samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Launch of the Asian Bond Fund (ABF) Malaysia Bond Index Fund Speech by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the launching of the Asian Bond Fund (ABF) Malaysia Bond Index Fund, Kuala Lumpur, 18 July 2005. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, The "Exchange Traded Fund" is a significant and highly successful product of financial innovation that is found in more developed financial markets. First introduced in Canada in the early 1990's, the use of Exchange Traded Funds gathered momentum after the listing of the S&P Depository Receipts Trust Series 1 (also known as "Spiders") on the American Stock Exchange in 1993. Since then, the Exchange Traded Funds have grown tremendously and there are currently a total of 350 such funds on the global exchanges with about USD313 billion in assets, comprising not only stocks and bonds but also currencies and commodities. Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my great pleasure to be here today at this ceremony of the inaugural listing of the ABF Malaysian Bond Index Fund, the first Exchange Traded Fund in Malaysia. In the EMEAP region, (the East Asia Pacific region) the ABF Malaysian Bond Index Fund represents the second country sub-fund to be launched, following the successful listing of the ABF Hong Kong Bond Index Fund on 21 June 2005. Six other EMEAP country sub-funds will be launched in due course.

The launch of the ABF Malaysian Bond Index Fund today marks another important milestone resulting from EMEAP Central Bank cooperation in the region. It represents the successful implementation of the Asian Bond Fund project to accelerate the development of the domestic bond market and to promote greater integration among the regional bond markets. The listing of the ABF Malaysian Bond Index Fund is thus another major step forward in the development of the Malaysian bond market, and to enhance further its potential to contribute to sustained and balanced growth of our economy. The bond Exchange Traded Fund is an investment instrument with a low entry cost. It is a highly efficient, transparent and convenient investment tool designed to appeal not only to institutional but also retail investors. With an affordable standard lot size, the bond Exchange Trade Fund provides an avenue for retail investors to have access to the bond market. It thus offers investors an additional investment alternative as well as an opportunity to diversify their investment into more asset classes. The ABF Malaysian Bond Index Fund comprises investments in Government and Quasi Government securities and tracks an index, which by design is replicable and transparent. The listing of the ABF Malaysian Bond Index Fund today will not only add to the diversity of listings on Bursa Malaysia but would also pave the way for the increased introduction of other more innovative products in the future.
Progressive economic growth will continue in this case. Any delay would require us to raise the key rate more significantly in the future, or even to pursue tight monetary policy. After today’s increase in the key rate, we have approached the threshold between accommodative and neutral policy. Taking into account the time lag effects of policy, monetary conditions will generally stay accommodative for a while longer. We will be closely monitoring how the market will be adjusting to our decisions. I would now dwell on the factors of our today’s decision. I will start out with inflation. Today, the acceleration of price growth is absolutely obvious across a wide range of products and services. This is caused not only by one-off factors and the pass-through of higher production costs, but also by the stronger impact of the steady component of price dynamics to an increasingly greater extent. In our opinion, this growth reflects the monetary nature of inflation. It is the fast rebound of aggregate demand exceeding the capacity to expand supply that has sped up price growth. As demand is high, this enables producers to pass through their increased costs to end-user prices. Production costs have really risen. Specifically, the growth of world prices for raw products (primarily, for wheat, steel, oil, and timber) has boosted production costs of many goods and services in the consumer basket. For instance, global steel prices have surged by 50–70% over six months.

