samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Switzerland has a long tradition of organising its core financial market infrastructure as a joint enterprise, according to the ‘user-owned, user-governed’ principle. In the case of the repo market, the current solution has proven its worth. Nonetheless, due to changes in the stock market and regulatory environment, the SNB has undertaken a reassessment of the situation. In the light of this, the SNB has decided to conduct its monetary policy operations via a new trading platform, provided by SIX Group Ltd, as of May 2014. In this way, the repo market will be based on an integrated solution, in which the trading platform, securities settlement system and payment system are covered by a single source. Moreover, further developments will also be possible, for example the expansion of trading to incorporate further products. Since the new trading platform will resemble the existing Swiss franc repo system (Eurex Repo), access for market participants will entail only minimal adjustments. We are confident that an integrated solution is the best means of ensuring a robust repo market infrastructure. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Charts  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches

Nocera noted that “in 2007, the chief executives of the Too Big to Fail Banks made, on average, $ million … more than double the compensation of the top nonbank Fortune 500 executives.” A recent survey conducted for the Wall Street Journal of CEO compensation at 350 public companies shows that financial services compensation has been tempered; the rate of increase in compensation for 2010 was just 1 percent.11 The Journal attributed this to higher levels of scrutiny of financial firms as well as pressure from shareholders and regulators. Even so, some financial-sector CEOs enjoyed robust increases in their total compensation, including a 74 percent increase and a 51 percent increase at two of the five largest U.S. banking organizations. Interestingly, the trading revenue of these two firms accounted for almost half of the $ billion in total trading revenue mentioned by Mr. Wilmers. These recent numbers buttress Nocera’s reasonable conclusion that bank CEOs “were being compensated in no small part on their trading profits – which gave them every incentive to keep taking those excessive risks.” I am sympathetic to these concerns. I have no problem with risk takers being rewarded with large compensation packages. I put my own and my partners’ capital at risk for the 20 years I operated in the markets and profited handsomely. But I never was provided with capital that was safeguarded by government guarantees.
Earlier this year, most forecasters thought that the recovery was gaining traction and that economic activity would increase at a solid – though not spectacular – pace through 2012. The labor market was beginning to show some long-awaited improvement, and the financial repair process seemed to be making progress. Analysts thought that higher prices for energy and other commodities would weigh on output growth, as would supply-chain disruptions from the disaster in Japan. But these factors were expected to be transitory, and most forecasters thought growth would improve significantly once these influences had passed. Unfortunately, the news over the past several months has proved this forecast to be too optimistic. To use an automotive analogy, employment and growth are stuck in neutral. Job growth has been disappointing, and the unemployment rate just last month dipped below 9 percent. Revised data indicate that annualized real GDP growth in the first half of 2011 was only 1 percent and improved only modestly to a 2 percent pace in the third quarter. Consumer spending has been particularly sluggish. Furthermore, the weakness in GDP growth began before the bulk of the effects of higher energy prices hit the economy and before the disaster in Japan happened. This timing, along with the continued softness of most economic indicators into the early summer, indicates that the slowing in output growth was not all due to temporary factors. Even with slightly firmer economic data that have come out recently, the sense of building momentum seems absent.

