samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
These considerations largely explain the easing of monetary policy in the US and in Europe since last autumn. The fact that we reduced interest rates by different amounts, and that they remain at different levels, is explained by differing assessments of the prospective impact on the pressure of overall demand, taking account of our own particular starting points. But the general nature of the response was driven by essentially similar considerations. Managing this global imbalance will be a considerable challenge for policymakers over the next few years; and helping to finance it – including helping to finance re-emerging markets – will be a considerable challenge for international bond markets. The fact that you are all here – and in evidently good form – after the past remarkable year suggests that you have strong nerves. You may well need them again in the period ahead. But think of it this way. By the time we meet again for this great Congress next year, Y2K will be behind you – and if you have survived that, you can survive anything! I wish you all possible success. *  *  *  BIS Review 17/1999

These changing global dynamics, interacting with market’s reactions to potential US rate hike, may cause volatile ups and downs of financial markets. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  I will not discuss these at length. Rather, at this juncture, the key question is how to design or adjust policy frameworks to cope better with these financial spillovers while preserving monetary policy independence. Undoubtedly, there is no single recipe that fits all central banks. Thus the aim of my talk is to offer a central bank’s overall perspectives and Thailand’s experiences on policy framework in managing capital flow and exchange rate stability. I will also touch on some beneficial policy cooperation among regional countries. A brief background of Thailand’s monetary policy framework Let’s begin with a broad perspective of Thailand’s monetary policy framework. The Bank of Thailand (BOT) has been conducting monetary policy under “Flexible Inflation Targeting” framework since May 2000. As a pragmatic response to the failure of a pegged exchange rate system, transparency of the policy making process under IT was deemed appropriate for Thailand, particularly after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Under this regime, price stability is the overriding and explicit objective, while economic growth and financial stability are also taken into policy deliberation. The policy interest rate is our main tool in achieving the mandate. With managed-float exchange rate regime, the Thai baht is generally allowed to be determined by the market.
The public bank was tasked with estimating the value of the 500 or so different coins that were around and exchanging them with its own currency, the rijksdaalder. By having a single currency, the highly chaotic system was improved, and the bank quickly became a hub for settling international payments.2  The modern banknote In Sweden, problems with the coin system were of a different kind. At that time, Swedish coins were made of copper, not gold or silver. As a consequence, they had to be quite sizeable, as their value still depended on the metal used. Obviously, this made daily purchases a fairly heavy exercise. But again, great ideas seemed to come to our rescue when Latvian-born Dutchman Johan Palmstruch, with the blessing of Charles X Gustav, set up Stockholms Banco to issue the first ‘modern’ European banknotes. This was in 1661. However, Mr Palmstruch hadn’t thought it through properly. Or at least, he had underestimated the collateral needed to operate a business like that. When people started to queue up outside the bank to have their notes redeemed, he quickly ran out of metal. The bank was liquidated in 1667, and poor Mr Palmstruch was imprisoned, though reprieved from his initial death sentence. The year  2 See, for example, Gerarda Westerhuis , and Jan Luiten van Zanden, ‘’Four Hundred Years of Central Banking in  the Netherlands, 1609–2016’’, in Sveriges Riksbank and the History of Central Banking (2018): 242–264, for more about Amsterdamsche Wisselbank.

Five years later, many of the world’s central banks are now working on issuing digital central bank money to the public in the form of so-called Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). At the Riksbank, we have now taken a further step in our investigation by turning to the technical aspects of an e-krona. In practice, in 2020 we started a project, the e-krona pilot, to learn more about how a technical solution for the e-krona could work.9 Besides, the Riksbank is involved in extensive international work on the subject and participates in, and leads, a number of international working groups.10  9 See https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--cash/e-krona/ for more about the e-krona project. 10 See for instance the recently published reports by a group of seven central banks (besides the Riksbank, Bank  of Canada, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, European Central Bank, Federal Reserve and Swiss National Bank) and the Bank for International Settlements on various aspects of CBDCs that can be found at: https://www.bis.org/publ/othp42.htm  13 [15]  Why an e-krona? For hundreds of years, the Riksbank has ensured that the Swedish public has access to a means of payment issued by the state. The public’s access to central bank money is the anchor of a unified national currency that includes both private and government money, and where the exchange rate between government and private entities becomes one-to-one. Learning from history, I think we must ensure that this uniformity of money continues.
Let me now present another important issue in my speech, which has to do with one of the main legal responsibilities of the Bank of Albania, i.e., consumer price stability. 2. Inflation and monetary policy  Consumer goods price inflation over 2006 was generally within the Bank of Albania’s targeted range of 2 to 3 percent. Year-end recorded a 2.5 percent annual inflation rate. It was almost similar to the 2005 annual inflation rate of 2.4 percent. Inflationary pressures, though moderate, have been increasing over 2006. The average annual inflation rate amounted to  BIS Review 80/2007  3  2.7 percent during the second six-month period of the year, from 2.0 percent it was in the first half of the year. In general, the annual average inflation steadiness during the recent years, speaks for the inflation rate stability, in spite of the fluctuations in time and size of the factors that have conditioned the consumer price performance. Developments on the demand and supply side of the economy have been balanced, without creating premises for inflationary pressures. The fiscal policy has observed the programmed indicators on annual basis, stabilizing the impact of the public sector component on the aggregate demand. Also, the monetary policy has controlled liquidity conditions and interest rate developments, and has attended the exchange rate performance, monitoring through them the economic activity financial stimuli.

