samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
It is generally determined by Ofgem’s cap on the price that energy suppliers can charge consumers. In turn, Ofgem bases its calculation of the cap on the wholesale prices energy suppliers are expected to pay in European energy markets. Since October, the cap has itself been capped by the Government’s Energy Price Guarantee (shown in orange). Page 6  Chart 2b: Typical household energy bill Smaller of Ofgem energy price cap and Energy Price Guarantee  You can see that the typical energy price bill went up in a few big strides as Russia’s assault on Ukraine drove up wholesale energy prices. In October, as the Energy Price Guarantee was put in place to moderate what would have been an even higher increase in Ofgem’s price cap, the typical energy price bill was nearly twice as high as a year earlier. As shown in the right-hand chart, annual inflation in the typical household bill was nearly 100%. Even if electricity and gas only accounted for about 3½ per cent of the consumer price index, this increase had a big impact on the overall inflation rate: a 100% price increase in 3½ per cent of the consumption basket adds 3½ percentage points to inflation. Page 7  Chart 2c: Typical household energy bill Smaller of Ofgem energy price cap and Energy Price Guarantee  Looking ahead, with the announced adjustment to the Energy Price Guarantee, the typical energy price bill is set to rise further to £ in April.

If a particular security is scarce in the market, we will presumably not be shown offers at attractive terms, and hence we will not end up removing additional supply of that security. 9  The Desk tends to avoid conducting operations on days that coincide with FOMC announcements and on days that are known to have lighter liquidity conditions. 10  The Desk has begun publishing additional information from its operations, including information about the prices paid for each security, on a monthly basis. In addition, under the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Federal Reserve will publish additional information about its open market operations, including the individual securities purchased, the transaction prices and the counterparty, with a two-year lag for all transactions subsequent to the legislation. 11  Implementing the program over an eight-month period would not be expected to significantly reduce the speed or magnitude of its effects on financial conditions and, ultimately, on the real economy under the view that the program’s effects arise from the expected stock of our holdings rather than the flow of our purchases. Under this view, financial conditions react immediately to the announcement of the program, bringing forward its effects on financial conditions. This view provides policymakers with some flexibility regarding the amount of time to implement the total amount of purchases. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  The flexibility of this procedure can be seen in the patterns of our purchases over time.
Third, is to raise the quality of learning programs offered to financial practitioners in the country. This task was given to the Financial Accreditation Agency. The FAA has successfully launched the Finance Qualification Structure and FAA Learning Standards in September 2014. The Learning Standards will promote minimum standards in designing, developing and delivering learning programs. The Finance Qualification Structure will help to map professional qualification into a single framework that employers can use to compare and account for an employee’s prior learning. Ultimately, it will create seamless mobility for financial services practitioners to move across the industry within the financial sector. Another initiative conceptualised in 2014 and will be introduced in 2015 is the Financial Institutions Directors’ Education programme in Islamic Finance and Shariah Leaders Education Programme. These learning interventions are specifically designed to broaden the perspective of directors and shariah scholars on emerging opportunities in Islamic Finance, while equipping them with the necessary technical knowledge and skill sets. Offered at the ICLIFLeadership and Governance Centre, the programs will deploy proven learning methodologies and approaches. The industry has also done their part in transforming the financial services education landscape. The AICB and the Asian Banking School, the newly established entities created as a result from IBBM’s transformation in 2014, are committed to creating a greater brand identity through the offering of industry-focused professional examinations, qualifications and awards which are in tune with the evolving landscape of the financial sector. Of significance is the Chartered Banker Qualification.

