samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
If stablecoins are to be widely used as a means of payment, they must have equivalent standards to those that are in place today for other forms of payment types and the forms of money transferred through them. This will ensure that they are safe and resilient and that consumers can use them with confidence. To reiterate, a key principle for payments is that users can be confident that the instrument they use to transfer value can be converted into fiat money at any time. And, in the rare circumstances that the entity that issued that instrument fails, that there are clear rules and protections for the payment recipient and for the consumer. It is this assurance that stabilises the value of the transfer asset so that all parties in the economy can rely on it. Banks achieve this by giving the customer a money claim at par, supported by banks’ access to central bank facilities and extensive regulation of banks’ activities, including a protection scheme for customer deposits up to a certain amount. It is these protections that mean that individual shop owners don’t worry about scrutinising which bank issued your debit card before you tap it to pay. It is these protections that prevent a return to the literal wild-west in which individual banks issued their own private currencies, which were worth different amounts depending on recipient’s assessment of the soundness of the issuing bank.

Reinventing the Wheel (with more automation) Speech given by Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England  Brookings Institution, Virtual Event 3 September 2020  I am grateful to Josh Sadler for his assistance in drafting these remarks and Paul Brione, Nicholas Butt, Alice Carr, Ellen Caswell, Victoria Cleland, David Copple, Michaela Costello, Jas Ellis, Chris Ford, Lee Foulger, Sarah John, Louise Johnston, Cordelia Kafetz, Barry King, Jeremy Leake, Manisha Patel, Francine Robb, Christina Segal-Knowles and Michael Yoganayagam for their input. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  Introduction Even central bankers can sometimes be accused of overusing language. So, the world is always more uncertain than ever – except that at the moment it really is. And, innovation is all around us except in the productivity numbers. One area where innovation really is around is the world of payments, the focus of my remarks today. Innovation is a good thing. As authorities and regulators it is not in our interest – the broad public interest – to stop innovation. Moreover, when supported by clear standards and expectations, innovation can support the pursuit of public interest objectives such as greater inclusivity and network resilience. Making such standards clear early is much preferred to attempting to claw back the ground later, and particularly if that comes after things go wrong. This is the backdrop to innovation in payments, particularly in the area of so-called digital currencies, developed to offer new forms of “money”.
2  Examples of these stronger and pro-business rules are: (i) The procedures for investors to register their investment in order to benefit from protection under the agreement, are outlined clearly so that the procedures are transparent to investors; (ii) Policy-makers can more easily consider the views and feedback of the business community, as the ACIA has a consultations mechanism giving ASEAN countries an official platform to stay engaged on ACIA matters and its implementation; and (iii) The ACIA has a robust Investor-to-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism which will give investors additional recourse to seek redress or compensation if they have been treated unfairly by a government. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The appointment of a Renminbi clearing bank in Singapore brings new functionality to the Singapore financial system. The build-up of Renminbi liquidity in Singapore will encourage financial institutions in Singapore to develop and offer a wider range of Renminbi products and services. This will help meet the financing, investment, and risk management needs of the market. It will also strengthen the role of Singapore as a leading global financial centre that serves Asia and beyond. Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Besides the RCEP, Singapore is also actively engaged in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or the TPP. The TPP negotiations currently involve 11 countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and the United States. It aims to bring comprehensive duty-free market access as well as reduced restrictions on services, investment and government procurement.

This morning, I would like to illustrate to you how our commitments to fintechs are being implemented in practice: (i) firstly by enhancing dialogue, (ii) secondly by facilitating their integration into the regulatory framework, (iii) and lastly by conducting experiments with them. I. Enhancing the dialogue with fintechs We communicate with fintechs primarily through the specific correspondents of the Banque de France and the ACPR. At the Banque de France, thestart-up correspondents, also French Tech correspondents, assist start-ups at all stages of their project (financing, ratings, etc.). At the ACPR, the Fintech Innovation Unit is a dedicated gateway for fintechs. Each year, about 250 discussions are conducted in this context, half of which being initial contacts with innovative project leaders. With the development of the fintech ecosystem, it became necessary to broaden dialogue to all stakeholders, which is what our ACPR-AMF Fintech Forumembodies today. In addition to the productive working groups it initiated – I will come back to this later – this annual Forum day was introduced last year. This year, it is also part of the “French Fintech Week” in association with France Fintech (the sector’s professional association) and Swave (the first French start-up accelerator dedicated to financial services). As a sign of our commitment, the Banque de France and the ACPR will attend several key events during the week and Dominique Laboureix, Secretary General of the ACPR, will conclude the week in Lyon. II.
The ECB must thus exercise its powers based on the national transpositions; and these vary from country to country. This creates uncertainty and inconsistency. What we thus need is a harmonised legal basis from which we can apply early intervention measures. Now, let’s go one step further. Imagine our bank gets into more serious trouble. In this scenario, there is one tool that helps to create a bit of breathing space for the bank and the authorities to sort things out – a moratorium. A moratorium allows the authorities to suspend all the activities of a bank for a short period of time. In a sense, it freezes time. A moratorium helps to manage a crisis in an orderly manner. It gives the bank and its shareholders time to find a solution. This is particularly useful during a sudden liquidity crisis. However, there is a practical problem. Moratoriums are not part of the European toolbox. In some countries they do exist; in others, they don’t. And in any case, they are not harmonised. We need harmonised, short-term moratoriums in all euro area countries. If, for instance, a cross-border bank gets into trouble, the supervisor in that bank’s home country can impose a moratorium. But what if the bank has a subsidiary in a country where only a court could impose a moratorium? What if the bank has a subsidiary in a country where a moratorium cannot be imposed at all? This is a serious stumbling block for crisis management at European level.

