samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
I would like to describe in more detail our communication strategy for monetary policy. The information provided in our Monetary Policy Report is only part of that communication. The preparation that leads up to its publication is a vital component of our work, demanding great dedication, discussion, interaction and reflection on the current state of the economy and the outlook for inflation. The Board and staff meet at least six times in the course of five weeks and there are presentations of special topics, a great many bilateral meetings and draft reports are revised and discussed at length prior to publication. Therefore in this process the board members form their opinion on the determinants of inflation and how monetary policy should evolve. This kind of reporting was introduced by the Bank of England in 1993 and is a common practice among central banks that have inflation target regimes. Today a great number of banks publish inflation reports and in a survey carried out by Fracasso et al. (2003) our Monetary Policy Report was classified in 5th place out of a sample of twenty such reports, the Bank of England’s being judged the best. To provide a basis for discussions on monetary policy, the Board decides which are the key variables of the most likely economic scenario. The projections for these variables derive from sources considered to be the most realistic and widely accepted.

In the case of Chile, this duty to impart information is stipulated in the Central Bank’s Constitutional Organic Law which mandates that once a year the Bank must inform the President of the Republic and the Senate about its deliberations and developments. This takes place in September when the Central Bank Board presents its Monetary Policy Report to the Senate. Nevertheless, the Central Bank of Chile goes beyond this requirement and reports not only to the Senate in September but also presents a monetary policy report to the Senate’s Finance Committee in January and again in May. The same happens with the Financial Stability Report which is published in January and June each year. Similarly, the Bank gives an account of its management of international reserves once a year as part of its Annual Report. However, this is not enough. The legitimacy of the Central Bank is upheld by direct, open, and non-excluding communication with the general public and so these documents are uploaded on the Bank’s website at the same time as they are being presented. Moreover, the Bank issues other reports, communications, minutes, specialized studies and statistics, all of which are available to the public. There are also press conferences and interviews with Bank board members and staff. The time when the workings of central banks were something complex and mysterious has also passed. We want the community to understand our work since it consists of providing a public good – stability – which enables the country to progress.
Here in Morocco, we have just completed our national strategy for financial inclusion, which will be discussed in the appropriate panel. As for regulation, we are now called to leave room for creativity and Fintech development, but at the same time, preserve and strengthen resilience of our financial systems, and protect consumers and enterprises, particularly smaller ones. To guarantee such a difficult equilibrium, risks shall be identified and classified, and the potential impacts of innovation and of the new financial activities shall be foreseen. Sometimes, central banks are required to resort to interim solutions in the absence of statutory powers, as is the case for crypto-assets. In fact, to deal with this issue, which arose in Morocco in 2017, we chose to approach it from the consumer protection angle to attract attention to the risks involved. Still, it should be made clear that we have not taken a final position on the issue. Moreover, as enterprises, we are also called to adapt ourselves to this digital transformation, starting with strengthening the capacity of our human resources in this field and reinforcing our infrastructures, mainly the information systems whose resilience to cyber criminality has become a daily concern. 9  In this regard, and as part of our 2019-2023 strategic plan, we conducted a thorough reflection in Bank Al-Maghrib and have just drawn up a roadmap for our own digital transformation.

Here again, estimates vary from one study to the other, and all agree on the same finding: a huge potential is still there to exploit. This being said, risks in the financial sector are the most varied and most important, especially in terms of money laundering, financing terrorism, cyber security, as well as protecting customers and personal data. Such risks have become major concerns both at the national and international level. For us, central banks in particular, the changes brought by the Fintech challenge us in several aspects, namely in our core functions. Now, even the monopoly of issuing currency is exposed, leading some central banks to consider the option of issuing a digital currency, and therefore reduce the costs related to conventional banknotes’ production and use, and minimize the insecurity risks involved. 6  Among the other fields concerned is financial supervision. This area is now gradually expanding as new actors and financial products have emerged, which can certainly affect monetary policy transmission. Ladies and gentlemen, The digital transformation we are facing today is primarily driven by operators and private companies that continue to invest heavily in this area and seize the opportunities and the potential it offers. Considering the important economic, financial and social implications of such a revolution, public authorities are compelled to set an adequate legal framework and provide an environment  conducive  to  technological  innovations  and  Fintech  development.
At the same time, the APP is said to have withdrawn increasing volumes of high-quality liquid collateral from the market, exacerbating pricing tensions, especially for special bonds. 1/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  While monetary policy may, in some circumstances, exacerbate repo market tensions, I believe it to be far from the only factor at play today, or indeed the most important one. The situation in the repo market today in fact reflects a confluence of longer-term trends that have affected both the supply and demand for good collateral. I will review some of these trends in a moment. Before doing so, I would like to recall an important point. Our mandate is clear: to deliver price stability. This is our primary objective and the sole orientation for our policy. What we aim to do is to act in a way that is necessary, proportionate and that limits side-effects. This is why we have designed our programmes in such a way as to deliver our objective without creating excessive distortions in market functioning and price discovery. And it is also why we have taken measures to mitigate some effects of our measures on repo markets. These measure, too, are governed by the principle that they must be necessary and proportionate, as well as not being in conflict with our price stability mandate.

