samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The number of additional people wanting to work overwhelmed the longer-term effects of population ageing, which, all else equal, would have been expected to have removed around half a million people from the labour force (Chart 10). This expansion of the workforce is being driven mainly by women and older workers. Before the Great Recession, between 46% and 83% of those in the 50- to 64-year-old age cohort were active. Now it is between 60% and 89% (Table 1). In part this reflects a continuation of past trends within age cohorts, but it goes much further. 8 The greater risks and financial burdens that many are now facing are likely to be important drivers of the recent increase in the labour force. Changes to pension arrangements have encouraged people to work longer. 9 State pension ages are rising, and the default retirement age has been abolished. 10  6  The average of European Commission, OECD and IMF estimates of structural unemployment have increased from 8.8% in 2008 to 10.3% in 2013, reported in Draghi, M (2014), “Unemployment in the euro area”, Speech at the annual central bank symposium in Jackson Hole, August. 7  There is evidence of there having been an increase in skills mismatch both in the rightward shift of the euroarea Beveridge curve and as indicated by skills mismatch indices. See Draghi (ibid.).

To date, only a few countries have conducted their Proliferation Financing Risk Assessment (PFRA), for example, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Latvia, Portugal, and the United States,2 as well as the recent assessments by Malaysia and the United Kingdom3 in 2021. To further facilitate APG members, the Workshop this week will discuss the strategies and best practices for conducting the PFRA including challenges faced by the public and private sectors as well as sharing of latest trends and typologies on PF. My fourth and final observation is on the importance of greater understanding of risk associated with AML/CFT/CPF measures which will help us mitigate any unintended consequences from such measures. The FATF’s recent project on mitigating unintended consequences of its Standards4 has found financial exclusion and de-risking as among the consequences which are often observed from the incorrect understanding and implementation of AML/CFT/CPF measures. Taking pre-emptive steps to better understand the risks will help us avoid those potential consequences while supporting access to financial services and other developmental agendas which are equally important. Conclusion I would like to encourage participants and delegates to take the opportunity to learn the latest developments and perspectives from various experts during the Workshop this week. I hope that participants will be able to draw new insights, consider relevant initiatives and emulate best practices in your respective jurisdictions. I also note that a diverse mix of participants including from the private sector has registered for the Workshop which no doubt will enrich the discourse this week.
Together we have prepared the banking system for the new times ahead, and the FROB has played a key part in this process. Some very significant challenges remain, but we now have more mechanisms at our disposal and institutions that are better prepared to address these challenges. Thank you very much for your attention. I now give the floor to the Vice-President of the European Central Bank, Luis de Guindos. 2  J. CARMASSI, S. DOBKOWITZ, J. EVRARD, L. PARISI, A. SILVA and M. WEDOW (2018), Completing the Banking Union with a European Deposit Insurance Scheme: Who is Afraid of Cross-Subsidisation?, Occasional Paper Series 208, European Central Bank. 7/7

When I say this, you should also remember that many decision-makers are involved in the implementation process, both internationally and in Sweden. Furthermore, the Riksbank is not responsible for the main part of the new regulations – so this is not something we can decide on. On the other hand, we can and should participate in the debate. Regardless of our conclusions, it is important that we have an open and realistic discussion on the development of the Swedish economy and or possibilities to counteract potential risks before we are saddled with a new crisis. The discussions currently underway in the EU on how the costs of a crisis should be allocated show how difficult it can be to sort out problems after the fact – and this applies to an even greater extent as regards extensive cross-border banking operations. We should thus learn from this and discuss how we can avoid ending up in such a situation right from the very start. Finally, I would also like to add that there are a number of important areas that Basel III does not deal with. These include how we should handle banks that encounter problems, what approach we should take to systemically-important participants and how we should solve the challenges set by cross-border banking. These are areas that remain to be regulated and which will be keenly discussed in the future, both in Sweden and in the EU. 12  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Lars Nyberg: IT in the financial sector Speech by Mr Lars Nyberg, Deputy Governor of Sveriges Riksbank, at UNISYS, Executive Business Conference, 16 September 2002. *  *  *  To begin with, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to come here today and discuss how information technology has affected the financial sector. This is a very large subject, with many possible approaches and my aim is merely to illustrate a few of these. I have also been given the chance of selecting which of them I wish to discuss, which I especially appreciate. IT and the stock market Probably the first thing one thinks of when one hears the words IT and the financial sector is the “bubble” on the stock market, the increasingly unrealistic assessment of the profits that would be generated by the new technology and the “new economy” at the end of the 1990s and the painful sobering up process when the stock market took a downturn in winter 2000. Although we all feel some unease with regard to the stock market fall when we read our old age pension forecasts, this is perhaps in the long term the least interesting aspect of IT in the financial sector. I therefore intend to limit myself to two reflections regarding the “bubble issue”. The first is that it has happened before and will probably happen again. Let me remind you of the first “IT bubble”, at the beginning of the previous century when the new technology was wireless telegraphy.

