samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Furthermore, the ECB is involved in the recently established "Economic dialogue with accession countries", launched by the European Council, which includes issues highly relevant to the ECB such as monetary and exchange rate policies and financial sector developments. The road towards EU integration and, later, euro area participation is not a single one and, therefore, a plurality of approaches may well be pursued by accession countries, not only before EU accession, but also after it. It is true that, upon accession, countries will enter the EU with the status of "Member States with a derogation", that no "opt-out" clauses will be granted and that countries will therefore be expected to follow macroeconomic policies consistent with the ultimate adoption of the euro. Indeed, accession countries will have to comply with the well-known convergence criteria, before they can adopt the euro. It is also true that, with this objective in mind, countries will be expected to join ERM II at some point in time, and to participate in this mechanism for at least two years, without devaluation of the exchange rate of their currency vis-à-vis the euro, before they join the euro area. However, ERM II membership does not need to happen immediately after EU accession, neither need ERM II membership to be limited to only two years (this is a minimum for adoption of the euro). In fact, the length of the period of ERM II participation has also varied among current euro area countries; this may be similar for new Member States.

As central bankers, we are not isolated from the reality surrounding us, and we are committed to play our role in this historical process, particularly with regard to the smooth integration of the central banks of accession countries into the European System of Central Banks and, later , into the Eurosystem. Through ongoing co-operation, the central banks of the accession countries are being given an opportunity to familiarise themselves with the Eurosystem's mode of operation, and the Eurosystem can gain a better understanding of how these central banks operate under their respective regimes. This exchange, and the resulting establishment of a common terminology and understanding of each other's environments, will facilitate the pursuit of a common objective in the future. Thank you for your attention. BIS Review 84/2001  5
Øystein Olsen: Managing wealth – some thoughts on economic policy and the allocation of national savings Speech by Mr Øystein Olsen, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at a meeting hosted by the Norwegian Embassy, Rome, 29 November 2012. *  *  *  Introduction European economies are currently going through hard times, with repercussions of the crisis still being felt throughout the world economy. For all of us, it is a humbling experience to observe how closely interconnected markets and economies have become across national borders. My intention here this evening is not to point at solutions to the challenges currently facing the euro area. What I can offer, however, is the perspective of a friendly neighbour and a substantial investor. In this modest capacity, I hope to sound a note of optimism from a region of Europe that in its recent past went through a grave crisis, which was followed by a series of reforms and, eventually, the return of prosperity. The Nordic experience with the cycle of crisis, reform and recovery might provide some perspective for those European countries now facing similar challenges. I will also make some remarks on the current situation in financial markets in general, and government bond markets in particular, from the viewpoint of a global investor.

Bank of France reports industrial output continued to make progress in June 1997 BANK OF FRANCE, MONTHLY BUSINESS REVIEW, June 1997. According to the business leaders surveyed by the Banque de France, industrial output continued to make progress in June. Output of consumer and intermediate goods advanced significantly, with a more moderate increase for capital goods, whereas it levelled out in the food-processing industry and slightly dipped in the automobile industry. Capacity utilization rates recovered. Overall demand strengthened both in France and abroad. Export sales grew considerably, in particular to Great Britain, Italy and the United States. Domestic demand rose, stimulated to some extent by inventory replenishment. Order books seem generally satisfactory. While they have emptied out somewhat in the food processing industry, they remain on the full side in the capital goods sector. Inventories are only just above desired levels, despite an increase in the consumer goods sector, and above all in the automobile and food processing industries. In the coming months, activity is likely to intensify across the board, except for the automobile sector which is expected to stabilize. Overall, raw material and finished goods prices changed little. The cost of supplies climbed in certain branches of the intermediate goods sector, mainly due to the rise in the dollar, although these increases were not passed on to sales prices. Business managers continued to take a cautious stance on investment. The little capital expenditure there was primarily concerned the modernisation of equipment and bringing it into line with standards.
The practical question is how far systemic surcharges take us in tackling the systemic risk externality. In other words, at current levels by how much have systemic surcharges reduced  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  expected losses for the financial system? That is an empirical question. To assess it, consider the impact of capital surcharges on the expected losses facing the 29 institutions identified by the FSB. Using each of these banks’ balance sheets, we generate a measure of default probability using the Merton (1974) contingent claims model. We assume that the base level of equity for these banks is 7% (the new Basel III minimum) and that, in the event of default, they suffer losses on their assets of around 30%.4 To keep things simple, banks’ assets are assumed to be (log-)normally distributed, in line with Merton (1974), and default occurs only when a bank’s capital is fully exhausted. Assume initially that default risks across banks are independent. This is a highly conservative assumption, as in practice bank default probabilities are highly correlated at times of stress. Indeed, bank correlation coefficients in crisis often head towards one. For that reason, this thought-experiment provides a lower bound on expected losses across the financial system. Chart 5 shows expected losses across the 29 banks at different levels of the systemic surcharge. In the absence of any surcharge, expected losses across the system are just less than $ billion per year.