In October we had revised down our growth forecasts for Sweden and abroad considerably and in December we revised the forecasts down by as much again; the economic slowdown had hit with even greater force than we had earlier expected. The weaker krona together with the fall in energy and food prices appeared to some extent to be able to counteract the severe slowdown in the economy. According to our forecast in December, Swedish GDP will decline by 0.5 per cent in 2009, but recover during 2010, when growth increases to approximately 2 per cent. We also revised down the inflation forecast substantially, primarily because of falling energy prices and declining interest expenditure for households. According to our assessment, CPI inflation will on average be just over 1 per cent in 2009. However, inflation will then rise towards the target level at the end of 2010, as economic activity improves and the effects of falling energy prices and interest expenditure no longer affect the inflation figures. The assessment in December was that resource utilisation would be lower than normal over the coming years, while inflation would undershoot the target for a while. Given this, we Executive Board members were agreed that a substantial and long-lasting cut in the repo rate was needed to avoid an unnecessarily long period of inflation undershooting the target and of weak real economic development. Nor were there any advantages to adjusting the repo rate in gradual stages.
For example, if the haircut was 10% and the value of the security was $ the most the investor could lose would be $ Thus, the facility eliminates much of the downside risk that would arise from a very deep recession or the fire sales of assets that could cause prices to drop sharply temporarily. This is a very exciting program because it provides balance sheet capacity to risk capital that cannot currently get leverage. It goes beyond current programs. Just as important, once it is up and running it can be scaled up and out in many different dimensions. In principle, it could be applied to other distressed asset classes, it could move down the credit spectrum to lower-rated tranches, and it could be used to fund older vintage assets. Two other important initiatives are also in train that deserve note. Last week the Treasury and the major banking supervisors announced the details of a capital stress assessment process for all bank holding companies with assets in excess of $ billion. This process is designed to ensure that the banking system has sufficient, high-quality capital to be able to absorb the losses that would likely be generated by an economic scenario considerably worse than generally expected. The stress assessment assumes an adverse economic environment. For example, under this scenario, the unemployment rate is anticipated to average more than 10% in 2010, considerably higher than the consensus economic forecast. The stress assessment will unfold in three steps.

More relevant to today’s conference, following the FSB’s recent Plenary meeting in Tokyo we announced that in the next few weeks we will issue a consultative paper on resolution planning and, in particular, on resolution strategies. The paper, drawn up by a subcommittee led by Christine Cumming of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, will cover three areas. The first is Recovery Triggers and Stress Scenarios used in recovery planning. Firms need to ensure that triggers are not linked mechanically to metrics that lag behind their true financial condition – a problem with some previous earlyintervention frameworks. Recovery actions must start sufficiently early. But care must be taken to avoid markets overacting to the fact of such actions being taken. That is not easy. Second, the consultative paper will outline a possible framework for national authorities to use when identifying the critical functions and support services of firms that need to be sustained in distressed conditions. What matters here is focusing on those services that are vital to the economy. The third, and most important, area of consultation is about the development of Resolution Strategies and Operational Resolution Plans. This guidance aims to capture the main issues that authorities should address.
These stones could be as large as 12 feet in diameter and represented a value determined by both by the stone’s size, the quality of its craftsmanship and the history associated it. 5 See for example, ‘Money: the unauthorised biography’ by Felix Martin. 3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  3  Societies do not need to have such social technology – there are examples in history of quite advanced 6  societies that have not used it. But modern economies and the changes to living standards to which we have become accustomed would almost certainly be impossible without it. This social technology is of course supported by other technologies - physical, legal and institutional. But these can be very different in different societies and they evolve and change over time. The claims we hold on each other and exchange can be expressed in physical form, like coins or as records in a paper or an electronic ledger. They can be issued or authorised by the state and governed by law - but they do not have to be. In the end, what counts is that the social convention that is money continues to hold. When it fails, when it gets ‘out of order’, the damage to society can be very great. And though money can exist without them and although they can vary, what I have called the supporting technologies matter hugely.

The objective is to reduce risk in the payment system. At the other end, state issued ‘cash’ – notes and coin – is used mainly for the smaller value payments that settle the bulk of transactions in our economy. 6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  That has not always been the case. At the end of the 1970s, 90-95% of payments by volume in the economy were made using cash. 8  Private money, in the form of cheques, bank transfers and more recently credit and debit cards were simply too expensive and too cumbersome to use for small value payments. The trend, however, has been away from cash towards a greater use of private bank money in the economy. The spread of credit and debit card technology meant that by 2000, cash payments accounted for less than 75% of payments by volume. 9  And a number of recent inter-linked developments in what I have called the technologies that support our money may be driving an acceleration of that trend. New regulations have reduced the cost of credit and debit card transactions by capping the fees that card companies and banks can charge merchants.
Christian Noyer: Challenges ahead - the accession process Speech by Mr Christian Noyer, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London, 12 November 2001. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, It is a great pleasure for me to be able to be here today at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to share with you some thoughts on the process of EU accession and the challenges that this process poses for the accession countries. While recognising that this process raises challenges for the EU itself, I will not elaborate on those in my speech today. Undoubtedly, the enlargement of the European Union to embrace a number of countries from central, eastern and southern Europe and the Mediterranean constitutes, after the changeover to the euro banknotes and coins, one of the main challenges currently faced by European policy-makers. However, I would be giving a somewhat misleading impression if I devoted my speech today solely to the “challenges ahead” without first mentioning the very foundations of the European structure. The latter form the basis for our capacity to actually meet those challenges. EU enlargement rests on the proven success of European integration. The European Union constitutes an unprecedented framework for the successful development of regional co-operation.

