samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
5  At the time the FOMC was purchasing an additional $ billion a month of longer-dated Treasury securities while selling an equivalent amount of shorter-dated securities under the Maturity Extension Program. 6  While we specified a current monthly pace of purchases the degree of stimulus depends mainly on expectations for the ultimate size of purchases and how long we are expected to hold the assets that we have acquired. 7  This was made clear in the FOMC statement that the Committee expected to reach the unemployment rate threshold at the same time as the earlier date guidance. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  make it clear that short-term rates will not be raised at the first sign of economic improvement, before a sustainable recovery has been secured. As a result, households and businesses should be more confident in undertaking additional spending and investment today. The shift to thresholds-based rate guidance has other benefits. Relative to calendar-based guidance, it provides more information about the economic conditions the Fed would need to see before raising rates.8 Importantly, the shift to thresholds should also make the eventual normalization of monetary policy smoother, a subject I will return to later. But this raises an obvious question. If quantitative thresholds are good for interest rate guidance, why not also have such thresholds for the asset purchase program? There are two reasons.

We have a diverse audience with well-known experts on Islamic finance and market participants who, I am sure, will provide us with a fruitful encounter. Let me thank the IE again for hosting the event and the IFSB and Mr. Jaseem Ahmed for bringing this initiative to Madrid. I wish you all a very successful Forum. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Speculators may observe relevant information about the weaknesses of one particular financial institution or the system as a whole and exploit such information in speculative attacks that target certain assets when the central bank or another institution may have low reserves or liquidity problems. CBDC seems to lead inevitably to the replacement of the classical role of central banks at the top of a tiered liquidity system to that of a massive retailer, where deposit-taking may soon combine with loan-making. For this reason, the experiments with RSCoin at the Bank of England and CAD-Coin at the Bank of Canada take a very cautious approach, aiming at addressing technical issues before any definite step in such direction. This means that a real CBDC may still be many years away.

Ardian Fullani: Recent economic and monetary developments in Albania Speech by Mr Ardian Fullani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the press conference on the Monetary Policy Decision of the Bank of Albania Supervisory Council, Tirana, 29 September 2011. *  *  *  Today, on 29 September 2011, the Supervisory Council of the Bank of Albania reviewed and approved the monthly Monetary Policy Report. Based on the analysis of Albania’s latest economic and financial developments and following discussions on the performance outlook, the Supervisory Council of the Bank of Albania decided to cut the key interest rate by 0.25 percentage points. Following this decision, the interest rate for one week repurchase agreements is 5.00 per cent. This cut in the key interest rate reflects contained inflationary pressures, anchored expectations of economic agents, and a more prudent fiscal policy during the period ahead. The easing of monetary policy aims at providing appropriate monetary conditions to meet the medium-term inflation target and promote economic activity through stimulating consumption and investments in Albania. (Let me now proceed with an overview of economic developments and main issues discussed at today’s meeting of the Supervisory Council.) *** The month of August was characterised by a sharp decline in inflationary pressures. Annual inflation rate was 3.1%, or 0.4 percentage points lower than in July. In addition to decreased foreign price shocks, during this month, inflation contribution on regulated prices dropped and contribution of prices of bread and grains curbed.
The figures for other countries are:  In Canada: 28% of the population answer the three questions correctly. The percentage is 23% for youths aged 18-34. Gap 18-34/total: 82%  In The Netherlands: 34% of the population answer the three questions correctly. The percentage is 26% for youths aged 1834. Gap 18-34/total: 76%.  In the United Kingdom: 14% of the population answer the three questions correctly. The percentage is 11% for youths aged 18-34. Gap 18-34/total: 78%. 4  6  In terms of the specific questions, those showing the biggest differences are that on inflation (compared with 58% of correct answers in the total population, 49.5% of individuals aged 18-34 reply correctly) and that on risk diversification (compared with 49% of correct answers in the total population, 43% of individuals aged 18-34 reply correctly). 7 Specifically, individuals are defined as delegating when, in the Survey, they have answered “No” to the following question: "We wish to know whether you are familiar with your household’s finances. We refer not only to whether you are familiar with the household’s properties, financial products and debts, but also the reasons for specific spending and investment decisions.”  5/8  population, 6% of individuals state they are not familiar with their household’s finances, while this figure triples for youths aged 18-35. These results might be influenced by the high percentage of Spanish youths that live with their parents compared with other developed countries.

