samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
This depreciation of our currency, however, is an optimal response to the new circumstances, as it implies an adjustment of relative prices and thus contributes to the rebalancing of sources of growth across economic sectors. In other words, it shifts the growth dynamic from domestic demand to exports. In this scenario, Chilean inflation has returned to the vicinity of 3 percent (bear in mind that last year it was most of the time in the lower part of the Central Bank’s tolerance range: 2 percent) (figure 3). So this big depreciation of the Chilean peso has not altered the forecast that inflation will remain in line with the target over the policy horizon. This reflects that the pass-through coefficient, which measures how much of the depreciation is translated into higher prices, so far has not created unwanted propagation to inflation. Of course there are items that immediately reflect any exchange rate movements, like fuels, for example. But the passthrough to core inflation trends and expectations is not so mechanical. On one hand, there is evidence suggesting that it depends on the economy’s cyclical conditions, meaning that in the present circumstances, where gaps are being formed, this pass-through should be small. On the other hand, said coefficient has shrunk over time as the inflation targeting scheme has consolidated. Thus, the credibility of monetary policy also reduces the coefficient, allowing us to project that, beyond short-term effects, inflation will stay near the target over the policy horizon.

The SIC system takes account of such forces and sets the stage for cashless payment innovations, which ultimately benefit customers. This is reflected in the launch of the fourth generation of the SIC system in April this year. SIC now supports ISO 20022, the emerging standard in payment messaging. 9 Thanks to the IT architecture of the new SIC system, innovative services can now be maintained and developed more flexibly and cost-effectively than in the past. Furthermore, SIC’s operating hours are due to be changed next year; this will extend the window in which customers can submit payments with same-day value date. 10 The possibility of adjusting the regulatory framework that I touched on earlier is also very topical in Switzerland at the moment. Specifically, this concerns the issue of lowering barriers to market entry for fintech companies. FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory 8  In terms of numbers of transactions, SIC is practically a retail payment system, since around 95% of transactions are conducted for this purpose. 9  The ISO 20022 standard for electronic data interchange aims to harmonise the exchange of data between participants in differing areas of finance, including payment transactions. Essentially, the processes behind this data exchange and the messages’ data formats will be unified, leading to improved settlement of transactions. 10 As of 15 May 2017, the end of the SIC system’s clearing day will be extended from 4.15 pm to 6.15 pm. Page 5/6  Authority, supports the introduction of a new licensing category for fintech companies.
Hence, the joint application of short-term interest rate cuts, asset purchases, special financing operations aimed at banks and an active communication policy of the part of the ECB Governing Council have all allowed the yield curve to ease in recent years. This has had a most notable impact on financing conditions for all agents, public and private alike, within the area.9 It is important this complementarity be maintained with the new measures, should they prove necessary, in order to maximise their effectiveness. Indeed, following the adjustments recently made to the ECB Governing Council’s communication, market interest rates in all segments have continued to decline, and the yield on the GDP-weighted euro area 10-year sovereign bond has fallen to below 0.2%. The sovereign bond risk premia relative to the German benchmark and the yield spreads on corporate bonds have also declined. Notwithstanding the monetary policy decisions that may have to be adopted in the short term, I believe this setting also calls for some thoughts on the medium-term monetary policy strategy. It should be borne in mind that, insofar as interest rates hold at levels close to their effective lower bound for a longer period, central banks will have less headroom to cut rates in response to future crises. They also have to resort more frequently to less conventional measures to increase their balance sheets. This situation has led some central banks to discuss possible alternatives to the current monetary policy strategy, aimed at countering the constraint of the effective lower bound of interest rates.