Spencer Dale: Inflation targeting and the Monetary Policy Committee’s forward guidance Speech by Mr Spencer Dale, Executive Director, Monetary Policy, and Chief Economist of the Bank of England, at the International Journal of Central Banking Annual Conference, “Inflation targeting and its discontents”, Warsaw, 6 September 2013. *  *  *  A central theme of this conference has been to highlight potential shortcomings of inflation targeting and to consider potential alternatives. I believe that the traumatic events in the UK economy over the past five years have, in fact, strengthened the case for inflation targeting. The credibility of the inflation target has played a crucial role in anchoring inflation expectations over the past five years, a period in which inflation has been consistently above target. That credibility has been vital in giving the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) the flexibility to loosen monetary policy aggressively in order to support growth and jobs. But while it has not constrained the MPC’s freedom to act in support of the economy, the inflation target, on its own, has proved less well suited to addressing some of the exceptional communications challenges posed by the sustained combination of weak growth and elevated inflation. I would highlight two in particular: the need to make clear the central role that monetary policy has played in supporting output and employment; and the need to provide guidance about the Committee’s view of the appropriate trade-off between bringing inflation back to target and stimulating the recovery.
As I have already said, a significant part of the responsibility for the low growth potential of the Spanish economy lies with the limited use of labour. In my opinion, this is closely related to the structural shortcomings that have, for decades, hampered the operation of the Spanish labour market. These shortcomings not only result in insufficient use of this productive resource, but also give rise to a further factor that limits the growth of productivity in Spain relative to other European countries. The Spanish labour market displays two undesirable stylised facts. First, it is characterised by the persistence of significantly higher unemployment rates than in other European countries, even in upswings. Combating high unemployment and, in particular, its long-term component requires the appropriate instruments, in the form of active labour market policies, in order to increase the employability of persons who have lost their jobs, so as to avoid a permanent deterioration in their human capital and in the growth potential of the economy overall. 9  See P. Cuadrado et al. (2020), A sectoral anatomy of the Spanish productivity puzzle, Occasional Paper No 2006, Banco de España. 20  Second, the unemployment rate fluctuates sharply, which means that inequality also increases substantially during crises. These sharp cyclical fluctuations in unemployment are explained by the high rate of temporary employment and the low protection of workers with temporary contracts compared to those with permanent ones, which means that employment adjustment in recessions falls on temporary workers.

Thus, for instance, only 77% of the hotel establishments that had opened in August 2019 did so in the same month in 2020, and only slightly over 40% of hotel rooms offered were taken up. On the information available, it is even possible that tourist activity may have worsened in September, given the high level of cancellations of prior reservations, the step-up in the year-on-year decline in air traffic and the downturn in spending using cards issued by non-residents. And, evidently, the latest pandemic-related developments in Spain do not contribute to brightening the outlook for these sectors of activity in the coming months. 2  Beyond the short term, the outlook for the Spanish economy, as for other countries, is shrouded in uncertainty, linked to how the pandemic evolves. This is why the Banco de España opted, in its publication dated 16 September,2 to present more than one scenario in relation to the possible course of the economy over the next two years, as it had already done last April and June. In this case, two scenarios were released. They share a common assumption about an effective medical solution being found and widely distributed among the population as from the second half of 2021. That is in line with the time horizon which, despite the high uncertainty, epidemiologists appear to be tentatively viewing as most realistic. The difference between the two scenarios lies in the assumptions made about the course of the epidemiological situation in the coming quarters.
Releasing the liquidity standard in times of stress could communicate authorities’ views on banks’ forward-looking liquidity resilience and  Page 11  appropriate usage of liquidity buffers, supporting financial stability and market confidence. But while the principle may be similar, in practice there may be bespoke challenges to releasing liquidity standards via the LCR. As I discussed earlier, it is an incomplete, static metric, which can mean different things for banks’ liquidity in different scenarios. But it is the existing regulatory standard. So in considering how to release liquidity standards, we would need to be mindful of the challenges posed by the nature of the LCR metric, and that in some stresses releasing the LCR may not be the right policy. These challenges motivate broader consideration of whether and how we might improve the LCR metric itself to make it less cyclical and volatile. For example, we could explore a less cyclical approach to calibrating the potential liquidity outflows from margin calls stemming from an increase in market volatility during a time of stress. There may also be other options for improving usability that worth exploring, but there are unlikely to be any silver bullets – we will need to be mindful of the potential issues and inherent trade-offs that different options entail.