SPEECH DATE:  17 June 2020  SPEAKER:  Deputy Governor Henry Ohlsson  VENUE:  riksbank.se  SVERIGES RIKSBANK SE-103 37 Stockholm (Brunkebergstorg 11) Tel +46 8 787 00 00 Fax +46 8 21 05 31 registratorn@riksbank.se www.riksbank.se  Monetary policy during the economic crisis* The economic crisis the world economy is now experiencing is the deepest for many decades. Both demand and supply have declined substantially around the world. Economic policy faces major challenges. Sweden, which is a small open economy, has been severely affected by the reduced economic activity in the world around us. Naturally, we have also been affected by how international economic policy to deal with the crisis has been formulated. I will in this speech highlight three challenges that monetary policy has faced during the spring. These challenges have by no means disappeared, we will continue to deal with them. The first challenge has been that the financial markets function less smoothly during severe economic crises. This has been an important base for the Riksbank's monetary policy during the spring. Monetary policy aims to attain the inflation target. A second challenge at present is that the inflation statistics are difficult to interpret. For instance, there are no prices for many goods and services because there is quite simply no economic activity on these markets. Monetary policy must also be forward looking. Under normal circumstances this means that monetary policy is formulated according to forecasts of future economic developments.
Governments as insurers against aggregate instability: the importance of government balance sheets The Bank has said before and we shall carry on saying that no set of measures introduced by national and international authorities – whether by way of regulation, resolution, or the structure of the financial system; whether leaning against the wind; or all in combination – is certain to prove sufficient to guarantee macroeconomic stability in the decades ahead. The final protection against economic collapse comes from governments – at the expense of their needing to take care about creating incentives for the private sector to take large risks. We have seen that amply demonstrated in this crisis. But, if society wishes, their role as catastrophe insurer can go beyond financial crises; governments can help smooth the adjustment of the economy in the face of any kind of disaster. They do so essentially by accumulating debt and so spreading the burden to future years, future generations. The extent to which they can do so depends on the starting position of their own balance sheets – in other words, their levels of debt relative to their tax-generating capacity, proxied by GDP, before crisis hit. And that means the strength of their balance sheets when a crisis erupts and also prospectively looking forward, so taking account of ageing populations etc. We are familiar with this from that part of our history when we regularly found ourselves at war. Spending, and so government debt to GDP, would balloon.

14  -30 2003  2004  2005  2006  2007  2008  2009  Sources: Bank of England and Dealogic. (a) Rolling three-month flows. (b) Estimated using data on syndicated lending flows. BIS Review 21/2010
Nevertheless, the unemployment rate in New York and New Jersey has risen to levels not seen in almost two decades. In New York City, employment has typically recovered more than a year later than the recovery of national employment and has, in the past, been led by a recovery of Wall Street employment. Although Upstate New York has seen little overall job growth for the past several decades, job losses in this downturn were not as severe as losses for the nation, in part, because the upstate metro areas did not experience a boom-and-bust housing cycle. In addition, Puerto Rico, which is also part of our District, has experienced a considerably longer and deeper downturn than the mainland or this region. Before I continue, it is important to explain the integral role of the Federal Reserve System in regional economies across the country. One of our key responsibilities here at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is to connect the Federal Reserve System to Main Street across our District. Real activity takes place on Main Street in the form of the millions of decisions made every day by households and businesses around the country. When we talk to them, we learn how firms and consumers are experiencing the economy. That essential insight from Main Street informs the policy decisions that we make in pursuit of our goals of stable prices, full employment and financial stability.

