samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Confidence first and foremost in the currency: everyone will be free to use the payment instrument of their choice, and that still includes cash. Confidence, as well, in the ability of financial institutions to finance the economy. And the ACPR will continue and step up its efforts – notably through its FINTECH Innovation unit – to monitor all innovations that impact these methods of financing. Thank you for your attention. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches

Do you think prices in general will be higher, about the same, or lower, 5 to 10 years from now?” Those who respond “stay the same” are then asked whether they mean that prices will go up at the same rate as now, or that prices in general will not go up during the next 5 to 10 years. Those who indicate that they mean prices will go up at the same rate are then given the same follow-up questions as those who answer that they believe prices will be higher 5 to 10 years from now. Respondents who answer that they expect prices to be higher [lower] 5 to 10 years from now receive the question “By about what percent per year do you expect prices to go up [down] on the average, during the next 5 to 10 years?” Only respondents who give a response over 5 percent are then asked the clarifying follow-up question “Would that be [x] percent per year, or is that the total for prices over the next 5 to 10 years?” Respondents who answer “total” are then asked for a “per year” amount. 18  Further, the clarifying question used in the Michigan survey that asks whether respondents meant their response to reflect price changes per year or over the entire time period induced significant revisions. The follow-up question is administered only to respondents who give expectations over 5 percent, thus failing to correct misinterpretations among those who gave lower responses.
Similar policy recommendations follow from another paper 6 prepared by IMF staff, which was presented in Session 2 and sought to identify the features that distinguish “good” credit  2  Neagu, F., Mărgărit, A., Copaciu, M., Racaru, I. Mircea, R., Andrassy, A.: Non-Government Credit in Romania: Perspectives and Implications, National Bank of Romania, Occasional Paper No. 4, June 2006. 3  Ramanauskas, T: Interest Rates, Credit and Macroeconomy – a Small Structural Model for the Lithuanian Case, mimeo, November 2006. 4  World Bank EU8+2 Regular Economic Report, Special Topic: Credit Expansion in Emerging Europe: A Cause for Concern?, January 2007. 5  Bems, R., Schellekens, P.: Finance and Convergence: What's Ahead for Emerging Europe?, IMF Working Paper No. 07/244, November 2007. 6  Barajas, A., Dell’Ariccia, G., Levchenko, A.: Credit Booms: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, mimeo, November 2007. 2  BIS Review 137/2007  booms from “bad” ones, i.e. such that probably eventually lead to a banking crisis. The analysis has shown, inter alia, that better banking supervision lowers the probability of a crisis. It has also established that booms that coincide with current account imbalances seem less dangerous (a finding that may seem counter-intuitive at a first glance), that trade openness is another factor that makes a crisis less probable, and that the more prolonged booms as well as those accompanied by high inflation or slow economic growth are the “bad” ones. Another important topic raised during the conference was housing.

However, there are notable differences across the region: the Baltic states (especially Latvia and Estonia) and South-East European countries (especially Croatia and Bulgaria) seem to have approached or even reached the equilibrium by 2004 or 2005, whereas in the case of the Visegrad countries (especially the Czech Republic and Poland) the credit-to-GDP ratio seemed to remain below its estimated equilibrium level at that time. Of course, it might well be that some of the CEE economies have overshot the  1  Kiss, G., Nagy, M., Vonnák, B.: Credit Growth in Central and Eastern Europe: Trend, Cycle or Boom?, MNB Working Paper No. 2006/10, November 2006 and Egert, B., Backé, P., Zumer, T.: Credit Growth in Central and Eastern Europe: New (Over)Shooting Stars?, ECB Working Paper No. 687, October 2006. BIS Review 137/2007  1  equilibrium only recently, but one has to wait for a while until the relevant data become available before this overshooting can be captured in empirical analyses. The general upshot of these papers is that the rapid credit expansion in CEE economies has mainly been fuelled by demand factors: the buoyant economic growth and the ensuing increases in disposable incomes, rising expectations with regard to future income prospects related to EU accession, remarkable decreases in interest rates, and falling or low and stable inflation rates.
Developments in 1998 are one example, when the krone came under growing pressure as a result of the sharp fall in oil prices, turbulence in international capital market in the wake of the Russian crisis and imbalances in the Norwegian economy. Monetary policy The long-term objective of monetary policy is to provide the Norwegian economy with a nominal anchor - domestic price stability, and thereby the basis for a stable krone. Nominal stability is the best contribution monetary policy can make to economic growth and prosperity. A nominal anchor is also a necessary precondition for stable financial markets and property markets. High inflation and wide swings in the exchange rate impair the function of prices as an information vehicle. This leads to booms followed by busts and an arbitrary redistribution of income and wealth. Inflation therefore poisons the economy. By linking movements in the krone to the euro, we have chosen to follow the same standard for nominal stability in the economy as set by the euro area countries. BIS Review 19/2001  7  Since 1997, inflation has been higher in Norway than in the euro area. The difference partly reflects a period of strong growth in Norway, while the level of activity in Europe has been low. But the relatively high inflation rate in Norway cannot continue as this will undermine the basis for stability in the krone exchange rate and weaken confidence in monetary policy.

