samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
We deem that the implemented policies and the undertaken measures have served to promoting monetary and financial stability, by contributing to safeguarding the economic and financial balances, necessary for sustainable economic growth. *** Following, I will briefly summarise the work of the Bank of Albania regarding the promotion and development of the payment system. 4. Functioning of safe and efficient payment systems In the framework of strengthening the payment systems and payment instruments oversight, the Bank of Albania has worked to align the regulatory base to the international standards that guarantee the security and promote the efficiency of payment systems. A huge amount of work has been done to compile the draft-law on Payment Services, which approximates the EU’s Payment Services Directive. The implementation of this directive is expected to considerably contribute to improving the security and efficiency of payment services through promoting competitiveness, strengthening transparency and clearly defining the rights and obligations of these services’ providers and consumers. Also, it addresses the risks arising from technological novelties (Fin-Tech) in payment services. Currently, the Bank of Albania is in the consulting and finalising process of the draft-law. The approval of this draft-law is an important step towards the implementation of the European Commission recommendations for the free movement of capital and for the adherence to the Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA). The Bank of Albania also has the role of payment systems’ reformer.

These meetings enabled the members of the Committee to learn about the internal control systems and risk management procedures. Upon the proposal of the Inspector General, and following consultations at the Audit Committee, the Supervisory Council approved, for the first time, the level of tolerance to the operational risk at the Bank of Albania. The activity of the Supervisory Council has been faithfully published in our periodic press releases. 2. Monetary Policy of the Bank of Albania The monetary policy decision making is based on a comprehensive, consistent and transparent set of macroeconomic analyses and forecasts. They are supported by the whole range of information available at the time of decision making, and the expertise and judgement of the Bank’s experts on the trends of economic development and the monetary policy pass-through mechanism. I will elaborate on the underlying reasons of our decision making to maintain the accommodative monetary policy stance in 2017 and the assessment of its effects on the economy in the following. 2.1 Economic developments and monetary policy in 2017 The Albanian economy performed positively throughout 2017. The volume of economic activity trended upward, spare capacities in the labour market reduced, while the main indicators of economic and financial stability improved. Following are presented a few figures to illustrate it. According to Instat statistics, the volume of economic activity grew 3.8% in 2017, registering a positive dynamics compared to 2.2% and 3.4% growth in 2015 and 2016. The economic activity expanded on a broad base.
On the contrary, lack of discipline has been inherent in the system. Confidence in monetary policy and general economic policy has been strong in the area and thanks to this confidence – and as free riders – countries have been able to raise loans at low interest rates. A committee headed by Herman Van Rompuey, President of the European Council, is assessing how coordination and monitoring of EU economic policy in the various countries can be improved. The goal is to reduce deficits and at the same time ensure that conditions are favourable for future economic growth. Without stretching the comparison too far, management of public finances in euro area countries can perhaps be compared to the management of Norwegian counties and municipalities. Under the law, they cannot go bankrupt. The government stands behind them. They have access to funding markets and can make use of the Norwegian central government’s creditworthiness. There is an obvious temptation here to borrow too much – to act as free riders – that is reminiscent of the temptation faced by the euro area states. But the Norwegian system is balanced. If local government administrations in Norway borrow too much, the central government intervenes. Municipalities and counties with a budget imbalance must apply to the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development for approval when decisions are made on borrowing or long-term leasing agreements. The county governor, as representative of the state, supervises the municipalities.

