samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Assessments of the sustainable rate of unemployment can be made and discussed in an open debate within and outside the central bank, with internal and external economists who are specialists in the field of labour market research using micro and macro methods. A major advantage in this context is that Sweden has a tradition of outstanding labour market research at universities and research and evaluation institutes. It will also be simple and transparent to perform sensitivity analyses in the form of various assumptions about the sustainable rate of unemployment. If different members of the Executive Board of the Riksbank make different assessments of the sustainable rate of unemployment, they can simply and clearly explain how this affects their decisions. It is of course inappropriate for the central bank itself to calculate the price index that is used to assess the attainment of the inflation target, and it is a major advantage if this index is calculated by another, independent organisation or authority, like Statistics Sweden in Sweden’s case. For the same reason, it is inappropriate for the central bank to have a monopoly on calculating the normal level for the measure of resource utilisation used to evaluate target attainment. In practice it is impossible for outsiders (and most people at the Riksbank, including the members of the Executive Board) to verify and assess the calculations of potential production and hours worked that are performed. It is very difficult to determine whether the measures are reasonable and reliable.

Climate risk is a real threat: financial institutions should have the conviction to want to understand the environmental risks in their portfolios and to mitigate these risks. It is imperative that financial institutions step up efforts to collect the data that are necessary to mitigate their physical and transition risks as soon as possible. Second, financial institutions need greater clarity on the ESG data they need. The Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) has recently published a progress report on bridging data gaps. MAS agrees with the recommended approach, which is to first identify the stakeholders and 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  use cases, and then define the metrics and data requirements. In the absence of a use case driven approach, technology will remain a solution looking for a problem to solve. In Singapore, MAS is working with our financial institutions, solutions and data partners to pilot some use cases so that we can collectively learn, adapt, and grow in our ability to define the right metrics for ESG measurement. MAS has launched, together with the industry, Project Greenprint – a technology platform to support the green finance ecosystem. The project will identify use cases where technology can help to mobilise capital for green projects, monitor commitments to emissions reductions, and quantify the impact of abatement efforts. We look forward to collaborating with more international financial institutions and solution providers in this effort. Third, we need to develop methodologies to translate raw data into quantifiable assessments of climate-related risks.
Major changes have been initiated in the areas of human resources management and technology, and the directorates banking supervision, internal audit, administration and works, note issuance and circulation, and control and accounting have been reorganised. In all these changes, the collaboration of the Bank's staff has been excellent. I should thus first thank the Deputy-Governor and the Directors-General for their support and co-operation and, on their behalf, express our profound gratitude to all the Bank's staff for their positive attitude and hard work. Particular acknowledgment is due to all those who, directly or indirectly, participated in the physical introduction of the euro. Without their dedication and effort, the success of the changeover would not have been possible. Finally, let me convey my gratitude to all the members of this Council for their invaluable support and co-operation. Their contributions have been fundamental in ensuring collegiate decision-making, adding depth and quality to the process. 10  BIS Review 38/2002

