samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Its subsidiary EnterNext, which is dedicated to the financing and promotion of small and mid-caps, in turn enabled 26 companies to carry out IPOs, raising EUR 6 billion over the period. You are thus helping to bring about two important reconciliations: between the worlds of business and finance, and between France and its appetite for risk. What’s more you are achieving this with a European dimension. I can’t stress this enough: having a strong position in market infrastructure is vital for the French economy. I would like to look beyond Euronext now, and focus on two more general avenues for promoting equity financing. First, the French public needs to adapt its savings behaviour to the current low interest rate environment. This is a chance to encourage a “riskier” and more long-term approach to investment, in the interest both of savers and our economy. Today, only 31% of households’ financial investments are made up of risky assets, compared with 45% in the euro area. This means taking action in two areas: first, the decrease in interest rates should be gradually passed on to risk-free investment returns – which is why I proposed lowering the rate on the PEL, the French housing savings plan, and why we must continue to lower the returns on life insurance savings invested in euro funds; second, we need to develop new products: less liquid, and with or without a long-term capital guarantee, and which allow savers to benefit from the higher returns offered by equities over the long term.

Our position, put simply, is that we do not believe that customers should be responsible for any security breach or system problem that is not due to negligence on their part, and we have requested that this should be reflected in the contractual agreements for internet banking services. Reputational risk Risk of damage to the bank’s reputation goes along with the other risks I have mentioned. It can arise, for example, from operational risk even if customers suffer no actual damage. If a hacker successfully 3  BIS Review 108/1999  breaks into a bank’s website and makes alterations, the bank concerned can suffer substantial damage to its reputation although customers’ balances are safe and the hacker has not obtained any financial benefit. This does not only affect the individual bank concerned but may also undermine confidence in the security of e-banking more generally and therefore slow down development in this area. Systems breakdown, even if only temporary, is another example of how banks may be affected by bad publicity. Given the fact that the element of trust is so fundamental to banks’ business, banks will find it increasingly important to adopt measures to manage reputational risk and incorporate public relations strategies into their overall risk management framework. Banking risks As I have already mentioned, an internet-based bank is faced with the same types of banking risk as its traditional counterparties. In some ways, the internet may heighten these risks.
It also provides credit for long maturities (with a 3-month maturity);  -  procedures guaranteeing a high level of security for all interbank transactions and large-value payments within the euro area and with other countries in the European Union, with in particular the TARGET system, which played a predominant role in the integration process of the euro money market. 2. The strategic framework also contributes to the efficiency of the single monetary policy  From the outset, there was a consensus among the designers of the Eurosystem that the Single monetary policy would require a clear strategic framework. This framework can be characterised by two main principles: a quantitative definition of price stability and a mediumterm orientation of monetary policy. The quantitative definition of price stability has been clarified after five years of experience The definition adopted by the ECB’s Governing Council in October 1998 was confirmed and clarified in May 2003 following an in-depth review of its strategic framework by the Eurosystem. In the wake of this assessment exercise, the Governing Council specified that price stability was defined as an annual increase in the HICP close to, but below, 2% over the medium term. Several remarks should complement this definition: -  by specifying that inflation should be close to 2%, the Governing Council intended first of all to confirm the symmetrical nature of its strategy by ruling out situations of deflation.

As a supervisor and regulator, I have a duty to households and businesses in the UK to preserve financial stability – to protect the UK economy from disruption. So I need to know on an ongoing basis that large CCPs on which the UK financial system relies are robustly regulated and supervised. But that should not necessarily mean I have to do the supervision of non-UK CCPs myself. Indeed if every host authority supervised every CCP that offers services to its banks and other financial institutions it would be untenable. We cannot have 21 different regulators’ hands on the steering wheel when it comes to critical cross-border infrastructure. That would hardly be a good result for financial stability - especially in a crisis, where clear and quick decision-making is critical. The solution is proportionate and informed reliance.8 Informed reliance means that, with sufficient information and a deep cooperative relationship with the home supervisor, I can defer to them to ensure that a CCP is as safe to operate in UK as those I regulate and supervise directly. Proportionate means that for cross-border CCPs that are very important to the UK financial system, I will need more information and even  7 8  BoE calculations. Principles for Financial Market Infrastructure Responsibility E on Cooperation. 5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  5  deeper cooperation – and in the event that we are unable to secure this, I may need to resort to supervising the CCP directly.
Analogously, in significant degree financial stability is about safeguarding the stability of private money (deposits held by households and firms with the banking system) relative to central bank money. Depositors with banks have to be confident that they can exchange their deposits at face value for our money – our notes; or that they can smoothly transfer their deposits to other banks where they could be confident of that. Those two formulations amount to much the same thing, as transfers between banks are settled across our books in central bank money, the economy’s ultimate settlement asset. 5 At the level of the system, we need an “exchange rate” of unity between private money and central bank money. And we need wholesale funders of banks to be confident of that too. Absent that stability and confidence, the payments system and credit creation become severely disrupted, with big social costs. Of course, banks are not the only lenders in our economies. The current crisis owes a lot to the non-bank financial sector – funds, conduits, SIVs, securities dealers, and so on. But the excessive leverage and maturity transformation in the shadow banking system was in general predicated on the plentiful availability of credit on too-easy terms from the  maintenance period. For more details see paragraphs 74-81 of “The Framework for the Bank of England’s Operations in the Sterling Money Markets (the ‘Red Book’)”, Bank of England. 4  Ibid., paragraph 166.