The Swedish Telecommunications Administration’s monopoly began to break up as early as the 1980s, but the real turning point came in 1993, when the Administration was privatised as Telia. The market was opened up and exposed to competition; new challengers could gradually take over more than a quarter of the total market and a significantly greater part of the mobile telephony and Internet telephony segment. At the same time, technical developments were very rapid. Fiberoptics enabled lower costs for long distance calls and increased the speed of transfer of large amounts of data, which benefited the development of the Internet. Together, increased competition and rapid technological developments led to a fall in prices with regard to both telephony and Internet connection. The lower prices for users have probably contributed to the widespread use of the Internet in Sweden. The new technology was perhaps available in all essentials to all developed countries, but the views on deregulation varied. Only eight of the 25 member countries, today 30, of the OECD allowed competition in the telecommunications market, while the remaining countries retained a monopoly. There is also a clear connection between use of the Internet and competition. Competition is allowed in the telecommunications markets of six of the nine countries with the highest Internet usage. These countries have also experiences an increase in access to the Internet six times as fast as countries that have a monopoly market.
Friedman, at least at the time he wrote, trusted neither of the two and advocated a constitutional rule for constant money growth as his preferred solution of the long-standing debate on “Rules versus authorities in monetary policy” (which is the title of the classic paper by Henry Simons from 1936). His concerns reflect what I would regard as a healthy distrust of the unfettered “rule of men” as opposed to the “rule of law” which he much prefers - in line with the long and venerable tradition of British liberal thinking. Friedman, at the time, was quite sceptical on central bank independence and asked whether it was “really tolerable in a democracy to have so much power concentrated in a body free from any kind of direct, effective political control?” This is why I believe it is important to stress that, if an independent central bank is assigned a clear and limited mandate, this represents a constraint on the discretionary exercise of power by the government but also by the central bank itself. In the absence of a complete and universally applicable rule for monetary policy an independent central bank which focuses firmly on the single overriding goal of price stability is the closest realistic and credible substitute for a literal “rule of law”. In particular such a central bank does not have the discretion to pick and choose at will among several objectives. A clear commitment to a single overriding objective is the key to credibility and it is also the key for accountability, i.e.

Using balance sheet policy, the central bank seeks to influence longer-term interest rates and thereby funding costs in a more direct manner. 3 Purchases of government or private sector bonds are intended to depress yields and push up securities prices – the so-called portfolio effect. 4 Studies from the past three or four years indicate that the portfolio effect has been in operation in both US and UK markets – bond prices have increased and long-term yields have fallen as a result of quantitative easing. 5 The aim is to achieve lower long-term yields in order to boost lending and investment. In addition to the portfolio effect, the new use of the balance sheet can have a signal effect: central banks that engage in large-scale purchases of securities to pull down long-term yields are sending a signal that the key rate may be kept low for a long period. In this sense, balance sheet policy also contributes to anchoring expectations and supporting monetary policy communication. It is not easy to say what the situation would have been without these measures. However, it is likely that central bank bond purchases have curbed the decline in output in the UK and the US. Chart: Central bank balance sheets, stylised These measures, by their nature, have an impact on central bank balance sheets – in terms of both size and composition. 2  See the Federal Reserve’s “Monetary Policy Report to the Congress”, February 2012, http:// www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/mpr_20120229_part1.htm.
Anyone needing an umbrella when it’s raining has to show that he can get alternative one on demand. Loans from the IMF and others are our umbrella. In the third place, co-operation with the IMF is important not only because of the access to credit contingent on the progress of the programme. The Fund serves as a sort of validation agency for the economic policies of countries that find themselves in economic difficulties. Its stamp of approval is a precondition for obtaining credit not only from other countries, but also from foreign banks and investors. In many instances it is a premise for foreign investment in domestic industry. This view has been clearly expressed in interviews with numerous foreign bankers, who are prepared to take Iceland to the global credit market as soon as the uncertainty delaying the progress of the programme is eliminated. Many find the medicine prescribed by IMF bitter, and have requested a more palatable economic strategy without the Fund’s involvement. Of course, it would be desirable to use automatic fiscal stabilisers or discretionary fiscal policy to mitigate the economic cycle. Countercyclical fiscal policy, however, is a privilege reserved for countries whose credit rating has not been tarnished. Iceland does not enjoy this privilege any more than Greece, Latvia, and various other states. To toss away the IMF’s umbrella and set off empty-handed to meet with foreign creditors in an attempt to refinance the loans maturing in the next two years would be a fatal error.

