samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Countries that have attempted to shield their economies from the rest of the world have fallen back into stagnation. Nascent signs of increased protectionism are again giving cause for concern. If this tendency intensifies, international trade and prosperity will be undermined. With its open economy, Norway would be severely affected. It is in our own interest to make an active effort to counteract such a development. Monetary policy – a nominal anchor Against the background of an economic downturn and low interest rates among Norway’s trading partners, the conduct of monetary policy in Norway is challenging. A higher key policy rate might have curbed debt growth and demand pressures in the Norwegian economy. But in an environment of persistently low external interest rates, such a policy would likely have led to a sharp appreciation of the krone, resulting in too low levels of inflation and economic activity. Thus, the crisis in Europe and weak growth in the US are also contributing to keeping interest rates in Norway at a low level. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  The main objective of monetary policy in Norway is low and stable inflation. This objective provides the economy with a nominal anchor. With firmly anchored inflation expectations, monetary policy can contribute to stable developments in the real economy. Chart 7: Rise in consumer prices The operational target of monetary policy is annual consumer price inflation of close to 2.5 percent over time. Over the past ten years, average inflation has been somewhat below, but close to, 2.5 percent.

Over the past 20 years, nominal mainland GDP has increased by around 6 percent annually, and growth is still hovering around that trend. There were some tendencies towards overheating in the years prior to the financial crisis. Price and cost inflation in the Norwegian economy picked up markedly. But the correction that followed during and after the crisis has brought growth back to trend. There is little in this chart to indicate that the world economy has recently been through the most severe economic downturn in post-war history. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The picture changes when growth is broken down into price and volume. The high prices for domestically produced goods are the main factor that has supported our country’s income. Since 2005, producer prices have increased considerably faster than trend. This illustrates that mainland businesses have also benefited from the substantial improvement in Norway’s terms of trade. Chart 13: Mainland GDP – slump in economic activity Economic activity, on the other hand, slumped during the financial crisis. Although economic growth has picked up in the past few years, the level is still clearly below the pre-crisis trend. This would indicate that the financial crisis and the debt crisis have had lasting effects on the Norwegian economy as well. Chart 14: Mainland GDP – per capita The picture becomes even clearer when population growth is factored in. Measured per capita, we do not generate more value today than we did five years ago. This picture is similar to that of other advanced economies.
Some of the targeted mitigation measures undertaken by the authorities include: •  Intensified joint investigation efforts by the LEAs to effectively combat money laundering and terrorist financing. This is reflected in the increased number of raids, arrests and prosecutions related to money laundering and terrorist financing and predicate offences;  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  •  Another effort is the enhancement of the structure of the individual LEAs, which includes the formation of dedicated AML/CFT unit within the LEAs and increase in manpower focusing on money laundering and terrorist financing investigations;  •  Another response by the government is the amendment to the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act 2001 (AMLATFA) which is aimed at strengthening Malaysia’s AML/CFT framework against criminal activities. The amendments would provide clarity on reporting obligations so that preventive measures can be implemented more effectively, such as requirements to submit STRs related to terrorism financing, tipping off provision and CDD requirement;  •  The intensity of enforcement actions against financial institutions that failed to comply and implement AML/CFT programs is also increased. In 2013 and 2014, BNM has compounded banks for various failures to implement effective compliance programs. With the coming into force of the amendments to the AMLATFA on 1 September 2014, the maximum penalty for various provisions was increased. For instance, maximum penalties under general offence have been increased from RM250,000 to RM1 million.

