samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Philipp Hildebrand: Key factors for the Swiss economy – financial market regulation in Switzerland Speech by Mr Philipp Hildebrand, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, Swiss Economic Forum, Interlaken, 4 June 2010. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website. *  *  *  The financial system is the life blood of our economy. Key measures to increase the resilience of the financial system have already been implemented in Switzerland. However, they have not addressed the fundamental problem, which is that systemically important banks cannot at present be allowed to fail. The commission of experts set up by the government to examine ways of alleviating this problem published its interim report a few weeks ago. The report proposes measures in the areas of capital, liquidity and organisational structure. This approach is in line with the key points on the Financial Stability Board’s agenda. The interim report is an important milestone in the efforts to address the “too big to fail” issue. Naturally, we still face considerable challenges. Moreover, cross-border solutions are required for the “too big to fail” question. The commission’s proposals represent a constructive step towards global cooperation. If the key points on the Financial Stability Board’s agenda are not implemented in the major financial centres, we will ultimately be left empty handed. One of the few positive aspects of the financial crisis has been the unprecedented international collaboration to combat the crisis and the endeavours to cooperate internationally on regulatory reform.

In the meantime, I am pleased to note that the first RMB equity securities have been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. •  Third, there will also be a need to enhance the price discovery process and related market infrastructure for RMB transactions. This will mean introducing the necessary benchmarks for RMB transactions in the offshore market, including an exchange rate fixing, interest rate fixing and various kinds of benchmarks for RMB investments. The Treasury Markets Association introduced spot USD/CNH fixing in June 2011, and they recently announced the June 2013 launch of CNH HIBOR fixing. This welcome development will provide a reliable benchmark to price loan facilities and facilitate the development of the offshore RMB interest rate swap market. Global hubs and linkages The fourth and final characteristic – the presence of a network of global hubs and linkages – is especially apt for all of us in this room today as we consider Hong Kong’s role in the nascent offshore RMB market. The Eurodollar market, which originated in London, is made up of different hubs connected by extensive links. London remains a major centre, while other hubs serve other time zones and networks, and together they form an integrated whole through the free flow of funds. In 2004, Hong Kong was the first offshore market to launch RMB business, and since then it has provided an efficient and reliable settlement platform from which trade settlement is conducted, RMB liquidity built up, financing activities arranged and a wide range of RMB products developed.
I am pleased that negotiation on a GCC-Singapore Free Trade Agreement has just been completed. This will help to expand trade ties. I hope this can also catalyze the broader pact between the Middle East and ASEAN, which will help to expand trade and investment flows between our two regions. Some 250 Middle East companies, including the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation, Proclad Group from Kuwait and the Emirates National Oil Company, are currently using Singapore as a base for their Asia-Pacific operations. Recently, the Al Futtaim group bought a major department store, Robinsons, in Singapore, as part of their strategic decision to expand into South-East Asia. Shariah-compliant funds which are deployed for investment in Asia have attracted strong interest from Middle East investors. One example is the ARC-CapitaLand Residences Japan Fund which was issued by a Singapore-based property developer. These are just examples from Singapore. I am sure there are more in Malaysia, Indonesia and other parts of Asia. My general point is this: the more we can bring the issuers and investors from both regions together, the more we can promote the use of Islamic Finance to fund some of these projects. 2nd task: addressing the need for appropriate legal, regulatory and supervisory frameworks for Islamic finance All of you would be aware that the IFSB and IDB have co-issued The Ten Year Framework and Strategies. 1 It is a thoughtful blueprint. The Framework highlights the need for appropriate legal, regulatory and supervisory frameworks that effectively cater for the specificities of the Islamic services providers.

