. The SNB was forced to intervene in the foreign exchange market on an ever larger scale. This was reflected in the monetary base (the volume of liquidity created by the SNB), which had expanded in several surges since 2009 and was now rising sharply again (cf. chart 4). Given the changed international environment, the minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20 per euro was no longer sustainable. The SNB could only have enforced it through ongoing foreign currency purchases of rapidly increasing magnitude – in an environment where there was no prospect of a long-term stabilisation on the exchange rate front. Delaying the decision to discontinue would not have mitigated the economic consequences, but the losses for the SNB would have been far greater. This would have compromised the SNB’s ability to fulfil its mandate in the long term and would have undermined its independence in matters of monetary policy. Monetary policy since the discontinuation of the minimum exchange rate Developments since the minimum exchange rate was discontinued have confirmed our assessment at the time. The euro continued to weaken against the US dollar.
The alternative to a fund would have been to directly regulate production by putting a conservative upper limit on annual extraction. This was attempted in the 1970s and -80s. At that time, we had a production ceiling of 90 million standard cubic metres per year. This approach was abandoned in the 1980s. Today, the government steers exploration activities  BIS Review 81/2008  1  and awards production licenses, but has no explicit production target. Since the mid-1990s, total petroleum production has been around 250 million standard cubic metres per year. The Fund mechanism The Fund is by law fully integrated with the government budget, and the same priorities are imposed on spending from the Fund as on any other government spending. This means that the entire petroleum revenues are transferred to the Fund. An amount equal to the non-oil budget deficit is then transferred to the fiscal budget. The mechanism ensures that the accumulation of capital in the Fund is equal to government net financial savings. There is no corresponding increase in liabilities. Furthermore, legislation prohibits use of Fund money for purposes not prioritised in the regular budget processes. There is no hidden use of oil money, or any use for special purposes. The Fund is strictly and effectively “out of bounds” to special interests.

Arthur Yuen: Welcome remarks - HKMA Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Financing of Terrorism Regulatory Technology Forum Welcome remarks by Mr Arthur Yuen, Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, at the HKMA Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Regulatory Technology (RegTech) Forum (Excerpt), Hong Kong, 22 November 2019. * * * 1. First of all let me welcome you all to this AML/CFT Regtech Forum, which we intend to be the first in a series. 2. In particular let me thank everyone for the very positive response and participation of key stakeholders including the FinTech Association of Hong Kong, experts, academia, other regulators as well as our partners in government bureaux, Companies Registry, Joint Financial Intelligence Unit (JFIU), Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) and Hong Kong Association of Banks. 3. Let me start with a question that speaks to why we are all here today: how effective are we, really, in our important role in anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing? We all recognise the efforts of the banking sector over many years – and continuing today – in helping to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. This has recently been praised by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which gave us a very good score card in its Mutual Evaluation Report on Hong Kong. 4. But, despite the mutual evaluation result, no system is perfect and most of the challenges we face – money laundering from fraud, tax crimes and corruption to name but a few – are global in nature.
Enron had extensive links with banks and other financial firms, mediated in part through the use of relatively new credit risk transfer instruments. Tracing these exposures through to their ultimate owners is not a particularly straightforward business - an issue that we at the Bank have been raising in a macro-prudential context for some time now, most recently in our December Financial Stability Review. But on current information, the residual exposures do not appear unmanageable. Indeed, the apparent dispersion of exposures may even turn out to demonstrate the effectiveness of these markets in spreading risk. BIS Review 18/2002  3  The Bank does not have any direct locus on the accounting and corporate governance issues raised by the case. But the way in which firms' financial performance is overseen and presented does have an important bearing on the disciplines applied by financial markets, which are an essential component of maintaining financial stability in the wider sense. Public confidence in financial statements and the role of auditors is critical. One set of issues relates to the appropriateness of accounting rules governing the treatment of special purpose vehicles and those relating to revenue recognition. This is a technical area, and one in which the rules applied in the US and the UK are relevantly different. No doubt the appropriate professional bodies will be looking at these questions. Another set of issues relates to rules and practice governing the appointment of auditors, and the extent and nature of non-audit work carried out by firms' auditors.

Nonetheless, I hope to be able to give you some fresh insights into Switzerland’s position in the European framework. I shall first give you a brief overview of the present economic situation in Switzerland and then talk more specifically about our relationship with our neighbour countries. As you know, Switzerland is not a member of the European Union. But it is by no means an island or an isolated place in the Alps. Second, I should like to focus on Switzerland as a financial centre located in the heart of the continent and the challenges it currently faces. Finally, I shall outline the Swiss National Bank’s monetary policy and what degree of freedom it has in a country fully surrounded by the euro zone. This question is particularly relevant, since progressive globalisation and Switzerland’s close economic links with Europe regularly raise the question whether pursuing an autonomous monetary policy is still appropriate. Let me begin with the current economic situation in Switzerland. 2. The economic situation in brief  In Switzerland, as elsewhere, the boom of the late nineties has been followed by a prolonged period of stagnation accompanied by rising unemployment. Not only was last year disappointing, but 2003 also began badly. Given the sluggish economic development, especially in Europe, we have been forced to gradually downgrade our forecasts. On the exchange market, the strength of the Swiss franc has been an additional factor creating further difficulties for our export sector.