This level will still provide solid profitability for many investment projects in the petroleum sector and continued large surpluses on the current account and in government finances. The krone exchange rate, measured against our most important trading partners, has appreciated by about 7 per cent since the spring of 2000. However, the krone exchange rate is about 2.5 per cent weaker than in 1990 and at the same level as in the mid-1990s. Traditional merchandise exports remained high in the first half of 2001 but exhibited a weaker trend in the second half of the year. Foreign trade figures for the fourth quarter of 2001 indicate that the decline in export volumes may have come to a halt, although export prices are still falling. Consumption indicators suggest strong growth in private consumption. Credit growth has slowed somewhat due to reduced borrowing by enterprises. Household borrowing, on the other hand, has increased further. Developments in debt may also influence financial stability. Although borrowing by enterprises appears to be declining, their debt burden remains high. This reduces enterprises’ ability to cope with downturns. The household debt burden is increasing, but the level is low. These developments are due in particular to the housing market, with high turnover and high price rises. Experience shows that private sector debt tends to increase at a particularly fast pace during upturns. Higher asset prices may be a driving force.
When monetary policy was delegated to independent central banks it was not just the instrument, the policy rate, that was well-defined. This applied in many ways to the objective, too, which was primarily to maintain price stability. When the role of the central banks is expanded to include areas beyond traditional monetary policy, independence also becomes more difficult to define. One can say that the transition from a situation with one instrument and one well-defined objective to a situation with several instruments and a more complicated objective means that the independence is viewed in a different light.4 In some areas, the discussion of independence is not primarily concerned with the crisis, but linked to a disappointment over developments and what the central bank has achieved in the slightly longer run. Recent events in Japan could perhaps be said to be an example of this. The newly-appointed government there has launched a powerful new monetary easing programme as an attempt to break the long-term deflationary trend. Part of the new policy entails bringing inflation up to 2 per cent, a doubling of the inflation target set earlier by the  3  Bullard (2013) takes as an example the ECB’s OMT programme, where the bank undertakes to buy a country’s government securities if the country in question meets the fiscal policy targets set. 4  See, for example, King (2013). 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Bank of Japan, but which it has found difficulty attaining.

According to studies carried out at the Banque de France 1 , the disinflationary impact of imports appears to be relatively independent of import volumes: the mere existence of potential competition renders the markets, in the words of experts, more “contestable” and influences behavioural patterns. These disinflationary forces are still present. However, there are now other more powerful forces that have the opposite effect. The growth of emerging market economies and the rise in the living standards of their populations are leading to a surge in the demand for natural resources, food and energy, which logically has a strong and permanent impact on inflation. Furthermore, by strengthening the magnitude of global shocks in relation to more specifically domestic shocks and favouring the international transmission of the latter, globalisation introduces a much greater synchronisation of inflationary cycles between countries, with the ensuing risks of amplification. Overall, the effects of globalisation have ceased – probably in the long term – to be spontaneously disinflationary. The second topic that I wish to discuss concerns globalisation and financial innovation. There is, in my mind, no doubt about the long-term benefits of the financial innovation process that we have been witnessing over the past twenty years. However, we can also see that it may be accompanied by cyclical developments and structural changes that could potentially prove to be disruptive for monetary policy. Monetary and financial conditions are simultaneously influenced by central bank decisions, but are also increasingly affected by sometimes exogenous trends in asset prices and the pricing of risk.
I want to bring out that they are, nevertheless, integral to financial stability authorities. Under each of those headings, I shall raise a few points that have not featured prominently in recent debates. To be clear, I shall not attempt to cover all important markets. And I shall not address important questions about the role of securities regulators in crisis management, circuit-breakers, or counter-cyclical policies such as varying minimum margin requirements as conditions change. Moreover, I must stress that I speak only for myself. The issuance and distribution of securities Toxic ABS and CDOs – cash as well as “synthetic” or derivative versions – were at the centre of the crisis. They were not toxic for the financial system because they were risky or, indeed, because many underlying household and business borrowers became overindebted. Markets can price (and ration) risk they comprehend (if appropriate requiring yields that inhibit issuance). They were toxic because they were mispriced; and they were mispriced in part because they were misunderstood. Through the consequent enticements to leverage, that misunderstanding engulfed banks, asset managers, credit insurers and, eventually, the authorities. Both dealer-financing markets and end-user markets closed. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Listing authorities and securities regulation And yet all of those securities were issued and/or distributed under the securities laws and policies of developed countries or financial centres with elaborate securities market regulation. Prospectuses or other documentation had to meet regulatory or listing requirements.