Success in explaining the objectives of monetary policy, building the constituency for low inflation, and setting policy in order to meet the inflation target, are all key parts of the role of the Monetary Policy Committee. But the MPC cannot fine-tune the economy quarter by quarter. Its contribution to stability is to meet the symmetric inflation target of 2½%, looking beyond the immediate short-term fluctuations in monthly inflation rates. The Committee will have to watch carefully developments in the economy as they unfold, and be ready to act promptly in either direction. There will always be unpredictable events to which the MPC will need to respond. What is essential for monetary policy is the transparent framework for meeting the inflation target in the medium term, and, in so doing, helping to anchor inflation expectations as close as possible to the 2½% target. At the beginning of next month the MPC will meet for the 50th time. Reaching our half-century has not been without incident. No doubt there will be more surprises on the way to our century. But the symmetric and transparent inflation target provides the best defence against unexpected events. 4  BIS Review 58/2001
Weaker growth implies a diminishing risk of inflationary impulses from demand, which normally warrants a less restrictive monetary stance. Conversely, demand that is excessively strong in relation to potential output implies a risk of rising inflation and a need to raise the repo rate. The current discussion seems to be about whether the Riksbank acts symmetrically. In other words, is the Riksbank as concerned about under-shooting the inflation target as it is about preventing inflation from exceeding the target? My answer to that question is definitely “Yes”. The Riksbank aims to keep the rate of inflation at 2 per cent, neither more nor less. The issue of monetary policy asymmetry seems to be linked mainly to two matters. One is the question of monetary policy’s central concern. Is this inflation’s prevailing rate or the rate that assessments point to one to two years ahead? The answer is that the Riksbank is guided by the assessment of future inflation. If inflation is currently running at 2 per cent and the predicted rate (based on an unchanged instrumental rate) one to two years ahead is, say, 1 per cent, then the instrumental rate should be lowered. The reason for this is quite simply that monetary policy acts with a time lag of one to two years. Using the prevailing rate of inflation as a guide would involve adjusting the instrumental rate more frequently and markedly, thereby entailing undesirable economic instability. But how can we be sure that the assessments are always correct? Of course we cannot.

Mr. Bäckström reports on inflation and the interest rate in Sweden Speech by the Governor of the Bank of Sweden, Mr. Urban Bäckström, at a conference organised by the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce and Veckans Affärer in Stockholm on 27/1/98. Thank you for the invitation to talk at this conference about the outlook for inflation and the interest rate. It is now five years since the inflation target was instituted; so before considering the current situation for monetary policy, I should like to say something about the intervening period. Five years with an inflation target In January 1993 the Riksbank’s Governing Board decided to adopt an explicit target for inflation and specified that as of 1995 and measured in terms of the consumer price index, the rate of inflation was to be limited to 2 per cent, with a tolerance interval of ±1 percentage point. The commitment to an inflation target originated from the Riksbank but both the Government and the Riksdag (Sweden’s parliament) expressly support monetary policy’s focus on price stability as well as the inflation target. Last year five of the political parties in the Riksdag agreed that the Riksbank’s objective, to safeguard the value of money, should have the force of law; a Government bill with provisions to this effect was presented to the Riksdag in November. In recent years, monetary policy’s commitment to low inflation has thus been established increasingly firmly.
From our engagement sessions, it was not uncommon for us to hear about stories of anger, resentment and frustration from the migrant workers about the difficulties they had to go through in remitting money to their families. The workers whom we approached in Sapong estate for example, told us that they only had two options to access the remittance service: the closest is in the town of Tenom which is located 8 kilometers away from their estate; or if that is not available, the next option is to go to Keningau which is about 50 kilometers away! We also knew of instances where the workers were robbed on their way to remit money. Some told us that the money that they sent through hawaladars did not reach their families. These aptly sum up why it is crucial for us to promote a remittance service that is safe, affordable and convenient. This is also the primary reason why we decided that Project Greenback 2.0 Kota Kinabalu should be focusing on accelerating usage of digital remittance services.

