samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Cf. SNB Quarterly Bulletin 3/2016, p. 26. For a detailed description of methodology and calculation of this item, cf. Altermatt, Lukas and Baeriswyl, Romain (2015), ‘The effect of the monetary base expansion on the balance sheet of domestic banks’, SNB Quarterly Bulletin 1/2015, pp. 34–45. Another possibility is that there have been significant changes in transactions with banks abroad. Cf. Auer, Raphael A. (2015), ‘A safe haven: International demand for Swiss francs during the euro area debt crisis’, SNB Quarterly Bulletin 2/2015, pp. 40–52. Seite 6/7  transactions. Thus, as can be seen in chart 9, the pension funds’ foreign currency exposure after hedging has declined steadily, while the share of their assets in foreign currencies has simultaneously risen to almost 50%. In retrospect, full hedging of currency risk has turned out to be advantageous, due to the significant appreciation of the Swiss franc and the comparatively low interest rate differential with other countries. At present, we are proceeding on the assumption that the economic outlook for the global economy will continue to firm. In the US, policy rates have been rising for some time and markets expect further tightening. This means that interest rate differentials between Switzerland and other countries may widen further in the future. Given such a scenario, it is to be expected that domestic investors will once again hold more foreign currency assets, and that they will hedge these less in future. Concluding remarks Ladies and gentlemen, this brings me to the end of my speech.

What is clear in those early editions is the decidedly international flavour of a London investor’s interests – from tramways in Buenos Aires to copper mines in Portugal. Since then, London has been a truly international financial centre. In 1913, at the twilight of the last great wave of globalisation, 71 foreign banks had London offices. A century later, there are nearly four times as many. Today, almost twice as much international banking activity is booked here as anywhere else. London is the home of global markets as well as global banks. Almost half of all turnover in over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives takes place here. London’s share of global foreign exchange turnover is almost as high and it remains a major hub for trading in gold. UK insurance companies have around 10% of the global market.2 Extending the net further, the UK is home to the third largest “shadow banking system” with assets of $ trillion.3 The emergence of London as a financial centre in the nineteenth century owed a lot to the UK’s position as the world’s greatest trading nation. Britain accounted for as much as a quarter of world trade and produced around a tenth of global GDP.4 Over the following  1  At around this time there were 701 accountancy firms operating in the City, and over 2000 firms of solicitors. See David Kynaston’s book “City of London: The History” (Chatto & Windus, London, 2011). 2  See “Fund Management September 2013” published by TheCityUK, available at http://www.thecityuk.com/research/ourwork/reports-list/fund-management-2013/.
In the field, this is referred to as measures that increase the risk of moral hazard. 10  In bad times, the capital adequacy requirement is reduced to 1.5 times the international minimum requirement. See Swiss Federal Banking Commission (2008): “SFBC and large banks agree to set higher capital adequacy targets and introduce a leverage ratio”, press release 4 December. 11  See Myners, Paul (2009): “Developing a New Financial Architecture: Lessons Learned from the Crises”, speech at the Financial Times Global Finance Forum, 18 September, HM Treasury. The same theme is also dealt with in Bair, Sheila (2009): “Remarks by FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair to the International Institute of Finance, Istanbul”, FDIC, 4 October. 10  BIS Review 131/2009  I can provide an example. A creditor may for example assume that big banks are in practice “insured” by the authorities, which will also be reflected in rating agencies’ assessments. Banks considered systemically important receive a higher rating. As a result, funding costs for these banks are lower, allowing them to increase leverage and expand even further. Reducing the procyclicality of bank behaviour Both international studies and Norges Bank studies indicate that the current capital adequacy rules, Basel II, amplify the procyclical effects arising from bank behaviour. 12 During an expansion, bank earnings are high. Ample supply of capital leads to high credit growth. In a  12  See Andersen, H. (2009), “Norwegian Banks in a Recession: Procyclical Implications of Basel II”, Working paper 2009/4, Norges Bank , and Kashyap, A.K.

