samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
According to the textbooks, exchange rates are governed, to a large extent, by differences in present and future monetary policies between different countries. In principle, by raising and lowering the repo rate you can control the exchange rate. This affects import prices directly and indirectly, with a certain lag. The same applies to demand and to general price trends. The conclusion has, however, been drawn many times during the last decade that the world is not as simple as this. One recent example is from 1998 to 1999. It is hard to believe that the weakening of the krona during the autumn of 1998, were effected in a larger extent of the interest-rate cuts which were made at that time. The krona strengthened considerably during the following winter, when exchange rate differences, compared with the outside world, remained unchanged. The fact that the krona has weakened during the past year can, of course, be to some extent due to monetary policy. But stock market trends, fluctuations in expectations of growth and the outflow of portfolios have also played their part. A reasonable conclusion is that short-term interest rates can have an effect on the exchange rate, but that their importance varies quite a lot over time, and is dependent on many other factors. These factors are not always as easy to identify, even after the event. BIS Review 38/2001  3  One comforting factor in this connection is that the link between exchange rates and price trends seems to have weakened during the 1990s.

Encik Abu Hassan Alshari Yahaya: Islamic finance - potential growth areas and challenges Address by Mr Encik Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the 14th Kuala Lumpur Islamic Finance Forum (KLIFF) 2017, Kuala Lumpur, 3 October 2017. * * *  Islamic Finance the Road Ahead: Meeting New Challenges and Opportunities Last year at KLIFF, I talked about the need for the industry to reflect on its existing strengths; and to build new capabilities to create new engines of growth within the industry. To seize various growth opportunities and to continuously reinvent; re-energise; and re-anchor the industry. Today, I would like to elaborate on potential growth areas and challenges that are in store for Islamic finance. Without a doubt, Islamic finance has made great strides both domestically and globally. We have witnessed the expansion of industry players – from a few financial institutions to a diverse set of players. Customers that prescribe to Islamic finance now, enjoy a wider range of financial products and services that meet their needs. Globally, Islamic finance has continued to grow to reach USD1.9 trillion of financial assets in 2016 – with increased domestic market share for Islamic banks in 18 countries1. Within our shores, progress has been made at many fronts. The Islamic banking share of assets has quadrupled from 7.1% in 2001 to 28% in 2016. Takaful penetration now stands at 14.6% of the population2.
Moreover, as many of you here are accounting, financial and business leaders of Hong Kong, I am sure you will also share my view that enhancing the financial literacy of our citizens is a difficult but worthy task, requiring the collaborations of all sectors of the community to work closely together. You are well positioned to help our public education programme, and we in the HKMA look forward to your continued support and advice. Thank you. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5

Price stability is essential for sustained economic prosperity, and we are strongly committed to using our tools as needed to achieve our price stability and maximum employment goals. 1 International Monetary Fund, Database of Fiscal Policy Responses to COVID-19,  October 2021. 2 Olivier Armantier, Fatima Boumahdi, Leo Goldman, Gizem Koar, Jessica Lu, Giorgio  Topa, and Wilbert van der Klaauw, "Have Consumers' Long-Run Inflation Expectations Become Un-Anchored?," Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, September 24, 2021; Olivier Armantier, Leo Goldman, Gizem Koar, Giorgio Topa, Wilbert van der Klaauw, and John C. Williams, "What Are Consumers' Inflation Expectations Telling Us Today?," Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, February 14, 2022. 3 Olivier Armantier, Leo Goldman, Gizem Koar, Giorgio Topa, Wilbert van der Klaauw,  and John C. Williams, "What Are Consumers' Inflation Expectations Telling Us Today?," Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, February 14, 2022. 4 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Issues FOMC  Statement, March 16, 2022. 5 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Summary of Economic  Projections, March 16, 2022. 4/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  6 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Principles for Reducing the Size  of the Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet, January 26, 2022. 5/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches
With multiple policy objectives and a challenging economic environment, macroprudential tools have given additional degrees of freedom to Asian policymakers who want to avoid a build-up of financial imbalances and unsustainable asset prices, but do not want to give up domestic monetary sovereignty, allow excessive exchange rate appreciation, or impose capital controls. 43. While these targeted interventions have achieved a measure of success, macroprudential policies in Emerging Asia have been deployed in a relatively eclectic and even ad-hoc manner. As these countries return to more normal times, there is a need to  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  formalise and institutionalise the modus operandi of these policies, for greater transparency and policy effectiveness. Reforms to strengthen the underlying potential of economies 44. Let me now turn to the last, and perhaps most important, set of policies that will determine how successfully the global economy secures a return to normalcy. These are the structural reforms needed to strengthen the underlying potential of economies. Let me highlight those which I think are most important. Advanced economies: labour reform, tax reform, pension reform 45. In the advanced economies, I would put labour market reform, tax reform, and pension reform at the top of the list. 46. Labour markets need to become more flexible, especially in Europe. Even in the US, production patterns are changing rapidly, increasing skills mismatches and generating structural unemployment.

