samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
I will also elaborate on the main elements of our investment strategy. Historical background Chart: GDP per capita in Norway, 1970–2015. Indexed to OECD To put the Norwegian economy and our wealth position into some perspective, let me start by going back in time. When the first oil was brought to the surface in 1971, income levels in Norway were low compared with other western countries. The picture has reversed since then. We have gradually caught up to the wealthiest nations. Measured by GDP per capita, Norway now ranks close to the top. Even excluding the oil sector, Norway’s mainland economy has shown relatively robust developments. But there is no doubt that the extraction of oil and gas has played a major role. Given the high oil prices of the past fifteen years in particular, a booming oil industry has been an important driver of economic growth. Last year, the petroleum sector accounted for more than 50 percent of our exports, and more than 20 percent of GDP. Chart: Business investment The high oil prices of recent years have spurred investment in the petroleum sector to record-high levels. The level of investment in this sector in 2014 was as high as total investment in domestic non-oil industries. The positive spillovers to the oil service industry and other business sectors have been substantial, in particular through the past decade. Norwegian employment has remained high and unemployment low, even when the financial crisis hit in 2008.

Reserves in emerging Asia recently passed the $ trillion mark, double their size at the end of 2003. Given the levels that have been reached in many countries, it may no longer be appropriate to view rising reserves as a source of increasing strength against future volatility. They are, increasingly, signs of the allocative distortions that result from the exchange rate regime. And they are in a sense too much of a good thing. Conclusion The economic and financial transformation of the crisis economies has been extraordinary. The policy reforms adopted in the wake of the crises have made those economies less vulnerable and more resilient. And these changes justify substantial confidence about Asia’s economic future. Asia’s success fundamentally changes the international economic and financial system. It is no longer tenable to view the world as divided between a dominant core of mature industrial economies and a smaller periphery of emerging economies. Asia is now so closely integrated with the rest of the world, so large in relative terms, and growing so rapidly that the policy choices made in this region will have a much greater impact on the rest of the world. And it means that Asia will need to prepare for a future in which it relies more on the strength of growth at home rather than on the strength of growth in the rest of the world.
2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  I am also very happy to note the Association’s launch of the MSB App this evening —- which will provide consumers with convenient access to price comparisons, locations of MSB companies, customer reviews, and avenues to lodge complaints and report illegal MSB activities. This App reflects an increasingly digitalised society and business environment where demands for greater transparency, convenience and consumer engagement have become the norm. The MSB App is a great example of how financial technology, or fintech, is changing how customers experience financial services. The possibilities are almost boundless as we are discovering through Bank Negara Malaysia’s recently launched “fintech hacks”. This is a project where we are inviting the public to submit ideas to improve financial services. Let me mention some of the suggestions we have received in the area of money services. Allow tourists to exchange their unused foreign currencies for e-money that can be used to make purchases at any airport merchant worldwide. Develop a peer-to-peer currency exchange app that will allow travellers to meet up and exchange currencies. Provide an app that will allow individuals to book and pay for foreign currencies using their mobile phones, and have the currencies delivered directly to them. And enable e-KYC for remittances. These represent opportunities for MSB companies to innovate and continuously improve on products and services that are meeting the needs of today’s consumer.