The aim of the policy of gold parity in the 1920s was to bring the krone back to the value prevailing before World War I: “Our monetary regime is enshrined in law. (…) The regime is anchored in our legal system, which we cannot break down. Inherent therein is a moral obligation to restore the monetary  8  For more discussion of the IMF proposal, see Pål Winje (2002): “Gjeldsordning for land (Sovereign debt restructuring)”, Penger og Kreditt 4/2002, Norges Bank. 9  Henrik Bahr (1962): “ Høyesteretts dom i gullklausulsaken (The Supreme Court’s ruling in the gold clause case)”, Lov og Rett, Norsk Juridisk Tidsskrift, No. 5. See also Jan F. Qvigstad (2008): “On keeping promises”, 11 November 2008. BIS Review 123/2010  5  system to its previous condition. (…) This is a question of fundamental importance to the nation through time. The difficulties that arise in connection with the transition to normal, legal conditions are transient. No one can close his eyes to the fact they are very serious. But the life of the people is eternal and this involves a decision of significance across generations.” 10 4. What is a sustainable sovereign debt load? A debt level that is high in one country can be sustainable for another. When Norway experienced payment difficulties in 1816, government debt stood at 6 million speciedaler, or about NOK 700 million at today’s value of the krone, and was probably considerably smaller than annual GDP in the country at that time.
In the United States, energy commodities represent 3.5% of the CPI, while total energy is weighted with 7.1%. Traditionally, changes in oil prices fed through to the Swiss CPI slowly. A survey of the data between 1984 and 1996 reveals that oil prices and the CPI were still positively correlated after two years. Since 1997, a change in oil prices seems to affect the CPI more rapidly. The transmission is virtually complete after a mere six to twelve months. While the speed of the pass through from oil prices to the CPI has nearly doubled, the magnitude of the transmission has declined (see Graph 9). Integrated global capital and goods markets have increased competition and led to a generalized reduction in pricing power. In a fiercely competitive environment, producers find it difficult to transfer higher oil prices to consumers. Ongoing competitive pressures and further globalization constitute barriers to incorporating higher oil prices in the price- and wage-setting behavior. A credible central bank with a long-term record of price stability is an additional key parameter ensuring that higher oil prices do not spill over into elevated longer-term inflation expectations. Given the rapid pass through from changes in the price of oil to the CPI, headline inflation figures are subject to frequent base effect related distortions. As a result, various core inflation measures become more important. These reflect the longer-term price dynamics in an economy.

For the time being, the UK has conducted a referendum and triggered Article 50 but doesn’t leave the European Union until March next year: there are no tariff or trade barriers. Yet the pound fell immediately after the referendum result in anticipation of more difficult external trading conditions in the future; this has substantially hurt the purchasing power of UK households. Business investment slowed down – as apparently it has in Canada due to NAFTA uncertainty. The Bank of England estimates that UK real GDP is already 1¾-2% lower than it otherwise would be as a result of Brexit. Fiscal policy Uncertainty about fiscal policy in many advanced economies is a second source of policyinduced uncertainty. Public debt has risen significantly since the Great Recession. Average gross government debt in the Euro Area rose from around 65% of GDP in 2007 to peak at over 90% in 2014 and is currently still over 85%, despite the fact that primary balances have improved on average across the Euro Area. The macroeconomic costs of fiscal uncertainty can be felt even without an actual sovereign debt crisis. Risk premia increase and raise the cost of borrowing but without any riskadjusted increase in return for savers. The risks of fiscal uncertainty are highly non-linear and one could almost say binary due to the reaction function of financial markets, as we have seen since 2010 in the Euro-zone. Below a certain threshold, fiscal uncertainty has very limited effects on sovereign borrowing spreads or economic activity.
Well-judged adjustments in the interest rate can ensure a stable development of inflation in the long term. In addition, monetary policy can, at best, contribute to alleviating cyclical fluctuations in production and unemployment. However, the interest rate is much too blunt an instrument to be able to fine-tune the economy to any great extent. Secondly, a production target or employment target would only be purposeful if we were fairly sure how large the growth potential of the economy was and what level of employment represented some form of equilibrium. In practice, it is not possible to determine this with any great precision. Both potential growth and employment vary over time with structural changes in the economy in ways that are difficult to quantify. BIS Review 17/2007  3  Thirdly, an extra difficulty in this context is that the picture of how the economy develops changes over time as statistics are revised. This applies in particular to GDP statistics. It becomes particularly clear how difficult it would be for the Riksbank to have a target for productivity growth if one looks at how the statistics were revised at the end of 2004 and beginning of 2005. The information available at the beginning of 2005 indicated a fairly clear slowdown in production growth. Later on in 2005 the picture of a slowdown in the growth of the economy was confirmed, but it then appeared to have a more prolonged course of events.