Audience Member: Greetings, good morning to – or good afternoon to you and your guest. Now while it would be interesting to speak of why the New York Fed and the Atlanta Fed are differing on their economic forecasts, that might be interesting, but I want to speak to something far more local. Far more local. This community, and communities like this, were devastated, were ravaged – and I could use a stronger word – during the financial crisis of 2008. We’ve never recovered from this. The black community lost approximately 50% of its wealth in four years. 50% of the wealth accumulated from slavery till today lost in four years. No one, of course, was ever jailed for these things, no one was ever – very little punishment, if anything, was done. I understand that while you may want to do or feel strongly it’s not the purview of the Federal Reserve – I understand that. Using your researchers at Liberty and other parts of your organization, I need to know what laws that I can put on the books to protect communities like this. We’re about to go back into another phase of exotic mortgage-lending, and I will humbly differ with you on Glass-Steagall, of course. We’re about to go into another phase of exotic lending. They call it exotic lending. We call it predatory lending, and we pay for it. We can expect that again.
On the supply side, as the world economy recovers, the balance of production will continue gradually to shift towards exporters and towards firms which, given sterling’s large depreciation since mid-2007, can now compete somewhat more readily against importers. For sectors primarily serving domestic markets, the adjustment is more challenging. Some face both higher costs for imported inputs to production and weaker demand – not just temporarily but persistently – for their final output. On the ugly side of this rebalancing, there has already been an increase in vacant properties on the high street, which is also facing structural change due to on-line shopping. Some of those properties will no doubt be converted to other uses over time, but I know it will not be easy for the firms affected or for their employees. Company insolvencies have ticked up, and will likely continue to do so for a while. Credit supply and the corporate sector Recovery will come, and the necessary adjustments will occur, over time. But it is made harder for you by the problems in the financial system. You have faced first tightening, then in late 2008 frozen, and now a prolonged period of tight credit conditions. Many of you must have worried at times about the safety of your cash balances and other liquid investments. You will have wondered about the soundness of the counterparties you use in the capital markets.

Better, sometimes, to try to address a bubble at its source. This could be unpopular, but such is the job of taking away the punchbowl. We will explain our decisions. I cannot emphasise enough that the FPC will not indulge in attempts to micromanage the banking system or the allocation of credit. Nor will we be excessively activist, trying to fine-tune credit policy. This is about stability, which is an absolute precondition for steady improvements in economic activity and employment. The goal is to make the financial system resilient, to contain destructive “busts”, and to do so without impairing the contribution that the financial sector makes to the economy’s medium-term growth. Can the FPC help right now? The benefits of the new regime for stability will take time to come through. That might leave you asking what the FPC could do to help right now. Indeed, with credit conditions so tight, it has been asked whether the FPC should be easing regulatory constraints on banks. The aim would be to encourage them to loosen lending conditions, helping recovery. And, it is suggested, that would be consistent with the FPC’s remit because it could reduce threats to stability from the risk of borrowers defaulting. At its September 2011 meeting, the FPC concluded that such a step would in fact be counterproductive – endangering stability and jeopardising recovery. Given the precarious starting position of UK banks when the crisis broke, their capital adequacy is still being rebuilt. And banks are still operating in an extraordinarily risky international environment.
This has been accomplished without any evidence of market disruption or volatile price movements; it has been, as former Chair Janet Yellen once said, like “watching paint dry.” 12 The charts in Figure 4 also show the projected progression of the portfolio for the rest of the year. Runoff from the balance sheet increases over the projection horizon, as the caps attain their terminal value later this year. As had been expected at the start of the program, principal repayments from our agency MBS portfolio are projected to eventually start coming in below the level of the caps. Based on current projections, principal payments on the Federal Reserve’s holdings of agency MBS would likely be lower than the monthly cap on redemptions that will be in effect beginning in the fall of this year. Consistent with the Policy Normalization Principles and Plans, when this occurs in a given month, no reinvestment occurs, and the portfolio size declines by the amount of principal repayment. It is important to remember that mortgage principal repayments are uncertain; are sensitive to various factors, particularly long-term interest rates; and could conceivably rise above the level of the cap in the future, particularly if interest rates were to decline. If this were to occur, those amounts above the cap would be reinvested. The cap-based program to normalize the balance sheet was designed at the start to operate exactly in this way: it is the mechanism by which the decline in the balance sheet is kept to a gradual and predictable pace.