If we believe the above theories, and assume that regulations impose ultimately a cost on the consumer or taxpayer, it may be in the public interest to remove regulations and allow greater competition. This is the primary driving force behind current market deregulation policies prevalent in OECD markets. A recent example of the deregulation drive to “make markets work better” is the report of the Australian Financial System Inquiry (Wallis Report), whose recommendations seek to:create a flexible regulatory structure which will be more responsive to the forces for change operating on the financial system; clarify regulatory goals; increase the accountability of the agencies charged with meeting those goals; ensure that the regulation of similar financial products be more consistent and promote competition by improving comparability; introduce greater competitive neutrality across the financial system; establish more contestable, efficient and fair financial markets, resulting in reduced costs to consumers; provide more effective regulation for financial conglomerates which will also facilitate competition and efficiency; and facilitate the international competitiveness of the Australian financial system. On the other hand, a market without regulation also does not work. Free banking and frontier capitalism results in control by the Mafia, with huge losses inflicted on the innocent and unwary. The public interest theory argues that regulation is an attempt to correct for market failures, such as monopoly, externalities and lack of information. For example, the social cost of the failure of a financial institution may be much higher than the private cost to the institution itself.
These may seem like theoretical arguments. Yet Ireland is a very concrete working example. Thanks to prior structural reforms, relative prices in this country adjusted almost immediately after the 2008–09 recession, allowing the economy to quickly begin regaining its competitiveness. The unemployment rate started declining in 2012, falling from 14% in December that year to 12% a year later. By contrast, in other programme countries with less flexible economies the recovery started much later. While we need to be cautious attributing causation, the significant decline in investment in Ireland over the last five years now appears to have ended. Capital formation in the first three quarters of 2013 declined in annual terms, but stripping out the impact from a fall in aircraft purchases there appears to be stronger underlying recovery in investment. All this suggests that Ireland is implementing the right kind of policies to raise its growth potential in the future – and in a sustainable way that is not linked to the financial cycle. The current level of Irish government bonds spreads implies that this is a view widely shared by financial markets. However, I trust that this good news will not give rise to complacency, as Ireland continues to face considerable challenges on several fronts. These include further repair of both public and private sector balance sheets. They include reducing the still high rates of unemployment for the long-term unemployed and the young.

Ong Chong Tee: Observations and thoughts from a financial regulator’s perspective Keynote address by Mr Ong Chong Tee, Deputy Managing Director (Financial Supervision) of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS) 9th Annual Anti-Money Laundering & Financial Crime Conference, Singapore, 24 April 2017. * * * 1. Good morning. Mr Timothy McClinton, President and CEO of the Association of Certified AntiMoney Laundering Specialists (ACAMS); Ms Hue Dang, CAMS-Audit Head of Asia; Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen. I am delighted to join you in this 9th Annual Anti-Money Laundering & Financial Crime Conference in Asia Pacific. 2. I like to commend ACAMS’s leadership and your membership for the extensive work on training and various outreach programmes relating to financial crime detection and prevention. Many of you are specialists and experts in this area. But as Malcolm Forbes once said: one definition of an expert would be someone who knows enough of a subject to know that he does not know how much he does not know. Fora such as this are therefore beneficial for collective learning and sharing, to plug knowledge gaps and to exchange perspectives. 3. Allow me to share some observations and thoughts this morning from a financial regulator’s perspective. 4. For some years now, the global community has been stepping up our efforts to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The integrity and stability of the international financial system must not be exploited by those who engage in criminal activities. 5.
WC-FINC aims to reduce the average financial exclusion level in ASEAN to 30% by 2025, and increase the level of infrastructure readiness in ASEAN to 85% (currently at 70%), based on agreed measures of financial inclusion outcomes and preconditions. Particular emphasis is given to capacity building and peer learning. An especially interesting part of this journey has been ASEAN’s incredible diversity which provides a rich and broad canvass for drawing lessons from every country on specific challenges faced and measures pursued to increase financial inclusion. For some of us, the geographic barriers to financial inclusion are the most urgent, for 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  others, cost or knowledge and trust are more significant barriers. In different ways, we all have something to learn from each other’s experience on strategies that worked or did not work so well. This is why we are here today. This Forum on financial inclusion was organised in response to technical assistance requests and learning needs of ASEAN countries based on a survey conducted by WC-FINC last year. There was particular interest in Malaysia’s experience and so we volunteered to host this first Forum, but clearly, we are also eager to learn from others. The Forum focuses on 5 key areas which represent core pillars of a holistic financial inclusion system. The first is the development of a national financial inclusion strategy and monitoring mechanism which are crucial to ensure that strategies are well targeted, coordinated and executed.