During the post-meeting press conference, Chairman Bernanke stated “While participants continue to think that, in the long run, the Federal Reserve’s portfolio should consist predominantly of Treasury securities, a strong majority now expects that the Committee will not sell agency mortgage-backed securities during the process of normalizing monetary policy, although in the longer run, limited sales could be used to reduce or eliminate residual MBS holdings.” Surveys conducted after this meeting revealed no expectation for agency MBS sales, and for the portfolio to be larger over time as a result. 21 “What explained markets’ strong reaction – and why did it surprise us? In retrospect, I think our view of market  expectations was too dependent on our survey of securities dealers. Futures markets gave us a reliable read of where markets thought the federal funds rate was going – but not for our securities purchases. For that, economists at the New York Fed asked their counterparts at the securities firms, who paid careful attention to every nuance of Fed policymakers’ public statements. In effect, our Ph.D. economists surveyed their Ph.D. economists. It was a little like looking in a mirror. It didn’t tell us what the rank-and-file traders were thinking. Many traders, apparently, didn’t pay much attention to their economists…” 22 These figures include results from the Desk’s September Surveys of Primary Dealers and Market Participants. The results from these surveys will be released tomorrow on the New York Fed’s website.
One Car, Two Car, Red Car, Blue Car Speech given by Andrew G Haldane, Chief Economist, Bank of England  Materials Processing Institute, Redcar 2 December 2016  The views are not necessarily those of the Bank of England or the Monetary Policy Committee. I would like to thank Mauricio Armellini, Sandra Batten, David Bradnum, Ben Broadbent, Angelina Carvalho, Fergus Cumming, Jeremy Franklin, Alex Haberis, Andrew Hebden, Gabor Pinter, Alice Pugh, Tom Smith, Gertjan Vlieghe, Matt Waldron and Chris Yeates for comments and contributions. The title draws its inspiration from “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” by Dr Seuss, a children’s book first published in 1960, whose use of simple language contains an important lesson for economists like me. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  As someone whose family hails from the North-East, and who themselves was born in the North-East, it is wonderful to be here in Redcar. Regional visits like this are crucial for the Bank of England. They enable us to take the temperature of the local economy by speaking to a broad cross-section of businesses, charities, social enterprises, schools, further and higher education institutions and trade unions. Here in the North-East, it is clear the temperature of the local economy is not as high as either you or I would wish. Despite having come down rapidly over recent years, the unemployment rate, at over 6%, is still higher than for any other region in the UK.

5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  5  What is true across time is also true, by and large, across regions. Chart 5 looks at a regional map of firm-level productivity, where productivity is measured as output per hour worked. This map is built up from several sources of data on output and employment collected by the ONS using surveys covering tens of thousands of firms across all regions in the UK and all sectors of the economy. 10  It paints a pretty  comprehensive picture of the regional workings of the UK corporate sector. This productivity map suggests, perhaps unsurprisingly, a wide degree of regional dispersion. The most productive region (London) has firms with levels of productivity almost 60% higher than those in the lowest productivity part of the UK (Northern Ireland). This map matches closely the regional pattern of GDP per head and wages, consistent with Krugman’s conjecture. Much of the regional variation in economic activity and household income derives, it seems, from variations in productivity among firms. These regional maps suggest a simple but coherent story about regional variations in living standards. The more productive a firm, the higher the wage it pays. If levels of regional productivity differ greatly, so too will regional levels of economic activity and household income. So Red and Blue Car regions comprise low and high productivity firms, and thus low and high income households, respectively. This is not an imaginary world; it is the real world.
1  Nout Wellink, ‘The Role of National Central Banks within the Europeans System of Central Banks: The Example of De Nederlandsche Bank’, 30th Economics Conference, Oesterreichische Nationalbank, June 13 – 14, 2002. 2  BIS Review 46/2002  This would not, however, represent much of a change because already today the Bank has only limited autonomy in the conduct of monetary policy. As far as the transition to the euro is concerned, therefore, the path that Malta should follow seems fairly straightforward, given the starting point of the existing exchange rate regime. Today, the basket consists of the euro, the US dollar and sterling, with weights of around 52%, 26% and 22%, respectively. There is no fluctuation band. The peg is backed by official external reserves, which have comfortably exceeded the monetary base over the years and are equivalent to a fifth of broad money. The first step would be to increase the weight of the euro in the currency basket at the expense of either or both of the other component currencies. If the United Kingdom were to join EMU, this would automatically raise the proportion of the euro in the currency basket, making Maltese entry into ERM II that much easier. On accession, the timing for joining ERM II, as well as technical questions relating to the entry level and the fluctuation band will be up for discussion. If the Maltese lira were to join ERM II with the normal fluctuation band of ±15%, this would inject more flexibility into the system.