The greatest challenge to these emerging markets is how to achieve a more balanced and sustainable growth in the midst of globalisation. As more economies in the region move to the middle-income category, I urge the Bank to proactively consider ways and means to help them meet the new challenges of changing times. Sustainability of the region’s future growth seems to lie in the growing trend of intra-regional trade and economic interdependence. Asia is highly integrated in trade. Propelled by vertical integration of the production process, intra-regional trade grew by 14% a year between 1995 and 2003, while world exports increased only 7.5%. Compared to trade, integration in the financial sector has been progressing at a much slower pace. As a result, the very substantial volume of foreign reserves accumulated in the region, of some $ billion last year alone, goes mainly to the developed rather than the regional markets. When some of the capital from the developed market is recycled back to the region, it is of a more volatile and repercussive nature, and can be difficult to cope with as we saw it in the late 1990s. To reduce the reliance on the recycling of domestic savings through the developed markets, Asian governments have put in place several initiatives to strengthen financial intermediation. A notable example is the Asian Bond Markets Initiative under the ASEAN+3 forum.
Observations for each region are weighted by the population of each region. Chart 5 compares the regional distribution of income per head in the UK, France and Germany in 2016, again centred on mean income levels in the UK in 2016. It suggests a materially wider regional dispersion in incomes in the UK than in France and Germany. The gap between richest and poorest regions in the UK is almost twice as large as in France and three-quarters larger than in Germany.13  12 13  Comparing NUTS 3 regions. Figures refer to income differences at the NUTS1 regional level, using Purchasing Power Standard (PPS). 9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  9  Chart 5: Distribution of UK, France and Germany income per head in 2016  Île de France  Oberbayern  Inner London West  Sources: Eurostat and Bank calculations. Notes: Purchasing power standard (PPS) per household in NUTS2 regions for 2016 centred around the UK mean. Excludes NUTS region ‘FRY’ (‘Départements d'outre mer'). These regional differences in GDP are found in alternative metrics of economic health, such as pay (Chart 6).14 They are also mirrored in medical health. Chart 7 plots one measure of medical health by region – average life expectancy. This mirrors regional income differences. Richer people tend to live longer. The gap between highest and lowest life expectancies regionally is around 3.4 years, or 4.2% of the UK average. 14  Haldane (2019).

40  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  40  Chart 25: Cartogram of local-authority level ECIs  Sources: ONS Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) and Bank calculations. Notes: UK NUTS 3 regions re-sized and coloured using estimates of economic complexity. 41  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  41  Table 1 lists the top ten local authorities by ECI across the UK in 2017, while Table 2 shows the bottom ten. There is a high degree of inertia in both rankings. The ECI framework could be used to help assess which industrial strategy interventions might boost the degree of specialism and diversity, and hence the income benefits, both in already-successful and struggling regions. Table 2: Bottom 10 local authorities by ECI Dudley  Moray  South Derbyshire  Hartlepool  Wrexham  Carmarthenshire  Aberdeenshire  Breckland  North-East Lincolnshire  Telford and Wrekin  Sources: ONS Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) and Bank calculations. Economic complexity can also be assessed across industries using a product complexity index (PCI). This proxies the embedded knowledge in an industry. Table 3 plots the top-20 UK industries by PCI against their sector shares. Financial services, the creative industries, and higher education exhibit the highest economic complexity and thus potentially generate the highest value-added. PCI metrics could be used to identify industries where “sector deals” could benefit most the economy, as part of an industrial strategy.
Our task is confined to ensuring that structural changes do not undermine the soundness and “supervisability” of banking institutions, and that bank shareholders are suitable. So, with this in mind, let me turn to the main topic that I would like to discuss, which is the Basel II initiative. When the IIF met in Madrid last July, the Basel Committee had just released the text of the revised capital framework. The publication of Basel II marked a critical milestone in our efforts to improve the risk-sensitivity of bank capital requirements while providing incentives to strengthen the quality of risk management. I think that on this occasion the meeting of the IIF has been preceded by another milestone in our work in relation to the new capital framework. A successful meeting of the Basel Committee concluded yesterday. Among other things, we dealt with the double default and trading book issues, on the basis of the work undertaken in close collaboration with the International Organization of Securities Commissions. I think this teamwork between IOSCO and BCBS can also be perceived as a landmark in the area of cooperation among supervisors. Let me therefore start by talking about this work strand. Then I will try to clarify some aspects of the calibration exercise and, finally, I will address implementation issues of Basel II. When we were in Madrid last summer, I mentioned that supervisors were very interested in finding practical and prudent solutions to the treatment of certain exposures under Basel II.