Or: With expanded markets and choice available for high net worth customers, will it make it harder for domestic financial institutions to continue supporting inclusion outcomes that are partly cross-subsidised by high net worth business today? Correspondingly, to what extent will this impact the cost of financial services for the poor, potentially making them even more unaffordable than before? Or: Are there opportunities to bring new technologies and emerging practice into domestic markets and simultaneously create an environment for them to take root and spawn original domestic applications that will create additional multiplier effects? Or: How might easier cross-border access encourage new business partnerships that would enable financial institutions to penetrate untapped customer segments more efficiently and reduce associated information asymmetries? Answers to such questions can be important in how we think about and approach financial integration. Ultimately, behaviour matters, and therefore needs to be explicitly addressed in financial integration strategies. Unless we also turn our attention to the behavioural responses of financial actors in a more financially integrated region, we may find that our best efforts to strengthen the pillars for greater financial inclusion ultimately does not deliver as expected. Financial inclusion and financial integration strategies therefore need to come together through deliberate approaches that are mutually reinforcing.
Luis M Linde: Reflections on the planned Banking Union in Europe Address by Mr Luis M Linde, Governor of the Bank of Spain, at the First Bank of SpainOMFIF Economists Club Meeting, Madrid, 21 October 2013. *  *  *  Dear colleagues and friends, ladies and gentlemen: It is a pleasure to host this first Banco de España-OMFIF Economists Meeting. I am fully confident that it has provided an excellent opportunity to review and assess the latest developments in the Spanish and European economy and the present situation of the Spanish Financial System. I would like to share with you some reflections on the Banking Union in Europe which is, as we all know, a very important matter for the present European financial scenario. The thrust for the design of such a fundamental reform as the Banking Union in the economic governance of the European Union has come from the crisis, both international and European. The euro zone financial and sovereign-debt crisis has shown the shortcomings of the European institutional framework, triggering a wave of reforms that would, otherwise, most probably, not have taken place. Last year, the Presidents of the Council, ECB, European Commission and Eurogroup agreed on the milestones for building a new Economic and Monetary Union, based, in principle, on four blocks: the banking union is the first of those blocks, to be complemented, according to the political design, a later stage, with a fiscal union, an economic union and, finally, a political union.

If that is not enough, a final safeguard is built into our new forward guidance framework. The Bank’s independent Financial Policy Committee has the task of warning publicly if persistently low interest rates are leading to vulnerabilities that cannot be contained by other means. In short, we are providing the stimulus the economy needs, but in a disciplined way to secure price and financial stability. Conclusion Let me finish by drawing the pieces of the jigsaw together. Developments at home and abroad suggest that conditions are in place for growth to be sustained into the medium-term – though at a pace that is likely to be measured rather than rapid. Households have reduced their debt levels and are now spending out of income. The outlook for the world economy and our major export markets is a bit better. The extreme risks in the euro area have been substantially reduced. The global financial system is being repaired. There will still be bumps in the road ahead. A few can be foreseen, others will surprise. Emerging market economies – the engine of global growth in recent years – are under strain as capital flows back to recovering advanced economies. A few less well-managed financial institutions still have a long journey ahead to rebuild their balance sheets and are vulnerable to shocks until they do so. Progress in Europe will remain uneven. We cannot control all these events.
In addition to these general forces that lead to industrial concentration, there is for financial services the particular importance of market liquidity and the ability to trade efficiently, which depends in turn on a large number of market participants wanting to trade in a particular venue. And the necessary market infrastructure generally has increasing returns to scale. Concentration in financial markets  Financial services concentration has increased with financial globalisation and with the revolution in information technology. There are more financial centres now and the largest have become very large. This may appear puzzling; the death of distance, the ability to interact instantaneously with market participants and end users anywhere in the world should perhaps have led to less not more physical concentration of financial services. One can only assume for financial services the returns to face-to-face contact, to physical proximity and co-location of workers remain high. And it is possible that the information technology revolution has perhaps had the opposite effect of making it more possible for activity that used to happen in more localised markets to benefit from the lower costs, greater efficiency and specialised products of the larger financial centres. 4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  4  There is some historical support for this. The development of transatlantic cables, telegraphs and tickers in th  the late 19 century seems to have led to greater not less concentration, perhaps by giving greater access to th  economies of scale.

