samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
As in other countries, the outlook for the Spanish economy remains uncertain, although this has abated somewhat recently in light of the brighter figures for the world economy. It is likely that the recovery in the Spanish economy will lag that in the euro area to some extent. This is due above all to the marked weakness of investment, not only in the case of housing, but also in that of business investment, given the very low levels of capacity utilisation. While public investment will continue to account for a high proportion of GDP in 2010, this figure will be lower than in 2009. The outlook for private consumption is more uncertain. The main determinants of consumption will not be favourable, given the foreseeable behaviour of employment and the difficulty of reversing the high unemployment rate. Yet as the decline in households’ consumption has been much more drastic than that of their incomes, the saving rate is climbing to very high and indeed unprecedented levels. Hence, if the factors of uncertainty were to abate, consumption might contribute more significantly to the recovery. Given these constraints, the main support factor of activity in 2010 has to be the external sector. This will be assisted by the earlier recovery of our main trading partners and the relatively favourable course that Spanish exports are following.

The euro area has also shown some improvement recently, with positive growth rates in some countries as early as in the second quarter. The latest figures suggest that economic activity may be expected to show positive growth rates across the area in the third quarter. That said, the upcoming recovery will be slow, meaning that quite some time will elapse before pre-crisis output levels are restored. BIS Review 151/2009  1  Public finances have worsened considerably in the euro area owing both to the operation of the automatic stabilisers, which have responded to the cyclical downturn, and to the discretionary measures adopted to boost demand and the action taken to support the financial system. The financial crisis and the decline in activity have severely affected some European credit institutions, which have come to depend largely on public-sector support and which are immersed in a process of adjustment that may have repercussions for their ability to effectively channel funds in the future. On the inflation front, we have continued to witness year-on-year declines in consumer prices in the euro area, due above all to notably lower oil prices than a year ago. Most forecasts suggest positive inflation rates will resume in the area in the coming months, as the comparison effects with the levels reached by commodity prices twelve months back cease to apply.
Foreign bank branches and subsidiaries have more than doubled their market share in the Norwegian banking market since 1999. The share is considerably higher than in Sweden and Denmark, although the proportion of foreign institutions has also increased markedly in these countries. The sharp rise in Finland is due to Nordea’s becoming a Swedish rather than a Finnish bank in 2004. Cross-border activity contributes to increased competition, a wider range of options for operators and the sharing of expertise. With banks from several geographical markets, the financial system is also less vulnerable to cyclical developments in any one country. Growth in new, less well-known markets makes risk assessment more demanding. A consequence of cross-border institutions may also be that turbulence in financial markets in one country more easily spills over to other countries. Moreover, a crisis may be more complicated to resolve in an internationally active institution than in a national institution. Conglomerates The trend in financial markets is moving towards large financial conglomerates and alliances. In addition to traditional banking services, these conglomerates also offer other financial services. Large banking and financial groups in Norway have substantial market shares in several sectors. Compared  2/6  with other Nordic banking conglomerates, Norwegian banking conglomerates earn a larger share of their revenues from services outside the bank itself. Banks that grow into other sectors will face challenges relating to risk management, product knowledge and customer relations.

Anne Le Lorier: Regulating non-banks – ways forward and challenges ahead Speech by Ms Anne Le Lorier, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, at the ACPRBank of France Conference “Financial regulation-stability versus uniformity, a focus on nonbanks actors”, Paris, 28 September 2015. *  *  *  Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Colleagues and Friends, On behalf of the Banque de France and of the ACPR, I would first like to thank very much the speakers and the participants in today’s conference for the quality of their presentations. Indeed, they helped us to have insightful debates on the ongoing efforts made to prevent systemic crisis as much as possible, strengthen the global financial system and its resilience i.e. its capacity to withstand systemic shocks. As illustrated today, this is not an easy task and the global regulators are facing many challenges in shooting at a moving target: the financial system not only adapts, but also transforms itself and anticipates regulatory changes, sometimes constructively, sometimes less, thereby continuously modifying the sources, the channels and the shape of systemic risks. Regulation itself can be ill-designed, too narrowly focused or can generate unintended consequences.
The contrast with the events of 7 October – less than four months later – could not be stronger. In the early hours of the morning sterling depreciated by around 9% against the US dollar in a matter of seconds, before quickly retracing almost all of the move. Not only did this represent almost unprecedented volatility, but for short periods market depth on key trading platforms all but evaporated. The Amihud measure of liquidity, based on the price impact of individual trades, suggests that there was a notable period at the start of this event where liquidity was markedly poorer than during the events around the referendum (Chart 3). 4  The Bank for International Settlements recently published an exhaustive study of the event drawing on 5  analysis conducted by the Bank of England. Like many flash events, the sterling moves seemed to have no clear trigger – just unusually large selling flows at a typically quiet period of the trading day. Instead the BIS report characterises the moves as the result of a confluence of factors, including the time of day, significant demand to sell sterling to hedge options positions, the execution of stop-loss orders and the withdrawal of liquidity by both human and automated traders in the face of unexpected volatility.