This designation will be the Gold Standard in banking  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  qualification and recognition. It will be jointly awarded with the Chartered Institute of Bankers. This award, I am confident, will be the catalyst that significantly elevates professionalism in the banking industry. I am most inspired by the theme of this year’s conference. It is pragmatic, realistic and aptly sums up the importance of talent management as we steer through the evolving financial landscape. Topics such as “Asia 2.0: Leading the Next Wave of Growth” and “Global Workforce Strategies CEOs Deploy to Achieve Leading Business Result” would be significant especially for HR practitioners managing multinational companies in Asia. Besides, topics such as “Are Our Graduates Employable?” will also be an interesting meeting point for HR practitioners and educators. I wish you an insightful and productive discussion. I trust that today’s conference is merely another step in the journey of intellectual quest that will continue long after this conference has ended. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
Eighty years of the Central Bank of Chile and how inflation was conquered in Chile The Central Bank of Chile was created in 1925 as an entity apart from the Executive Power. That year, also two laws related with the Bank’s startup were enacted: the Monetary Law and the General Banking Act. The former established a gold standard, while the latter created the Superintendency of Banks to supervise commercial banks. The Central Bank was granted the monopoly for printing bills, which under said Monetary Law would be gold convertible. But the foreign exchange regime and the Bank’s institutionality as set forth in 1925 weren’t strong enough to cope with the Great Depression with some success (it had enormous impact on the Chilean economy) and the growing demands for fiscal funding. These forced the abandonment of the gold standard, the imposition of foreign exchange controls, the creation of multiple exchange rates and the beginning of trade. Since the Great Depression – except for very short spans of relative macroeconomic stability –, the country suffered decades of high, volatile inflation. The ultimate cause of this was the systematic expansion of credit on the part of the Central Bank, both to state-owned organizations and to the private sector. Inflation followed inevitably and caused the failure of stabilization attempts in the years 1950 and 1960. The deterioration of the fiscal and monetary situation culminated in the early 1970s in a short hyperinflation.

This is something on which individual banks will have to take a view, but I would like to offer some general advice. First, banks should accept that profits for 2003 may not reach budgetted targets as a result of the outbreak; and they should not strain too much to make up the difference. When profitability comes under pressure, it is important to avoid the mistakes that might arise from over-aggressive business tactics. Keep the bank healthy from a capital and liquidity point of view in order to benefit from the business recovery when it comes, as it surely will. Banks should also monitor closely the financial position of their customers and adopt a supportive attitude to those experiencing financial difficulties as a result of the SARS outbreak. This means being prepared to offer temporary relief arrangements to borrowers who find that they cannot service their debts in the current environment. This should not be seen as soft option for customers since the banks will certainly not benefit if those customers go bankrupt. Nor do I suggest that relief should be offered indiscriminately. The long-term viability of the customer or his business, his track record and his willingness to cooperate with the bank are all factors to be taken into account in deciding whether to restructure debts. Each case thus needs to be looked at on its merits.
Bank analysis suggests that Brexit remains the most important driver of short term market interest rates since then (Chart 12). 20  See the written statement to Parliament made by the Chancellor on 20 December 2017, available at www.parliament.uk/ business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2017-12-20/HCWS382/. 19  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  19  Chart 12: Brexit news has been the main driver of UK interest rates Decomposition of the variance of UK 3-year interest rates since November 2015 Per cent 100  Other  90  Brexit  80  Euo-area data  70  US data  60  UK data  50  Euro-area monetary policy  40  US monetary policy  30  UK monetary policy  20 10 0  Sources: Bloomberg Finance L.P. and Bank calculations. Notes: This decomposition is based on changes in UK 3-year interest rates in 30 minute windows around data releases and monetary policy announcements in the UK, US and euro area, and news about Brexit. Households looked through Brexit-related uncertainties initially. But as the consequences of sterling’s fall showed up in the shops and squeezed their real incomes, they have cut back spending growth to rates about one half of those pre-referendum. Businesses have been somewhere in between. Since the referendum, they have invested much less aggressively than usual in response to an otherwise very favourable environment – with global demand growing strongly, limited spare capacity, relatively high rates of return on capital and the low cost of finance – reflecting the drag from Brexit-related uncertainties.

The monetary policy implementation framework continues to provide the FOMC with excellent control over overnight money market rates, and has proven to be flexible, including through the technical adjustment, in the face of new developments. Thank you for your attention. I look forward to the panel discussion. ###  29  The Federal Reserve is working on enhancements to the overnight bank funding rate (OBFR) to capture wholesale borrowing activity, which moved from offshore to onshore branches. Collection of these data began on October 1, 2018. There will be a review of the new data and an evaluation of how its inclusion will impact the OBFR before its expected addition. 30 For more information about this survey, see Senior Financial Officer Survey, August 29, 2018. 13
The economic purposes of these contracts include hedging or gaining exposure to: outright interest rate risk, basis risk, cross currency risk, and interest rate volatility. Banks, pension funds, insurers and hedge funds are all heavy users of Libor derivatives. Libor is also important for the real economy in the UK, with more than £ of SME and corporate loans, around £ of Floating Rate Notes and £ of structured debt referenced to sterling Libor. Libor’s role here is typically to provide a transparent and widely accepted reference point for the floating interest payments on loans. The dominance of Libor might be taken as evidence of the overwhelming need for Libor-linked financial contracts. However I do not believe this is the case. A large part of the reason Libor is so widely used is due to what economists call network effects. Using Libor is attractive because Libor instruments are liquid. This is self-reinforcing – liquidity drives use of Libor, which drives liquidity. In many cases the use of other benchmarks would be preferable for users. For example, most users of interest rate swaps are seeking to hedge the general level of interest rates, not bank credit risk. For this, near risk-free rates would be more appropriate. However, liquidity for long-dated sterling swaps is firmly rooted in contracts referencing six-month sterling Libor, and individual participants cannot change this.

