samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
These concerns are based in part on uncertainty - a candid acknowledgment that there is a lot we do not yet know about how these instruments and the increased role of nonbank institutions in these markets will affect how the financial markets are likely to function in conditions of stress. Or to put it a bit differently: this concern comes from an awareness of the formidable complexity of measuring the scale of potential exposure in many of these instruments, and it comes from an awareness of the difficulty in anticipating how changes in credit market structure are likely to affect the behavior of financial market participants and market liquidity across a wide spectrum of financial and macroeconomic conditions. The velocity of change itself would not be particularly interesting if the scale of exposures involved were still small, but this is not the case today. Credit derivatives, although still only 7 percent of estimated total notional over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives contracts, generate a significant fraction of total counterparty credit exposure. The direct counterparty credit exposure in OTC derivatives is quite large relative to the capital cushions of the major banks and investment banks, and relative to more traditional forms of credit exposure. Further, these exposures merit more attention because they may be harder to measure than those in the more mature interest rate and exchange rate derivatives.

And the increase in the diversity of nonbank financial institutions that hold risk may also serve as a stabilizing force in credit markets. But the greater relative importance of nonbank financial institutions also means that distress among these institutions has the potential to have a substantial impact on market behavior and liquidity. Understanding these relationships is an important part of the risk management challenge for banks, even in a world where derivatives have helped spread risk more broadly. The innovations that have taken place in the credit derivatives market were driven to a significant degree by the losses experienced in past crises, but most of the growth in this market has occurred in relatively favorable overall economic and financial conditions. This wave of innovation in credit markets has occurred in an environment in which: •  the price of insurance against credit risk has fallen substantially as realized losses have declined and perceptions about corporate credit fundamentals have improved;  •  volatility has declined in many different types of asset prices, as have expectations of future volatility  •  the number of bank failures in the United States have fallen to levels not seen in a generation or more, and the price of protection against default by the largest financial institutions has fallen to levels that suggest a very low probability of failure; and  •  overall liquidity in markets has been high.
The experience gained from the listing of these foreign companies has equipped Singapore with the necessary expertise to help companies from both mature as well as emerging markets meet their capital-raising needs. In particular, the Singapore Exchange has had a long track record of being home to the IPOs of many Southeast Asian and Chinese companies. The Singapore Exchange will be able to share their expertise with our Vietnamese friends on what are some of the areas that you should look out for, as you plan for your listing. I am also especially glad that the Singapore Exchange will be signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Hanoi Stock Trading Centre this morning. The inking of the MoU can only mean more opportunities for both our stock markets to seek greater collaboration, and I urge officials from the SGX and Hanoi STC to move beyond just the MoU document to plan for even deeper level of partnership and cooperation. I understand as well that a couple of the Vietnamese State-owned Enterprises have also made plans to explore a listing on Singapore’s bourse – these are indeed concrete demonstrations of the close synergies between our two marketplaces. The stage is now set for an enduring relationship between Vietnam and Singapore that will last for years to come. I am confident that the Vietnam-Singapore Listing Preparatory Program will be but the first of many other initiatives that will further cement the growth of Vietnamese companies in Singapore.

And unemployment has fallen from a peak of 10½% on a claimant count basis at the beginning of 1993 to the present rate of 4%. That is the lowest for 20 years in the UK as a whole, and just about the lowest in nearly every region. In Yorkshire and Humberside unemployment is 4.7%, the lowest rate since June 1980. Our problem - and it is a real problem, as we have recognised for some time - is the imbalance, within the overall economy, between the domestically-oriented businesses and sectors, and those that are most internationally exposed. In part that imbalance is a hangover from the slowdown in global activity from the end of 1997 through to the start of 1999 - though the welcome recovery in global demand means that this influence is now diminishing. The more important factor now is the persistent weakness of the euro - not exclusively against sterling but equally against the dollar and the yen. The impact is particularly severe on the UK because of the closer ties between our economy and that of the Eurozone. I’ve not heard a wholly convincing explanation for the euro’s persistent weakness. Many analysts relate it to market concerns about structural rigidities in some parts of the Eurozone, which are encouraging direct capital outflows attracted elsewhere by higher prospective earnings growth. Whatever the cause, few of those I talk to expect the weakness of the euro to persist.
Financial crises have typically been associated with boom and bust cycles in asset prices and credit. Due to sharp growth in house prices and household debt in several countries in recent years, the question of whether monetary policy should be used to mitigate such developments has received increased attention. In the light of these developments, I would like to address four main questions. What do we mean by financial stability, how do we analyse it, how do authorities cooperate in order to support it, and finally, what instruments are available to secure financial stability? What do we mean by financial stability? Despite increasing focus during the last decades, uncertainty about how best to define the concept ‘financial stability’ remains1. In order for households and enterprises to obtain optimal consumption and investment over time there has to exist a well-functioning financial system that can intermediate between savers and borrowers, carry out payments and redistribute risk in a satisfactory manner. This promotes an efficient allocation of real economic resources across different activities and over time. From this point of view, financial stability can be defined as a situation where the financial system is able to meet these requirements, and thereby enhance economic performance and wealth accumulation A more narrow approach is to define financial stability in terms of what it is not, that is a situation in which financial instability impairs the real economy.