We recognize that timely and accurate information about our region, which is highly valuable to us, can also help to reduce uncertainty and inform the economic and financial decisions of regional residents, businesses, communities and governments. To that end, we make our various regional measures and analysis available to the public through our website and a variety of outreach activities. These activities include making presentations on topics of current concern to business and community organizations throughout the District. We welcome you here today to brief you on our views of the current state of activity and employment in the regional economy and to review the rich portfolio of resources that we make available to help monitor economic conditions across the region. 2  BIS Review 49/2010
Last year, the Bank of England subjected UK banks to a sharp slowdown in China, a fall in oil prices and intense market volatility, coupled with stressed estimates of redress costs for past misconduct. Across the system, banks in the test incurred losses of £ That’s over twice the losses of the system in the financial crisis. Back then, losses on that scale would have wiped out almost two thirds of the capital of the entire British banking system. With so much more capital today, the stress test showed those losses could be absorbed, even while the system continued to grow credit to the real economy. Far from sideswiping the real economy under stress, the test showed the banking system could continue to support it. 1 And yet, there is still, eight long years after the crisis, a lively debate in newspapers, blogs and academia, about whether the capital strength of the banking system should be built up further. 1  Available at http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/financialstability/Documents/fpc/results011215.pdf. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  About whether authorities should abandon the conclusions of Basel III and of the UK’s post-crisis Independent Commission on Banking and compel banks to go further. A debate like that is all to the good; these are important questions for society. But it has to be balanced against the merits of clarity. Clarity you need to run your businesses effectively. Clarity investors need to allocate and price capital efficiently. Clarity the public, and Parliaments, need to hold policymakers and banks to account.

Compared with the March projections, the average inflation rate for 2023 is revised downwards by 0.5 pp. This is the result of a sharper-than-expected slowdown in energy prices and, to a lesser extent, in food prices. As with the euro area as a whole, there is still a great deal of uncertainty and the risks to the growth projections remain predominantly tilted to the downside. With regard to inflation, the Employment and Collective Bargaining Agreement recently reached by Spain’s main social partners includes recommendations for wage rises for the period 2023-2025 that somewhat mitigate the probability of second-round effects emerging via wages in Spain. Indeed, according to the data on the collective bargaining agreements registered up to May, the wage moderation continues.1 In terms of profit margins, the results of the Banco de España’s Central Balance Sheet Data Office Quarterly Survey (CBQ) show an uptick in 2023 Q1, although the margin on sales remains below its 2019 level. In any case, there is a high degree of heterogeneity across sectors.2 Recent developments in the banking sector With the context given so far, the most recent developments in the banking sector can be characterised by the following stylised facts. Financing First, financing in the sector is being influenced by the tightening of monetary policy. This has led to a reduction in Eurosystem financing,3 which has been offset above all by  1  The average wage rise agreed for 2023 stands at 3.3%, slightly above the 2.9% agreed for last year.
(b)  Ignorance can be bliss  There is a second, quite different, rationale for simple decision rules. This does not rely on the sub-optimality of satisficing behaviour. Instead it states that heuristics may be the optimising response to a complex environment. Disregarding information can make not only for cheaper but also for better decisions. Ignorance can be bliss (Gigerenzer (2010)). Oscar Wilde said of cynics that they knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. 2 Autistic savants have an acute case of this problem. Often, they combine prodigious memory skills (knowing “the price of everything”) with serious deficiencies in value judgements (understanding “the value of nothing”). They are penny-wise and pound-foolish. These neurological traits are linked. Too great a focus on information gathered from the past may retard effective decision-making about the future. Knowing too much can clog up the cognitive inbox, overload the neurological hard disk. One of the main purposes of sleep – doing less – is to unclog the cognitive inbox (Wang et al (2011)). That is why, when making a big decision, we often “sleep on it”. 2  Wilde (1893). BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  “Sleeping on it” has a direct parallel in statistical theory. In econometrics, a model seeking to infer behaviour from the past, based on too short a sample, may lead to “over-fitting”. Noise is then mistaken as signal, blips parameterised as trends. A model which is “over-fitted” sways with the smallest statistical breeze.