With respect to individual countries, we should continue working to strengthen the bilateral surveillance process. While focused on the country at hand, it would be important that bilateral surveillance be fully-informed by regional and global perspectives as well. Systemically important countries will clearly continue to deserve special attention. Operationally, our respective country teams will remain the focal points for our activities in individual members. At the same time, country teams will continue to draw upon specialized expertise where necessary, from both inside and outside of the Fund. To maintain overall coherence, it would be important for efforts to continue in the integration and sharing of information among country teams and specialized experts. Second, our work in financial sectors and capital markets. The IMF is the one international organization capable of carrying out financial sector surveillance universally and comprehensively. Further efforts will be needed to realize this potential, not least by deepening the IMF’s role in anticipating sources of instability in national and global financial markets, and in generating timely action to address them. The IMF will continue to help countries strengthen their financial sectors, including in following up on the findings of the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) exercises. One important aspect of this will be to help members adapt their prudential and administrative frameworks to benefit more from private capital flows.
In the UK, where the annual increase in house prices amounted to approximately 4 per cent the second quarter this year, the ratio of debt to disposable income is around 150 per cent. In Sweden, house prices have more than doubled in the past decade, with a par-ticularly strong increase in metropolitan regions. Part of the explanation is that household incomes have also risen rapidly in this period. It is reasonable to assume that house prices follow income in the long run. What gives some cause for concern is that house prices and household debt have both been rising very much faster than income and have continued to do so this year. At the end of the second quarter this year, house prices had risen by more than 7 per cent and house-hold debt by over 10 per cent compared with a year ago. Since 1995, house prices and debt have both risen over 40 per cent more than income. The pertinent issues have mainly been whether there are “bubbles” in the housing market in the sense that house prices have deviated markedly from what can be motivated by underlying factors such as disposable income and interest rate costs, and whether households have taken on too much debt in relation to their future ability to pay. Another question that has come up in recent years in Sweden, as well as in England and elsewhere, is why the strong credit growth and rising house prices have not been accompanied by increased consumption.

30 November 2017  Speech on the 60th Anniversary of the National Association of Specialised Lending Institutions (ASNEF) Luis M. Linde Governor  Good evening everyone. It is a pleasure for me to take part in this celebration of the 60th anniversary of the National Association of Specialised Lending Institutions. As your president, Fernando Casero, has just mentioned, throughout its history your Association has played a very important role in promoting and enhancing consumer lending, which is a key factor in driving economic growth. Indeed, consumer lending has a series of characteristics that make it especially relevant both for the financial system and economic activity. On the one hand, it is highly cyclical and is, therefore, a leading indicator of confidence among both consumers and financial institutions. On the other, it generally leads the way in terms of adaptation to innovation. As is well known, in the past consumer lending played an important part in the expansion of credit cards, and more recently it has been at the forefront of the incorporation of new technologies. In the expansionary phase that began after 2000, consumer lending grew rapidly in Spain, reaching a balance outstanding of € billion in mid-2008. The financial crisis reduced these figures, down to almost half that amount by early 2015. Since then, in keeping with the economic recovery, consumer lending has been very dynamic.
Therefore, assuming that supply shocks gradually fade out over time, headline inflation is expected to decelerate. BIS Review 62/2008  7  Figure 10: Output Gap 8 6 4 2 0 -2 -4 -6 -8 2008-I  2007-III  2007-I  2006-III  2006-I  2005-III  2005-I  2004-III  2004-I  2003-III  2003-I  2002-III  2002-I  2001-III  2001-I  2000-I  2000-III  -10  Source: CBT. Distinguished Members of the Press, The domestic currency has depreciated by more than 15 percent in nominal terms since the beginning of the year. Notwithstanding the expected deceleration in the core inflation indicators in the medium term, the first round impacts of the exchange rate pass-through may be significant in the short term (Figure 11). Figure 11: Risk Premium and Nominal Exchange Rates 2  400 YTL/Currency Basket (0.5 Euro+O.5 US Dollar)  1.9  350  EMBI+Turkey (right axis)  04/08  03/08  02/08  01/08  12/07  0 11/07  1.2 10/07  50  09/07  1.3  08/07  100  07/07  1.4  06/07  150  05/07  1.5  04/07  200  03/07  1.6  02/07  250  01/07  1.7  12/06  300  11/06  1.8  Source: CBT, Bloomberg. 8  BIS Review 62/2008  Longer term interest rates have increased lately due to the rising risk premium (Figure 12).