Thomas Jordan: Does the Swiss National Bank need equity? Summary of a speech by Mr Thomas Jordan, Vice-Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, to the Statistisch-Volkswirtschaftliche Gesellschaft, Basel, 28 September 2011. *  *  *  The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). The Swiss National Bank (SNB) had to report heavy losses for 2010 and the first half of 2011 due to the strength of the Swiss franc – or, more precisely, due to valuation changes on its foreign currency reserves. Consequently, it suffered a substantial reduction in its equity. Understandably in such a situation, concerns began to be voiced in public. Questions often posed in this context include: Might the SNB lose its capacity to act as a result of a negative equity level? And, if its equity were negative, would the SNB have to be recapitalised, or might it even have to go into administration? The short answer to these questions is “No”, because the SNB cannot be compared with commercial banks or other private enterprises. For one thing, a central bank cannot become illiquid. This means that a central bank’s capacity to act is not constrained if its equity turns negative. Moreover, unlike other enterprises, it is not forced to implement recovery measures or go into administration. For another, central banks enjoy a funding advantage over private companies, owing to their banknote-issuing privilege. Moreover, they generate surplus income over the long term.
Ravi Menon: An electronic payments society Keynote address by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Sim Kee Boon Institute Conference on FinTech and Financial Inclusion, Singapore, 19 August 2016. *  *  *  Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Singapore has embarked on a journey to become a Smart Nation. •  We want to embrace innovation and harness technology so as to increase the productivity of our businesses and enhance the welfare of our citizens. The financial services sector is well placed to play a leading role in the Smart Nation project. MAS has been partnering the financial industry to create a Smart Financial Centre, where innovation is pervasive and FinTech is used widely. We want to do this to: •  increase efficiency;  •  manage risks better;  •  create new opportunities; and  •  improve people’s lives. A key component of the FinTech agenda is payments. •  All of us – as consumers, employees, or businesses – use payments. •  Payments impacts every sector of the economy. •  So, getting payments right is important; and we need to get it right for the future. That future is digital and mobile, and it is already here. •  Our wallets are overflowing with cards of every type and form. We can dip them, tap them, and now, add them to our mobile phones.