Without formal supranational solutions in place, it is all the more important to ensure cooperation between the central banks and supervisory authorities involved. The fact that a large share of the financial institutions in the new EU member countries are foreign-owned makes this issue even more relevant. In June 2003, the governors of the Nordic central banks signed an agreement on the management of a potential financial crisis in a Nordic bank with activities in two or more Nordic countries. The agreement contains procedures for the coordination of crisis management between the central banks. The Nordic supervisory authorities have drawn up a similar cooperation agreement. One particular problem in the Nordic region is the differences in the countries’ deposit guarantee schemes. The different schemes vary both with respect to guaranteed amount and type of deposit covered. However, these differences are also widespread across Europe and some convergence of rules and operating procedures is certainly long overdue. What instruments are available to secure financial stability? Monitoring and analysis of the financial system result in an assessment of the current situation regarding financial stability. This leads to the question: what instruments are available to enforce and secure financial stability? We can distinguish between preventive measures and measures for crisis resolution. Of relevance to the latter is the role of the central bank as the lender of last resort. In some countries this role was the main reason for establishing the central bank in the first place.
I have conducted here a fairly superficial analysis of a particular set of countries, in order to make a general point, which may be more relevant in some cases than in others. I am not going to be drawn into commenting on specific cases, since more thorough analysis would be required before reaching definitive conclusions. I leave you with, I hope, an incentive to explore some of the issues further if you wish. The challenge which I have identified - that of raising the efficiency and attractiveness of domestic financial intermediation - is not a new one, but an old one which has perhaps remained with us for too long. And I should add that the problem is one that is probably very much more serious in certain other parts of the world -for example, in some countries of the former Soviet Union - than in Asia. I have managed to get this far without saying anything about Hong Kong, other than to exclude it from the preceding analysis. I ought now to redress the balance. You will recall that one of my reasons for excluding Hong Kong was that I judged it to possess a relatively mature financial infrastructure. That certainly does not mean that we are necessarily satisfied with things as they stand. Indeed, I know of no financial centre in which the authorities are in that happy position.