Furthermore, some areas of the financial system are still not yet adequately covered by regulation, for example leverage in the non-bank financial sector. In my remarks today, I would like to elaborate on the interaction between monetary policy and macroprudential policy. I will first review the conceptual framework for monetary policy and financial stability and then look at how, at this stage of the cycle, macroprudential policy and monetary policy can best complement each other in the pursuit of their respective objectives. Monetary policy and financial stability Price stability and financial stability are tightly interconnected and mutually reinforcing; in the longer-term, each is a necessary – but not sufficient – condition for the other. Price stability contributes to the efficient allocation of resources in the real economy, thereby supporting longterm growth. A stronger and more stable macroeconomic environment contributes to healthy household and business balance sheets, thereby fostering financial stability. However, history abounds with cases where financial vulnerabilities were built up in good times, while market participants overly discounted the likelihood of adverse shocks. Financial instability is basically the result of market failures, which should be addressed by regulation (covering the time and cross-section dimensions of financial stability). Deficient regulation can lead to excessive leverage and maturity transformation, which may in turn result in funding fragilities and systemic vulnerability.
In his article, "Less is more" for the IMF's magazine, Professor at the University of Chicago and former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India Raghuram Rajan said: "Central banks have constrained their own policy space with asymmetric and unconventional policies, ostensibly intended to deal with the policy rate touching the lower bound. They have triggered a variety of imbalances that are making fighting inflation harder today." More purposeful and less interventionist central banks would probably do better than a high-inflation, high-debt, low-growth world (Rajan, 2023). For central banks, less can mean more. Therefore, our strategy in the Czech Republic is "higher for longer", i.e. to maintain interest rates at higher levels for longer. Regarding government debt, I stated that monetary policy is at its tightest in 20 years and is slowing the economy. A problem arises if the government helps the economy with subsidies, supports and contributions at the same time. This counters our fight against inflation and the economy is not dampened as much as it should be. Therefore, the CNB must consider the following: Should we start competing with the government and dampen the economy by, for example, increasing rates? Should we further push down demand, just to have it subsequently fostered by the government with some kind of supports or subsidies? And so on ... it is a vicious circle. It would be better if both policies were anti-inflationary at the same time.

Negative real interest rate not unusual Per cent 40  40 Real short-term interest rate Nominal short-term interest rate  30  30  20  20  10  10  0  0  -10  -10  -20  -20  -30  -30  -40 1900  -40 1919  1939  1959  1979  1999  Note. The real interest rate is calculated using series for the nominal interest rate and inflation/inflation expectations. For the nominal interest rates, annual data from historical monetary statistics is used for the period 1900-1918, while the Riksbank's discount rate is used for the period 1919-1983 and after that the rate on a threemonth treasury bill is used. For inflation/inflation expectations, annual data from historical monetary statistics is used for the period 1900-1918, the cost-of-living index/CPI from Statistics Sweden is used for 1919-1979 and after that inflation expectations in the household sector for one year ahead, as calculated by the National Institute of Economic Research. Sources: National Institute of Economic Research, Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  15 [20]  Figure 4. Good profitability in Swedish banks Return on equity, rolling four quarters, per cent  Note. Unweighted mean value. The red line refers to a selection of major European banks. Sources: The banks’ interim reports and SNL Financial Figure 5. Positive sentiment in household and corporate sectors Index, mean = 100, standard deviation = 10  Source: National Institute of Economic Research  16 [20]  Figure 6.
Bastiat opined, “There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.”14 The same might be said of regulators. As regulators grapple with implementation of the voluminous Dodd–Frank reform act, the unforeseen must be taken into account. The law of unintended consequences is always lurking in the shadows. To get regulatory reform right, we have a lot of “foreseeing” to do. One can envision, for example, that the potential cumulative impact of the many regulations demanded by Dodd–Frank will be to artificially raise the cost structure of the non-too-big-tofail depository institutions. Imposition of the new requirements and restrictions risks creating new economies of scale in banking generated by the costs of regulatory compliance, many of which could be fixed costs not fully proportional to bank size. To the extent that a large scale becomes necessary to absorb the regulatory cost associated with reform, Dodd–Frank could intensify the tendency toward bank consolidation, resulting in a more concentrated industry, with the largest institutions predominating even more than in the past. Such an outcome would appear to me contrary to the stated spirit and goal of the act. A more consolidated industry would only magnify the challenge of dealing with systemically important institutions and offsetting their historically elevated too-big-to-fail status.