23 It is important to note that these new regulatory and behavioral factors are related to liquidity in general and not strictly about reserves held in Federal Reserve accounts as in Regulation D. Banks have many possible means for addressing their requirements under the LCR, and the LCR rule does not impose any specific requirement to hold central bank reserves. 7  have various ways to meet their obligations under this system: their choices are not limited to simply holding more reserves. As a result, reserve scarcity may be accompanied by shifts in market pricing and flows that we might not have seen in the old framework. Finally, the old system provided a degree of stability over time through its ability to reallocate scarce reserves among banks in response to shocks through interbank lending in the federal funds market. This interbank activity largely dried up following the crisis and has not meaningfully returned—in part due to regulatory incentives, but also because banks report that they are now less interested in taking on financial exposure to other banks. 24 As a result, it is possible that a regime of less abundant reserves may now be accompanied by an element of increasing volatility or periodic turbulence in money markets. One new way in which scarcity might manifest itself going forward is through effects related to the LCR. Very generally, the LCR is designed to ensure that banks hold a sufficient reserve of high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) to allow them to survive a short-term period of significant liquidity stress.
Foreign direct investment has helped total factor productivity in recent years, yet if wages reach too high levels, attracting investment may become a problem. We therefore need to ensure that wage levels are compatible with attracting investors, but at the same time acknowledging that, at least in certain areas, wages need to go up at present, in order to mitigate the labour force drain that affects the private and public sectors alike. However, pay rises in the private sector should not be triggered only by an increase in public sector wages. While raising the minimum wage has been necessary, we should be very careful not to hurt employers, as they represent an important engine of the economy. The key is, in my opinion, to increase wages at an adequate, sustainable pace, in order for Romanians to ultimately benefit from an improved living climate reflected in a higher purchasing power, but also from preserved macroeconomic equilibria, as well as higher-quality public goods – especially highways connecting different regions of Romania, but also our country with the West. After all, wages are not the only side of the emigration story. 4. KEEPING THE EXTERNAL DEFICIT IN CHECK The wage matter is also closely linked to the topical issue of ensuring a balanced external position. To the extent to which the upward path of wage costs is too steep, it gets very difficult to preserve competitiveness, not only on external markets, but also on the domestic market.

Pursuing monetary policy to stabilise inflation and raising the key rate to achieve this, the Bank of Russia curbs growth in long-term interest rates in the economy. This quarter experience is a good illustration of the above. Despite the increase in the key rate on three occasions since last March for a total of 125 basis points, the yields of long-term OFZs are currently on the same level as in late March. As far as the pace of lending growth is concerned, it remains high both in corporate and particularly retail segments. Thus, mortgages are rising by more than 25% year-on-year. In addition, retail loans are heating consumer demand. We are also concerned by the fact that lending is growing due to loans to borrowers with a high debt burden. Therefore, we resume prepandemic macroprudential add-ons on unsecured loans from 1 July and on mortgage loans with a low down payment and a high debt-to-income ratio of borrowers — from August. The Bank of Russia will stand ready to further increase macroprudential add-ons to prevent the accumulation of systemic risks and to ensure financial stability. Since our meeting in April, the balance of risks has tilted even more towards proinflationary risks. Elevated inflation expectations as a response to high inflation and low interest rates still pose a major risk. With fears of future price growth, people tend to spend more today and save less for tomorrow. This makes prices grow even more rapidly. Disinflationary risks look weaker.
Financial regulations are necessary given the complexity of financial transactions that are taking place here in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. They are not liked by anybody but regulations should be viewed as brakes or traffic lights. Regulations by themselves are not meaningful, unless the financial community makes a concerted effort to observe what is good for the wider financial system. Regulators should be flexible to relax regulations, where possible, and allow markets to grow. For example, very recently, the government decided to allow foreigners to invest in Sri Lanka Treasury Bonds through TIERA accounts. That is a further relaxation of capital controls. If financial markets use this opportunity in an objective manner, we can expect further relaxations. Regulators and policy makers should find a middle way to understand the way innovative products work. My message to this august audience is that under the present regulatory regime, Sri Lanka’s financial system is resilient and it is capable of absorbing shocks from within or outside. We should be happy to note that like the Sri Lankan economy, the financial system has also displayed its resilience under trying circumstances in the recent past. We hope it will continue to be so in the future. From a regulatory point of view, we will continue to support markets and financial intermediaries to maintain the required robustness of the financial system. Thank y ou. BIS Review 6/2007  3