On the basis of that guidance, we scrutinise the banks’ strategies and provide feedback. So we are keeping a close eye on how banks are addressing the problem. And today, we have published an addendum to our guidance. This addendum will help to ensure that NPLs remain a problem of the past once they have been dealt with. To that end, it lays out how we expect banks to provision for new NPLs. More specifically, it refers to exposures that are newly classified as non-performing as of 1 April 2018. The addendum is not a binding document, but it specifies our expectations and will thus serve as a starting point for our dialogue with each bank. Conclusion Ladies and gentlemen, Rest assured that I have not exhausted the topic of my speech. But I may well have exhausted you. So I will conclude quickly and painlessly. First, banks are important for the economy, particularly here in Europe. That said, it might be good to add a bit more capital market to the mix; but that is a topic for another day. Second, banks must be able to fail. If they are not, the economy will suffer in the long run. But if banks fail, they must do so in an orderly manner. If not, financial stability will suffer in the short run. The new European resolution framework helps to make orderly failure possible. Third, failure is the least desirable outcome, of course. We need banks which are profitable and resilient in the first place.
Net interest income has been an important driver of the improved bank performance, on account of the steeper yield curve and wider operating margins. The tightening of credit standards, the gradual pass-through of lower policy rates to lending rates and declining competitive pressures in the credit market have all contributed to higher revenues from core banking business. Trading income has increased even more strongly as the financial markets  4  BIS Review 168/2009  recovered after the first quarter of 2009 and has been the main contributor, on average, to the increase in revenues as a percentage of assets. With regard to bank capital positions and loan-loss provisions, I would like to highlight the following points. The recovery in major banks’ earnings, the slowdown in the growth rate of both risk-weighted and total assets and increases in capital have contributed to a slight increase in the regulatory capital ratios of the median institutions. Even those institutions with the lowest regulatory capital ratios comfortably exceed at present the minimum requirements (see the left side of Chart 11). Provisions on impaired assets had been a serious drag on euro area LCBGs’ incomes in 2007 and 2008. To a large extent these provisions still related to securitised loans, although the share of loan impairments had started to grow. Most institutions have reported sharply higher provisions for loan losses (see the right side of Chart 11). Moreover, expressed as a percentage of total loans, loan-loss provisions were the highest in the third quarter compared to the five preceding years.

The turnaround has been underpinned by government-provided downside protection of financial institutions’ balance sheets, which has reduced tail risk, improving macroeconomic news and better than expected earnings, especially by financial institutions. Against this background, the equity markets have rebounded, led by financial stocks. At the same time, historically low levels of money market interest rates have induced a hunt for yield among investors, triggering outflows from bank deposits and money market funds into riskier assets, including corporate bonds issued by lower-rated borrowers. Euro area bond and equity markets Over the past six months, euro area long-term bond yields have declined. However, in late November 2009, the slope of the euro area yield curve remained steeper than at any point in time since the launch of the euro, due to the past declines in short-term market rates (See Chart 8). Intra-euro area sovereign spreads, as well as euro area sovereign CDS spreads, have narrowed further, in some cases to pre-Lehman levels, until very recently, when a few have widened again. Looking ahead, the prospects for euro area government bonds continue to be surrounded by persistent uncertainty about future macro-financial developments. Upward risks to yields could stem from a further unwinding of flight-to-safety and flight-to-liquidity flows. In addition, slower than expected growth might increase the financing needs of euro area governments and bond markets might face difficulties in absorbing higher government bond issuance.
In addition to the rising cost of bank loans, credit standards for approving loans to households and firms tightened across the board in 2022 Q2, according to the latest edition of the Bank Lending Survey. Looking ahead to Q3, in June banks expected a further contraction in the supply of credit, especially in the case of financing to SMEs. The tightening of financial conditions could increase the financial pressure borne by some firms. Short-term and floating-rate loans make up an important part of corporate bank financing, and the increase in market interest rates therefore passes through relatively swiftly to the average cost of debt. For Spain, it is estimated that, given the increase in market rates, the median indebted firm’s ratio of financial costs to profits before interest will rise by between 2.5 pp and 5.6 pp in the short term, depending on the percentage of debt and loans that are refinanced in the short term. In the case of households, it is estimated that the proportion that have a high net interest burden will rise by nearly 4 pp in Spain. This effect would be more pronounced among indebted households between the 20th and 40th percentiles of the income distribution. Meanwhile, the steep rise in the public debt-to-GDP ratio seen since 2007 also means that public finances are more sensitive to interest rate movements.

