samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
At this point, I would like to emphasize that we will continue to take the necessary measures to contain the adverse effects of the global financial turmoil on the domestic economy, provided that they do not conflict with the price stability objective. The general framework of the Central Bank’s liquidity management is fairly flexible and wellstructured to fulfill its lender-of-last resort role and meet both New Turkish Lira and foreign exchange liquidity requirement of the banking system effectively. We will not allow any setback in New Turkish Lira money markets and will ensure smooth operation of payment system. In this context, judging that inflation will display a more rapid fall than envisaged before, the Monetary Policy Committee has decided to lower the borrowing rates by 50 basis points on November 19, 2008. In addition, the margin between the lending and borrowing rates was reduced by a further 50 basis points in order to contain the potential volatility in short term interest rates. Dear Guests, The Central Bank of Turkey is aware of the significance of foreign exchange liquidity in the banking system and progressively puts into effect necessary measures in order to get through this period with minimal damage. Accordingly, the Central Bank resumed its activities as an intermediary in Foreign Exchange and Banknotes Markets as of 9 October 2008 and later raised transaction limits in the Foreign Exchange and Banknotes Markets to USD 10.8 billion.

A positive output gap indicates a level of activity that fuels pressures on economic resources and rising price and cost inflation. (See for example Frøyland and Nymoen (2000) and Olsen, Qvigstad and Røisland (2003) for more on the output gap.) The optimism spread to Norway, where equity prices also rose. The level of activity was very high in the securities market, among corporate lawyers, consultancies and in the ICT industry. High oil prices through most of the 1990s resulted in buoyant investment activity and growth in operating expenses in the petroleum sector. With substantial government tax revenues, expectations concerning the use of petroleum revenues also rose. It became increasingly challenging to keep pressures in the economy at bay by means of fiscal policy. The response to this challenge was the revision of economic policy in spring 2001. The most important policy change was the strategy for the phasing in of petroleum revenues – the so-called fiscal rule. An inflation target for monetary policy was introduced at the same time. The revision came after four years of strong economic expansion and high growth in labour costs, pressures to spend petroleum revenues and high household credit growth. Implementation of monetary policy • The interest rate is set so as to keep inflation at a low and stable level • Higher interest rates will reduce inflation by curbing demand and strengthening the krone. An interest rate reduction has the opposite effect. • The effects of interest rates on inflation may vary over time.
Consequently, applying the policy rate or regulatory tools as the situation requires may be the most practical path. Let me now shift the focus from monetary policy to the work on financial stability, but the issue will still to a large extent be how to achieve a balance between financial stability and monetary policy. Challenges for regulatory design Not only the regulations but also the whole area of macro-prudential surveillance aiming at financial system stability have become a highly topical issue in the aftermath of the latest crisis. Prior to the crisis, financial regulation was excessively focused upon individual institutions under the erroneous assumption that the system would remain stable as long as the individual institutions were stable. Consequently, processes that created risks on the system level were ignored. I certainly welcome the current international discussion regarding the inclusion of more explicit systemic-risk preventive regulations, or macro-prudential regulation, in the regulatory framework. An important challenge for the design of a new regulatory framework will lie in finding an appropriate balance: On the one hand, the regulations will need to be sufficient to effectively reduce the risk of financial crisis; on the other hand they should not be so stringent as to impose unnecessary costs on the financial sector. It is a matter of finding the right level of regulation. In this context it is very illuminating to read the so called MAG and LEI reports which attempt to translate various levels of Basel III-regulation into estimated higher interest costs for the end-borrower.

All of these issues are very much in line with my thoughts on what has to be done to create a truly useful central bank – to allude to the theme of this Symposium. I thank you for listening. 8  BIS central bankers’ speeches
BANK Of ZAMBIA  CYBER SECURITY IN THE FINANCIAL SERVICES SECTOR WORKSHOP  SPEECH BY DR. DENNY H. KALYALYA GOVERNOR – BANK OF ZAMBIA  MONDAY, 6th MAY 2019 INTERCONTINENTAL HOTEL, LUSAKA, ZAMBIA  CYBER SECURITY IN THE FINANCIAL SERVICES SECTOR WORKSHOP, SPEECH BY DR. DENNY H. KALYALYA, GOVERNOR – BANK OF ZAMBIA – 6 MAY 2019  Chief Executives of Financial Institutions in Zambia, Representatives from MEFMI, Members of staff from Bank of Zambia and other Financial Institutions Distinguished Resource Persons, Dear Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen. I am honoured to welcome you all to this important workshop on “Cyber Security in the Financial Services Sector”, which is being jointly conducted by the Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa (MEFMI) and the Bank of Zambia. This workshop aims to discuss financial sector vulnerabilities arising from cyber threats and risks and to develop the necessary skills and tools to make the sector resilient. Let me take this opportunity to extend a special welcome to our facilitator Dr. Rukanda. I am sure the delegates will greatly benefit from your experience and vast knowledge on the subject. Ladies and gentlemen, as you are all aware, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have over the years permeated all aspects of our lives and in particular, have become the mainstay of the world’s financial sector infrastructure.