The MSB industry in Malaysia is also highly competitive, with among the lowest remittance costs in comparison with other markets. I know that this has been an issue of some concern among some players in the industry as margins have continued to narrow. As in any other industry, an environment of healthy competition that delivers more choice, provides better service and encourages innovation, generally benefits society. Tonight’s awards are a good example of MSB companies that have stepped up to deliver an outstanding customer experience in order to attract and retain customers. Many strategic partnerships between companies in the industry have also been formed over the 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  years in response to greater competition. This has unlocked value for the companies by opening up new business opportunities and increasing cost efficiencies. Throughout history, whether in an organisation, an industry or a nation, progress and development have always been achieved through a process of creative destruction, adjustment and evolution. The industry will continue to transform and evolve, and in the process, it become more efficient and advanced in delivering superior products and services to the public. Bank Negara Malaysia remains committed to ensuring that the market for money services continues to function efficiently and sustainably in the best interests of consumers, and a competitive market is an important part of this process. The industry’s remarkable development has not gone unnoticed. More than a few countries have been interested to study and learn from Malaysia’s experience.
This means macroprudential policy has an increasingly important role. Rightly, the Chinese G20 Presidency has called for G20 members to learn from each other’s experience of macroprudential management. The IMF, FSB and BIS will therefore report to G20 Leaders ahead of the Hangzhou Summit regarding processes to analyse systemic risks; toolkits to address vulnerabilities; and mechanisms for domestic and international coordination. In an increasingly integrated global financial system, this work can help identify areas where we need to work together to keep our systems resilient. It is clear, for example, that strong links exists between asset management in advanced economies and the debt markets relied upon by emerging market corporates. Where appropriate, the FSB will make policy recommendations regarding structural vulnerabilities associated with asset management activities for public consultation before the  14  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Hangzhou Summit. And reinforced by recent experience, the FSB’s second annual report on the effects of reforms will include a comprehensive review of the extent, drivers and likely persistence of any reduction in market liquidity. Whither the G20 Plan for strong, sustainable, balanced growth? Most fundamentally, the G20 needs to use the time purchased by monetary policy to develop a coherent and urgent approach to supply-side policies. Gradualism in structural reforms may be promoting disinflationary expectations, while sapping the political process of its mandate. The weakness of investment not only holds back the supply side but also weighs on the equilibrium interest rate and further burdens monetary policy.

Those who are subject to this pain should have a good understanding of the virtues of this painful adjustment and be prepared to take the bitter medicine for a permanent cure of the ailment. This casts a new responsibility on the banks, because monetary policy is implemented by the central bank through banks. In terms of this new responsibility, the banks should appreciate the intention of the central bank with a positive note. If the central bank raises interest rates and curtails credit levels, the banks should do much more than what the central bank has directed. It has to extend, both by deed and word, its full cooperation and commitment to attaining the monetary policy targets, because at the end, they are the main beneficiaries of having an inflation free world. A similar responsibility is cast on the private sector as well. The Central Bank, like a good physician, has to flush out all the causes of inflation from the system. When doing so, it has to adopt painful and unpopular measures. But such measures are taken for the interest and the long term well-being of the economy. If the economy is allowed to be hit by inflation continuously, it is the private sector which would suffer most. It would be reduced from a long term planner to an at the moment event manager. It would be pestered with numerous requests for wage increases by the employees. Its profits would fall in real terms.
Ideas and Institutions – A Growth Story Speech given by  Andrew G Haldane Chief Economist Bank of England  The Guild Society University of Oxford 23 May 2018  The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the Bank of England or the Monetary Policy Committee. I would like to thank Shiv Chowla and David Ronicle for their help in preparing the text. I would like to thank Will Abel, Sandra Batten, Sarah Kinson and Patrick Schneider for their comments and contributions. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  Economic growth has been among the greatest gifts given to us, as individuals and societies. It may no longer be fashionable to say so. Measures of economic growth, like Gross Domestic Product (GDP), can be highly imperfect metrics of how well individuals and societies are faring, their subjective sense of well-being. 1  And growth in income and output is not, of course, an end in itself. Nonetheless, it is now pretty well-established that growth is a vital ingredient, indeed pre-requisite, for meeting many of the broader societal objectives many would view as important to our longer-term health, 2  wealth and happiness. While not an end in itself, economic growth appears to be a vitally important means of achieving those societal ends. Economic growth is the main reason why global levels of poverty and rates of infant mortality have fallen spectacularly over recent centuries. It is why longevity and educational standards have risen secularly over the same period.