Thus, this episode has shown that structural policies that foster the integration and interconnection of European markets – in particular energy markets – and strengthen the 12  single market will not only generate greater resilience to shocks, but also drive competitiveness. Joint funding arrangements should be established to safeguard this common effort and avoid any excessive or highly unequal impact on national public finances. Common funding arrangements would enable financing for large-scale programmes based on shared quality standards and provide for a uniform approach for assessing programme execution. Headway must also be made in the expansion of the public and private risk-sharing arrangements in the EU. The euro area needs a permanent macroeconomic stabilisation mechanism – with revenue-raising and borrowing capacity – to complement the single monetary policy. It is also imperative that the banking union be completed with the establishment of a European deposit guarantee scheme. Lastly, we must press forward with constructing a capital markets union. 4. Concluding remarks In short, with war on European soil and a sharp rise in geopolitical tensions, the challenges we face are very complex. These developments, together with the additional series of shocks on an unprecedented scale from the pandemic, have pushed inflation to persistently very high levels both in Spain and in the euro area as a whole. Given this situation, monetary policy needs to be steered to ensuring that the direct effects of these shocks are not included in the formation processes for other prices and wages.
In the international sphere, as I have already mentioned, some of the elements which have already adversely affected activity in recent quarters may have even more unfavourable effects in the future. Such is the case, for example, of the possible adoption BANCO DE ESPAÑA  6	 TESTIMONY BY THE GOVERNOR OF THE BANCO DE ESPAÑA BEFORE PARLIAMENT IN RELATION TO THE DRAFT STATE AND SOCIAL SECURITY BUDGET FOR 2019  THE MACROECONOMIC PROJECTIONS FOR THE DRAFT BUDGET  CHART 7  GENERAL GOVERMENT BUDGETARY BALANCE  REAL GDP Rate of change (%)  % of GDP  4  0  3  -1  2  -2  -1.3 -2.1 -2.4  1  -3  0  -4 2017  2018  2019 STATE BUDGET 2019  2017  BANCO DE ESPAÑA (DECEMBER 2018)  2018  2019  CONSENSUS FORECAST  SOURCES: Consensus Forecasts, IGAE, INE, State Budget 2019 and Banco de España  of additional protectionist measures by some countries and of the potential responses to them by other economies. Nor can we rule out fresh tensions linked to the changes in US monetary policy, particularly in those economies with a high dollar-denominated debt and, in general, in the international financial markets. Also, the final terms of the UK’s exit from the EU continue to be highly uncertain, with possible adverse effects on the euro area (see right-hand panel of Chart 5), where, moreover, uncertainty regarding the fiscal policy of certain countries persists.