•  But we need to make the payment experience seamless and convenient before adoption can take off. Let me highlight the key infrastructure initiatives: •  promote online fund transfers;  •  simplify acceptance of card payments at retail outlets;  •  facilitate online payment of bills; and  •  enable mobile payments for public transport. Online fund transfers – FAST and central addressing As I mentioned earlier, we have a world-class infrastructure for electronic fund transfers. •  In 2014, Singapore became one of the first countries in the world to build a 24/7, real-time inter-bank fund transfer system. •  We call it FAST; Fast and Secure Transfers. FAST is almost as convenient as cash, but safer and cheaper. •  You can make a payment securely from your computer or mobile device at any time of the day. •  You can receive confirmation of payment within seconds. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  •  If you are a company, near-instant payment and confirmation round-the-clock makes a huge difference to cashflow management. But FAST is grossly under-utilised. One key barrier is that making a payment through FAST requires you to know the bank account number of the person you are sending money to. •  Most of us, I think, do not remember our own bank account numbers, let alone will know the account numbers of those we want to send money to.
We have witnessed a remarkable improvement in the functioning of short-term credit markets and an impressive recovery in the stability of large financial firms. While a whole range of government actions contributed to this recovery, giving financial institutions greater confidence about their access to funding, and that of their counterparties, was most likely a crucial step toward achieving stability. Moreover, the exit from these facilities has been quite smooth. At their peak, these facilities provided more than $ trillion of credit to the economy. Today, the remaining balance across them is around $ billion. It is impressive that the Fed was able to remove itself from such a large amount of credit extension without creating any significant problems for financial markets or institutions. That success largely reflects the effective design of those programs, as most were structured to provide credit under terms that would be less and less appealing as markets renormalized. This design worked incredibly well, as activity in most of the facilities gradually declined to near zero, allowing the Fed to simply turn them off with no market disruption. The success of these facilities should be judged by the outcomes they produced for financial market functioning, and not by the financial returns they generated on the Federal Reserve’s books. However, there are several reasons why the Fed might be expected to profit from this type of lending under most circumstances.

These collections that have been built since the earliest days of our Bank over a period of more than five decades aim to foster greater understanding on the history of our currencies and of our economy and financial system, and also represents our support to contemporary art in Malaysia and thus contribute towards preserving the heritage of our country. Allow me now to invite Yang Amat Berhormat, Dato’ Sri Mohd. Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak to deliver his address and to officially launch Sasana Kijang. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
At the same time, petroleum-related exports, which account for about a quarter of mainland exports, will likely decrease due to a decline in global offshore investment. It will likely take time for the effects of lower oil prices on the mainland economy to become fully visible. So far, unemployment has only shown a slight increase. A flexible labour market appears to be curbing the rise in unemployment. Employment growth has also remained firm, although an increasing mismatch between the number of unemployed and job vacancies points towards more slack in the labour market. In regions and sectors closely linked to the petroleum sector, unemployment has increased. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Weaker growth prospects may reduce the willingness of mainland firms to invest. On the other hand, improved competitiveness will provide a basis for expanding capacity in some sectors. In addition, housing investment is likely to support overall investment activity. House price inflation remains high. Growth in household consumption has been moderate in recent years and household saving has reached a high level, in spite of low interest rates. The pension reform and uncertainty surrounding economic developments have probably induced households to increase saving. Overall, we expect growth in private consumption to remain moderate ahead and the saving ratio to remain at a high level. Debt-to-income ratios for Norwegian households are high, reflecting a long period of rapidly rising house prices.