While these ever emerging technologies such as Digital transformation, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Enterprise Mobility and Mobile Banking, have brought about efficiency and increased innovations, they have also exposed the financial services sector to cybercrime. Some notable incidents of 1|Page  cybercrime include, the attack on the Central Bank of Bangladesh, Russian retail bank and seven banks in the United Kingdom. The financial services sector is a key target by criminals because it is the custodian of large amount of funds in the economy. For this same reason, the financial services sector has to also deal with other types of risks, which among others include, fraud, extortion, money laundering, illicit financial flows, market manipulation, data theft, and currency attacks. With statistics showing an increase of cyber-attacks in the financial sector, the importance of ensuring that our institutions are cyber resilient cannot be over-emphasized. Ladies and gentlemen, the financial services sector has to see cybersecurity for what it is, a large scale operational risk deserving the utmost attention and thus develop the necessary systems and cultures throughout the sector to deal with this risk. Key to the development and operation of these systems and cultures is the need to nurture talent capable of addressing cyber security threats through prompt detection, investigation, reporting, prosecution and prevention. Distinguished participants, let me also emphasize that cyber risks should be viewed from an enterprise-wide perspective.
Hence the focus on two dimensions: -  Loss absorbency: firms need TLAC in the right amount (enough not only to absorb losses but to provide for recapitalisation so firms can continue to meet requirements for authorisation); in the right form (debt with residual maturity of a year and subordinated to operating liabilities to avoid breaches of the ‘no creditor worse off than insolvency’ (NCWO) safeguard or other challenges to the bail-in and at the same time to provide clarity to depositors that they are not likely to be bailed in); and in the right location (ensuring that resources are positioned within a group so that the key operating companies containing a firm’s critical functions can be recapitalised 3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  3  immediately in resolution).As such, international agreement of the FSB’s TLAC standard in 2015 represented a major milestone in moving towards ending TBTF. -  4  Continuity of critical functions: the second main dimension of stabilisation is to ensure continuity in a firm’s operations in resolution. Part of this is legal – changing contractual arrangements so that entry into resolution does not result in widespread, disorderly termination, close-out or acceleration in financial contracts, provision of services or access to financial market infrastructures (FMIs). It is true that under the Key Attributes, resolution regimes include statutory powers to stay. But statutory stays may not be effective cross-border.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: ASEAN – a dynamic region with diverse strengths Speech by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the International Symposium “Ten Years After the Asian Currency Crisis: Future Challenges for the Asian Economies and Financial Markets”, hosted by the Center for Monetary Cooperation in Asia (CeMCoA), Bank of Japan, Tokyo, 22 January 2007. *  *  *  Ten years after the crisis, ASEAN stands out as a dynamic region with diverse strengths. With a growing population of over 550 million, ASEAN remains one of the fastest growing regions in the world (2005: 5.6%; world: 4.9%). The combined GDP of the ASEAN economies is expected to exceed USD 1 trillion in 2007. This growth has been extensive and includes all the developing economies in the group. The ASEAN economies have always been highly open economies, with total trade accounting for more than 130 percent of GDP and the value of trade flows now exceeding USD 1 trillion. In view of this high degree of openness, ASEAN has also always been vulnerable to external developments. The ASEAN economies have however demonstrated, time and again, their capacity to rebound from adverse shocks, and to do so within a short period of time. While the 1997 – 1998 crisis was devastating, most ASEAN economies were able to restore stability and resume growth just after a year. ASEAN has also continued to weather other both regional and international shocks that have since occurred.
In particular, lower interest rate levels help reduce losses on credit portfolios, thanks to the favourable effect they have on borrowers’ ability to repay their loans, associated both with lower loan costs and with the higher income and lower unemployment levels linked to the positive macroeconomic impact of lower interest rates. These effects have been especially significant in countries such as Spain where the banking system had a high level of non-performing loans and where short-term and variable rate lending predominates, since this means that changes in market yields are rapidly passed through to the cost of outstanding debt. This effect thus explains part of the decline in the NPL ratio in recent years. In addition, lower interest rates help drive up the prices of financial and real assets. This effect is immediate in the case of debt securities, especially long-term ones, as their prices are more sensitive to yield changes. The prices of equities and real assets, such as housing, are also boosted by lower interest rates, owing to their effect on the discount factor, although these prices are also affected by other factors, such as macroeconomic expectations. All this entails capital gains for banks exposed to these financial and real assets. It also increases the value of loan collateral, which enhances the credit quality of loans and, therefore, reduces losses on the credit portfolio. That said, it is true that these capital gains become exhausted once interest rates cease to decline and remain at low levels.