When the P27 initiative was announced, the BRO project was put on hold in order to consider whether a future common Nordic infrastructure as proposed by the P27 banks could be a satisfactory replacement. Norges Bank has engaged in joint discussions with the other Nordic central banks since P27 was launched. The central banks have given preliminary feedback on the P27 project and appreciate the project’s ambition to improve payment system efficiency in the Nordic area. At the same time, there are issues that need to be addressed before the authorities can take a position on any transition from domestic infrastructures to a common Nordic solution. This process may take time and will also involve authorities other than the central banks. Security legislation is one of these issues. If P27 is realised, it will probably be viewed as an important critical infrastructure for the countries involved. National security concerns may influence the conditions governing whether a payment system infrastructure can be operated across national borders. In the case of Norway, one likely condition could be that satisfactory contingency arrangements must be in place in Norway. Domestic control of the payment system must be possible in a crisis. The European Central Bank has launched a European solution for real-time payment settlement in central bank money called Target Instant Payment Settlement, or TIPS. The system is scheduled to commence operations this month and may be expanded to include non-euro area countries.
The technique involved generating random numbers and comparing them with probabilities derived from theory. By doing this for a large number of possible neutron paths, he painstakingly painted a picture of the transport of neutrons. Fermi had, by hand, constructed the first agent-based model. These models were about to get a machine which could do these large-scale computations for them. Assembled at Los Alamos during World War II was a dream team of the great and good in science, including John von Neumann, Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr and Robert Oppenheimer. Von Neumann himself offered use of one of the first-ever computers to perform neutron calculations. That exercise culminated in the hydrogen bomb. ABMs had found their first real-world application. 11  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  11  Figure 2: John von Neumann  Figure 3: The hydrogen bomb  Source: LANL (public domain). John von Neumann in the 1940s (image available here). Source: The Official CTBTO Photostream (CC-BY-2.0). An atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the U.S. at Enewetak Atoll on 1 November 1952 (image available here). (b) Military Planning By 1947, the use of random numbers in computation had a name which reflected its probabilistic nature – 3  Monte Carlo, home of the casino. In a lecture in 1948, von Neumann described the idea of cellular automata - artificial systems of cells exhibiting life-like behaviour which evolved according to simple rules of behaviour (von Neumann et al (1966), Sarkar (2000)).

They give rise to a multiplicity of non-stationary equilibria, which evolve through time. And the resulting distribution of outcomes in this system is highly non-normal, non-linear and fat-tailed. Of course, this system is hypothetical. So it is interesting to ask whether the behaviour exhibited in real-world economic and financial systems is  Source: Kieff (CC-BY-SA-3.0-migrated-with-disclaimers). Bill Gosper’s “Glider Gun” animation created by Johan Bontes and available here. broadly consistent with the patterns from complex ABMs. One simple, reduced-form way to assess that is to look at the statistical distribution of various economic and financial time-series for evidence of discontinuity, non-normality and fat-tails. These are properties which, we know, exist in other natural and social systems (Barabasi (2005), Turrell (2013)). 19  These are: Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies; Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation; Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies; Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell. 24  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  24  The short answer is yes – the properties of economic and financial systems are little different than other social, and many natural, systems (Haldane and Nelson (2012)). To provide a few illustrations, Chart 6 looks at the distribution of a set of economic and financial variables over a time-series dating back at least 150 years – equity prices, bond prices, GDP etc.