8  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  8  Chart 5: Investment grade, non-financial bond  Chart 6: Sterling investment grade non-financial  spreads  bond spreads, split by eligible and ineligible securities  Sources: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Bloomberg and Bank calculations Sources: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Bloomberg and Bank calculations Chart 7: Sterling investment grade corporate bond  Chart 8: Investment grade bond issuance by UK  issuance  private, non-financial corporates (PNFCs)  Sources: Dealogic and Bank calculations  Sources: Dealogic and Bank calculations  9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  9  Chart 9: CBPS portfolio relative to sector key  (a) As at 5 January 2017 (b) As at CoB 4 January 2017 Source: Bank calculations  10  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  10
Jean Claude Trichet: Welcome Malta! Speech by Mr Jean Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, at the event for launching the joint communication campaign for the euro changeover at the Central Bank of Malta, Valletta, 30 September 2007. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great honour and pleasure for me to be here at this festive moment. This is to mark the launching of the joint communication campaign for the euro changeover in close co-operation with the Central Bank of Malta and with our friend, Michael Bonello, just 92 days before Malta adopts the euro on 1 January 2008. This will signify a great milestone in Malta’s history, especially since Malta only joined the European Union (EU) almost four years ago, on 1 May 2004. Let me first offer my warm congratulations to all of those who have helped bring Malta to this point. In 2002 for the countries that were in the euro area at the time, as well as for Slovenia this year, it was a memorable moment and a positive step. So I can well imagine how the Maltese feel at the moment. You can be proud of Malta’s successful convergence process. In fact, we are very pleased about the fruitful cooperation between the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Central Bank of Malta in the preparations for the changeover, be it at the technical level or through the participation of Governor Bonello as observer in the Governing Council since last July.

012234  56789  7   30  *" 8%7   *-8 15"* #*#1 #*#1  4512 8 25 41 4 &  45452 34868 1   252 596 252 24 526 5241 26536  6 2284 5 26536   21452 634 6 256 26852 252 54 32 2 3 6 61262 4 6 6456  24 68 488 412 06 54 252 5452 654 6 4 6 06 6 82 6 62 2 668526 6 32 2 !/# 4 2  95  49  944 .9 94944 94944 ' 0   39 3  $  U2526995 mG 9 9 +oTr0sta
Here in Singapore, as we develop GIC to invest our national reserves, we have always looked towards NBIM in maintaining a close professional exchange of views and in mutual learning from one another. Over the past 12 years, the two organisations have actively exchanged best practices across a full spectrum of investment, risk management, operational and governance issues; the professional ties extend across many levels between the two organisations. These, I am told, have included a regular dialogue between GIC’s senior management and Governor Gjedrem of Norges Bank and his management team at NBIM. 5. This partnership extends into the international arena. In particular, the work undertaken by the International Working Group or IWG , IMF’s grouping of SWFs which includes both Norway and Singapore, has important relevance to the global community. I believe NBIM and Singapore’s GIC and Temasek share many common views of SWF best practices and serve as thought and practice leaders in the area of SWF investments. 6. I am pleased to note that the IWG has since advocated a meaningful and credible set of principles in the form of the Generally Accepted Principles and Practices or GAPP, for short. These principles serve to underpin the strategic investments of the SWF community. This is an important development because SWFs have become a significant investor group. According to the IWG, since 2005, at least 17 funds were created. There are now 38 SWFs. Last year, SWFs collectively managed over $ trillion of assets.