Other (operational and amortization) expenditures are almost at the same level with that of the previous year. BIS Review 80/2007  13  Finally, the almost full compensation between increase of incomes and expenditures makes the net profit of the Bank of Albania for 2006 be in the same level with that of the previous year, at about ALL 5.16 billion (or 99.6 percent of the profit for 2005). Honourable deputies, Concluding my speech, I would like to underscore that during 2006 the Bank of Albania included in its agenda all the recommendations given by the Albanian Parliament in its resolution adopted on 25 May, 2006. I would also like to assure you that even in 2007, the same philosophy will characterise our work. Understanding correctly the role and mission of our institution, on behalf of the Supervisory Council of the Bank of Albania, I declare that the Bank of Albania will continue to be an accountable institution, deeply committed to fulfil its obligations vested by the Law and the Constitution. We have many priorities for 2007, but let me highlight the most important ones: •  Maintaining consumer price stability remains the main legal target of the Bank of Albania. We are confident that the decisions taken in 2006 were appropriate and have served to orient inflationary expectations to the targeted range. Based on our forward-looking philosophy, we will prudentially evaluate all the risk factors, so that we operate on due time and intensity.
And in the Express & Star, you have the most successful regional paper in the country. Sport, too, plays an important role in the life of the Black Country. Next summer twelve schools in the Wolverhampton and Walsall areas will be participating in Chance to Shine – a new campaign to regenerate cricket in state schools, and of which I am proud to be the President. Given that in business the need to work in teams is of the essence, it is sad that competitive team sport in our schools has declined. The aim of Chance to Shine is to give young people from all our communities, boys and girls, a chance to experience – before the world of work – what it is like to be in a team, and  BIS Review 112/2006  1  to learn how to win and how to lose. Last summer Chance to Shine enabled almost 50,000 children to play competitive cricket for the first time. Young people need role models and sport is perhaps the most important source of them. Of the many Black Country sports men and women who have been role models down the years, there is one whom I would like to single out tonight – Vikram Solanki. Born in Rajasthan, Vikram moved to Wolverhampton as a small boy, and became the finest and most exciting batsman to emerge from the area for a long while. Now captain of Worcestershire, one could not think of a better role model to bring communities closer together.