Prasarn Trairatvorakul: Current topics of the economy and monetary policy of the Kingdom Speech by Dr Prasarn Trairatvorakul, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the Japanese Chamber of Commerce Dinner Talk, Bangkok, 25 March 2013. *  *  *  Good evening, Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to thank the Japanese Chamber of Commerce (JCC) for inviting me to give a keynote speech at this special annual event. It is my honor to be back here again for the prominent institution that has its presence in Thailand over half a century, contributing to the development in trade and investment, as well as promoting Japan-Thailand friendship through cultural exchanges and technical support. For this special evening, I would like to reflect on recent developments in the global and Thai economy, and the challenges for monetary policy going forward. First of all, let’s look back to what happened last year. In 2012, Thailand faced a series of challenges from both domestic and external fronts. The global economy was subject to the main drag from the Euro debt crisis, while uncertainties remained on the recovery process of the US and Japan. These advanced countries faced a number of structural problems which would, of course, take time to resolve. However, it was encouraging to see the overall global economy continue on a gradual recovery path, with improving outlook particularly in the US and Japan, while China and Asia remained robust.
In my mind, current circumstances and a weighing of alternative risks mean that a balanced policy approach calls for being extraordinarily patient in reducing accommodation – that is, being patient about when we first increase the federal funds rate and being patient about setting the pace of rate increases once we have begun to move. Proceed cautiously in normalizing policy The first factor entering my analysis is that I see a number of downside risks to the growth and inflation forecasts. For instance, as I look around the globe, I see many economies facing slow growth and low inflation. Europe and Japan are well-known cases among the advanced economies. Of course, slow or stagnant growth in advanced countries has negative spillovers onto emerging markets that are highly dependent on exports for their growth. Indeed, today China is confronting slower growth, and the Brazilian economy has fallen into recession. For the United States, slower growth abroad reduces demand for our exports and, with it, U.S. production. In addition, weakness abroad could translate into a higher exchange value for the dollar against other currencies, further reducing net exports. A higher dollar also would result in lower prices for imports, which, in turn would hold down inflation and delay progress toward our 2 percent inflation target. While the risks to the U.S. outlook emanating from abroad are worthy of notice, they are not the biggest thing on my mind.

Lessons for monetary policy With regard to monetary policy, in many respects recent events have served to confirm the approach adopted by the ECB since the outset of Monetary Union in 1999. Most fundamentally, the primacy of price stability as the objective of monetary policy has been confirmed. Indeed, at times of financial stress, the credible maintenance of price stability becomes even more important. Were the anchoring of inflation expectations to weaken, financial market tensions would intensify further and corrective measures would prove less effective. Moreover, our recent experience of financial crisis – with its roots in the evolution of bank balance sheets, and thus monetary and credit developments – has vindicated in my view the importance attached by the Governing Council to a close and regular monitoring of the monetary data. In the design of the ECB’s monetary policy strategy, it was always foreseen that the close monitoring of monetary developments would provide a framework for policy makers to consider asset price developments and potential misalignments. Responding to monetary and credit dynamics as part of a comprehensive assessment of the risks to price stability in the medium term implies that interest rate decisions will tend to “lean against” accumulating financial imbalances and asset price misalignments. Recent research provides a vastly enriched framework for conducting such monitoring in a systematic fashion, and offers a real possibility that asset price disequilibria and associated financial distress may be identified at an early enough stage for corrective measures to be taken by the policy authorities.
New and emerging risks The rapidly changing global landscape has given rise to new and emerging risks which are mostly intangible, such as cyber, liability, supply chain and reputation. Cyber risk is the new catastrophe, estimated to cost the global economy between $ – $ trillion annually. This is much higher compared to the average annual cost of natural disasters at $ More than just the burden of cost, cyber risks often bring about much embarrassment and reputational damage to the company and its clients. However, cyber risks are not adequately prepared for and their associated costs and impact under-estimated: •  A large majority of businesses believe that cyber risks are still not fully understood, and that risk readiness for cyber risk may have been “vastly overstated”. •  Challenges exist around the quantification and pricing of cyber risks and their accumulation effects. Yet such risks are the most likely to occur and carry the greatest potential impact on operation, with the leading risks in terms of impact and likelihood being: •  Reputational damage from a sensitive data breach (impact on organisation’s resiliency – 79%; likelihood 79%)  •  Failure in a main IT data centre (59%; 77%)  •  Disruption of online services due to a cyber attack (58%; 77%).