For a period of time – even perhaps a few years – wages can rise somewhat more without jeopardising the inflation target – for example, if the ratio of wages to national income is unusually low following a crisis and businesses are able to absorb some of the increase. This has been the case to an extent in the past few years. Other factors could counteract larger wage increases as well – for instance, declining foreign-currency prices of imports and a stronger króna have contributed to declining inflation even though wages have risen considerably more than the sum of the inflation target and the increase in productivity. But there are a number of indications that we will not be able to rely on these countervailing factors next year. By then, the slack will have disappeared from the economy, the ratio of wages to national income is at or above its historical average, and there are no premises for further appreciation of the króna, as the current account surplus is narrowing and the real exchange rate is no longer below its estimated equilibrium value. Nevertheless, different wage increases could be negotiated for different groups if there are grounds and will to do so. As I draw near the conclusion of my talk today, I would like to shift gears a bit and say a few words about credit ratings.
The financial turmoil of recent months may provide new avenues for analysing or developing CSR. My second question is: will the concept of CSR, whose global spread has been promoted by globalisation, result in new forms of managerial responsibility? It is vital that, in companies, the CSR approach feeds into risk management. Banks, for instance, seek to better understand, beyond their direct impact (environmental footprint), their indirect role through the projects, investments or businesses they choose to fund, i.e. through the financing of a more sustainable economy. Some experts have even introduced the concept of “sustainable finance”. This is the notion whereby the banking sector commits to ensuring transparency, long-term governance, wellinformed choices and sustainable markets. In 2003, the network of NGOs, Banktrack, defined a benchmark against which civil society could measure the commitment of the banking sector in terms of sustainability. The current financial crisis left no doubt as to the fact that financial institutions exert a substantial indirect impact on society and its economy. This impact may be considerable in both directions and go far beyond the mere financing of projects or management of risk. Perhaps confidence in the financial sector could be rekindled thanks to such notions, with a return to fundamentals: simplicity (of products in particular, circuits and funding of companies or virtuous projects), transparency, ethics and balance. My third question is: can CSR give rise to an alternative or complementary regulatory approach that could reinforce global regulation policies?

I would now like to discuss three questions in particular. The first is whether CSR is a stable concept or one that is still evolving? This concept broadly stems from that of sustainable development, which is defined as development that meets present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own. Its blueprint was set out at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (the first Earth Summit). It is based on the principle of development that is economically efficient, socially equitable and ecologically sustainable. CSR, whose initial objective was accountability, still largely appears to be an evolving paradigm closely linked to the current transition towards a new economic model. BIS Review 132/2008  1  In this respect, Rio brought to the fore the need for an ISO standard at the company level in order for companies themselves to take account of their impact and change their processes as part of a preventive approach. The UN addressed this dimension and brings together, under its aegis, the initiatives of the major companies that adhere to a relatively general charter. The Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (also known as Rio Plus 10 or the Second Earth Summit), largely focused on companies wishing to take centre stage in the protection of the planet and adopt a proactive role. The ethical dimension of CSR lends strength to the questions of stakeholders and employees as to how their funds are used.
Broadly speaking, this operational philosophy is guided by the need to steer the short-term interest rates in the interbank market close to the key interest rate set by the monetary authority. As such, it serves better to keeping the short-term horizon of the interest rates’ curve under check, making the conduct of monetary policy more transparent and providing clearer signals for the economic activity. Steering our operations to the stability of interbank market interest rates will serve to a more relaxed functioning of the interbank market and lowering of risk premiums. In addition, this operational target is well-framed in our mediumterm steering and commitment to adopting the inflation targeting regime, making up an important link of its successful adoption. Concluding my theoretical discussion of this change, I would like to underline that our longterm commitment to keeping our foreign reserve at optimal levels to cope with the shocks Albania may be faced with remains an unquestionable objective of our monetary policy. In an institutional aspect, I would like to note that such a move does not only attest to the level of maturity of our interbank market. It also crowns our constant efforts in achieving its utmost efficient management. In this context, the Bank of Albania has made utmost efforts to develop liquidity forecast models, to dampen the impact of fiscal flows into the money markets and to develop optimal procedures and modalities of interbank market interventions.

This completes our network of 12 regional agencies across the UK - with the purpose of keeping ourselves more closely informed of regional economic developments. Previously Neil Kemsley covered Northern Ireland from our Agency in Liverpool and is here to make his farewell - and I am grateful to him for all that he did in reporting on developments here. But Nigel Falls - one of our most experienced regional Agents - is now established here in Belfast itself. He is also with us today. I very much hope that many of you will establish regular contact with him so that he can inform our Monetary Policy Committee each month of the particular problems that exist in Northern Ireland, so that we can take them into account in our monetary policy process. His reports will complement those which Roy Bailie, our Non-Executive Director here in Ireland, gives regularly to our Court of Directors. In our monetary policy role the Bank operates essentially on the demand side of the economy - aiming to keep aggregate demand in line with the supply-side capacity of the economy to meet that demand. But we can also contribute directly on the supply side, by helping to ensure that the financial system properly supports the needs of the wider economy.