Tharman Shanmugaratnam: Enterprise innovation - improving lives in Singapore  and  technological  Speech by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the FinTech Awards, Singapore, 17 November 2016. * * * Mr Wee Ee Cheong, Chairman, ABS and CEO, UOB Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, 1 Thank you for joining us here at our inaugural FinTech Awards prize presentation ceremony. 2 Let me begin by thanking the participating teams, as well as the international cast of judges who helped evaluate the entries, for their time and inspiring work. 3 This evening, we are honouring winners from two competitions organised as part of the inaugural Singapore FinTech Festival: the Global FinTech Hackcelerator and the FinTech Awards. The Global FinTech Hackcelerator attracted a total of 655 submissions from more than 50 countries. They produced solutions to address some of the 100 problem statements that the financial sector had put out. The FinTech Awards recognises innovative FinTech solutions that have actually been implemented by financial sector players and technology companies. We received 210 entries, running the gamut from cyber security to payments. 4 We celebrate the winning entries this evening. But equally, we are celebrating the spirit of innovation that each of the participants in these competitions demonstrated. They represent the passion to make things better, to create value for firms in a way that gives customers value, and ultimately, to find innovative ways to improve everyday life. That is the FinTech spirit.
Modelled on the Independent Evaluation Office of the IMF, we will create a unit to support this, with a director reporting to the Chairman of the Oversight Committee. It is not just our governance but also our commitment to transparency and openness that must be further enhanced. Transparency and openness are central not just to our legitimacy to perform these new tasks on behalf of the citizens of the United Kingdom. They are also central to our effectiveness in performing them. Just as Governor King described in his Mais Lecture 9 years ago, openness about what policy is seeking to achieve can make it more effective.21 In monetary policy, that helps to anchor inflation expectations and to support countercyclical movements in the policy setting. To that end, we have introduced forward guidance to reduce uncertainty about the way monetary policy will be set as the recovery gains pace. Our Inflation Report has evolved in the past year to contain more information about the key judgements underlying our forecasts and to widen the set of economic indicators for which we publish forecasts to include the labour market, components of GDP, the world economy and household incomes and saving. It will evolve further, including using our new organisational structure to draw stronger distinctions between staff and MPC forecasts. We will also review the case for releasing transcripts of our policy meetings after some years, and report publicly to the Oversight and Treasury Select Committees on the outcome of that review.

That criticism faded as the Bank gradually assumed the role of lender of last resort, adopting Bagehot’s principle that it should lend freely against good collateral at penalty rates in times of crisis.3 By the end of the 19th Century the Bank of England had informal responsibility for a broad range of policy areas. It remained the fiscal agent for the government. It maintained monetary stability through the operation of the Gold Standard. And it promoted financial stability through its role as the effective lender of last resort, and more generally – through the judicious exercise of the Governor’s eyebrows – as the institution which managed and resolved financial crises.4 While the Bank’s responsibilities varied over the following century they remained broad and largely informal until 1997. The transformative changes that year gave birth to a modern Bank with a narrower focus on price stability grounded in clear statutory objectives, and with the operational independence to pursue them. Independence was the solution to the time inconsistency problem, which causes policymakers who promise low inflation – but then go for faster growth – to get neither. Removing political considerations from the conduct of monetary policy made possible a credible commitment to low inflation. Strong accountability mechanisms and transparency were put in place to legitimise that independence. Those changes reflected the belief that price stability was the best contribution a central bank could make to macroeconomic stability and by extension to the broader public good.
This is imposed also by our strategic determination for admission of the Republic of Macedonia to the EU - which ultimately means reaching an institutional capacity adequate to the criteria of the Maastricht Agreement from 1992 in order to be prepared to join the European System of Central Banks. We should even further increase the capacity of supervision. Therefore, new regulations, which we develop together with the Ministry of Finance are already underway, as well as new intensive activities for gradual shift towards risk-based supervision, as a basis for implementation of the New Capital Accord - Basel 2. At the same time, we should improve our capacity for analyzing the financial stability of the country - activities we have started, but which require great efforts and dedication. I would like to express my gratitude on behalf of the National Bank to all of you who in various circumstances and under serious challenges contributed to the development of an institution such as the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia. The Monograph we prepared on this occasion - 60 years of central banking in the Republic of Macedonia, is primarily a tribute to them. I would like to thank all of you who are here tonight, deeply feeling the historical significance of this jubilee! 4  BIS Review 100/2006