Lastly, most spending is temporary and non-recurring, which will make it hopefully possible, once the crisis is over, to return to a sound and sustainable fiscal path. II. Can reconstruction now strengthen Europe and the Franco-German alliance? After the emergency phase, the time has come to exit the crisis. We Europeans have common objectives here: to support growth during the recovery phase, but above all to invest for the future (climate change, digital, health, etc. ), in a world that is increasingly uncertain. To achieve this, Europe has four concrete and innovative levers at its disposal: an unprecedented recovery plan, a Financing Union for private savings, its single market, and its commitment to fight global warming. An unprecedented recovery plan The Franco-German initiative of 18 May, and the subsequent European agreement of 21 July, have been a major step forward for European financial solidarity. This is an unprecedented act of solidarity towards the countries most affected by a pandemic, which is itself unparalleled. For the first time, a common European-wide fund to finance final expenditure has been adopted, representing over half of the package (EUR 390 billion). This is not only a strong political signal, but also an economic rebalancing of the policy-mix in the euro area, which lays the groundwork for a real common fiscal policy. The ECB's Governing Council has long advocated that monetary policy should not be “the only game in town” in Europe. This is very good news.
The focus of this Symposium – on insights, inclusion and innovation – underpins this adaptability. Insights – identifying with microentreprenurs As effective policymakers and practitioners, we need to have deep insights of our clients on-theground: the microentrepreneurs. This obligation begins with the awareness that the needs, tradeoffs and circumstances of microentrepreneurs are unique. They face very different financial constraints and in turn, very different choice sets. Hence, effective microfinance design that appeals to microentrepreneurs’ needs will not only require a rooted understanding of whether they have been good paymasters, who their other financiers are and how they conduct business; 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  but also their specific background, problems and values. As we speak, predictive credit analytics are being developed using alternative data, such as psychometric assessments and other non-financial information. This may be particularly useful in the microsegment, where traditional data on creditworthiness are usually scarce. These insights can also be leveraged to design products that are tailored towards the distinct needs of microentrepreneurs. Improving user experience and confidence is equally important. Application procedures, user interfaces and operational processes should be simple and seamless. Most importantly, they should be appropriate to the circumstances of microborrowers for whom a loan may well be the first experience with a formal financial institution. How they perceive this experience can have longer term effects on the level of trust they place in financial institutions, and reinforce behaviours that will either encourage them to use financial services, or further distance them from the formal financial system.