During the same period, the average inflation in emerging market economies with inflation targeting rose from 3.4 percent to 6.1 percent. Figure 6: S&P Goldman Sachs Commodity Price Indices  750  550  Commodity Prices Metal Prices Energy Prices (right axis) Agricultural Prices (right axis)  675  450  600 525  350  450  5  250  375  3/12/2008  11/14/2007  24-07-2007  29-03-2007  01-12-2006  09-08-2006  150 17-04-2006  300  Source: Goldman Sachs. Figure 7: Inflation in Other Countries a. Inflation Rates  b.Diff. Between Turkey and Other Emerg. IT’ers*  9  Developed Economies Developing Economies Turkey  02.08  12.07  10.07  08.07  06.07  04.07  02.07  12.06  10.06  08.06  06.06  01.08  11.07  2  09.07  0 07.07  3  05.07  2 03.07  4  01.07  4  11.06  5  09.06  6  07.06  6  05.06  8  03.06  7  01.06  10  04.06  8  02.06  12  12.05  14  *Sample of emerging economies under inflation targeting covers Brazil, Czech Republic, Colombia, Philippines, South Africa, Israel, Hungary, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Romania, Chile, Slovakia and Thailand. Source: Web sites of central banks, IFS, TURKSTAT, CBT  BIS Review 62/2008  5  2.
To offset the impact of a shock on RPIX inflation in less than a year or so might imply undesirable volatility in output. BIS Review 63/1999  4  Hence the MPC has been given “constrained discretion” concerning the horizon over which it tries to bring inflation back to the target level. The appropriate horizon depends, in general, on the type and persistence of the shock. There is no simple rule to determine the appropriate horizon. It depends on the nature of the shocks. That is why the MPC spends so much time trying to unravel recent economic history. On average, since shocks may take several months to have their full effect, a horizon of about two years is a reasonable one over which to bring inflation back to its target. But if shocks are sufficiently large – in either direction – then it may be sensible to aim to bring inflation back to the target level over a somewhat different horizon. In such circumstances, the MPC would make that clear both in the minutes of its meetings and in the Inflation Report, and, if required, in an open letter to the Chancellor. Common objectives versus individual accountability During its first two years, the MPC has had to develop a modus vivendi to manage the potential tension between operating as a team with a common objective, on the one hand, and the requirement for individual accountability of its members, on the other.