For instance, the recent Level 3 assessment by CPMI-IOSCO on the implementation of the PFMI5 by ten CCPs (including SGX-DC) helped to identify gaps and shortcomings which CPMI-IOSCO expects to be addressed by the CCPs and their respective regulators by the end of the year. As outstanding issues are addressed and the progress tracked, regulators should also have greater confidence in undertaking their equivalence assessments of CCPs that their domestic market participants can access. This can then provide greater certainty to global market participants. 2/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  Improving market access for CCPs Singapore, as with other jurisdictions, will be commencing our clearing mandate next year thereby enhancing the role of CCPs as a risk mitigating tool. However, a clearing mandate cannot be effectively implemented if access to CCP remains an issue for counterparties, particularly smaller players. We share similar concerns to those that have been expressed by ESMA. In this regard, it is noteworthy that ESMA has looked into possible ways to improve CCP access and has, for example, proposed indirect clearing arrangements which strikes a balance between having an appropriate level of indirect client protection and counterparty risk. I hope today’s forum will allow MAS and other regulators to learn from ESMA’s insights. To enable a wider range of market participants – including those based outside Singapore - to have direct access to CCPs in Singapore, MAS will allow our CCPs to introduce self-clearing and remote clearing memberships.
Without clearer guide rails of this kind, we are destined to proceed somewhat messily from crisis to crisis, building a framework by circumstance rather than by design. Second, we need to work towards a more developed understanding of the tools that central banks need to deal with this new era of liquidity risk, and in particular the right mix between lending and asset buy/sell facilities required in different scenarios. Most of us share the instinct that lending tools are the right place to start – but progress on defining the set of non-bank firms that are needed, able and appropriately incentivised to participate has so far been limited. And there are important debates to be had about the regulatory perimeter. Whether a steady state  Page 13  toolkit will require buy/sell tools is an important debate – but at the very least it does seem that we are going to need to be able to reach for ‘break glass’ versions of such tools until and if more developed repo facilities are developed. Third, we need to debate the relative merits of standing vs discretionary facilities. Appropriately designed standing facilities could help reduce the incidence of future liquidity crises, by clarifying the circumstances in which public assistance would be available, replacing the sort of crude guesswork that constructive ambiguity can generate, and incentivising more effective self-insurance. But calibrating them accurately, and ensuring they are ready to function, requires sharply improved levels of understanding and operational readiness.

Arjuna Mahendran: The latest financial crisis and Sri Lanka Speech by Mr Arjuna Mahendran, Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, at the International Research Conference, Colombo, 7 December 2015. *  *  *  Professor Yi Fu Lin, Dr. Harsha De Silva, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this 8th research conference by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. I must congratulate Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe and his colleagues who have developed this tradition which in no small way has established the Central Bank of Sri Lanka on the international research map as a meeting place for the profound minds of several leading academic and banking institutions. This conference itself is no small feat to have organized given that we have participants from several parts of the world in Europe and Asia including several areas that we have very strong relationship with as a country, and I think this is a great testimony to the continuing tradition that we have evolved in the Central Bank in terms of creating another center of excellence in Sri Lanka. In my opening remarks I thought I would perhaps take a leaf from Professor Lin’s commentary just now, and perhaps adapt Sri Lanka’s situation in terms of the structuralism or the lack of it that Professor Lin discussed. Now when you look at the total economy, we have in the last five years gone through a fairly challenging period.
In our case, total productivity – the variable that seeks to approximate the level of efficiency of the economy and which depends, among other factors, on the effects of technological improvements and on the efficiency of the institutions and the regulations in place within an economy – worsened significantly during the years of expansion prior to the crisis, posting slightly negative rates as from 2000. Despite some improvement as from 2008, linked to the disappearance of unproductive firms, Spain continues to post significantly lower productivity growth than the average for the developed economies. There are simplistic analyses that would seek to explain these developments by resorting to singular and even anecdotal macroeconomic aspects; but the factors that appear to lie behind our mediocre productivity performance are varied and complex. Apart from the fact that Spain has significantly lower levels of technological capital than other developed countries, factors are often cited such as the high costs and administrative obstacles facing business start-ups, the low level of competition in certain sectors and the small size of our companies. Low productivity can also be related to some of the labour market aspects I referred to earlier, such as the disconnection between remuneration conditions and the specific situation of each firm, and labour market duality, which hamper the reallocation of resources across companies and human capital accumulation decisions. Conclusions To conclude, allow me first to refer to the situation of the euro area, and then to the Spanish economy, on the road to recovery from the crisis.