The aim of the CBRT’s road map is to improve the resiliency of the economy to external shocks through (i) maturity lengthening – encouraging banks to shift their non-core liabilities from short-term to long-term (Figure 17); (ii) providing incentives to banks for borrowing and lending  BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  directly from and to the Central Bank in times when foreign players are reluctant to engage with banks in Turkey due to heightened volatility in global markets; (iii) bolstering safety-nets – making sure that the banking sector has access to adequate foreign exchange liquidity in times of market stress; (iv) supporting financial stability – providing incentives to banks to improve loan to deposit ratios; and (v) simplifying the monetary policy framework to improve the communication of the monetary policy stance. All but the interest rate corridor simplification step on the roadmap have already been taken and the focus is now firmly on fine-tuning their parameters. Overall, these measures ease the policy tradeoffs posed by the excessive volatility in cross border flows, enabling the interest rate policy to concentrate on the primary objective of price stability. So far the financial market performance of Turkey suggests that the measures undertaken since August 2015 have helped Turkey outperform many peer EMEs. Of course, on the way, Turkey also enjoyed the benefits of lower oil prices relatively more than many EMEs and reduced political uncertainty after the general election result in November 2015.
This process of regular and systematic assessment, based on the economic and financial data, is unimaginably different from the erratic reaction to financial market disturbances which characterised the conduct of monetary policy too often in the more distant past. And the reflective, interactive, debate within the Monetary Policy Committee is very different too from the sometimes exaggerated advocacy of a particular viewpoint which inevitably crept in to the Ken and Eddie show during which the Bank usually had at most an hour in which to persuade a sometimes reluctant Chancellor! The present arrangements allow us to explore, without initially taking hard positions, alternative possible interpretations of the data and their implications; and those discussions capture far better than before the uncertainties inherent in the conduct of monetary policy. It is, I think, how monetary policy really should be made. Transparency and accountability With operational independence comes - quite rightly in my view - even greater transparency and public accountability. The minutes of the two-day meeting at which that decision is taken, together with a summary of the information presented by the staff, are published in the week after the following meeting. Those minutes also record the individual votes of each member of the Committee. Beyond this, we publish a regular assessment of monetary policy - including a forecast of inflation over the two-year period that we believe is relevant, given the lags between policy actions and inflation outturns - in the Bank’s Quarterly Inflation Report.

Such involvement would not normally involve the central bank in significant financial risk. But in more difficult - and mercifully rare - situations, where the failure of one institution could bring down other - otherwise viable - institutions, the central bank may need to consider acting in the role of “lender of last resort” to the failing institution, against poorer quality, less liquid, assets which might expose the central bank to financial loss. The key phrase here, of course, is “where its failure could bring down other otherwise viable - institutions”. The central bank safety net is not there to protect individual institutions from failure. It is there to protect the stability of the financial system as a whole. In the absence of a serious systemic threat, the right course would normally be to allow the institution to fail. If any institution felt that it could rely on being bailed out if it ran into real difficulty, that, too, would introduce “moral hazard”, encouraging excessive risk-taking and financial fragility in the system as a whole. There can be nothing automatic about “lender of last resort” assistance - and, when it is provided, it should always be on the most onerous terms that the borrower can bear: it is not provided to protect the shareholders who should be looked to first. Nor is it there to protect the management.
So, it is imperative that we treat terrorists, their allies, sympathizers, and associates, with the same yard stick, and not get fooled by some of the sugar coated pills in which blatant and horrendous acts of terrorism are sometimes cleverly packaged and presented. What are the other manifestation of these organized funding schemes? We, in the South Asian Region, are conscious of the unofficial banking systems that operate, like the Hawala and Hundi, which pose a serious threat to our efforts to close the avenues available to money launderers and terrorists. These underground banking services provide the ideal framework and the means for laundering of money and financing terrorism. It has just been reported that the Indian Income Tax Department early this year, busted a money-laundering racket during a routine investigation into Hawala transactions. From the information unearthed so far, they have discovered that Transworld ICT was only a front for a huge money laundering scam. In this scam, a certain Delhibased businessman, is said to have, by himself, remitted US $ 1.4 billion between January and July 2006 "as proceeds of software business" through Transworld ICT Solutions, which essentially worked as an illegal clearing house. BIS Review 48/2007  1  We are of course, mindful of the efforts of the international standardsetters and watchdogs, to deal with these situations. They work tirelessly to review and recommend the preventive measures needed to be taken in this regard.