I have been informed by the Chairman of Equity Capital Resources (ECR) Plc that the Company intends to list ECRUT on the stock exchange in the near future. When this commendable intention is achieved, ECRUT will be the first collective investment scheme to be publicly traded on the Stock Exchange in Zambia. With the calibre of men and women behind this investment vehicle, I am confident this will be achieved in the required time frame. When that time comes we want to turn back to this day and say “we were part of the birth of ECRUT”. The existence of the ECRUT shall provide means of resource mobilisation, bringing on board a collection of individual participation in the capital and money markets. This vehicle will  BIS Review 48/2008  1  facilitate the participation of investors who previously were not capable of participating in highly denominated securities in the financial sector. Ladies and Gentlemen, before I end my speech, let me quickly touch on an important aspect of collective investment schemes, that is, investor confidence in the managers and the industry itself. I believe by far this is the most important factor in whether a scheme can attract and maintain long-term investors. There must be a strong regulatory framework. Whereas there is a strong regulatory body in the Securities and Exchange Commission that vigorously administers the law to protect investors, fund managers must be committed to strong self-regulation and exercise professional ethics to the best interests of investors. This, Chairperson, is fundamental.
However, finding a job will not be easy – the unemployment rate is much too high – nearly 10 percent. And the recovery seems likely to be more sluggish than we would like. The economy is suffering from the hangover of the real estate and consumption boom that ended a few years ago. That boom collapsed beginning in mid-2007. The result was a very deep downturn from which we are now only emerging. Although the Federal Reserve has been aggressive about easing monetary policy to support economic activity, the recovery is not likely to be as robust as we would like for several reasons. First, households are still in the process of deleveraging. The housing boom created paper wealth that households borrowed against. This pushed the consumption share of nominal gross domestic product to a record high of about 70 percent. When the boom turned into a bust, those paper gains evaporated. In fact, many households now find that the value of their homes is less than the amount of their mortgage debt. This has created a difficult time for many families and has caused the hangover to last longer. Second, the banking system is still under significant stress. This is particularly the case for small- and medium-sized banks that have significant exposure to commercial real estate loans. This stress means that banks have been slow to ease credit standards as the economy has moved from recession to recovery. Third, some of the sources that have supported the nascent recovery are temporary.

The big swing from inventory liquidation during the recession back to accumulation will soon end as inventory levels come back into better balance with sales. And fiscal stimulus from the federal government is subsiding and will soon reverse. Coupled with the benign outlook for inflation, these headwinds to growth and employment explain why the Federal Reserve is keeping short-term interest rates unusually low. We want to do all we can to support more rapid economic and employment growth, subject to keeping inflation low and stable, and inflation expectations well anchored. The situation has improved and total employment is now growing – for example, U.S. payrolls rose by 290,000 last month. But we are still far from where we want to be. In this environment, finding a job will be tough, but when you hit the pavement remember that the job market is improving. Don’t get discouraged. Get your foot in the door by doing something productive, even if it may not be exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life. Gaining knowledge and experience is what is important at this point. The first job out of college is a foot on the ladder – the job doesn’t have to be perfect to be valuable to you. A bit of advice In terms of your career, my first bit of advice is: don’t rush. There is plenty of time for your careers to unfold. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.
Eva Srejber: The power of transparency for macroeconomic discipline Speech by Ms Eva Srejber, First Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at the 10th International Financial Economic Forum, Vienna, 11 November 2004. * * * The crisis encountered by the Stability and Growth Pact has put the new enlarged Europe at a crossroads: either we get our act together and produce better checks and balances in our institutions or we are going to move down a path of looser fiscal policy and tighter monetary policy. Both fiscal and monetary policy need the other to be predictable: a government needs the predictability of a transparent and consistent monetary policy to know how to conduct fiscal policy, and of course no monetary policy will be sustainable if poor fiscal policies lead to a rapid accumulation of debt. This is what Sweden witnessed in the 1980s and the 1990s. In the 1980s we had an unsustainable mix of fixed exchange rates and lax fiscal policy, which led to high inflation and eventually to a crisis that landed us with an even higher mountain of debt. When the regime collapsed in 1992 we introduced a target for inflation of two per cent, which today is hailed as a success. However, the real breakthrough for the new regime was in the mid 1990s when a forceful implementation of fiscal consolidation, supported by a broad political majority in parliament, made the whole macroeconomic set-up credible.