LEVERAGING BETTER OUR CURRENT ECONOMIC SUCCESS  ADDRESS BY DR MARIO VELLA GOVERNOR, CENTRAL BANK OF MALTA DELIVERED DURING THE IFS MALTA ANNUAL DINNER  01 DECEMBER 2017  Dear President and Members of the Committee of the Institute of Financial Services (IFS) Malta, distinguished guests, personally and on behalf of the Board of the Central Bank of Malta, I thank you for this annual traditional opportunity to address this distinguished audience and, through it, all stakeholders. Also my personal and institutional welcome to the representatives of overseas professional bodies who are with us tonight, the London Institute of Banking and Finance, the Global Association of Risk Professionals, and the European Banking and Financial Services Training Association. You evidently hold IFS Malta in high esteem. So do we. Mr President, we are pleased to hear about the many initiatives being undertaken in the area of financial services education and commend the Institute for its ongoing commitment to the professional development and up-skilling of financial services practitioners. This is definitely a positive contribution to the sustainability of our dynamic sector, and one we commit ourselves to support effectively. The Central Bank of Malta is a long-standing partner of the Institute. Rest assured that we will continue to offer our support wherever possible. Tonight’s event has become an important date in the calendar of key stakeholders in our country’s economy, particularly but not only in the financial services sector.
SPEECH  The European Climate Law and the European Central Bank Keynote speech by Frank Elderson, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB and Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB, Lustrum Symposium organised by Dutch Financial Law Association Amsterdam, 1 December 2022 I am honoured to speak at this 20th anniversary dinner, with so many distinguished lawyers around me. In this setting, I feel quite comfortable dwelling on legal issues for a while. A topic close to my heart – apart from the law – is the ongoing climate and environmental crises. I am glad that we have long since moved on from the time when only scientists and activists were concerned with this topic. It is now high on policymakers’ agendas, as we saw at the recent United Nations Conference of Parties (COP27) at Sharm el-Sheikh, at which – along with world leaders and a wide range of policymakers and interest groups – the ECB was also represented. I was struck by one story in particular. [1] The tiny Pacific nation of Vanuatu is badly exposed to cyclones and rising sea levels. To the inhabitants of Vanuatu, climate change is a human rights issue. And, as Vanuatu’s president, Nikenike Vurobaravu, stated, “we are measuring climate change not in degrees of Celsius or tonnes of carbon, but in human lives.” Vanuatu now plans to ask the UN General Assembly to seek an opinion from the International Court of Justice on the human rights implications of the climate crisis.

How will the terrorist attack affect this fragile state of mind? US business investment during the past 4-5 years expanded at the rate of 8-9 % per year. It slowed to only 1.7% in the first half of this year. How will the tragic event that occurred slow this down even further? The price of Dubai crude, which is the reference price of Thai import cost, before the attack was at the $ 24-25 per barrel level. After the attack, it briefly touched $ 29 before turning back. How much will the volatile oil price cool down the world economy? 2  BIS Review 81/2001  These are very difficult questions to answer. They are difficult questions to answer under normal circumstances. But when you take into account the fact that the United States soon will undertake operations against the terrorists, and what events may unfold out of that, these questions become many times much more difficult to answer. I am comforted, however, by the quick actions of financial authorities in all the major countries to try to shore up the situation. The Federal Reserve acted quickly to set up $ 90 billion swap facilities with many central banks to facilitate market transactions. Ample liquidity was provided by all countries to market participants. Swift interest rate cuts were implemented in both the USA and Europe. In Thailand, what can we do in the face of these uncertainties?
Banking produces a particular form of social pollution – financial crises. We have had many hundreds of years of experience of such crises. The global financial crisis will, however, almost certainly require a re-think of their costs. The cumulative GDP costs of the crisis so far in the US, UK and the euro-area are well in excess of 25% of GDP (Chart 8). In net present value terms, they could easily end up equating to a year’s GDP or more. This suggests, pre-crisis, the misalignment between private and social incentives in banking was larger than perhaps at any time in the recent past. In the language of Jensen and Meckling, risk had been shifted by management and shareholders onto a much wider set of societal stakeholders, with significantly adverse macro-economic implications. (b)  Moral hazard  That brings me to the final of the incentive frictions. When the social costs of an activity are high, as during financial crises, there are strong incentives to cushion the effects on wider society. The global financial crisis provides no better example of those incentives, with extraordinary levels of government support to the global banking system in the form of recapitalisation, liquidity support and guarantees. BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  While these levels of support were arguably necessary to limit the costs of the crisis, they came with their own longer-term costs.