Richard W Fisher: Containing (or restraining) systemic risk – the need to not fail on “too big to fail” Remarks by Mr Richard W Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, before the Market News International Seminar, New York, 6 June 2011. *  *  *  The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve System. Thank you for that kind introduction. This discerning audience no doubt noted that despite being overeducated, I am not a formally trained economist. I do not have a Ph.D. in economics; those who do will correctly deduce that I am somewhat “dismal” in comprehending the arcana of “the Dismal Science.” After my undergraduate education in economics and my studies at Oxford, I took a different path. I earned an MBA and then went to Wall Street and into funds management before cashing out and taking to public service. My perspective on monetary policy and regulation is shaped less by theory and more by my experience as a market operator. I confess that in matters of monetary policy and regulation, I am often in the minority. This does not make me the least bit uncomfortable. The majority opinion is not always right; indeed, my experience as an investor has biased me to conclude that more often than not, the consensus view is the wrong view, even among the most erudite.
Second, latest data show that net private transfers are lower then projected in conditions of growing demand for foreign exchange on the currency exchange market and of changes in the currency structure of the deposit potential. Third, certain indicative categories (stock exchange data on foreign investors' activities, developments of the net foreign assets of banks) indicate high probability of obtaining lower then expected capital inflows, which is consistent with more of global limitations on external financing. Figure 4 Dynamics of exports and imports of goods (annual changes)  4  BIS Review 60/2009  IV. Presented trends from our economy undoubtfully confirm and justify the additional reaction of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia. As I stated, the reaction is towards the further tightening of the monetary policy. The characteristics of our economy and of the monetary strategy deriving from it, whose central objective is maintaining the foreign exchange stability, make the requests for undertaking anticrisis measures similar to those of the developed countries, inappropriate and with no foundation. Therefore, we constantly repeat.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: New opportunities for growth and development in Islamic financial markets Speech by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the official ceremony for the completion of the Share Subscription Agreement between BIMB Holdings Berhad, Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad, Dubai Financial LLC & Lembaga Tabung Haji, Kuala Lumpur, 16 October 2006. *  *  *  This occasion marks the successful completion of the share subscription agreement between BIMB Holdings Berhad, Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad, Dubai Financial Limited Liability Company (LLC) and Lembaga Tabung Haji. It also sets a new chapter in Bank Islam's drive to chart its future direction in meeting new challenges and in exploiting the new opportunities for growth and development in the Islamic financial markets, both in the domestic and global market place. The participation of such key foreign and local institutions in the new share issuance by Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad signifies an important turning point in the history of Bank Islam which has been the pioneer Islamic bank in Malaysia. The partnership between BIMB Holdings Berhad, Dubai Financial LLC and Lembaga Tabung Haji is significant in several important ways. Firstly, it reflects the confidence and trust that international and domestic investors have in the investment and business climate in Malaysia, and in the Malaysian Islamic financial sector in particular.
Norwegian businesses are part of global value chains. This means that protectionist measures can spill over into the Norwegian economy even if Norway is not targeted. The international framework and trade agreements we have with other countries are essential to the Norwegian economy. The EEA agreement is of particular importance. Thanks to the free flow of goods, services, labour and capital within the EEA area, Norway’s domestic market is about 100 times bigger than it would have been otherwise. A good half of our trade with other countries is with EU countries (Chart 5). Common regulations and product standardisation facilitate market access for Norwegian firms. 1 Based on GDP at market rates. 6  NORGES BANK  Chart 5 We trade mostly with the EU. Goods and services. In billions of NOK. 2017 EU  US  China  ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES 14 FEBRUARY 2019  Other countries  Exports  Imports  0  200  400  600  800  1000  1200  Sources: Statistics Norway and Norges Bank  Norwegian business and industry may soon feel the consequences of Brexit. The UK is an important trading partner. The UK’s exit from the EU means it will also exit the EEA agreement, creating uncertainty for many firms. At the same time, international economic cooperation is creaking. In the years ahead, the multilateral trade system is at risk of being undermined, which may leave us with a more fragmented system. This may adversely affect small countries in particular.

2018  Exports  Oil and gas1) Fish Other goods  Imports  0  200  400  600  800  1000  1) Includes refined oil products. Sources: Statistics Norway and Norges Bank  Access to capital and technology abroad has enabled us to develop new industries based on domestic natural resources. Hydropower and the oil industry are prime examples. We now invest our petroleum wealth in capital markets. The Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) allows Norway to take a share in global value added. It gives us a cushion and helps trim the Norwegian state’s dependence on domestic economic developments. We need other countries – more than they need us. The foundation for today’s global trade cooperation was laid in the years following the Second World War. Institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank fostered closer economic cooperation between countries. The ratification of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) marked the beginning of a gradual reduction of tariff barriers, which culminated in a rule-based, multinational trade system under the aegis of the World Trade Organization (WTO). History has shown that the trend towards a more open and liberal world order can reverse, as seen in the interwar period. This may now be happening again. Brexit, the UK’s exit from the EU, may take place a few weeks from now, and is the first major setback for European integration in several decades. The scaling back of tariffs has stopped, and new tariff barriers are being erected.