Responses to the low profitability environment In recent years, Spanish banks have partially cushioned the fall in net interest income by means of various strategies. To address the current low profitability environment, they should persevere in some of these strategies and embark on others. First, as I mentioned earlier, banks have made great efforts to reduce their nonperforming and foreclosed assets. But the non-performing loan ratio still stands at 5.3% for business in Spain and foreclosed assets amount to around € billion, in both cases well above the pre-crisis levels. Banks should therefore persevere with this strategy. To illustrate the room for improvement that still exists in connection with these non-performing assets, if the level of provisioning of average total assets were as low as in 2005 (which, at 0.26%, was the lowest level recorded since 2000), it is estimated that Spanish deposit institutions’ annual consolidated profit would increase by € billion. This would raise average ROA by 10 bp and ROE by 1.3 pp.4  4  In addition, in a hypothetical scenario in which all foreclosed assets were performing assets, earning a return equivalent to average ROA (0.49%), net profit would increase by around € million, a modest but far from negligible figure. 15/29  Second, banks have diversified their revenue generation and in particular there has been an increase in fee income.
I have read two papers prepared by Aspen Institute and the German Marshall Fund: the report “Dialogues on the national interest. Recommendations of public policies” and the program “East-West Gateway”. They generate the object of the forthcoming debates. Allow me to make some remarks regarding the national interest and the transformations within the financial sector that are currently taking place in Europe. The national interest goes beyond its economic dimension, although it is also true that the smooth functioning of the economy is not only an objective per se, but also a means to achieve the other objectives subordinated to the national interest. As any other European central bank we are focused on price and financial stability. Obviously, monetary and financial stability is an essential ingredient of economic performance. This is all the more relevant for a catching-up economy, such as Romania. On the one hand, progress towards convergence is impossible to imagine without capital accumulation from local and external sources alike, and it cannot be achieved in the absence of a viable financial system. On the other hand, investments imply a long-term outlook, whereas high and volatile inflation or fragile financial sector hampers long-term planning. Moreover, the recent global crisis has shown that it is far cheaper to prevent financial instability than to rescue financial institutions in distress.

Financial crises are even costlier in emerging economies than in industrialized countries, as their ability to bear such costs is severely constrained by spillovers between the banking system and sovereigns and the related vicious circle of escalating risk premia. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  The crisis has also revealed that effective policy remedies have a transnational perspective. In the European Union the idea of a Banking Union emerged as a solution to break the above-mentioned vicious circle, thus putting a stop to financial fragmentation and helping restore the normal capital flow from the core EU countries to the periphery. In addition, the Banking Union has the merit of removing the contradiction between the pan-European nature of banking activity and keeping banking supervisory and resolution tasks at the national level. In this context, Romania’s membership in the Banking Union comes as a natural choice, given that euro area banks hold three fourths of the total assets of the Romanian banking system and two thirds of its capital. As was the case with EU membership, the national interest may be better served in the banking sector by relinquishing some of the national policy prerogatives. In the context of such a high financial integration, preserving the banking supervisory powers at national level would only entail suboptimal results, due to the limited access to information on parent banks and the lack of a cross-border perspective.
(2021), “Demand for central bank reserves and monetary policy implementation frameworks: the case of the Eurosystem”, Occasional Paper Series, No 282, ECB, September. 5. ibid. 6. See Schnabel, I. (2021), “Monetary policy and financial stability”, speech at the fifth annual conference of the European Systemic Risk Board, Frankfurt am Main, 8 December; and Schnabel, I. (2021), “Monetary policy and inequality”, speech at a virtual conference on “Diversity and Inclusion in Economics, Finance, and Central Banking”, Frankfurt am Main, 9 November. 7. See, for example, Cavallo, M. et al. (2019), “Fiscal Implications of the Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet Normalization”, International Journal of Central Banking, Issue 61, pp. 255-306. 8. See also Arrata, W. et al. (2020), “The scarcity effect of QE on repo rates: Evidence from the euro area”, Journal of Financial Economics, Vol. 137, Issue 3, September, pp. 837-856; and Brand, C. et al. (2019), “From cash- to securities-driven euro area repo markets: the role of financial stress and safe asset scarcity”, Working Paper Series, No 2232, ECB, January. 9. The latest adjustment on lending limits against cash took place on 10 November 2022. 10. These concerns were related to additional cash inflows from the Eurosystem’s non-monetary policy deposits, as the remuneration of these deposits was initially unclear. Ultimately, however, net inflows to  repo markets were limited during the episode of market strain, suggesting that behavioural factors have played a predominant role. 11. The remuneration of deposits held under the Eurosystem reserve management services framework was adjusted accordingly. 12. See, for example, Schnabel, I.