European Central Bank: Press conference - introductory statement Introductory statement by Mr Willem F Duisenberg, President of the European Central Bank and Mr Lucas Papademos, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, at the press conference held in Frankfurt, 5 December 2002. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice-President and I will now report on the outcome of today's meeting of the Governing Council of the ECB. We continued our in-depth assessment of monetary, financial and economic developments and the discussions we had in early November on the appropriate stance of monetary policy, taking account of the new information. Overall, since our last meeting, the arguments in favour of a cut in the key ECB interest rates have strengthened. The evidence that inflationary pressures are easing has increased, owing in particular to the sluggish economic expansion. Furthermore, downside risks to economic growth have not vanished. As a result, the Governing Council has decided to lower the key ECB interest rates by 50 basis points. At today's meeting, we also reviewed the reference value for monetary growth, which has an important role under the first pillar of the ECB's monetary policy strategy. The Governing Council has decided to leave the current value unchanged at an annual growth rate of 4½% for the broad aggregate M3.
Erdem Başçi: Latest economic outlook and macroeconomic developments in Turkey Panel speech by Mr Erdem Başçi, Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, at the Conference on “Policy responses to commodity price movements”, Istanbul, 7 April 2012. *  *  *  Distinguished Guests, The global economic developments observed during the last decade are influential on the commodity prices. Some of these developments were real factors directly affecting the supply and demand of these commodities. On the demand side, significant growth in demand for energy, food and raw materials of developing countries, led by China and India, became an important factor in commodity markets in recent years. Likewise, the discrepancy between the paces of recovery of developed and developing countries in the aftermath of the global crisis and the global monetary expansion are observed to have reflections on the demand for commodities. The increasing income in developing countries enjoying robust growth broadly decreases the price sensitivity of commodity demand. As a result of production capacity shortfalls of exporting countries in the short run and these countries’ reluctance to increase their production capacity, prices sometimes display excessive increases in the event of a setback in supply. On the other hand, the robust economic growth potential of developing countries implies that the demand for raw materials will continue to be strong also in the medium term. The key solution for imports-dependent countries due to having little natural resources lies in increasing the productivity in agriculture and energy sectors.

Commodity price changes with relatively more of a permanent nature may distort the general pricing behavior and initiate a wage-price cycle. This may entail prolonged upward movement in inflation in general and, accordingly, the high costs associated with this. Therefore, to be able to contain the potential second-round effects due rises in commodity prices, it is important for central bankers to pay close attention to core inflation indicators and inflation expectations, and shape their communication policy in this direction. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  We, as the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT), are also in the position to carry out the abovementioned analyses. As a matter of fact, in our Inflation reports as well as the Summary of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meetings, we share with the public, our assessment of the nature of commodity price changes. In the Inflation Report published in January 2012, we made the following assessment on oil prices: “Another risk factor in the forthcoming period is the uncertainty regarding oil prices. Although the weak course of the global economy dampens commodity prices, recent manifesting problems regarding oil supply pose upside risk to energy prices.