In fact, a recent study by the ECB shows that the closer a country comes to an excessive deficit, the more likely it is that the forecast the government presents officially will later turn out to be wrong. There is a strong bias towards unrealistic optimism once a country’s deficit approaches 3 per cent of GDP. Let me say something in this respect about the new member states. It is all too apparent that the collapse of Germany’s leading role in fiscal discipline has also set a bad example for some of the larger new member states. Given that public finances have deteriorated so much in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic during the first years of this century it is fortunate both for themselves and for the euro zone that these countries have postponed joining ERM II and the attempt to rapidly adopt the euro. Had they tried and locked their currencies within ERM II they may well have stayed in that position for a long time, becoming in the meantime targets for speculation - as their poor public finances would have lent little credibility to their overall economic policy. This was Sweden’s experience with the combination of a currency peg and deteriorating public finances in 1991-1992. But now there is another danger.
International developments will be weak this year The world economy was in a slowdown phase even before September 2008. Since then the deterioration in the world economy has been rapid. All of the large, developed economies are now in recession. During the fourth quarter of last year GDP growth in the United States and the euro area fell by around 6 per cent calculated on an annual rate. In Japan the fall was even greater, more than 12 per cent calculated on an annual rate. In the wake of the weak development households and companies have become more pessimistic about the future. Confidence indicators have been in free fall and are now at alltime lows in many countries. For example, the purchasing managers index has never before been so low. Share prices have largely halved since the top levels in 2007. The great uncertainty is also reflected in the large fluctuations in stock market rates. For the world as a whole we are now expecting more or less zero growth this year. Growth and developing economies appeared for a long time to be coping relatively well. But they have now also been affected by the crisis. In China, growth slowed down significantly during the final quarter of last year. The oil-producing countries in the Middle East and Russia have  BIS Review 25/2009  3  also experienced a sharp slowdown in economic activity. A few years ago GDP growth in the growth and developing economies was on average around 7 per cent a year.

If the central bank has cut the nominal policy rate to zero, one may find oneself in a situation where the real interest rate is too high to be able to stimulate the economy. The central bank must then bring up inflation expectations and thereby bring down the real interest rate. According to Lars, one means of creating expectations of higher inflation and escaping from this liquidity trap could be to introduce a temporary price level target, for instance in the form of an average inflation target where inflation must remain around the target over a five-year period. The central bank would then have the possibility to compensate for low inflation or deflation through a correspondingly higher inflation rate further ahead. The idea is that if the target is credible, inflation expectations will rise and the real interest rate will fall. My opinion is that we should not change the inflation target. We have invested so much in the credibility of the current inflation target and it has functioned very well. Inflation has on average been close to 2 per cent during the 14 years we have had an inflation target, and in the longer term inflation expectations are firmly anchored close to 2 per cent. Nor does Lars suggest that we should change the inflation target. He discusses a hypothetical situation where the policy rate is zero and inflation expectations are no longer firmly anchored around the inflation target, but are much lower.
Over April and May, the average monthly gain in employment in the private service-providing sector has been well maintained at 175,000. In contrast, employment in the manufacturing sector and the federal government declined a combined 20,000 per month. And the resulting uncertainty is, I believe, an important contributing factor behind the relatively sluggish pace of business investment spending. My best guess is that growth for all of 2013, measured on a Q4/Q4 basis, will be about what it has been since the end of the recession. But I believe a strong case can be made that the pace of growth will pick up notably in 2014. The private sector of the economy should continue to heal, while the amount of fiscal drag will begin to subside. I also see some indications that growth prospects among our major trading partners have begun to improve; for example, the rise in the June euro area composite Purchasing Managers’ Index. And this combination of events is likely to create an environment in which business investment spending will gather strength. Finally, I believe this tug-of-war analogy is useful in explaining the recent inflation dynamics. As is well known, total inflation, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) deflator, has slowed sharply over the past year and is now running below the FOMC’s expressed goal of 2 percent. Softness in energy prices, resulting from the weakening of global growth mentioned earlier combined with increased energy production here in the U.S. has contributed to the slowing of total inflation.

Although the sector has shed jobs over the past two years, it remains an important and valuable component of the local economy. There are also numerous corporate headquarters in the county and a notable manufacturing presence, particularly in the pharmaceuticals, electrical equipment and aerospace industries. In addition, the whole tri-state region has benefited from its proximity to New York City, where the rebound in the economy – and also in employment – has been much stronger. Fairfield County’s connection to New York City is not quite as strong as Long Island’s or the lower Hudson Valley: About 7 percent of working residents in the county commute to New York City compared to about 20 percent in those areas. Still, the city’s strong pace of job creation during the current recovery is supporting incomes in the county. Turning to the recent performance of the economy, this area is growing pretty much in line with the nation, at least in terms of employment. That’s a bit of an improvement from 2012 when, after solid gains in 2010 and 2011, job creation in both Fairfield County and Connecticut had stalled. Some sectors, such as education, health, and professional and business services were adding jobs; but those were offset by job losses not only in finance, but also in the goods-producing and distributing sectors. And at the end of October, Superstorm Sandy hit the region, causing major damage and disruption.