Lim Hng Kiang: Opening of the Norges Bank Investment Management’s Singapore office Remarks by Mr Lim Hng Kiang, Minister for Trade and Industry and Deputy Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, in celebration of the opening of the Norges Bank Investment Management’s Singapore office, Singapore, 1 July 2010. *  *  *  Minister Sigbjørn Johnsen, Governor Svein Gjedrem, Ambassador Janne Julsrud, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good evening. 1. It is a pleasure to be here to celebrate the opening of Norges Bank Investment Management’s (“NBIM”) Singapore office. 2. The opening of NBIM’s investment office here is an affirmation of the growing importance of Asian markets in the portfolios of many long-term investors like NBIM. It also reflects Singapore’s role as a key location to manage Asian investments. Your presence here will not only bring you closer to the markets you invest in but also help form stronger ties with partners in this part of the world. 3. Among the Sovereign Wealth Funds or SWFs around the world, NBIM is widely regarded as a role model for transparency and governance. Being one of the earliest SWFs, NBIM has built up a strong reputation of excellence and leadership in investment and risk management, governance and talent management practices. NBIM has stayed focused on its objective to preserve and grow wealth for the future generations of Norwegians by diversifying its investments internationally and developing a talented investment team. Your track record has been most enviable. 4.
Undermining the good name of the sector is a no-win strategy as this would limit and make the services offered by banks costlier, which would eventually harm customers and thwart economic growth. In this context, please allow me to also quote the call of the Head of State who, following his meeting with the BNB Governing Council in February, summed up the situation in a fine and very pragmatic way: “The State should continue to work for the good reputation of our banking system, which is a precondition for more favourable lending and is of benefit to people”. Looking ahead now, we need to stress that coping well in these times of crisis so far does not mean that we can afford to be less watchful or less precise in our next steps. This year, too, will be rich in new challenges. Based on the current projections for a recession in the euro area, we expect that the growth rate of the Bulgarian economy would slow down to about 0.7% in 2012, and this would have a direct impact on the potential of banks in Bulgaria to generate incomes from sources of their own. The weak demand for new loans is facing banks with a double challenge. On the one hand, it will be difficult for them to accumulate new buffers from profits; and on the other hand, the existing classified assets will go on putting pressure on the available reserves. While seeking new business opportunities, you should very carefully approach the question of capital planning.

2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  A financial-stability crisis can start when a financial institution is unable to repay funding to the lender at the repayment date, whilst the lender needs the liquidity at that repayment date. Fear of such occurrences happening simultaneously was an important element in the proliferation of the US subprime lending crisis to a global one. Central banks, recognisant of the impediments to markets’ functioning and the threat to the existence of solvent economic actors, utilise payment systems to grant liquidity not only to the market as a whole, but to individual institutions as well. Because of the re-emerging crisis, central banks can still use unconventional or non-standard monetary policy operations or target individual banks for assistance. The latter is however under-utilised by banks, because they avoid incurring a penalty over the market rate, fearing it may stigmatise them in the interbank markets. Talk of “emergency liquidity assistance” or “acting as a lender of last resort” is at present fading into the background because the commercial banks’ liquidity scare is largely, though not exclusively, a symptom of the sovereign debt crisis Nevertheless, risk stems from commercial banks typically holding positions across many participants (the central bank, other banks, brokerages, non-bank businesses and households) and across different payment systems. These positions lead to interdependencies among the real-time gross settlement systems, mainly operated by central banks, and designated-time net settlement systems, mainly operated by commercial banks jointly.
Sam Woods: Brave new world Speech by Mr Sam Woods, Deputy Governor for Prudential Regulation of the Bank of England and Chief Executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), at the Association of British Insurers, 16 March 2021. * * * Thank you for the invitation to speak today, and for coming along to this session. Although I can see nobody on my screen the ABI assures me that an implausibly large number of leaders of the insurance industry are in fact present, and that some of you may even be listening to this speech. As a prudential regulator we oversee a large and vibrant insurance sector supplying vital financial services to the wider economy. I will not bore you with another list of the magnificent variety, size and importance of those services – that is the job of the ABI. But safeguarding the stability of their supply is the whole point of our role. That role is about to change in two ways. First, the Solvency II review is well under way – I will come back to that. But I want to begin with the second change, which is more fundamental – the proposed reforms to the architecture of financial regulation as we enter the brave new world of post-Brexit Britain – and explain why we favour a shift towards more rule-making by the regulator, and the enhanced accountability that needs to come with that.