He said this: “Where once the poor were commonly seen as passive victims, microfinance recognizes that poor people are remarkable reservoirs of energy and knowledge. And while the lack of financial services is a sign of poverty, today it is also understood as an untapped opportunity to create markets, bring people in from the margins and give them the tools with which to help themselves.” I believe we will continue to see massive changes in rapid bursts. In the process, the goal should be to help as many people as we can emerge stronger and more productive members of the human ecosystem. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches
This confidence is justified. But one of the consequences of the resilience of the system in the face of past shocks is a higher degree of confidence in a benign and stable future. And this confidence itself can increase the risk of future instability. It is critically important, then, that we continue to strengthen our financial system. The most important dimension of this challenge is to ensure that the size and the quality of the cushions maintained by financial institutions against the risk of adverse outcomes are sufficiently strong. This is particularly important in the case of the relatively small number of bank-centered financial institutions that now play a much more central role in our financial system. Their extraordinary size and diversity diminishes their vulnerability to shocks. However, it also exposes them to a broader array of potential shocks, and magnifies the potential damage to the system should one of these institutions stumble or fail. We need to ensure that the level of insurance these core institutions maintain against risk – insurance in the form of their capital and liquidity cushions, their operational resilience, and the quality of their risk management and control systems – are calibrated to reflect their greater systemic significance and the greater complexity of the challenges they face in managing more diverse businesses. This is true not only for the largest banks, but also for GSEs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and also for those non-bank financial institutions that play a critical role in the wholesale financial markets.

Clearly, there is room to further unlock the potential of SMEs in Malaysia. While the banking system remains the main provider of funds to support the activities of the SMEs, there is the tendency for this system to focus on the more established SMEs. It can also be argued that the banking institutions also lack the appropriate skills and experience to develop and nurture the SMEs. This is where the presence of DFIs is so critical, that is to provide the complementary services, both financial and non-financial, particularly to support viable but smaller SMEs which are unable to obtain financing from the banking institutions. In Malaysia, there are at present two major DFIs specialising in supporting the development of the SMEs. These are Bank Pembangunan dan Infrastruktur Malaysia Berhad and the Credit Guarantee Corporation (CGC). Each of these DFIs has been assigned the specified mandated roles in assisting the SMEs in Malaysia. Bank Pembangunan is entrusted with the mandate of promoting entrepreneurial development by not only providing financial services to the SMEs, but also assume the nurturing and developmental role through the provision of advisory and consultancy services to this targeted group. Meanwhile, the CGC is mandated to assist the SMEs that lack track record and collateral to have access to financing, by providing credit guarantees to enhance the SMEs' accessibility to credit facilities.
This has naturally put us, along with other central banks and supervisors on alert for further signs of strain and the attendant risks of dysfunction. UK financial assets saw significant repricing since the start of this week, particularly affecting long-dated UK government debt. Were dysfunction in this market to continue or worsen, there would be a material risk to UK financial stability. This would lead to an unwarranted tightening of financing conditions and a reduction of the flow of credit to the real economy. On 28 September, yesterday, the Bank’s Financial Policy Committee, which I’m a member of, noted the risks to UK financial stability from dysfunction in the gilt market. It recommended that action be taken and welcomed the Bank’s plans for temporary and targeted purchases in the gilt market on financial stability grounds at an urgent pace. These operations have started, with the first one carried out yesterday afternoon. These purchases will be strictly time limited until 14 October. They are intended to tackle a specific problem in the long-dated government bond market. The purchases will be unwound in a smooth and orderly fashion once risks to market functioning are judged to have subsided. The Bank’s MI function has informed these actions by providing the Bank’s policy committees with detailed, real-time information on market functionality and tradeability.

This would reduce the number of “false positive” rates on transactions and reduce the costs of checks. This is one example of how a common approach to using payment data globally, harmonising our implementation of payment message standards and tackling potential barriers to sharing payment data across jurisdictions could reap significant benefits. The G20 roadmap for cross-border payments highlights key actions for jurisdictions, system operators and the wider financial system and payments industry to undertake and I would encourage all of us who are involved to redouble our efforts[9] . Through that collective effort we will make payments, quicker, smoother and cheaper for all. The benefits of richer, more structured data, including payments data, will only be fully realised if data users are able to access and extract value from the ever increasing pool of data they now have access to. The financial sector has been at the forefront of using artificial intelligence techniques such as machine learning to extract value from the explosion of timely data they now have access to, as the Bank’s surveys have found. [10] It’s obvious why as adoptions of technologies like machine learning have the potential to make financial services and markets more efficient, accessible and tailored to consumer needs[11]. I don’t have time to do anything like justice to this subject today but before I leave it let me just return to the example of fraud detection and anti-money laundering. Here machine learning is particularly useful for card authorisations that flow through the payments chain, very much in realtime.