Our institutions have successfully tackled the COVID-19 crisis thanks to a combination of suitable risk management and the set of extraordinary measures approved by the public sector (governments, prudential regulators and supervisors). I am confident that they are well prepared to deal with these new tensions and turbulence. In conclusion, the economic situation remains highly uncertain, in particular due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, the implied tensions in food and energy markets, the sanctions enacted against Russia, and the risks surrounding the continuation of energy trade with the latter. The economic effects of this situation can now clearly be seen for the economy as a whole and, in particular, for the more vulnerable citizens. With all of the uncertainty that surrounds any projection in these changing circumstances, while we foresee a significant deceleration of the economy and high inflation in the very short-run, we also expect the economic situation to normalise thereafter, with inflation easing over 2023, once all of the factors I referred to earlier have returned to normal. Fiscal policy has a key role to play, provided it targets the households and economic sectors hardest hit by the crisis, as also recently stressed by the European Commission, given the limited room for manoeuvre in public budgets. An appropriate combination of policies would support economic normalization and help tackle the inflationary episode, as would the continuation of prudent approaches by wage- and price-setters. Monetary policy can certainly meet the challenge.
However, at their origin, these institutions were created precisely to deal with the financial instability caused by frequent bank runs in the late 19th and early 20th century. Furthermore, the concern for price stability was even institutionalized later on around the world, with the inflation-targeting regime being the latest stage of its development. It is important to review jointly the issues of price stability and financial stability, because here the well-known Tinbergen principle is clearly present. This principle indicates that, to achieve a certain number of objectives, at least an equal number of instruments are needed. We often have used this argument when asked to achieve inflationary, output and exchange rate objectives with only one instrument, that is, the interest rate. Although several objectives can and do coincide with an instrument fairly frequently, there is no reason why they should. For instance, during a period of declining inflation, an expansionary monetary policy could be justified, which could trigger an excessive credit expansion, asset price bubbles and, hence, introduce vulnerabilities into the financial system. If the monetary authority decides to fight the credit expansion with a high interest rate, it may end up reducing inflation excessively incurring in unnecessary costs in terms of employment. Here a new instrument is in order, namely, financial regulation. About these issues I want to talk today. Price stability: inflation targets The regime adopted in Chile and in a number of other countries with low and stable inflation to pursue the price stability objective, is that of flexible inflation targeting.

It is necessary to continue strengthening the robustness of these methods to evaluate situations of extreme tension. Starting tomorrow, the Central Bank of Chile will hold its Annual Conference, and this version will feature frontier work in this area. From the regulatory standpoint, supervision must consider the macroeconomic impact of financial activity. In the months to come, we will have to analyze also the potential procyclicality of the Basel II capital requirements, as well as the modeling and quantification of liquidity risk. A regulatory framework will be necessary to ensure the building of sufficient reserves in the boom phase of the cycle in order for the financial system to be well capitalized when the bust phase comes. 9 One of the most recurring sources of financial stress in the past few years in emerging economies are periods of euphoria or pessimism, which trigger movements in their exchange rates beyond what their fundamentals would justify. For example, when economic expectations are good, foreign exchange appreciations can arise with symptoms of bubbles in favor of all the domestic assets. As I discussed before, a first line of defense for specific asset prices, stocks or housing is to raise the interest rate. However, in the area of exchange rates this may trigger more pressures to appreciate and exacerbate financial imbalances.
1 The ideas of how asset purchases can contribute to monetary policy becoming more expansionary are not new,  see for instance Tobin (1958). 2 See Bernanke (2020), Di Casola (2022) and Bhattarai and Neely (2022) for summaries of both theoretical and empirical studies. 2 [30]  Figure 1. The Riksbank’s monetary policy securities holdings Nominal amounts, SEK billion  Note. Phase 1 refers to decisions during 2015 to 2019 to purchase government bonds from 2015 to 2020. Phase 2a refers to decisions during March to June 2020 to purchase securities up to mid-2021. Phase 2b refers to decisions from November 2020 to June 2022 to purchase securities during 2021 and 2022. Source: The Riksbank. The effects of the Riksbank's asset purchases Phase 1: 2015-2019 – purchases of government bonds to bring inflation up to the target Despite the Riksbank having cut the policy rate to zero in autumn 2014, it was clear at the start of 2015 that inflationary pressures were problematically weak, and there were also signs that confidence in the inflation target had weakened. To bring inflation up to the target and reinforce confidence in the inflation target, monetary policy needed to be made even more expansionary. In February 2015, the Executive Board therefore decided to cut the policy rate to −0.10 per cent and as a supplement to this to buy government bonds for SEK 10 billion.

However, Figure 4 shows that the difference between these rates and the Riksbank's policy rate does not appear to have been affected by the asset purchases.14 Government bond purchases thus appear to have pushed down the interest rate on government bonds to a certain limit. However, there are no signs that this caused households and companies to encounter lower interest rates. It is therefore very unclear whether the result was that the economy was stimulated via the interest rate channel.15  13 The market is dominated by so-called FRN-bonds, where the coupon follows STIBOR 3 months. 14 Erikson and Vestin (2021) show a similar figure. Some larger companies also finance themselves through the  bond market. However, when the Riksbank began purchasing government bonds, this form of financing was fairly unusual and accounted for only 22 per cent of the companies' total borrowing (see the Riksbank, 2014). Moreover, it is common for companies' bond loans to have variable interest rates. As turnover in the market is small, it is difficult to follow price developments. Nevertheless, the statistics indicate that rates on corporate bonds fell less than those on government bonds in 2015 and 2016. 15 However, the lower interest rates could reasonably contribute to a lower central government borrowing cost, something I will return to in a moment. However, this was not the purpose of the Riksbank's purchases. 7 [30]  Figure 4. Lending rates have followed the policy rate Per cent  Note.