3/4  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  In any case, we stand ready to adjust all of our instruments within our mandate to ensure that inflation returns to our medium-term target and to preserve the smooth functioning of monetary policy transmission. We are now ready to take your questions. 4/4  BIS - Central bankers' speeches
This is by any standards a large portfolio – amounting to about a third of the total stock of conventional gilts in issue, with an average duration of 12 years, it has a so-called ‘PV01’ – or valuation 7  sensitivity to a one basis point movement in average interest rates – of about £ . Now an open position of this size would be many times larger than even the most aggressive traders in this room would dream about running themselves. Your natural instinct as a risk professional if you came across this in the private sector would probably be to seek an immediate reduction in the position, or a hedge in the market. But any attempt to do this would undermine the very policy objective of the Monetary Policy Committee in pursuit of their 2% inflation target: ie to induce a portfolio shift into riskier assets by removing duration from the market. As I noted earlier, this is a classic example of the central bank policymaker as fireman. What then is the role for the central bank financial risk function? For the new second line, it is a classical watching brief. Its first duty would have been to ensure there were sufficient resources to back the risk. In this case, that was achieved some years ago by placing the portfolio in a separate subsidiary of the Bank  7  For more details on the current composition of the APF gilt portfolio and the operations, see http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/markets/Pages/apf/gilts/results.aspx.

20 Bank of England (a)  15  15  10  10  5  5  5  0  0 1830  0  1860  1890  1920  1950  1980  2010  Sources: Bank of England, Federal Reserve, U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, ONS and Samuel H. Williamson (2017), 'What Was the U.S. GDP Then?'. (a) Data as at February. Final data point shows the latest published balance sheet data, at 29 February 2016, plus the increase in the loan to the Asset Purchase Facility since this time. Excludes TARGET balances held at the Bank by European central banks in 1999-2001. (b) Consolidated assets of all Federal Reserve banks. Data as at end December. Three key developments disturbed that calm, and led to the introduction of our new financial risk framework. The first was the huge increase in the size of the Bank’s balance sheet following the start of the financial crisis. Today the Bank of England holds assets worth about a quarter of UK annual GDP: a five-fold increase on a decade earlier (Chart 2). In the early part of the financial crisis, much of that increase reflected large scale liquidity assistance to the banking sector. For example the Bank lent £ to RBS 3  4  and HBOS in 2008-9 , and its market-wide Special Liquidity Scheme peaked at £ in 2009 .
This mechanism amplified the immediate effect of public spending on aggregate demand. Monetary policy – in charge of credit conditions – was entrusted with the task of alleviating, through a careful policy of accommodation, the impact that government borrowing  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  would have exerted on the cost of private debt. The central bank was financing the Treasury by creating money. Under these conditions, an increase in public spending could “add demand”– where this would be lacking for the goal of full employment – without taking away resources from other uses. Since then, the theory of economic policy has followed two paths that have led it to invert the ranking of relative potential of tools and to enhance the definition and measurement of the objective. As for the instruments, a different theory of the formation of expectations – no longer extrapolative – has highlighted the strong impact of monetary policy and has weakened the expected effects of fiscal policy. In the models that we use today, agents, when formulating their expectations, are attentive to the sustainability conditions of the choices in the long term. Economic policies deemed unsustainable in the long run are ineffective. For example, an active deficit-financed fiscal policy is limited by fears about the government’s ability to refinance the debt from which that policy originates. These fears may lead to behaviours that weaken the private sector – or, at worst, completely neutralise – the impact of public spending as a means of controlling demand.

Those who accuse the ECB of an indirect violation of the prohibition on financing public debt with central bank money are making the same conceptual mistake as those who accuse the ECB of not having forced the banks to the use the funds acquired via the LTROs to supply credit to the private sector. In the first case, banks would have had to have been forced not to purchase government  BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  securities, and in the second case, to give credit to the private sector. Both groups of accusers forget that the policy of precise allocation of credit was a norm in various countries until the end of the 1970s. In the 1980s the operational system for monetary policy was radically redefined, principally on account of the heavily distorting effects of such an operational framework on economic activity. Moreover, legal arguments relating to the Treaty and to the current contractual form of repos underlying the LTROs, as well as considerations relating to feasibility, would make it difficult to reinstate such a framework. Finally, the behaviour of credit institutions with respect to households and businesses is not uniform across countries: while some countries saw negative credit developments, others saw growth in credit, in some cases even significant growth.