The euro area faces a complex macroeconomic scenario, marked by an outlook of moderate growth and very low inflation, recently compounded by uncertainties such as those arising from the assimilation of migrant flows and the referendum on the United Kingdom’s continued membership of the EU. The ECB’s monetary policy is providing considerable stimulus through the easing of financing conditions, but it is necessary for other policies to accompany monetary policy if we wish to anchor the recovery and improve the medium-term outlook. In this respect, the fiscal policy of the member countries and of the EU as a whole should use the room for manoeuvre allowed under the Stability and Growth Pact to promote activity and, in parallel, the structural reforms aimed at improving our economies’ potential should be deepened. Turning to the Spanish economy, it has in the past three years moved back onto a path of economic growth, showing greater dynamism than in most of the EU countries. But it has not managed to overcome the imbalances I talked about earlier to the extent necessary. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Spain still has an unemployment rate of over 20% and a very high proportion of very longterm employment; we have financing maturities arising from our external debt that each year exceed 45% of our GDP; and our long-term demographic outlook threatens the sustainability of our public pension system.
Nor can it be ruled out that the temporary tax increases approved this year may have to remain in place for longer or be replaced in time by other permanent measures. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  I believe that in a country as decentralised as Spain, and in light of the deviations that arose in 2011, what was needed was to accompany budgetary consolidation with a significant strengthening of the institutional framework, so that all tiers of government might be called on to meet their commitments. Fortunately, the recently approved Organic Law on Budgetary Stability is a substantial improvement here. Moreover, it is fully attuned to the recent EU reforms on governance. Also, the agreement reached a few days back between the central and regional governments under the aegis of the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council on the deficit targets for 2012 and on the consolidation plans to attain these targets is excellent news. This lays the foundations for avoiding overruns such as those witnessed last year. What is crucial now is the swift and effective implementation of the instruments envisaged in this Organic Law, in particular the monitoring and control mechanisms for public finances at all levels of government, and those intended to enforce compliance with the targets set by all of them. The law proposes substantially improving general government transparency at the different stages of the budgetary process. In particular, timely detection of budgetary deviations is considered essential so as to adopt measures.

Consequently, it would be advisable to begin publication of the regional government monthly revenue and expenditure outturns as soon as possible, as envisaged in the Organic Law (Article 27.3). The law further includes coercive instruments to ensure compliance with budgetary targets by all levels of government. Such instruments can be effective in ensuring discipline if rigorously applied and if the appropriate procedures for overseeing the budget outturn throughout the year are set in place. But the pressure of everyday events should not make us lose sight of the medium and long term. Allow me to refer here to the major reform of the pensions system approved in July last year. This checked a pension spending dynamic that was endangering the sustainability of public finances over the medium and long-term horizon. But it should be recalled that this reform did not cancel out all the risks arising from population ageing. It would thus be desirable to properly define the so-called sustainability factor, so that the parameters of the system may adapt automatically to future demographic developments. Admittedly, the economic difficulties such as high unemployment and low growth that we face are most serious. But the main problem currently confronting the Spanish economy is the fall in all confidence indicators in recent months, exacerbated in recent weeks by the management of the latest banking crisis. Restoring confidence is the imperative at present, since without it, none of our problems will be resolved.
In the early days of the crisis, we saw biased actions which led to arbitrage of negative effects. Globalization requires the financial infrastructure to be everywhere similar in shape, contents, and human and technological capacities. It should operate under similar standards and practices and have the proper flexibility to precede the financial novelties. Second, the last crisis calls for the pre-emptive and forerunning nature of supervision and legal regulations in general. I believe a regulatory framework is genuinely effective and successful when it intertwines the simplicity and transparency of a rule-based approach with the flexible and far-sighted characteristics of a principle-based approach. At any case, this is indispensable to make banks accountable, to convince the supervision inspector on the risk characteristics and on the transformation of new different on- and off-balance sheet products, before they exceed a certain threshold in terms of magnitude and exposure. The Bank of Albania is making efforts in terms of identifying the aspects that need further improvement. In this undertaking, we will take into account the similar developments in the region and broader, to preserve the market competitiveness and the convergence in supervisory practices. Third, I believe that the crisis requires the existence of an international institution which should guide the financial stability, assess the systemic risk and determine the quantitative indicators measuring it. In this process, it is important that the regulatory norms be transparent to everyone.