Lars Heikensten: The Riksbank and stabilisation policy Speech by Mr Lars Heikensten, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at a discussion seminar of LO (the labour organisation), Stockholm, 24 May 2005. *  *  *  Let me begin by thanking you for the invitation to attend this seminar. I look forward to an interesting and rewarding discussion. The invitation to the seminar contained a list of questions for discussion. I intend to structure my contribution in terms of working my way down the list and giving my views on these questions. Before I do so, however, I would like to take this opportunity to say that I appreciated the section on stabilisation policy’s possibilities and limitations in the LO economists latest “Economic Prospects” report. Although I do not agree with everything – which will become clear later – I perceived the article to be serious and searching in a positive way. Is stabilisation policy important? My answer to this question is (of course): Yes, stabilisation policy is important. One only needs to look at our experiences in the 1970s and 1980s to realise this. What happened then was that the policy conducted could not sustain an adequate balance in the economy. The policy conducted was often too expansionary, which created an environment where it was difficult to keep price and wage increases at a reasonable level. The rapid increases in wages and prices were repeatedly in collision with the fixed exchange rate.
In a different situation such a policy could have undermined confidence, leading to a depreciation of the krone and higher interest rates. Owing to high oil prices, however, the krone was very strong in 1996 and 1997. It may be that the foreign exchange market accepted that Norway was in a situation – with large government budget and current account surpluses – where the country both could and should have transferred resources from the business sector to the public sector. It could be that market participants believed that this transfer of resources would occur with the help of a strong krone exchange rate, which reduces profitability in the business sector. Appreciation pressures mounted and culminated in a reduction in interest rates by Norges Bank in January 1997 in order to counter the sharp strengthening of the krone. If the central bank had not acted, the krone might have appreciated by an even greater margin. This could have given a strong signal to the business sector to move out of Norway. However, in a situation where fiscal policy was not sufficiently tight, the reduction in interest rates increased the risk of an acceleration in price and cost inflation. Then came the fall in oil prices, with an associated erosion of the external account. Income growth for liberal professions had been substantial, wage growth for salaried employees accelerated and the wage and income settlement in 1998 was very generous. This eliminated the basis for the strong krone.

To that end, investments in human capital aimed at improving the quality of the labor force in our country should be intensified and competition should be enhanced through effective regulations and implementations, especially in the goods market. The Competition Authority is one of the main institutional building blocks of the “open economy growth model” implemented in the period after 1980 and is based on strengthening the market economy. Competition policies and price stability, which is the core objective of the Central Bank, are strongly related. In an environment where competition conditions are ensured, monopolistic market behaviors will not be possible. Simplifying the entry and exit of firms to the various  BIS Review 37/2008  1  sectors and increasing transparency are the main factors preventing pricing habits that are based on a high profit margin. Additionally, due to pressures from both domestic and foreign competition, firms choose to implement strategies with the aim of increasing productivity, which in turn triggers innovation and technological development and contributes to the acceleration of the potential growth rate of our country. If firms increase profitability through measures that decrease costs instead of increasing prices, our country can reach higher growth rates in an environment of low inflation. Various instruments can be utilized to establish an effective competition environment in an economy.