This action was taken with the best of intentions: to cushion the economy from the sharpest downturn in economic activity since the Great Depression. Monetary policy aimed to do so by lowering borrowing costs for debtors whose income and employment prospects were squeezed and by boosting risk-taking, and hence asset prices, otherwise held back by fearful investors. It is impossible to know for sure how the economy would have performed in the absence of this monetary action. But it seems near-certain the economy would have been materially smaller, and asset prices materially lower, had this action not been taken. On the Bank’s own estimates, the UK economy today would have been at least 6 percentage points smaller today without the combined effects of lower interest rates and large doses of QE. Or, in money terms, we as a nation would have been perhaps £ billion poorer. The income pie would have been materially smaller. It is harder still to gauge the impact of monetary policy measures on asset prices. But the facts are striking. Equity prices are almost 90% higher than in 2009 when QE commenced in the UK. Corporate bond prices are over 40% higher and government bond prices 15% higher. In the US, the numbers are 120%, 30% and 12% respectively. In other words the wealth, as well as the income, pie would most probably have been materially smaller absent extra-ordinary monetary stimulus. During this reflationary process, shares of the income and wealth pie have not remained constant.
Ardian Fullani: Cooling down the liquidity situation in Albania Speech by Mr Ardian Fullani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the 6th Vienna Economic Forum, Regional Cooperation – Challenges and Chances: "20 Years after the fall of the Iron Curtain", Vienna, 9-10 November 2009. *  *  *  The argument the organisers have found is very relevant, particularly when it comes to central banks of the Western Balkan. Actually, as far as I am informed from my colleagues, constrained liquidity (especially in foreign currency) and lending tightening are two fragile points, which may put us in a difficult position in the months to come. This set of two arguments carries over a dual problem: the short-term one, which puts banking system stability at risk, while providing its own implications even on the economic activity and on macro stability in a broader sense. The second problem is related to the financial support of the country’s economic activity in the future, given the recent years, when lending to the economy has constituted one of the main contributors in this regard. So far I deem that we have been effective in short-term management of these problems. Similarly to the European Central Bank and other central banks of the developed countries, we (the central banks of our region) have succeeded in supplying the market with ample liquidity, combining a variety of operational tactics and instruments.

Taking into consideration even the impossibility of the European Central Bank to serve as liquidity provider to our countries, I would deem that the spaces available to us in the framework of current legal and regulatory aspect have already been exhausted (from the liquidity viewpoint). Otherwise, I would say we have reached a critical point, below which no space for action is left. Let me emphasise that now that the crisis highlighted many “vulnerabilities” of this rapid catching up, the analysis should go beyond just accepting it as valid. This becomes necessary if we take into consideration the designing of a different economic growth model. In this context, I am more and more convinced that the global crisis was a development that advanced in time the need for inevitable steering of many imbalances that our economies accumulated over the last 10-15 years. 2  BIS Review 146/2009
Using the broadest measure, Total Management Expenditure – which captures all areas of public spending, the Budget projects an average spending increase of 1.7% per annum in the five years to 2015/16. Should inflation remain at around the 2% level over the next five years, that would imply that government spending in aggregate is likely to be broadly flat in real terms. While that represents a change from the very significant increases seen over the last decade, it points to a milder drag on growth than some of the more lurid headlines about the spending review have been suggesting. On the detail for individual spending areas, we will learn more next week following the public spending review that has been going on over the summer. And that will hopefully help to remove some of the current uncertainty around future public spending which has been affecting business and consumer confidence in the UK recently. A second point to note about the impact of the government’s deficit reduction plan is that all previous recoveries in the UK economy – in the late 1970s and in the 1980s and 1990s – have taken place against a background of fiscal austerity and public spending restraint. It is  6  BIS Review 134/2010  true that the level of public borrowing has now reached a higher level than in previous downturns – peaking at 11% of GDP, compared to just under 8% of GDP in the early 1990s and 5% in the early 1980s.

8  The trigger for statutory resolution would be, broadly, that the conditions for the group being authorised as a bank or dealer were no longer met and there was no reasonable prospect of repair. It should be underlined that what is described here is nothing to do with so-called ‘contractual bailin’, which has been a source of confusing distraction over the past year or so. ‘Contractual bailin’ typically refers to bonds that convert into equity or write down under a trigger establishes purely in the contract documentation. But if the trigger is the firm’s capital ratio dipping below a high threshold, the bond is in fact for recovery not for handling abject distress. If, at the other end of the spectrum, the trigger is falling below a low capital ratio, there can be no assurance that the firm would survive in the markets long enough for the bond to be triggered before the firm had to go into statutory resolution. And if the suggestion were that the contractual trigger should give the regulators discretion, most Resolution Authorities would want to avoid writing down or converting bonds outside the statutory resolution process, since that provides protections for creditors, and gives the RA protections and powers for the achievement of a clear statutory objective established by the legislature. Bailin is not about a specific type of bond – a so-called ‘bailin bond’ – but about the application of a statutory resolution power to bonds of any kind within a statutory resolution.
However, this, in turn, raises some concern on how to justify “rare circumstance”. Again, implementation is a challenge, and no doubt you would have valuable discussions here. As for the efforts to mitigate procyclicality, various models have been proposed for the buildup of reserves and capital buffer. Each model has its pros and cons. On the capital side, there are proposals to increase capital charge for securitisation product and market risk, as well as harmonising the definition of capital. We agree that the banks’ capital buffers need to be improved both quantitatively and qualitatively. However, timing of implementation of guideline on definition of capital is quite crucial, and must be carefully considered. On the provisioning side, the current discussion is on which approach to be used as an alternative to the incurred loss model. The Bank of Thailand supports the principle of expected loss and dynamic provisioning, although it will be technically challenging to implement. As a regulator,  BIS Review 146/2009  5  we need to weight the balance on pros and cons of various models proposed as well as consider if it fits the national context. Turning now to the third dimension where a balanced approach is required. The balance in relationship and responsibility of home and host regulators, and a balanced voice of emerging markets on cross-border systemic risk. This is all the more important now, as regulatory reform across countries can create regulatory gaps and un-level playing-filed, that could cause instability down the road.