And even though they may have wanted to counteract inflation, they did not have the independence to do so. Furthermore, spiking oil prices were responded to with pay hikes, creating a vicious cycle of rising wages and prices – a typical wage-price spiral. This is why inflation was not brought under control until central banks had been granted independence and explicitly tasked with safeguarding price stability. In Europe, the German central bank led the battle against inflation, and it can be said that other countries tried to bask in the warmth of German credibility by pegging their exchange rates to the Deutschmark. In the Nordic countries, price stability was not ensured before a consensus was reached in the labour market with the so-called Nordic model. So is this where we are today? The lengths to which the world’s largest central banks have gone in quantitative easing over the past decade is cause for concern. They have truly taken on the task of financing government spending by printing money. It will require a Herculean effort to climb out of this slippery slope. The outlook is for many countries’ financing costs to rise significantly thereafter. By the same token, the labour shortages that have developed in the West could create wage pressures and push inflation higher. Honoured guests: It is vitally important that we Icelanders draw accurate conclusions from our own monetary history in the wake of the 1973 oil shock.
All else equal, we probably need to see not just stable prices of commodities and other tradable goods if we’re to meet the target over a reasonable horizon, but some further acceleration in domestic costs as well. While that’s what the central forecast in the February Inflation Report entails, the MPC will obviously have to be watchful, in the meantime, for signs that “good” deflation is turning into something worse. But we should not over-state the risks. The costs of deflation: income and interest rates matter too Something one hears quite often is that deflation is a problem “because it encourages people to postpone consumption”. Deflation – or more precisely the expectation that prices will fall – therefore weakens demand, it is said, and this can lead to a vicious circle in which prices are then depressed further. As far as it goes this has some truth to it. But it’s at best a partial description of the problem, at worst a bit misleading. It leaves out two important considerations. One is nominal income. Suppose you’re told that prices will fall over the next year but that the value of your income will remain unchanged. All else equal, the prospect of falling prices will give you an incentive to save more of your income (i.e. to postpone a bit of consumption). At the same time, the real value of that income will prospectively have risen.

It is an institution, it is said, which has lost its way. What is the truth of these allegations? Certainly, the Fund’s remit is unclear. Its lending activities have waned, and its role in the international monetary system is obscure. The tasks given to it by the conferences at Bretton Woods in 1944 and Savannah in 1946 need to be adapted to the financial circumstances of the 21st century. That was attempted in 1976 with the Second Amendment to the Fund Articles. But 30 years later it is evident that there is still more to do. We have an opportunity to return to first principles and ask some basic questions. Do we need an IMF? Is there a role for a multilateral institution in the management of the international monetary system? If so, what is it? Not before time are those questions now being asked in the corridors, if not the main floor, of international meetings which rotate endlessly around the world from one windowless room to another. Belatedly, the G-7 has started to discuss the future role of the Fund, and the IMF has initiated its own strategic review. Last October, the ministers and governors of the G-20 countries said that “more work is needed to develop a ‘roadmap’ for the future strategic reform of the Bretton Woods institutions”. And speeches by several G-7 ministers and governors, and as recently as ten days ago from the Managing Director himself, show that the debate on the role of the IMF is live.
So, what does this imply when we consider revisions to the Dodd-Frank Act and other aspects of reform? Capital and Liquidity Standards It is important to maintain appropriate capital and liquidity standards for large, complex firms to mitigate external shocks and the risks they pose to the economy. In particular, we need to maintain our focus on firms whose impairment would have significant negative consequences for the rest of the financial system. Effective capital and liquidity standards help to limit these adverse consequences. At the same time, they work against conferring a competitive advantage to large banks from a perception that they may be too big to fail. Accordingly, large financial firms have had to more than double their stock of high-quality capital since the crisis. Prior to the financial crisis, large financial firms were not required to hold sufficient high-quality liquid assets to protect against runs, and, as a result, several would have failed if not for extraordinary government intervention. Today, the liquidity buffers for large financial firms have dramatically improved in terms of both their size and quality. This is due in part to investors’ demands, but also to the efforts by regulators and supervisors in the United States and abroad to develop appropriate liquidity standards for large banking institutions. Some have argued that capital standards alone would be sufficient to mitigate the risks of failure. I am not convinced.

As I just noted, the crisis clearly demonstrated the added importance of liquidity, as the firms that failed appeared to have been appropriately capitalized based on traditional regulatory metrics at the time. Moreover, I strongly favor a system of capital and liquidity requirements that is harmonized on a global basis. Some believe that the United States should no longer participate in international forums—such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision—that discuss and recommend minimum capital and liquidity standards for global banking institutions. The argument is made that these international bodies are dictating to and constraining the choices of the United States. That is simply not the case. The Basel standards and other international efforts actually benefit the United States and its banks. In the preponderance of cases, agreements struck in these forums raise international standards closer to existing U.S. standards. Establishing a more level playing field enhances the competitiveness of internationally active U.S. firms. It also makes the global financial system safer by ensuring that foreign banks are subject to appropriate standards that cover their global operations. This protects the U.S. households and businesses that transact with these banks in the United States and abroad.2 Also, it is important to note that the recommendations of these international standard-setters are not automatically legally binding in the United States. They do not go into effect unless they are adopted by a U.S. authority acting under U.S. laws following an administrative process. They are also subject to a period of public notice and comment.
But clearly that is not true of the global economy as whole. Of course we have a great deal of experience in the EU of establishing common rules and policies. We know it is a painstaking process among 27 countries. But on finance and the economy we need to go wider than the EU and wider than the G7 to engage the new economies which account for so much of world growth. That is why it was so important and welcome that the recent meeting in Washington was of the G20 rather than the G7. Alongside the IMF it is going to play a key role in global macroeconomic coordination. 2. Better ground rules for cross-border financial crises  The failure of Lehman Brothers has confirmed that cross-border failures of large and complex firms are just as damaging and difficult to manage as we had feared. We need to ensure that proper contingency plans are prepared between the authorities most concerned for failures not just within the EU, where a lot of work is in hand, but on a global basis. As a start I hope we can establish a robust and predictable framework of rules and conventions that ensure that home authorities will co-ordinate a cross-border response better. The Financial Stability Forum is working on these urgently. This is not easy. In particular emergencies there are often different national interests at stake and the sheer pressure of events can limit cross-border consultation.