WIBC Asia provides a valuable platform to bring together stakeholders in Islamic finance, from Asia and the Middle East, to foster stronger collaboration for sustained industry growth. I wish you fruitful discussions. Thank you. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Strengthening market discipline For a long period, the absence of a common uniting standard to account for the measurement of insurance contracts has resulted in a wide range of approaches being applied by insurers across the world. Take for example the measurement of present value of future cashflows from insurance contracts. While some insurers update the discount rates to reflect current economic conditions, others opt to retain the use of historical discount rates when these contracts were originally underwritten, ignoring recent and future developments that could affect the value of the contracts. This means that similar contracts are being measured very differently, resulting in contrasting representations of the true performance and strength of an insurer. Such variations in measurement approaches significantly complicate comparability between insurers. This in turn weakens market discipline. The harmonisation of insurance contract measurement approaches across the globe brought about by IFRS 17 is therefore timely, if not long overdue. The measurement of insurance liabilities using current market prices will bring about a closer alignment between the assets and liabilities on an insurer’s balance sheet. And with a clearer demarcation between underwriting and investment profits and the recognition of profits over the lifetime of a contract rather than at a single point in time, IFRS 17 will also paint a more accurate picture of an insurer’s performance. These improvements will increase the relevance and utility of financial information provided to investors, financial advisers, insurance risk managers, businesses and individuals to inform investment and purchasing decisions.

But the work must start now, and it must start right by taking a broader and integrated approach to implementation. Today’s workshop aims to bring some of the most important issues in implementation to light, and provide you with valuable insights from our distinguished speakers and subject matter experts. With greater clarity and knowledge to inform careful preparations, insurers can be confident of not just achieving a smooth transition to IFRS 17, but of laying strong foundations for long term growth and success. 4/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  That is the ultimate goal. 5/5  BIS central bankers' speeches
On the other, the fiscal and monetary policy measures implemented could support the recovery more strongly than anticipated. Swiss economic outlook  Through to late summer, the Swiss economy also recovered markedly and more strongly than originally expected from the first wave of the pandemic. Following a record increase, GDP Page 2/4  Zurich, 17 December 2020 Thomas Jordan  News conference  was still 2% below the pre-crisis level in the third quarter, having been more than 8% below in the second quarter. However, in October coronavirus also spread rapidly again in Switzerland. This has resulted in a renewed deterioration in the economic outlook, at least in the short term. The containment measures implemented thus far are restricting economic activity less than was the case in the spring. However, certain industries are severely affected again, above all hospitality and entertainment. Sentiment is also subdued in other industries. Economic momentum is thus likely to be weak in Q4 2020 and Q1 2021. We expect that GDP will shrink by around 3% this year. At our monetary policy assessment in September, we had anticipated an even stronger decline. The revision is due to the fact that the decrease in GDP resulting from the first wave of the pandemic was not as substantial as originally expected. Developments going forward largely depend on how successfully the spread of the virus can be contained in Switzerland and abroad. Our assumption is that there will not be a significant easing in the containment measures in Switzerland until the spring.