The exchange rate would be able to move in response to the balance of payments, allowing monetary policy some latitude in reacting to domestic economic developments. In this framework, the real exchange rate appreciation that is a corollary of economic convergence could take place via nominal exchange rate appreciation. However, the introduction of a relatively wide fluctuation band could lead to unprecedented exchange rate volatility. In turn, this could jeopardise the Bank’s price stability objective. It may, therefore, be preferable to enter ERM II without a fluctuation band at all. This exchange rate strategy of course implies that the burden of adjustment to shocks will have to be borne by the real economy. In the first instance this means pursuing a prudent fiscal policy. The current aim of fiscal policy is indeed to reduce the deficit to GDP ratio to around 2.5% by 2004, from 5.3% last year and over 10% in the late 1990s. By restraining domestic absorption, a tighter fiscal stance will enhance the credibility of the exchange rate peg. Moreover, a smaller borrowing requirement will also free up resources for the private sector and contain upward pressure on interest rates, thereby stimulating economic growth. Finally, bringing the budget deficit closer to balance will then give fiscal policy the leeway it lacks today to respond to adverse shocks or cyclical downturns. The response to such disturbances will also depend on the degree of flexibility in the economy as a whole.
I believe we are only just starting to see the beginning of this. The future could be one where physical bank branches are just a memory – like public telephones on the street. Artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to all sorts of possibilities in terms of client-behaviour and data analytics, and probably in areas we do not even anticipate. 44. The potential is in some ways very exciting, but it also raises all sorts of concerns. Cybersecurity and data privacy are ones we all already face. But what about the possible implications for risk management? We do not know where new technology might lead us – so by definition we cannot predict what the risks will be. And what about the human factor in the relations between banks and customers? An AI system may be very smart, efficient and accurate – but will it have an understanding of morality? Can it make the right ethical judgement? Can it have a sense of fairness or decency? 45. I must be honest and say I cannot answer these questions. But it is clear that new capabilities for technology will require new capabilities from people. The industry could be entering a very different dynamic, where what is now a decade of change takes place in a year. Culture 46. This is going to put new burdens on all of us. I believe that, more than ever, we will need a basic sense of purpose to help us keep everything in perspective.

At the same time, the rising importance of services has impinged on the inflation process. Services prices tend to be more rigid than goods prices because they embody a larger share of labor input, and wages tend to be sticky. This may have contributed to inflation having become more persistent. At the same time, the digital revolution has driven the prices of many modern services, such as telephone calls, news, and entertainment to essentially zero. 4  The upshot is that the link between inflation and domestic measure of economic slack, as traditionally captured in the Phillips curve, has weakened and disappeared altogether in some cases. In terms of growth, slowing global trade and the rise of services implies slower and less capital intensive economic growth. For highly open economies, slowing world trade has undermined export as a growth engine. At the same time, the transition to services has also contributed to the growth headwinds given that modern services is less labor and capital intensive than manufacturing. Think of Google’s 40,000 workforce compared to General Motors’ 800,000. Or the fact that Uber is the world’s largest provider of auto transport without owning any cars. Or that AirBNB is one of the world’s biggest provider of accommodation without owning a single hotel. Given that investment is a relatively interest rate sensitive activity, to the extent that the transition to services has dampened investment, it may have also made the economy less responsive to monetary policy.