samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
13 If it is considered important to influence market expectations in a certain way, I believe that it is normally easier to achieve this using well-considered communication, for example in the form of more or less forceful statements from the Executive Board about future interest rate policy, rather than in the form of bond purchases. … but increased likelihood of unconventional monetary policy in times of economic slowdown When the acute phases of the financial crisis began in the autumn of 2008, the Riksbank owned no domestic bonds. As a result, the Riksbank found it difficult to quickly intervene on the market with appropriate support measures. A lesson learnt from this episode was that the Riksbank needed to have preparedness in order to be able to act on the bond market in special situations. Such preparedness presupposes that the Riksbank maintains at least a small portfolio of government bonds in order to have the necessary systems, agreements and knowledge in place. The Riksbank therefore built up a government bond portfolio in 2012– 2013. 14 This justification for maintaining a bond portfolio is still relevant. A future reduction of the Riksbank’s bond holdings will therefore most likely not result in a complete phasing out of the portfolio. But the bond portfolio built up in 2012–2013 was small in relation to the one built up for monetary policy purposes. Bond purchases in 2012–2013 totalled SEK 10 billion, compared with purchases for monetary policy purposes since 2015 totalling more than SEK 300 billion.

Although that decision will be highly uncertain and subject to intense scrutiny, the strategy guiding the decision – and the primacy of the inflation target within that strategy – should be clear. BIS Review 86/2009  5  4. Conclusion  The inflation target remains a vital pillar of the macroeconomic policy framework and should continue to provide the focus for monetary policy. But there are lessons that need to be learnt from this financial crisis. Good policy frameworks should provide policymakers with the right incentives to take difficult decisions and the right tools to implement those decisions. Inflation targeting goes a long way: the clarity of the objective and the transparency of the regime act as an important discipline on the MPC and short-term interest rates are, for the most part, effective in maintaining a broad balance between nominal demand and supply and so generating low and stable inflation. But they are not well suited to nipping incipient bubbles in the bud and restricting burgeoning imbalances. Policymakers need to make difficult judgements about asset prices and imbalances but they also need effective and efficient tools to enact those judgements. 6  BIS Review 86/2009
The main goal of the Strategy was to achieve universal access to and usage of a broad range of quality and affordable financial services that meet the needs of individuals and enterprises and targets overall financial inclusion of 80% of the adult population by 2022; In 2017, under the National Strategy on Financial Education (phase I) financial education was integrated into both primary and secondary school curriculum; In 2019, phase II of the National Strategy on Financial Education was launched, to address the gaps identified under phase I; and Through the financial literacy campaigns, the number of financial services accounts designed for children increased to more than 20 compared to only 3 at the beginning of 2013. We strongly believe that the formulation and implementation of these national Strategies have provided a robust framework that facilitates effective stakeholder engagement between the Government, financial sector regulators, financial service providers and the general public. This collaboration has resulted in increased public awareness of the availability of financial products and services across the country, therefore contributing to the increase in overall financial inclusion in Zambia from 37.3% in 2009 to 69.4% in 2020. As financial sector regulators and services providers, we are obliged to disseminate information about the different types of services and products that are available to the public as well as some of the risks that maybe associated with them.

Nevertheless, in our collective endeavour to pump the patient with as many drugs and tests  BIS Review 24/2007  1  we could possibly administer (may be because we could avoid law suits relating to professional negligence by doing so! ), a plethora of new rules and regulations have been churned out and these keep being churned out at regular intervals. But, with all that frenzied activity, the vexed question that keeps on haunting stakeholders is: Will today’s regulations suffice to inoculate companies from crises in the future and keep them healthy? Will these rules help to maintain and sustain investors’ trust in companies? Will these laws and regulations help to stimulate institutions instead of stifling them? Will these efforts actually build trust and confidence in the overall system? Of course, we have to readily admit that if not for the quick responses in the aftermath of Enron and others, the damage could have been too much to bear. The repercussions and loss of confidence could have been too serious to contemplate. But, at the same time, a painful truth has also emerged. i.e., that laws, rules, regulations and Codes, by themselves do not ensure good corporate behavior. However powerful and strong the new vaccines appear to be, however effective the treatment seems to be, however professional and keen the doctor tries to be, new diseases will emerge. Some may be minor. But, ever so often, new strains will occur, that will place the system under severe threat.
Is it established, or is it new and unknown technology? We also know that attitudes towards security and operational risk are important. But with tech firms rushing to offer new products to the market, there is the risk of insufficient emphasis on security. This is a risk that must be monitored – not only for new products or for new players, but also for incumbent businesses. Tech giants like Google, Apple, and Alibaba look set to become dominant players. Their advantage comes from providing cross-border services and having already gathered significant information about users. They are already present in the Nordic marketplace. This development may lean towards monopolies, as it can create entry barriers for new and smaller players in the market. If that proves to be the case, it could have a negative impact on competition and go against the aims of the PSD2 (the recent EU Directive on payment services in the internal market (2015/2366). This risk is greater when the payment mechanisms are outside the jurisdiction of the relevant state. Then there is the question of supervision. Will the new solutions be supervised, and if so, how? The challenge here is that many new solutions are global, and thus outside the European Economic Area or the European Single Market. Such supervision thus requires crossborder cooperation among supervisors. The challenge for the supervisor is also to maintain a comprehensive overview of the market.