But it was evident too in the formation earlier last  BIS Review 8/2002  1  year of the Guild of International Bankers, our co-hosts this evening, and of which you, Lord Mayor locum tenens, are the Founding Master. It takes on the mantle - or, perhaps more appropriately, takes over the ledger - from the Bankers Club which has contributed so much to the City's professional esprit de corps over so many years. So it has, as I said, been a long, hard year, President, but it has certainly had its positive moments. And I should like to conclude by paying tribute this evening to the role of the City Corporation and of the Mayoralty, and their contribution to many of the positive developments we have seen - through their own example in promoting community involvement, including their support for the Heart of the City campaign; through their own role in maintaining security and co-ordinating the "public" infrastructure - both vital to all our contingency plans; and through their support for the fundamentally international character of the City, not least in opening the way to the Guild. I am profoundly grateful to them for all the help and support they give to us all. It is in that context that I ask you now to rise and join me in a toast to "the Rt Hon The Lord Mayor, the Corporation of the City of London and the Sheriffs." 2  BIS Review 8/2002
Their effect will soon be exhausted and the increase will stop as pressures from the demand side have been completely absent. Temporarily higher inflation does not mean that price stability is undermined. Over the last two years, inflation in the Euro area has continuously been well above the ECB’s target, but no one gets upset about it, as it is clear that it is not a consequence of overheated domestic demand. Monetary policy cannot prevent the initial impact on prices from the supply shocks, but it can prevent the transmission effect on other prices. NBRM will not allow price stability to be undermined. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  You have recently admitted that monetary policy is facing several challenges, which call for contrasting reactions. Can you explain what you think specifically and how you would solve this problem in the monetary sphere? If there had not been price shocks of the global commodity exchanges, the NBRM would have had room for further easing of the monetary policy. However, due to the pressures from international prices we must give a clear signal that we will not allow undermining of price stability, while simultaneously adjusting the monetary policy to the slower economic growth. It is a great challenge, a difficult task, but not impossible. Now is the time when many central banks apply unconventional monetary policy measures to respond to the unusual economic trends.

So it is logical to expect stabilization, and perhaps reduction of the level of banks’ bad loans. Banks which have huge excess liquidity, have reservations regarding lending to companies, and they locate the reason in the emphasized risks. Is the placement of those funds in Treasury bills and Central Bank bills a solution, even at the cost of a decline in the economy? The monetary policy is trying to trigger a certain behavior of the banks which it considers is appropriate at a particular time. But banks independently manage excess liquidity and it is their decision whether more will be placed in the form of loans or in risk-free securities. At the beginning of the second quarter, with several measures we released substantial excess liquidity placed in CB bills over the level that we considered it was necessary to be maintained. It is a fact that banks placed only a small part of that surplus in loans. One of the reasons is certainly the perception of banks for increased risks in the domestic and global economy. But just as important, if not even more important reason are the corporate strategies of the banking groups in the Euro area that are owners of the Macedonian banks. Some of these banking groups have serious problems in their home countries. Although their banks in Macedonia have excellent capitalization and record liquidity, they must implement the strategy of their foreign parent banks, which due to the insufficient capital, refrain from lending in all countries where they are present.