Thailand, like Japan, is a country that is aging very rapidly as our labor force would be shrinking within this decade. Given that we were to rely on existing workers including informal workers from other countries in the region, our growth rate would still certainly trend downward. Again, increasing availability and attractiveness of automation will help mitigate that weakness in the Thai economy. The second trend is digital and governance. Currently, for example, people use digital payment as a way to access government income support schemes is something that will help improve the transparency and effectiveness of the government schemes. The overall trend towards digital together with the trend towards increasing transparency will help us in this regard quite significantly. Page 8 of 11  The third area, digital again not just to help with transparency but to help with our long-standing problem of not being able to move up the value chain as well as increase the value-added of many economic activities. For example, what are the things that we think Thailand is good at? What immediately comes to mind? One would probably think of food and the trend now is that people are increasingly concern about health, wellness, and want to know where their food comes from, not just the food itself but all of things that went into their food. Digital technology with ability to improve traceability in a transparent, verifiable way allows us at least to have the potential to increase some value-added of our food products.
Domestic demand is expected to become a major driver of growth as the private sector benefits from the strong macroeconomic fundamentals, healthy balance sheet position and a resilient financial system. Both fiscal and monetary policies are aimed at providing an enabling environment for sustainable growth. Monetary policy will remain supportive of growth, while attention will continue to be focused on ensuring that the private sector, in particular SMEs, have access to financing. In addition, the Central Bank is now in the process of formulating a new financial sector blueprint to chart the development of the Malaysian financial sector over the next decade so that the financial sector will reinforce transition of the Malaysian economy into a high value-added and high income economy. BIS Review 43/2010  3  As the Malaysian economy is gathering strength, the focus of policy has also shifted towards laying the foundations for the economy into a high value-added, high income economy. In this regard, the Government has recently announced the New Economic Model, which is intended to accelerate Malaysia’s development into a high income economy by 2020. The broad thrust of the strategies is to re-energise the private sector to drive growth. This involves providing an enabling environment in which high productivity, competitiveness and innovation can take place. As part of these initiatives, further liberalisation of the economy and the privatisation of selected Government-owned corporations are undertaken. This is also accompanied by the Government Transformation Program to enhance the public sector’s efficiency.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Strengthening of regional integration in Asia Speech by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the KoreaMalaysia Business Forum, Kuala Lumpur, 8 April 2010. *  *  *  It is my great pleasure to be here this afternoon to speak at the “Korea-Malaysia Business Forum”, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and Malaysia. The global economy is now on the path of recovery after the worst financial crisis in decades. This recovery is however uneven. Several of the advanced economies are still being confronted with unresolved crisis-related issues, in addition to structural factors that will constrain their growth performance in the years to come. Emerging economies, in particular Asia, is leading the global recovery. The region is fast becoming the anchor of growth and stability in the world economy. New growth dynamics are already at work to reinforce the strength of Asia over the next decade. Increased intra-regional economic and financial integration and other structural factors are supporting this trend. While this trend will intensify, the future global environment is going to be fundamentally different. Asia will be confronted with new challenges in this changed environment. Asia, therefore, needs to be well positioned to effectively manage these fundamental new global trends to ensure sustainability of our economic advancement. The business community and policymakers need to rise to the new challenges and build on our existing relationships.
Before the crisis, the most common view among central bankers was that monetary policy should only react to sharp increases in indebtedness and asset prices if these could be expected to lead to overheating in the economy as a whole and thus to a too high rate of inflation. Otherwise, the central bank should wait-and-see before adjusting monetary policy, but be prepared to quickly cut the policy rate if a burst asset-price bubble initiates a dramatic fall in demand in the economy. However, this view has been called into question recently. Many observers, including myself in one of my first speeches as a member of the Executive Board, have asked themselves whether monetary policy shouldn’t also be used to counteract the development of bubbles. 4 Would it have been possible, for example, to prevent this financial crisis if monetary policy had been tighter in the United States in the years leading up to 2007, when the problems on the US financial market began? As can be seen in Figure 1, the actual real policy rate was relatively low in this period. However, it is doubtful whether a higher policy rate would have been able to bring growth in property prices and credit to a more moderate pace in the United States without driving the economy into a recession at the same time. 5  2  See for instance BIS (2012): European bank funding and deleveraging, BIS Quarterly Review, March 2012.

It is seldom possible to demonstrate clear effects of interventions and that could not be done on this occasion, though the depreciation was broken during the day in question. Later in the autumn the krona appreciated again. BIS Review 111/1999  2  It seems to me that two main factors lie behind the krona’s appreciation in the past twelve months. One is a normal rebound from last autumn’s excessive weakening. This happened during the winter and was particularly pronounced because the euro’s introduction at the beginning of the year had made some investors concerned about the krona. The other factor is the increasingly clear picture of a strong economy with a budget surplus, low inflation and high growth. Moreover, the higher growth in Sweden compared with the euro area has influenced appraisals of the respective levels of interest rates. Specific events and statements may have played a part in the timing of the appreciation but it seems to me that the crucial influence has come from more fundamental economic considerations. The discussion of monetary policy has also acquired a new dimension. The procedure with the new Executive Board from the beginning of this year enables Board members to differ from the current majority view of inflation prospects and monetary policy measures. Board members have in fact differed on a number of occasions, as is clear from the published minutes. On two occasions, divergent opinions have also been registered regarding the level of the repo rate.