Our physical presence gives us the opportunity to better engage with and learn from our communities. Our mission is to make the U.S. economy stronger and the financial system more stable for all segments of society, and supporting local economies is a key part of that. The New York Fed is proud to be an anchor institution of New York City, and we want the city-and all of its people-to thrive. I'd like to share a bit more about why having these discussions is so important for the future of this city and for us here at the New York Fed. And with that, I must give the standard Fed disclaimer that the views I express are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Open Market Committee or anyone else in the Federal Reserve System. The City's Present and Future Native New Yorker John Jay Chapman once said, "The present in New York is so powerful that the past is lost." You can feel that powerful reality when you walk the streets today. Indeed, this city was once an epicenter of the pandemic: we were hit early, and we were hit hard. The virus spread rapidly, leading to widespread hospitalizations and a devastating death toll. During the initial months of the pandemic, one out of five jobs in the city disappeared. In the restaurant industry in particular, 70 percent of jobs were lost. Other industries, such as retail and even health care, experienced outsized losses as well.
Second, when interest rates are at the zero lower bound, the risks of tightening a bit too early are likely to be considerably greater than the risks of tightening a bit too late. A premature tightening might lead to financial conditions that are too restrictive, resulting in a weaker economy and, in turn, an aborted lift-off. This would be problematic in that it would harm the Fed’s credibility and, more importantly, would be difficult to rectify. The U.S. experience during the Great Depression and the Japanese experience over the past two decades illustrate the risks of raising interest rates too soon, especially when inflation is running below the central bank’s objective. Finally, given the still high level of long-term unemployment and the outlook for inflation, there could be a significant benefit to allowing the economy to run “slightly hot” for a while in order to get those that have been unemployed for a long time working again. I believe this can be done without jeopardizing our price stability objective. If the long-term unemployed are not employed relatively soon, their job skills will erode further, reducing their long-term prospects for employment and, therefore, the productive capacity of the U.S. economy. This would be a very unfortunate outcome for them, their families and the country. Market expectations that lift-off will occur around mid-2015 seem reasonable to me.

This implies a gradual reduction in the effect on actual M3 growth arising from the downward impact of the steep yield curve and the associated allocation of funds into longer-term deposits and securities outside M3. At the same time, the annual growth rate of M1 has continued to moderate, although it remained strong at 9.2% in June 2010. In part, this reflects somewhat higher opportunity costs of holding overnight deposits relative to other short-term deposits. The still weak annual growth rate of bank loans to the private sector continues to conceal countervailing developments, with increasingly positive growth in loans to households and stabilised negative annual growth in loans to non-financial corporations. A lagged response of loans to non-financial corporations to developments in economic activity is a normal feature of the business cycle. The data up to June indicate that, after expanding for a few months earlier in the year, the size of banks’ overall balance sheets has not increased further. The challenge remains for banks to expand the availability of credit to the non-financial sector when demand picks up. Where necessary, to address this challenge, banks should retain earnings, turn to the market to strengthen further their capital bases or take full advantage of government support measures for recapitalisation. In this respect, we welcome the EU-wide stress-testing exercise, which was prepared and conducted by the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) and national supervisory authorities, in close cooperation with the ECB.
The Central Bank’s decision to liquidate the bank was challenged in the Court of Appeal which quashed the Central Bank decision on the ground that the Central Bank had not followed the due procedure given in the Banking Act. Finally, the Government as a part of political decision in the interest of depositors bailed out the bank by vesting the bank with a new state bank set up for the purpose. If the Central Bank was conscious of its responsibilities, it could have resorted to a different path to resolve the bank at the very early stage. World over, central banks are blamed for delayed action, not effective to resolve problems. World over, regulators fall behind the market although they are expected to correct the market. Regulators are burdened with laws, procedures and bureaucracy and lack of latest market information. They work for office hours. However, market participants work 24 hours and are innovative for regulatory arbitrage. The human greed supported with moral hazard of regulation creates bubbles cyclically leading to financial and economic crises from time to time. The regulators and politicians create new laws, but they fail to prevent the next bubble. As a person being in both regulator and markets, I will do a lot of work to address this 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  universal issue hopefully. However, as financial regulators cannot control the greed, financial bubbles and crises are to happen. Finally, the Central Bank independence is the confusing and very technical subject. No Central Bank is divine.

Mojmír Hampl: European integration – a critical economist’s view Speech by Mr Mojmír Hampl, Vice-Governor of the Czech National Bank, at the Europe at Sixty: 1949–2009, Metropolitan University, Prague, 20 November 2009. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, Let me first express my deep gratitude to the organisers for inviting me to give this keynote speech today. And do not take it as a standard, politically correct opening sentence. I really mean it. For me it is quite a rare opportunity to speak frankly and openly on such an important topic, which the process of European integration certainly is, and to speak more as a scholar than a policy-maker. So I will try to do my best and to be outspoken enough to provoke questions and comments after I finish. Therefore, the usual disclaimer is more relevant than ever this time: my opinions are not necessarily the opinions of my employer. I think European integration is a process that provides a lot of food for thought for many social scientists. I will try to approach the topic from the point of view of an economist, but also a citizen and a mere mortal, sharing with you some of my concerns as to how the process of European integration has been evolving so far and where it is most likely heading.