In Spain, banks have had to provision for potential losses through the cycle. They were required to provision using non-tax deductible amounts for future losses at the time the loan was extended. Such dynamic provisioning has probably functioned effectively also because this system did not require that the supervisory authorities or the banks themselves had to decide that capital should be increased. 12  BIS Review 131/2009  Nordic cooperation  Equal competition considerations require that banking rules are practiced as evenly as possible across countries. For Norway, there are limits to how effectively regulations specific to Norway will be because we are part of the Nordic banking market. The Nordic region, however, is a well-suited region for an active use of regulatory measures. Nordic banks engage in cross-border operations. At the same time, they have little activity outside of the Nordic region. Nor are foreign banks from other regions large in this region. The conditions are therefore in place for effective cooperation in the area of banking regulation and crisis management between the political authorities, supervisory authorities and central banks. In the growth period from 2004 to 2008, foreign banks expanded rapidly in the Nordic market, but during and after the crisis they curbed their activity. I am afraid it can be said that they have amplified fluctuations in Norwegian markets. However, we assume the decline in their market share over the past year is attributable to their being harder hit by the international crisis than Norwegian banks.
On the other side, the external sector of the economy continued to be characterized by the deepening of current account deficit, which in annual terms, increased by 48 percent in the third quarter of 2008 to about 252 million euros. As a share of GDP it accounted for 13.7 percent which is about 5 percentage points higher than the same period the previous year. In addition to the trade deficit widening, the deepening of current deficit was also triggered by the narrowing of the positive balance of revenues and current transfers’ account. Its stability is imperative to ensure Albania’s financial stability and a stable and long-term economic growth. Therefore, the dynamics in the balance of payments developments remains an area which needs constant monitoring by the Bank of Albania. Monetary indicators had a stable performance in the second half of 2008, although the end of the period showed signs of their downward growth rates. Average annual growth rate of money supply was about 13 percent. A small part of deposits were withdrawn from the  2  BIS Review 29/2009  banking system in the last months of 2008 as a result of depositors’ concerns following the vague situation in the global financial system. In relative terms, these withdrawals made up a small share in commercial banks’ balance sheets and did not affect the banking system’s soundness indicators or impair its financial intermediation role. Credit to the private sector continued to provide the main contribution to money growth.

They make use of technology at many different levels: from traditional cross-harbour ferry and metallic coins to advanced transcontinental passenger planes and real-time electronic clearing. And usually both transport systems and financial infrastructure receive attention only when something goes wrong. Financial infrastructure suffers the further handicap that it is largely invisible – a matter of wires and electronic pulses – with none of the glamour or nostalgia that physical transport can sometimes evoke. So, quite understandably, the general public take it for granted – indeed may not even be aware – that Hong Kong has for some time had some of the most advanced, efficient and secure payment, clearing and settlement systems of any financial centre in the world. One of the responsibilities of the HKMA is to promote the development of these systems in collaboration with dedicated service-providers and the financial industry generally. In addition to its responsibility for Hong Kong's domestic systems, the HKMA also has a specific responsibility for promoting the development of systems in Hong Kong that facilitate the safe and efficient conduct of international and cross-border financial activities. We have been paying special attention to this aspect of our work in recent years in a way that has a very direct bearing on the development of financial markets in the region.
The difficulty today is one that monetary policy must address – this is to balance the risks of removing the stimulus from the expansionary monetary policy too soon, starving a recovery while it is still immature, against the risk of allowing inflation and inflation expectations to become stuck at above the target level. Balancing those risks in the UK is not easy. That is the issue the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England faces today and the one I now want to explore. The immediate monetary policy problem The financial crisis dealt a huge blow to the financial infrastructure in most of the developed world. In the UK, and here in Ireland, the financial system came close to total breakdown. It was not so much that virtually no-one thought this sort of thing would happen. It was worse than that; virtually no-one thought this sort of thing could happen. But it did happen. As a result the supply of credit to businesses and to households was – and continues to be – seriously affected. The confidence of businesses and households has been severely dented. Fiscal deficits have exploded; private sector investment has imploded. Whatever the aftermath of this event is – and we will not know that for many years – I very much doubt it will be a normal cyclical recovery after a downturn.