Svein Gjedrem: Economic policy challenges Address by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), to the Executive Board of the Confederation of Norwegian Business and Industry, 19 September 2002. Charts for the speech can be found on the Norges Bank’s website. *  *  *  A year and a half ago, the Government and the Storting adopted new guidelines for economic policy, which call for an annual use of petroleum revenues equivalent to the expected real return on the Government Petroleum Fund. At the same time, the Government issued a new operational mandate for monetary policy. Norges Bank shall set the key rate with a view to maintaining low and stable inflation. The first sentence in the monetary policy mandate refers to the value of the krone. Stability in the national value of the krone implies that inflation must be low and stable. This is the best contribution monetary policy can make to economic growth and prosperity and is a necessary precondition for stability in the financial and property markets. The regulation also states that monetary policy shall be aimed at stability in the international value of the krone. The krone exchange rate fluctuates from day to day, from week to week, and from month to month. We do not have the instruments for fine-tuning the exchange rate. The first paragraph of the mandate sets forth an objective. The last paragraph specifies what Norges Bank shall do. The inflation target is set at 2½ per cent.
The concern about empty shells arises because, given the uncertainty about the future relationship between the UK and the EU and the cost of making organisational changes, a good number of institutions are studying how to adapt to Brexit minimising the changes to be made to their structures, management and business models. They may be considering making extensive use of the capabilities of their UK headquarters through the use of back-to-back booking models for risk management, maintaining shared governance structures, extensive outsourcing within the group or keeping the bulk of their workforce in the UK through the artificial use of branches in the UK. Empty-shell banks do not have risk management and governance structures that ensure a safe continuation of the local business or a smooth wind-down in crisis situations, and may present operational risks and financial stability issues for the countries hosting them. For this reason, when assessing booking models, the ECB and national supervisors will pay attention to whether banks have adequate: (i) internal governance and organisation; (ii) access to financial market infrastructures; (iii) booking and hedging strategies; iv) intragroup arrangements; and v) IT infrastructure and reporting. Lastly, another very relevant issue with regard to Brexit that I would like to mention is that of the transition period. 5/6  EU and UK negotiators have reached agreement that a transition period should be a matter of mutual benefit and have set the principles for the negotiation of a transition period between the date the withdrawal agreement enters into force and 31 December 2020.

Given the Bank’s somewhat chequered record on gender diversity up to that point, it was rather unfortunately named CHAPS. And indeed still is. In 1993, the Bank stepped-in to rescue a flagging project to upgrade the securities settlement process in the UK. The Bank designed and built a new, safety-first, system which again exists to this day. Fortunately, we did not call this one BLOKES, but rather the gender-neutral CREST. Most recently, in the light of the crisis, the Bank has been at the forefront of the debate about re-organising the structure of banking, with a ring-fence or firewall between the basic retail and investment banking sides of the business. This structural approach is increasingly finding favour both in the UK (through the proposals of the Vickers Commission) and internationally (for example, through the Volcker proposals in the US and the recent Liikanen proposals in Europe). 9  Sayers (1976). 10  Sayers op cit. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  For the past half-century, the Bank’s structural agenda has become a central feature. But at the time it marked a radical departure from the Bank’s past. Designing what are in effect financial public goods is a front-foot activity. The Bank had grown a new limb, augmenting its crisis-management right arm with a crisis-prevention left arm. Stitching it all together So far, I have made no real mention of monetary policy. That is because, for much of its life up to the early 1970s, monetary control at the Bank of England was pretty simple.
This building will inevitably become known as the “house of the euro”. It provides a sound foundation for the ECB to pursue its mandate of maintaining price stability for all euro area citizens. In that sense, the building is a symbol of the best of what Europe can achieve together. But it is also a symbol of why we can never again risk to split apart. We are standing here today in what used to be Frankfurt’s former wholesale fruit and vegetable market, a state-of-the-art functional building from the 1920s that has largely been preserved and incorporated into the new structure. Between 1941 and 1945, more than 10,000 Jewish people from Frankfurt and nearby were deported from here to the concentration camps. A memorial on the east-side of the building has been built to remind us, and those who come after us, of deeds that cannot and must never be forgotten. An integrated, democratic and peaceful Europe was one of the key lessons from this dark chapter in history. We have come a long way since then – but nothing we have achieved should be taken for granted. European unity is being strained. People are going through very difficult times. A recent Eurobarometer survey on how households in several countries are coping with the crisis showed that all respondents had been affected by a loss of income, and almost all said life was worse since the crisis hit.