29 November 2018  Deputy Governor Rannveig Sigurðardóttir. Introductory remarks at the 2nd Annual Nordic Cyber in Finance Conference, Helsinki, 29 November 2018  Let me begin by saying that this conference is both timely and interesting for me, as I have only been in office for five months. Given that I come from the monetary policy department at the Central Bank of Iceland, cybersecurity has not been much on my agenda until now. It is, nonetheless, a very important topic. The Central Bank of Iceland, and other central banks are facing several new challenges in this area, both in the financial sector generally and central banking more specifically. Last week I attended an interesting macroprudential policy conference at Danmarks Nationalbank. The discussion paper prepared for that conference was called While the sun is shining, prepare for a rainy day. Sitting there, I pondered what the discussion paper for this conference today might be called. Perhaps something like The snowstorm is here – what do we wear? Cybercrime is now the world’s fastest-growing type of crime. It has shot up to second place on the list of the top ten business risks worldwide, after not even making the list five years ago. The financial sector is particularly important because it greases the wheels of our economies, and cyber risks pose mounting threats to the financial system. Developments since the emergence of the internet show that new technologies have brought with them new challenges.
So perhaps it is unsurprising that some commentators have found it hard to grasp the subtleties of our forecasts. That has led some to suggest that we publish tables  10  BIS Review 36/2010  of key summary statistics on the same day as our forecasts – the mean, median and mode of the distribution. We fear that if we make such statistics available, all of our hard efforts to communicate the outlook as a whole get washed away in an extreme focus on point estimates. We do not want media commentators to summarise that outlook in a single number, preventing us getting the broader view across. As well as leading to over-simplification, publishing the information can also promote overinterpretation of our forecast. Whilst the fan chart represents the Committee’s probabilistic view of the future, it is important to recognise that it has only incomplete information on that distribution. We therefore should not overplay the particular parametric form of the chart. As a result, it makes little sense to place a lot of weight on particular summary statistics of the distribution. Rather, what the Committee can do is make broad statements – such as “inflation is more likely than not to be above the target”. Being more precise risks overstating the MPC’s degree of knowledge about the distribution. So the MPC’s concern is that early publication of the numerical parameters risks not only trivialising the policymakers’ overall view of the economy, but misrepresenting that view by being overly precise.

The darker shades refer to increasing probability densities at any given point. Of the remaining 10 out of every 100 occasions inflation is expected to lie outside the shaded part of the fan altogether. But the distribution of these tail events is not explicitly specified, as to do so would require a spurious degree of precision on the part of the MPC. The fan chart is designed to communicate specific concepts important to policy. Next, we will illustrate these using the February fan chart. But first, let’s briefly recap the recent history of inflation. Here, you can see that over the past couple of years inflation has been volatile, first rising sharply to around 5% and then falling back recently [Slide 2]. Looking ahead, the MPC felt it was likely that inflation would rise again in the first quarter of this year [Slide 3]. You can see that in this projection the entire 90% of the distribution covered by the shaded fan is higher than the last data point. Remember, though, with 10% of the distribution not specified, the MPC were not ruling out the possibility that inflation might have remained unchanged or fallen. Since this projection was published, new data have been released for inflation in January, shown by the green marker [Slide 4]. This showed that inflation had indeed risen. So it now looks even more likely that inflation in the first quarter of 2010 will be close to the middle of the MPC’s fan chart.
A series of Building Societies Acts between 1836 and 1962 set out the statutory framework under which building societies could operate and gave increasing powers to the Chief Registrar (hereon the “Registry”). Unsurprisingly, and in common with other financial services regulation, these additional powers were often introduced as a result of scandal or crisis in the sector. 29  BSA Building Society Fact Book 1984 9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  9  By 1960, the Registry had the power to call for an inspection of a society, to prevent it from taking deposits and to prohibit it from advertising. During this period, the Registry operated a legalistic framework; indeed, it was a statutory requirement until the late 1970s that the Chief Registrar and the two Assistant Registrars were lawyers. Only following the failure of Grays Building Society in 1978 (where all societies made good the losses that would otherwise have been suffered by Grays’ retail depositors) did we see the first appointment of a non-lawyer as Chief Registrar. With that, a new approach to supervision was adopted, comprising more frequent visits to societies, the receipt of more regular, better quality information from societies, and the recruitment of additional staff to undertake these enhanced supervisory activities. The role of the Registry also evolved to reflect the market conditions of the day.