SPEECH  Price Stability: The Foundation for a Strong Economy July 08, 2022 John C. Williams, President and Chief Executive Officer Remarks at the University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico As prepared for delivery  It's a pleasure to be here this morning at the University of Puerto Rico's beautiful Mayagüez campus. Thank you for that kind introduction. This visit is part of the New York Fed's broader commitment to serving the diverse economies in the Federal Reserve's Second District, which—in addition to Puerto Rico—includes the U.S. Virgin Islands, New York State, northern New Jersey, and parts of Connecticut. Here in Puerto Rico, we supervise four commercial banking organizations that account for a large part of the deposit and lending activities on the island. We also provide cash services to depository institutions located in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. To take one example, the New York Fed coordinated an extensive effort to keep cash operations on the island functional following Hurricane Maria, ensuring adequate supply and meeting the demand for much-needed currency. We also study issues that affect the communities here, and our economists monitor economic conditions that inform our work.1 I'll start by saying that I am so pleased that in many respects the Puerto Rican economy has recovered strongly from the hurricanes and the pandemic. Over the course of my visit, I've had the opportunity to hear firsthand from business, government, and community leaders about what is happening on the island.
We have systematised our judgement so that it is possible for others to determine whether the bank’s assessments seem reasonable. The assessment of risk is linked to six factors that are important for 4 price inflation. Our assessment of risk associated with each of these factors is formulated as a probability distribution around the projection for the variable in question. The assessment of risk associated with the actual inflation projection emerges as a weighted average of these six distributions. The weighting of each factor reflects its significance to developments in price inflation as this emerges in our model. Weighting is heaviest and approximately the same for domestic private demand, wage growth, growth in public expenditure and developments in the global economy. The weighting for exchange rate and oil price is somewhat lower. The chart shows our assessment of the balance of risks associated with estimated wage growth as it was presented in the Inflation Report 3/2001. We estimated 5 per cent wage growth in 2003. At the same time, we said that the probability that wage growth would be higher than projected was greater than the probability that it would be lower. We could present similar charts for the other five factors. The ”fan” for the inflation projection is a topographical map of the overall assessment of the balance of risk. 4  The risk model is discussed further in “Box: Assessment of risk to the inflation projection”, Inflation Report 2/2001, Norges Bank.

Switzerland’s only major drawback is the fact that it is a lightweight in the geopolitical arena, which makes it almost impossible for it to defend itself against protectionist tendencies and discriminatory measures taken by big countries. The Swiss government must therefore take a strong stand on behalf of free trade, while also ensuring that the private sector operates within the best possible framework for its further development. Ultimately, our future welfare depends on the vitality of the private sector, not on any state intervention. BIS Review 166/2009  1
Jon Cunliffe: Macroprudential policy – from Tiberius to Crockett and beyond Speech by Sir Jon Cunliffe, Deputy Governor for Financial Stability of the Bank of England, at TheCityUK, London, 28 July 2015. *  *  *  Historians still argue about the exact causes of the financial crash of AD 33 that rocked the Roman Empire. The commentators of the day did not unfortunately have, let alone record, the vast amounts of data that we have become used to today. But in a world still painfully extricating itself from the crash of 2008, the key features look eerily familiar, as a number of modern day commentators have observed. An extension of credit across the empire, a sudden deleveraging, debtors failing and bank closures in a number of Roman provinces, the total drying up of liquidity in the financial system and widespread panic. The remedies look familiar too. The Emperor Tiberius was not able to rely on a modern independent central bank with the ability to print money to staunch the crisis. But notwithstanding that immense shortcoming, Tiberius took effective action, injecting into the system a huge amount of liquidity stored in coin in his treasury, setting interest rates at zero for a three year period – an early example of forward guidance – and doubling loan to value requirements for property loans. He also executed those he thought most responsible: though some might advocate that today, I think in that respect at least we have moved on from AD 33.

However, it is likely that the distribution of income will be affected in terms of growing gaps between those with and without higher education. Wage shares have fallen in many countries, without any real explanation, while profits in the OECD area have been at an all-time high. Technological developments have led to both increased profits and increased demand for highly-educated labour in relation to less qualified. The possibility that increased competition from low-wage countries could be part of the explanation cannot be entirely ruled out. However, there is no support in the statistics to say that economies that are more dependent on foreign trade have higher unemployment than others. It is rather the other way round; that increased trade often goes hand in hand with lower unemployment and higher welfare. The rapid market growth in such large countries as China and India means that demand for goods and services produced in the old industrial nations increases. The investment in research and development in China and the transition to increasingly advanced production does not mean that "all jobs” will move there. Experiences from Europe’s trade exchange with Japan and Korea in recent decades indicates a different development. There one can see that an increasing percentage of trade has developed to become what is known as inter-sector trading, that is, one exchanges goods with one another that are produced using roughly the same technology.
I wonder whether the ECB’s behavior has been limited much more by its status than by the country in which it is headquartered. I suspect even more that Germany’s insistence on strict observance of ECB rules stems from a fear that any lenient interpretation will lead sooner rather than later to the total subordination of minority interests in the eurozone, i.e., the interests of savers, i.e., German interests. i. Anyway, I am afraid that the ability of economic-based reasoning to influence events is gradually declining. Future events will be influenced more and more by decisionmakers’ communications and gestures or by accidents unplanned by anybody. As an example of the latter, consider how Greece’s tourism income might develop this year and the next if its major electricity supplier occasionally switches off supplies due to payment problems, thereby shutting down air conditioning in hotels. j. But now I am straying away from the topic of imbalances, so I’d better pause to venture one final observation. Germany is currently under financial stress and is full of middle-class savers who are angered by the perceived failure of their state. This situation, I believe, has never been in the interests of my country or in the interests of Europe. Some of us may like to contemplate this a bit. Possible questions for the panelists (as I have already spoken enough I will reserve myself for the second round of Q+As): a. How has the financial crisis modified the world-wide pattern of creditor-debtor countries? b.