Moreover, our last system of explicit coordination – the system of fixed exchange rates under Bretton Woods – broke down for a reason. Monetary policy meant to suit everybody is likely in the end to suit nobody. Similar considerations underlie the widespread move in the emerging world away from fixed exchange rate regimes. Policymakers worldwide have learned that a framework capable of responding in a disciplined but flexible manner to changing domestic conditions works best over the long run. While explicit coordination looks neither feasible nor desirable, there is more that central banks in general, and the Fed in particular, could do to be better global stewards. One thing recent events demonstrate is the importance of effective Fed communication. It is clear in retrospect that our attempts last spring to provide guidance about the potential timing and pace of tapering confused market participants. In particular, markets seemed to conflate tapering with monetary policy tightening and raised their expected paths for policy rates. Lately, we seem to have done better: markets now seem to understand that policy rates will likely remain exceptionally low for a considerable period of time even after tapering is completed. As you know, we’ve taken a number of steps in recent years to increase transparency and improve our communications.
The direct exposure of the French financial sector to Russian assets is contained: the liabilities of French banks vis-à-vis Russian banks account for less than 1% of their total international liabilities, and French insurers’ investments in Russian securities amount to just under EUR 500 million. The withdrawal from investments in Russia was admittedly tricky, but orderly. The conflict could have more of an impact via indirect channels, including the strong tensions in global commodity markets. For the time being, the consequences of these market movements on the French banking sector have been kept under  Page 7 of 8 control. However, the ACPR remains fully mobilised in monitoring any potential financial risks that might emerge. More broadly, the macroeconomic and financial environment has evolved significantly since last year, and the Ukraine conflict has exacerbated the inflationary pressures that were already visible at the end of 2021: we are naturally keeping a very close eye on this, like our fellow citizens. The latest inflation figures for May, for France and the other countries, confirm a rise that we were already expecting, and the need for a gradual but resolute process of normalisation. We shall take a decision at our Governing Council meeting next week, which will be in line with recent comments by the President of the ECB. After having for years listened to complaints about how low interest rates were weighing on banks and insurers, we might have expected few to voice concerns now about a rise in rates.

One year ahead, the forecast is for an inflation rate of 1.6%, which will accelerate gradually until it reaches the inflation target in the first quarter of 2005 and goes up to 2.8% two years ahead. Subsequently, inflation will continue to gain pace if the forecast assumptions hold, including an unchanged monetary stance. Such forecasts are inherently prone to uncertainties, which in the present forecast in the short run largely involve exchange rate developments, as always. In fact the exchange rate has weakened since the forecast was made. A delay in construction work for the Norðurál smelter expansion could reduce domestic demand and thereby dampen domestic inflationary pressures. Offsetting this, the króna could probably weaken, as we are seeing now with a partial reversal of expectations about currency inflows for these investments. The uncertainty about the global economic outlook and the pessimistic tone in the first half of this year appear to be abating, at least in the US, even though the prospects in Europe are not promising. As I mentioned earlier, the policy interest rate is the Central Bank’s main instrument for attaining its inflation target. The Central Bank last changed its policy rate on February 10 with a reduction of 0.5 percentage points to 5.3%. The Governors of the Central Bank of Iceland have not considered that there are grounds for altering interest rates now, given the analysis and inflation forecast that I have outlined here.