Indeed, in its first report to Parliament, the BSC made clear that it would complete the shift in supervision (already underway at the Registry) from a 31  reactive approach “to the more positive and forward-looking approach” . In practice, all societies were visited at least once a year (4 or 5 times for the larger ones). There was an annual review meeting with the board; a report would be prepared with the supervisor’s assessment; a letter would be sent to the board outlining actions to be taken forward by the society; management information and strategy documents were reviewed, regulatory returns monitored, and mergers scrutinised. Insurance supervision The other major part of the PRA’s supervisory responsibility is the oversight of insurers. Here our heritage, as for building societies, is from outside the Bank. Indeed, despite the practice of insurance extending all the way back to the era of Babylon, it is only in the past four years that the Bank has played any role in supervising the sector. I will cover this more briefly, only because I have already given a speech devoted 32  entirely to this topic . th  Up until the 19 century, insurers were largely self-regulating and bound by the principle of “freedom with publicity”, the idea that regulation was unnecessary as long as some element of disclosure existed to encourage market discipline. This all changed when the Albert Life Assurance Company went under in 1869 and, in response, the Life Assurance Companies Act 1870 was introduced.
Tukiya Kankasa-Mabula: Modernising Zambia’s payment system Remarks by Dr Tukiya Kankasa-Mabula, Deputy Governor Administration of the Bank of Zambia, at the Ecobank Launch of Financial Products, Lusaka, 16 December 2009. *  *  *  • Members of the Ecobank Zambia Limited Board of Directors present; • The Managing Director of Ecobank Zambia Limited, Mrs Charity Lumpa; • Members of the Diplomatic Corps; • Ecobank Zambia Limited Customers; • Management and Staff of Ecobank Zambia Limited; • Members of the Press; • Distinguished Invited Guests; • Ladies and Gentlemen. It is with great joy and gratitude that I stand to address you at this important launch of the “Ecobank Rapid Transfer” and the “Non-Resident African Account”. I am informed that the two products are designed to transfer money faster and in real time while meeting the needs of customers resident in countries other than those where their accounts are domiciled. I am also pleased that these two products are aimed at promoting the efficient transmission of remittances at an affordable cost. Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to briefly highlight the importance of remittances to our economy. Remittances are increasingly growing to be one of the most important sources of finance in Zambia. Such funds are not simply an expression of fondness by people in the diaspora to assist their families in adverse situations. They also represent an important source of finance that augments capital inflows and investments in the economy.