As a regular attendee of TSC hearings I can assure you that we are already held very robustly to account for our activities – but I can see the point that some in Parliament have been making that if we do more rule-making, and with European Parliamentary scrutiny of rule-making no longer present, then we might be expected to do more to support Parliament in probing technical regulatory issues. Whatever Parliament decides on this, we look forward to engaging fully. International standards are another important safeguard. The UK has always been at the forefront of their development: with the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England was the driving force behind establishment of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and supplied its first chair. We remain fully committed to the development and implementation of international standards, and this applies as much in insurance as it does in banking. Actions speak louder than words – Dr Vicky Saporta, who runs prudential policy for the PRA, is also a very energetic and successful Chair of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors. There is also an increasingly lively debate around our objectives and ‘have regards’. As with accountability arrangements, it may well be sensible for these to evolve as our role changes. And we need to be wary of the natural tendency of regulators to become strongly attached to the objectives Parliament has currently set for them. But I would offer two notes of caution.
Given the uncertainties, it should not surprise you that the Committee members disagree more often than not, but usually at the margin, on what should happen in any particular month to interest rates. I regard that as a strength rather than a weakness of the process. It should not surprise you either that even though we consistently aim to hit the target, we rarely achieve it precisely. As a matter of fact, I have been genuinely, and agreeably, surprised that the outcome over the past few years has been as consistently close to the target as it has been. The best we can realistically hope for is that we come close on average and over time. And to achieve that, when we identify developments which are likely to move us away from our target on one side or the other, we must be ready symmetrically to adjust our policy to bring us back on track. That is why, even though the economy as a whole continues to perform relatively well on the data, we have moved interest rates downwards this year, to reflect the emergence of the new downside risks; and it is also why we indicated, in our recent press release, that we will continue to monitor those downside risks. That is not a promise of further interest rate reductions, but it is a promise that we are prepared to move further if we have evidence that those risks are increasing.

The Rt Hon Sir Edward George GBE: Macro-economic management in the UK Speech by The Rt Hon Sir Edward George, Governor of the Bank of England, at the 2001 Institute of Directors Convention, London, on 25 April 2001. *  *  *  The theme of your convention is change - and as a general observation what's always struck me about change is that it's not simply a one-off event - a discrete step from A to B. Change is a continuing process - and once you've embarked upon that process it's not always clear where it will lead. You either embrace the process, notwithstanding the uncertainty, it seems to me, or you resist it, with the risk then that the world changes around you and begins to pass you by. What is certainly true - in this country but much more widely internationally - is that there has gradually over a long period been a very profound change in the approach to overall economic management. For a long period after World War II the emphasis of macro-economic policy seemed to concentrate on aggregate demand management, with too little attention paid to the constraints imposed by the supply-side capacity of the economy to meet that demand. When growth and employment were judged to be insufficient, monetary and overall fiscal policy were used in combination to provide a stimulus to the economy, often supported by direct controls of one kind or another to suppress the emerging symptoms of increasing pressure on resources.
Admittedly, it is not always simple to know exactly where the line should be drawn between these two purposes. But if the guidelines are clear enough it should be up to the supervisors in each country to make sure that this line is respected, and if need be to oblige banks to reorganize their activities. This is the philosophy which was the basis of the Liikanen Report and hopefully it will prevail. EUROWEEK: And if things do go wrong is it fair to have a bail-in regime where debt investors bear their share of the losses? 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Noyer: Bail-in is an important concept. We discovered during the crisis that if all stakeholders are not eventually obliged to take part in the cost of restructuring a bank if necessary, the consequence might be that the taxpayer has to foot the bill, which is not fair , although it can be necessary in extreme circumstances. The other consequence is that banks are forced into fire sales of assets, which means the prices they command are very low and their losses are maximised. The result is either that the bank is pushed towards bankruptcy if the state allows it, or has to be supported using taxpayers’ money and possibly having them bearing the losses, which as I said before is not right.

So the IMF has simply observed that France can’t afford to stand still when Germany began to reform some years ago, and given that the southern European countries are also moving to address the problems of cost competitiveness and rigidities. This is clearly why the  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  economic reforms announced in France are so important. I’m delighted that the government has made this such a high priority. EUROWEEK: Let’s move on to France’s relationship with the financial markets and with the developments in its banking system. Are you concerned about what the ratings agencies have been saying about France? Or are ratings agencies irrelevant these days? They don’t seem to have had much of an impact on France’s borrowing costs. Noyer: No. I don’t worry about ratings agencies. The crisis led to a weakening in public finances in most countries, so in relative terms there have been few changes in their ratings. No agency is denying that France still has one of the strongest risk profiles in Europe. The second reason why I don’t worry is that worldwide authorities such as the G20 and the FASB have said very clearly that they want market players to rely less on credit ratings agencies and to make their own judgments. This can be done by banks’ internal models or other types of analysis by investment managers which are more sophisticated than they used to be a few years ago.