There is a very nice paper in the latest NBER issue which is called “When Inequality Matters to Macro and Macro Matters for Inequality”. So indeed, that places within macro the question of inequality – inequality which has been increasing too much in the past few decades. Changes are being discussed and are taking place I just hope that progress could be quicker. How does that impact central banking? We thought we could just target inflation, now you are saying the next generation has to consider all of these different preferences of agents, multiple equilibria, inequality... Well first of all, central banks will always focus mostly on control of inflation, or more broadly macroeconomic stabilisation. The regime of flexible inflation targeting will not change in the visible horizon, and that is because it allows central banks to take a medium-term perspective towards hitting the inflation target. The advantage of adopting this gradualist approach to reaching the target, is – as [leading monetary economist and former Riksbank official] Lars Svensson has demonstrated very convincingly – that you can allow for some consideration of stabilisation of the 6/8  BIS central bankers' speeches  economy in trying to move gradually towards the inflation target. What will change are the models used to analyse the consequences of policy – and the set of instruments that will have to be used. Central banks in the future will have to respond in a different way if they want to achieve the overall objective of reasonable inflation and macroeconomic stabilisation.
Inflation’s convergence in the run up to Stage Three has been checked, however, and recently the spread has even become wider. This is hardly surprising in itself, neither is it a major problem. The process known as catching up means that countries with a below-average level of prosperity initially will benefit from technological and organisational advances elsewhere and accordingly grow faster than the rich countries, which in turn can lead to higher inflation. Furthermore, countries with strong export-led growth can experience upward wage pressure in other sectors, too, leading ultimately to higher inflation. So there are reasons why growth rates as well as rates of inflation can diverge in a monetary union without this being unnatural or a problem for either the countries in question or the union as a whole. It seems fairly evident that elements of this kind of “more innocuous” inflation are around at present. The clearest example is Ireland, with catch-up effects and a number of years of exceptional productivity growth. But even there the picture is not unambiguous and when inflation now increases in a number of member states, questions arise about the formation of stabilisation policy. This is definitely not a problem that can be tackled with measures of monetary policy. The function of monetary policy is to maintain price stability in the union as a whole, a mandate that seems to be generally supported and understood. Neither is there any cause to criticise how monetary policy has been conducted in practice.

Despite this less-than-ideal starting position, the Bank ultimately embraced the provision of liquidity to the system over the course of the crisis, with the expressed aim of reducing the costs of disruption to critical financial services. This came about via an alphabet soup of schemes, including DWF, ECTR, ELTR, FLS, ILTR, and SLS. 3 Common to all was a  2  See Plenderleith (2012) for details of episodes of lender of last resort since 1973. 3  More information about these schemes is available on the Bank’s website: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  recognition that to achieve its aim, the Bank needed to provide liquidity against a wider range of collateral, to a wider range of counterparties, for a longer term. Two other innovations are noteworthy. •  First, in some circumstances the Bank lent in a currency other than sterling – a first for our liquidity insurance operations. 4  •  Second, the Bank acted as a market maker of last resort in the sterling corporate funding markets – making small targeted purchases and sales of commercial paper and corporate bonds. 5  Many of these changes were made in the heat of the crisis. And since the 2012 Winters and Plenderleith Reviews 6 much effort has been exerted in hardwiring them into our operating framework to make it clear to market participants how we would act in future.
The idea is, if I have understood correctly, that the Riksdag Committee on Finance or some part of it – a special stabilisation policy committee – would be given a greater role, with an analysis function and the authority to implement discretionary fiscal policy decisions when necessary. I have no faith in this idea, for several reasons. One fairly obvious reason is that a stabilisation policy committee would of course face the same difficult problems as the Riksbank and the government with regard to predicting the future. The fact that inflation is currently low is largely due to surprisingly positive surprise shocks that were not predicted by any analysts, rather than to the Riksbank making assessments that deviated from others or holding back demand. Difficulties in predicting and fine tuning the economy are something that everyone entering this field will face and scarcely a good reason for establishing a new public body. Another important reason for my doubts towards this proposal is connected with the leading principle for reforming monetary policy, namely that it should be formulated "at arm's length" from the current party politics. From what I understand of the proposal, the idea is that these problems will be managed by setting rules in advance that will indicate the situations in which discretionary fiscal policy measures shall be implemented and phased out. Of course, one can have different opinions as to how successful this might be.

However, the uncertainty around this expectation is large – at $ billion it is almost as large as the entire size of the large-scale asset purchases announced in November 2010 or the Maturity Extension Program announced in September 2011.6 This likely reflects uncertainty about how the economy will evolve and how the FOMC will adjust its purchases in response to changes in the economic outlook or the costs and benefits of the policy. Implementation of the current asset purchase program In implementing the current purchase program, the Desk has operated in a similar manner as in past programs. As always, outright purchases in Treasuries and agency MBS are conducted through operations that seek to acquire securities at competitive prices while minimizing any market disruptions. There are some key differences between our Treasury and MBS operations that I would like to discuss. As counterparties in our operations, you know that outright purchases of Treasury securities are conducted through large-scale, multiple-security auctions via the Desk’s FedTrade platform, which allows all primary dealers to place multiple offers across all eligible securities simultaneously. Purchases of MBS, on the other hand, are currently conducted using TradeWeb, a commercial trading platform.7 The platform allows buyers to solicit offers for one security at a time from up to four counterparties, so the Desk includes dealers in operations on a rotating basis. As a result, the Desk purchases MBS in a series of smallerscale, more frequent auctions.