For the surviving clearing members, they would suddenly find themselves having unmatched positions, with continuing obligations to clients but a non-performing CCP on the other side. Two strategies come to mind, which I am airing for debate. The first would be “recapitalising” the CCP so that it can carry on. The second would be to aim to bring off a more or less smooth unwinding of the CCP’s book of transactions. On the former route, in the banking sphere the basic strategy is to develop regimes for bondholders to share in the losses after the equity is wiped out; a distressed bank gets “recapitalised” in some way through a reconstruction of its liabilities. But CCPs do not issue debt, so there is not obviously an economic equivalent of recapitalisation by way of haircutting the debt claims of bondholders. Recapitalisation would seem to entail an injection of new outside capital. That should not come from the public sector. So the only options are the surviving clearing members themselves or a new “owner”. On the face of it, the clearing members would have to be involved, as surely the stricken CCP’s default fund would also need replenishing in order for it to continue. If the default fund were to be replenished by its surviving clearing members, that could in principle be sorted out at the time or it could be pre programmed. In practice, making it up at the time must be dangerous.
Interest rates are at an all-time low and the proposals in the Government’s Budget Bill imply a looser fiscal stance. Household consumption will continue to grow steadily in the period ahead, and business investment also appears to be picking up again following a number of years’ weakness. Taken together, this means that GDP growth in 2004 is forecast to be around 3.7 per cent, after which it will be dampened somewhat, standing at about 3 per cent in 2005 and 2006, which is a fairly high level in historical terms. Despite the firm growth Swedish inflation is very low – in January it stood at 0.4 per cent, measured as the annual change in UND1X. The weak inflation is primarily due to surprisingly low import prices. Other causes are the strong productivity growth; the krona’s appreciation in the past half year, above all against the dollar but also against the euro; and low electricity prices. There are many indications that we won't be seeing any significant inflationary pressures in the coming year either. That made it natural for us to decide not to raise interest rates at the end of January. My personal view is that it will probably be a while before a rate hike comes into question. The risk outlook Surrounding this rather bright picture are a large number of risks that our growth and inflation forecasts will not be met in the coming two years. The key risk factor is how the US deficits will be corrected.

As always, we are monitoring developments carefully and in connection with the Monetary Policy Update in April will make a renewed assessment of the international outlook in which we will also take into account how events in Japan may affect the development of the global economy in the slightly longer term. Sweden At the latest monetary policy meeting in February, we decided to raise the repo rate from 1.25 per cent to 1.50 per cent and our assessment was that the repo rate would need to be increased to 3.6 per cent by the end of the forecast period, that is in three years’ time. My assessment was that we will need to raise the repo rate by 0.25 per cent at every meeting in 2011 to 2.75 per cent at the end of the year. This entails a somewhat steeper upward path in the second half of 2011 than the repo-rate path presented in the main scenario of the Monetary Policy Report. However, in light of the uncertainty about the development of interest rates, I did not enter a reservation against the repo-rate path but confined myself to commenting on this at the meeting (see Figure 17). I will now discuss my view of monetary policy in the years ahead in a little more detail and take the picture of the economic outlook presented in the latest Monetary Policy Report as my starting point.
Michael C Bonello: The challenges facing Malta's banking system Speech by Mr Michael C Bonello, Governor of the Central Bank of Malta, at the Second Annual Conference of Finance Malta, Valletta, 29 May 2009. *  *  *  Introduction This conference about Malta’s financial services industry is being held in the midst of the most severe global financial crisis since the Great Depression and whose consequences for the real economy in terms of output and employment losses are proving to be the most devastating in living memory. It is a crisis, therefore, which cannot but have repercussions on a small, open economy like Malta’s that is highly integrated with the world economy through trade and finance. These circumstances present challenges for the domestic banking system, and in addressing them it is important to recognise the implications for the economy at large. A sound, adaptable and innovative banking system is a prerequisite for sustainable development. The birth of a modern banking system Malta’s recent banking history has indeed tended to mirror policy shifts in the broader economy. The nationalisation of the major banks in the 1970s was itself recognition that the centralisation of economic activity could not be achieved without state control of financial resources, including credit flows. Lending rates were set by the minister of finance while the central bank controlled deposit rates. Nominal interest rates were kept artificially low, often resulting in negative real interest rates.

The tests carried out by the Bank should, however, be complemented by parallel tests conducted by individual institutions. In particular, banks should make an in-depth, bottom-up assessment of the potential implications of critical events to identify potential weaknesses at an early stage so as to be in a position to take early corrective measures. This would also serve to reduce the pro-cyclicality of such measures. In recognition of the need for a strong risk management framework, the Central Bank of Malta, in cooperation with the MFSA, has been working with a number of banks on their contingency funding plans and stress testing capacity. A new supervisory regime The lessons that are emerging from the financial crisis will almost certainly change the shape of financial regulation and supervision as we know it. The globalisation of financial institutions and markets, and the associated interdependencies, imply that a regime that has only a narrow institutional and geographic focus will prove inadequate. There is now a heightened recognition of the importance of the macro-prudential dimension of supervision and of the need to have mechanisms in place to address systemic risks, within and across national borders. In this regard, the recommendations contained in the de Larosière Report constitute an excellent basis for action. The Report distinguishes between micro-prudential supervision (the supervision of individual institutions) and macro-prudential supervision (the limitation of the distress of the financial system as a whole to protect the overall economy from significant losses in real output).