It therefore seems that the Asian banking and financial markets are moving along the right track and we should congratulate each other for this accomplishment. However, I am not entirely sure if Asia can afford to feel complacent because I believe Asia’s finance is still facing many short-run and longer term challenges. In the interest of time, I would just highlight two key challenges. a.  Short-run challenge: clearly this has to do with the Fed tapering and the normalisation of the US interest rates. The key question is to what extent the unwinding of the dollar carry trade, which prevailed for over 5 years since the collapse of Lehman, would lead to significant outflow of funds and tightening of market liquidity across Asia. The risk of a “new normal” causing a rise in interest rates, re-pricing of assets and a slow down of economic growth would be a big challenge for Asia in the next year or two. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  b. Longer term challenge: there are many structural reform challenges for Asia’s capital markets, but today I would just focus on infrastructure financing. It is beyond doubt that Asia needs heavy investments in infrastructure in the next decade or two. Some have estimated the amounts of funding needed for infrastructure financing to be in the order of $ bn a year. At the same time, Asia has accumulated a huge amount of savings, which are more than adequate to finance the infrastructural investments in the region.
Faced with that, a central bank’s instrument – used, where necessary, in collaboration with its regulatory and finance ministry partners – is to supply the system  6  Chaplin G, Emblow A and Michael I (2000), “Banking system liquidity: developments and issues”, Bank of England Financial Stability Review, December 2000, pp 93-112. 4  BIS Review 44/2007  with an increased quantity of its money, without necessarily changing its price. Given the need to take collateral to protect against risk, and to charge a premium to create the right incentives, establishing a routine framework for such operations without creating moral hazard remains “work in progress” for the international central banking community. 7 So it would seem that there is a good deal to welcome in the greater dispersion of risk made possible by modern instruments, markets and institutions. But there are most certainly qualifications to such an apparently alluring conclusion. b)  The banking system’s residual risk, stress testing and transparency  The banking system retains risk in a number of ways, both pre- and post-risk transfer, and its aggregate balance sheet has in fact expanded considerably. 8 Pre-risk transfer, banks and dealers hold, or finance, warehouses of portfolios of loans to households and corporates on their way to securitisation, 9 meaning that the banking system can still find itself “holding the parcel” when the music stops. Post-risk transfer, some risk is contingently retained by virtue of banks and dealers financing the acquisition of risk by hedge funds and others.

Given that inflation is anticipated to be below target for a large part of the coming two-year period, I think one can argue that there has been scope to lower the repo rate somewhat more than we have done recently. But I have, like my colleagues, decided against this. There are several reasons for that – interest rates do not always have to be changed when inflation prospects differ from the target. The reasons are that growth is currently firm. We believe that the problems in the labour market are chiefly due to structural factors; it is therefore likely that they would only be marginally affected by lower interest rates. Moreover, the demand for labour is expected to begin to rise during 2005-2006, Swedish monetary policy is already loose, real interest rates are low, household borrowing is increasing quickly and house prices are rising - and have been for a long time. Even lower rates could further fuel the willingness to borrow, entailing risks in the long term in the shape of a growing property bubble. In addition, if monetary policy is to try to fully offset the low import prices by driving up domestic prices, for example in the service sector, this could lead to a domestic inflation rate that would be difficult to stop if economic activity were to continue to develop strongly for a longer period and resource utilisation thereby to rise.
The 1988 Accord became outdated to a large extent because it was a relatively simple and static document: its one-size-fits-all approach to capital regulation represented an important advance as a universally accepted standard, but it did not provide a means to recognise more advanced risk measurement techniques. It quickly fell behind as the pace of innovation in technology, financial products, and markets accelerated. In response, the Committee designed the New Accord to be a more flexible document and one that would be more welcoming of improvements in risk management techniques. Its evolutionary approaches to credit risk and to operational risk, for example, give banks a range of options to choose from and create explicit incentives for banks to strive to adopt the most advanced approaches. The New Accord still has its limits, however. Members of the IIF and others have cited as an example the failure to recognise use of full credit risk models, which would adjust a bank’s capital requirements in accordance with the benefits of diversification in its balance sheet. As you know, the Committee evaluated proposals that would have allowed advanced banks to estimate the degree to which their assets might behave similarly or default together. For the time being, we have decided instead to establish standard estimates of diversification that banks would apply.

Muhammad bin Ibrahim: The way forward for development financial institutions Opening address by Mr Muhammad bin Ibrahim, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Global Symposium on Development Financial Institutions “The Way Forward for Development Financial Institutions”, Kuala Lumpur, 19 September 2017. * * * Selamat datang” and a very warm welcome. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today at this important gathering to discuss the way forward for development financial institutions. In 2012, the music video “Gangnam Style” by Korean pop artist PSY took the world by storm. Being the first video to record more than 1 billion YouTube views, its infectious dance moves have become universally recognised, transcending borders and social status. The video marked the beginning of the rise of the Korean cultural phenomenon known as Korean Wave or “Hallyu”, a new growth area for its economy. Today, the export of Korean culture content, including films and music, is estimated at USD83.2 billion. In under a decade, the sector grew to contribute 0.7% to South Korea’s GDP in 2011, supported over 67,000 jobs and generated USD3.3 billion in tax revenues. This extraordinary rise of the Korean Wave can be attributed to the growth of investment in the creative industry. The industry was boosted by the government’s strategy to prioritise the sector as an engine of growth after the Asian Financial Crisis. The Korean government had earmarked 1% of the national budget for development financial institutions to kickstart the sector.