There is no doubt that in the past few years saving has been particularly high in the Asian economies. In part, this reflects their wish to build up large balances in US dollars to protect themselves from financial crises that several of them experienced in the 1990’s, and also to maintain competitive exchange rates to allow export industries to absorb surplus labour. For example, although China invests an extraordinary 45% of its national income each year, it saves even more than this - 49% of national income in 2004. The resulting current account surpluses have been saved overseas, much of them in US government bonds. So, rather surprisingly, capital is flowing from some of the poorest countries of the world to some of the richest. Moreover, the rise in oil prices has raised the incomes of oil-producing countries, which have also chosen to save much of their additional revenues in overseas financial assets. Those surplus savings have depressed long-term real interest rates. In the industrialised world, consumers have realised that this is a good time to borrow and spend, resulting in the “imbalances” evident in the current account deficits of both the US and the UK. Whether long-term real rates around 1% are sustainable is an interesting question, and that uncertainty poses serious questions for monetary policy. On the one hand, the increased propensity to save across the world could start to unwind.
With the decline in global demand, prices for food, raw materials and oil have fallen sharply. This is the positive flipside of the coin, since this development will boost real incomes and consumption in most countries. Swiss economic outlook The Swiss economy is of course affected by this worsening of the international environment. At our September assessment, we were still projecting a marked slowdown in activity, but with growth remaining positive in 2009. We are now forecasting that GDP growth will be negative, not only during the first two quarters of next year, but also on average for 2009 as a whole. With the probable exception of consumption, all demand components should decline. Exports of equipment goods, demand for which is known to be cyclical, will be affected. In most countries, difficulties in sales and distribution, on the one hand, and restrictions on lending conditions, on the other hand, have prompted a downward revision of investment plans. The US and Europe are cases in point, but a loss of momentum is also being observed in emerging markets. These developments will weigh heavily on our exports of equipment and intermediate goods. The substantial decline in demand for vehicles made by US and European manufacturers will also impact on their Swiss-based suppliers. The metals, machinery and electronics industry was the first to experience a sharp correction in new orders. The worsening outlook for sales will lead to an adjustment of investment plans in Switzerland as well.

You may recall, for instance, that the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision was created in 1974, in the wake of the mistrust triggered by the bankruptcy of the German bank Hersttat; that the Financial Stability Forum was set up in 1999, following the bankruptcy some months earlier of the hedge fund “Long Term Capital Management”; and that the successor to this forum, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), came into being in 2009, after the Lehman Brothers debacle some months earlier. It is this latter institution, the FSB, which is pushing through a thoroughgoing amendment of the international regulatory framework, seeking to reduce the likelihood of further crises in the future. In this connection, the FSB has benefited from decisive contributions by, among others, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Identification of initiatives on the international regulatory agenda Initially, the FSB identified a series of issues with a view to organising a coordinated agenda of regulatory initiatives at the international level. Some aspects of the initial analysis, such as the design of structural measures in the banking sector (which were, in principle, highly oriented towards setting limits on the size of banks), were initially rejected by the FSB. However, as we now know, there have been several initiatives along these lines. Cases in point are the Volcker Rule in the United States, or the measures in the Vickers Report in the case of the United Kingdom.
In addition, financial integration enhances competition in each locality since savers and investors are not constrained to deal only with local suppliers of financial services, but can search for the most efficient supplier in the entire integrated area. 6. It is uncontroversial to suggest that financial integration within a given jurisdiction will be beneficial for the economy as a whole. Few would question that financial integration within the United States, for example, has made a positive contribution to that country’s economy. And, I am sure that the increasingly comprehensive financial linkages across provinces in Mainland China, would make the mobilisation of the high savings and the allocation of capital there more efficient, leading to sustained economic dynamism. But the benefits of financial integration need not occur only within a single jurisdiction. Observing from afar the process of economic integration in Europe, it is clear to me that financial integration across national borders will make a positive contribution to the region’s economic development. But I shall leave it to other speakers in our conference, particularly those with first-hand experience in Europe, to elaborate on that point. 7. Here in Asia, financial integration across economies has not proceeded as far as within either North America or Europe, even though the degree of economic, in particular trade, integration within the region has been rising sharply. As I have pointed out elsewhere, in the financial sphere Asian economies are less integrated with each other than with economies in the rest of the world.

Christine Lagarde: ECB press conference - introductory statement Introductory statement by Ms Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, and Mr Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, Frankfurt am Main, 9 September 2021. * * * Good afternoon, the Vice-President and I welcome you to our press conference. The rebound phase in the recovery of the euro area economy is increasingly advanced. Output is expected to exceed its pre-pandemic level by the end of the year. With more than 70 per cent of European adults fully vaccinated, the economy has largely reopened, allowing consumers to spend more and companies to increase production. While rising immunity to the coronavirus means that the impact of the pandemic is now less severe, the global spread of the Delta variant could yet delay the full reopening of the economy. The current increase in inflation is expected to be largely temporary and underlying price pressures are building up only slowly. The inflation outlook in our new staff projections has been revised slightly upwards, but in the medium term inflation is foreseen to remain well below our two per cent target. Financing conditions for firms, households and the public sector have remained favourable since our previous quarterly assessment in June. Favourable financing conditions are essential for the economy to continue its recovery and to offset the negative impact of the pandemic on inflation.