Formal remittance inflows into the country for the three quarters to September 2009 were estimated at K221 billion. This emphasizes the growing significance of globalisation and thus the need to intensify efforts to improve and establish, an environment that could enhance the impact of remittances and their effectiveness on the economy. Furthermore, remittances when compared to other forms of capital inflows, can have a positive impact not only on the volume but also on the quality of investments. People in the diaspora or their relatives are more familiar with the local economic and social environment and therefore can make a better use of the capital brought into the country. Infact, the recent few years has seen a growing number of Zambians who were in diaspora, returning and trying to set up their own small or medium size businesses, bringing in, not just funds, but also a lot of know-how. The downside to remittances is the possibility of the recipients remaining dependant on money transfers. In Zambia remittances are mainly used to secure daily family needs and to improve life style, as well as to construct or reconstruct houses, and to finance family ceremonies like weddings and funerals. Only a small portion goes into banks as savings. However in order to alleviate poverty, it is important that remittances are utilized in an effective manner that will contribute to economic development. It is therefore imperative that some of these funds are channeled into the financial sector and invested in meaningful projects like real estates, manufacturing and agricultural sectors.
In the retail sector and household service industry, prices are expected to show  2  BIS Review 35/2006  only a moderate rise in the period ahead. In the building and construction industry, there are now more signals of rising prices. Consumer price inflation has edged up, but is still very low even 2½ years after the cyclical change. The year-on-year rise in the consumer price index (CPI) was 2.4 per cent in March. Price impulses from consumer goods that are imported to Norway have been negative in almost all the years since the mid-1990s, reflecting the liberalisation of international trade and the shift in imports towards lowcost countries. The rise in prices for domestically produced goods and services slowed somewhat towards the end of 2005 and into 2006. The 12-month rise in prices for these products is estimated at 1.6 per cent in March adjusted for the effects of lower maximum day-care rates. However, several factors point towards rising inflation. Capacity utilisation in the Norwegian economy is increasing, and tighter labour market conditions may result in higher wage growth in the coming years. The rise in oil prices is resulting in higher input costs for producers. As a rule, monetary policy shall not take account of the direct effects on consumer prices resulting from changes in the interest rate level, taxes, excise duties and extraordinary, temporary disturbances. However, there is no certain method for distinguishing extraordinary, temporary disturbances from more long-lasting price changes.

15.02.2023  Latest monetary policy developments in the euro area Consejo Empresarial Alianza por Iberoamérica (CEAPI) Madrid Pablo Hernández de Cos Go verno r  Ladies and gentlemen, let me begin by thanking Consejo Empresarial Alianza por Iberoamérica for inviting me to address you all. Today I will focus on recent and future monetary policy developments in the euro area. In the first part of my address, I will explain the rationale behind the monetary policy decisions that we adopted in our European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council meeting earlier this month. In the second part, I will lay out a number of factors that will require close monitoring going forward. Our February monetary policy decisions In order to explain the rationale behind our February decisions, it is useful to first go back to our decisions and communication at our December monetary policy meeting. As you may recall, in that meeting we raised our key interest rates by 50 bp. More importantly for the purpose of my address today, we also announced that interest rates would still have to rise significantly at a steady pace to reach levels that are sufficiently restrictive to ensure a timely return of inflation to the 2% medium-term target. The ECB Governing Council’s assessment of the inflation outlook is based on a wealth of information, in which the ECB/Eurosystem staff’s macroeconomic projections – prepared on a quarterly basis – play a prominent role.
Fundamentals that we are not able to disregard include the fact that housing construction is low and has been so for a number of years. A low level of construction, combined with a growing population and a move to metropolitan areas also contribute to a rise in housing prices, and ultimately to an increase in debt. And the conversion of rental properties to tenant-owned properties also contributes to increased debt. A further aspect is that household savings are high and have increased at the same time as debt has increased. But high indebtedness probably means that the economy will be more sensitive to shocks, even if it can be explained by fundamentals. An economic downturn could then be reinforced by households with large debts trying to increase their saving by reducing their consumption. Moreover, we can hardly rule out the possibility that households’ increased indebtedness in recent years has at least partly been caused by unrealistically low expectations of future mortgage rates. In my opinion, it is therefore in principle justified for monetary policy to now take into account the rapid increase in household indebtedness. Risks with a low repo rate A further question is thus in what way monetary policy can lead to financial imbalances building up. International academic research discusses several potential problems that can arise if a central bank holds its policy rate at a low level for a long period of time.

4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  From principle to practice The question is then how the principle of consideration of financial risks and imbalances should be put into practice in monetary policy. How should the balance between the different tasks be managed? When determining this we must consider whether other tools than monetary policy are more suitable for managing financial risks, whether our concerns regarding household debt are justified and what effects monetary policy has on the imbalances and risks that concern us. I do not intend to conduct any deep discussion of the links between monetary policy and other tools today. As expressed by the Riksbank (2010), I note that it is not primarily monetary policy, but an efficient regulatory framework and supervision that is important to prevent financial imbalances. The way in which monetary policy should take into account financial risks may therefore depend on the formulation of the regulatory framework and the supervision. I shall return to this question when I discuss the new framework for macroprudential policy. Household indebtedness is worryingly high Also, I do not wish to get into a detailed discussion now as to whether the concern over rising house prices and household debt in recent decades is justified.5 It is clear to me that we do not fully understand what the underlying factors are. We therefore do not know whether the upturn is largely explained by fundamental factors or whether it reflects imbalances that have built up in the economy.