And, as with all the other denominations in the new series, it is narrower and shorter than the previous note. The theme of the 100-franc note is Switzerland’s humanitarian tradition, and the key motif is water. Both are reflected in the note’s core design elements. The hand and the globe are the main images on the front of the note. The hands are scooping up water, and isobars are depicted over the globe. Page 1/3  Berne, 3 September 2019 Fritz Zurbrügg  News conference on new banknotes  The back of the note shows an irrigation channel, or ‘suone’, feeding glacial meltwater down a cliff face to the fields below. A suone is a method of transporting water from high altitudes to lower-lying areas for irrigation purposes. In the past, such irrigation channels were used for land cultivation, especially in the Valais region. The image of a suone symbolises the treatment and distribution of water – a major component of Switzerland’s humanitarian and development aid effort. The key motif also plays an important role on the security strip, which features a network of waterways over the map of Switzerland, together with a list of the country’s longest rivers. The remaining security features, such as the transparent Swiss cross or the shimmering globe, are the same as those on all denominations of the new series – you will already be familiar with these.
Yet although the decline in residential demand has been very abrupt, lower interest rates and the fall in house prices have placed affordability indicators at more moderate levels, which is helping to stabilise real estate purchases in recent months. In the case of lending to the private sector, we have witnessed increasingly negligible and even negative growth rates, and this pattern will probably prevail over the coming quarters. These developments in lending have a most significant cyclical component, accentuated by  2  BIS Review 151/2009  the tension on international financial markets. After the strong increase in household and corporate debt ratios in the previous upturn, it was inevitable these ratios would fall to improve the financial position of households and firms, and to assist in the resumption of a sustainable path of spending. The strong adjustment in spending is also bringing about a sharp reduction in the external deficit which, after posting a figure close to 10% of GDP in 2007, may be below 5% of GDP in 2009. The adjustment is based, above all, on the decline in imports and on lower commodities prices; accordingly, for this correction to firm when demand picks up, a more substantial contribution by exports will be needed and, in this connection, our export base and the productivity of our companies must continue to be strengthened. In terms of inflation, we are also seeing a significant correction, as there has been a negative inflation differential with the euro area for almost a year.

This means that aspects such as the privacy or protection of information, transparency towards consumers (so they may take informed decisions) and the effective level of competition between providers of specific technological services (take, for example, the use of the cloud) all gain in importance. However, these matters lie outside the typical remit of financial supervisors and thus make it necessary to promote a collaborative climate and more intense cross-disciplinary dialogue. Conclusions By way of conclusion, I would assert that twenty years after the creation of the euro, major headway has been made in equipping EMU with greater stability. However, the architecture of EMU remains incomplete: there is a pressing need to complete Banking Union and make headway on the Capital Markets Union. To do this, we must push through key aspects such as the common European deposit insurance scheme, and deepen financial integration. The internationalisation of the banking business would help bring about greater diversification, weakening thereby the link between sovereign and banking risk. Further, harnessing synergies and economies of scale may contribute to improving profitability. That would provide for the investment needed to enable the ongoing adaptation to the change wrought by the digitalisation of the banking business. Digitalisation promises major benefits, both for consumers (in the form of better and tailored services) and for those financial institutions able to seize this opportunity. Our role as supervisors lies in ensuring a safe and stable transition for the good of all citizens. Thank you. 8/9  9/9