Ardian Fullani: Monetary & financial stability policies – lessons from the crisis Speech by Mr Ardian Fullani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the 8th International Conference of the Bank of Albania: "Monetary & Financial Stability Policies – Lessons from the Crisis", Tirana, 17 September 2009. *  *  *  Honourable Mr. Prime Minister, Dear Governors, Distinguished guests, I feel deeply privileged to open the proceedings of the 8th International Conference of the Bank of Albania entitled: “Monetary & Financial Stability Policies – Lessons from the Crisis”. I hope the proceedings will help the participants better realize the issues facing the global economy during this period and draw the proper lessons. I am personally convinced that the prominent speakers’ reputation is a guarantee in this regard. Before I invite the guests to discuss the features and lessons drawn from the global and regional crisis according to their viewpoints and experiences, allow me to say a few words on this conference. The topic chosen to be dealt with in this conference is at the forefront of the institutions’ agenda, responsible for macroeconomic policies and financial system surveillance at a national and international level. The panic that followed the Lehman Brothers’ failure almost a year ago transformed the turmoil in the U.S. mortgage loan market into a genuine globalwide financial crisis.
As pointed out in the Economic Commentary “The lower limit of the Riksbank’s repo rate” (Beechey and Elmér, 2009), which was published on the Riksbank’s website last autumn, one cannot find any problems in the financial markets that can be attributed to low interest rates. Since then a few more months have passed. Both the Monetary Policy Department and the Financial Stability Department at the Riksbank closely follow developments in the financial markets and have very good information about them. There are still no signs that low interest rates have entailed any problems with regard to financial stability or the functioning of the financial markets. The profitability of the major banks, in the form of the net interest margin, has been stable and their share of deposits from households has not changed noticeably. The redistribution of capital on the fund market has also been moderate. The financial infrastructure has not been affected by any problems during the period of low interest rates and resilience against disruptions of the financial infrastructure is deemed to be high. The final paragraph on page 28 mentions risks linked to exaggerated lending and rapid increases in house prices. These risks have been closely studied in both the Riksbank’s most recent Financial Stability Report and by Finansinspektionen (the Swedish financial supervisory authority) in its report on the Swedish mortgage market and bank lending (Finansinspektionen, 2010).

Mr President, no company can sustainably grow if it does not provide mechanisms by which employees can influence their working lives. Labour is more than a commodity. Unlike non-living factors of production, such as, machinery and raw materials, the work of human beings raises questions about the impact of work and work relations. As you review your collective agreement frameworks, I wish to remind you that there are a lot of common interests and important interdependencies between employers and employees despite the apparent conflicting interests. For instance firms need workers and workers need jobs. Ladies and gentlemen, there can be no true bargaining without prudent and effective leadership on either side of the table. This kind of leadership is required for us to achieve our collective objectives. We are desirous of seeing a Union leadership, which is well-informed and constantly upgrading their leadership skills for the attainment of organisational goals and workers welfare. In conclusion, I wish to once again implore you to actively participate and take a keen interest in the deliberations of this Forum. It is my expectation that you will have an opportunity to carry out an appraisal of your individual and collective skills and how they impact upon the job market and workers welfare in the financial sector. With these remarks, Ladies and Gentleman, I declare this Forum officially open. I Thank You  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Table 1: Google searches related to social consumption  Country  Peak YoY change, %  Italy  -67  Spain  -75  France  -73  Germany  -70  US  -58  Japan  -82  China  -73  UK  -69  Sources: Google and Bank calculations. Table 2: UK “fast indicators” of consumption categories  Category  Peak change, %  Social  -80  Work-related  -65  Delayable  -50  Staple  -5  Total  -30  Source: Bank of England and Bank calculations. GDP data so far broadly corroborates the message from these fast indicators. Compared with the fourth quarter of 2019, UK GDP fell by around 25% during the first four months of this year. The fall in UK-weighted world GDP is likely to have been similarly unprecedented. Unsurprisingly, these would be the sharpest four-month falls in GDP on record, in both the UK and globally. This contraction has affected almost every sector, if to differing degrees (Chart 2). The largest falls have been in the accommodation and dining sectors (over 90%). But sectors such as arts and recreation, construction and education have fallen by more than 40%. Utilities, food production and real estate have been among the least affected. Generally speaking, the greater a sector’s reliance on personal contact, the larger its fall. 4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  4  Chart 2: Falls in output by sector Industry output, hit to level, % Accomm.

The May MPR scenario suggested peak-to-trough falls of 60% and 40% respectively, based in part on results from the Bank’s Decision Maker Panel (DMP). The latest results from the DMP appear broadly consistent with this. Updating Staff’s nowcasts for these high-frequency data gives an estimated fall in Q2 GDP of around 20% relative to its pre-Covid peak. While this is an exceptionally weak number, that is not in itself news. The news is that it is 7 percentage points less than in the May MPR scenario. By comparison, an estimate based on the stringency-based model implies a broadly similar contraction in UK GDP in Q2 of 19% (Chart 7). It could be argued that, while these are large upward revisions in an absolute sense, they are still relatively modest by comparison with the falls already seen. And of course, some of this rise in spending might simply be the release of pent-up demand, which could dissipate subsequently. Against that, the evidence so far suggests the recovery is not simply the bringing-forward of spending. Were this higher level of spending maintained, it would put GDP on a different path than in the May MPR scenario. The cumulative loss of annual GDP in the May scenario, relative to the January MPR forecast, was around  11  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  11  17%.