In fact, the loans that have already been received have guaranteed foreign exchange reserves sufficient to enable the Treasury to service its debt for the next two years without major foreign currency purchases. However, foreign reserves would fall to a level that is not acceptable. The cost would be a lower exchange rate than otherwise, and it would be inadvisable to relax the capital controls at the same time. Fourth, it is important to take the first steps towards removing the capital controls as soon as possible after the objectives described above have been achieved. The objective is to make the disappearance of the last vestige of controls an event that will hardly be noticed. We learned from the financial collapse that fair weather can turn foul at short notice. Once the storm has passed, however, the skies can also clear more quickly than most people expect. BIS Review 64/2010  3
2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Several factors suggest that these developments are not purely cyclical. On the demand side, estimates by the ECB, as well as the IMF and the European Commission, suggest that – with the exception of Greece – the majority of current account adjustment in deficit countries has been “non-cyclical”.3 “Non-cyclical”, however, does not mean “structural”. What it means is simply that, though falling demand did depress imports during the crisis, potential growth has fallen as well. Thus, when the output gap closes, current account positions should not substantially worsen. “Non-cyclical”, however, does not mean “structural”. What it means is simply that, though falling demand did depress imports during the crisis, potential growth has fallen as well. Thus, when the output gap closes, current account positions should not substantially worsen. On the supply side, there is also evidence of structural shifts in deficit countries that should help sustain their export performance. Cost competitiveness – measured in terms of real effective exchange rates deflated by unit labour costs (ULCs) – has improved strongly since the start of the crisis. In most cases real effective exchange rates now stand close to 1999 levels or even below. That suggests much of the pre-crisis “excesses” have been reversed. To give some examples, in Ireland the improvement in cost competitiveness from peak to trough is close to 50 percentage points. In Greece and Latvia the figure is around 30 percentage points.

Benoît Cœuré: Rebalancing in the euro area – are we nearly there yet? Speech by Mr Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, to the Danish Economic Society, Kolding, 15 January 2016. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, Mr President, dear Per, The euro area crisis was a crisis fuelled by imbalances. Imbalances laid the ground for economic and financial turmoil, in part due to the euro area’s design flaws. And the difficult process of repairing imbalances within that design sustained the turmoil further and let its consequences become entrenched, tearing our social fabric. If we want lasting stability and growth in the euro area, we cannot let the same things happen again. The long-term solution is to complete our monetary union and make it less vulnerable to shocks. The foundations of this road have been laid by the Five Presidents’ Report, and it implies setting up new risk-sharing mechanisms among the participating economies. But that will not happen in a situation where large imbalances between member countries already exist and are considered as a state of nature. Just like John Rawls pointed out with his concept of the “veil of ignorance”, it is impossible to achieve an optimal solution for a group if the winners and losers are clear a priori. Citizens are rightly suspicious that risk sharing may turn into risk shedding.
BIS Review 56/1997  -4-  Figure 2  M o n e y M a r k e t Ag e n ts’ I n fla t io n E x p e c t a t io n s P e r ce n t 5  5  O c t . ’9 4  4  4 3  O c t . ’9 5 M a y ’9 6  CPI  3  N o v . ’9 ’9 6 2  2  F e b . ’9 ’9 7 1  1  0  0 -1  -1 94  95  96  97  98  99  00  01  S o u rce s : S ta tis tics S w e d e n a n d P ro s pe ra R e s e a rch The way in which the instrumental interest rates are changed also has to do with credibility and tactics. If complete credibility in monetary policy and a low-inflation regime have not been achieved , it will naturally influence the pace with which interest rates are lowered or raised. In situations of this kind, the result may be that the central bank has its instrumental rates set at either a too high or a too low level compared with what would have been warranted in an environment of high credibility. Developments during 1996 can illustrate the effects on policy of both uncertainty and insufficient credibility.

The Exchange Rate In small, open economies, the exchange rate has an important influence on inflation. At the same time, it is a variable that has fluctuated considerably in recent years for reasons which have not always been easy to foresee and interpret. How changes in the exchange rate should be handled in practical policy depends above all on how lasting a change in the exchange rate is judged to be. More enduring changes that have an effect on inflation forecasts obviously have to be taken into account In order to decide on the duration and what is a reasonable reaction, one normally has to know what brought about the change. Several different cases can be discerned: A nominal change in the exchange rate can be a result of a change in the real equilibrium exchange rate. This case is in principle simple to manage since it normally does not lead to a changed picture of inflation and thereby does not occasion any specific policy measures. Changes in the real equilibrium exchange rate have not been an especially common reason for changes in the exchange rate in recent years, at any rate since the krona fell in connection with the changeover to a flexible exchange rate in 1992. A change in the nominal exchange rate may also have to do with a change in the long-term view of the steadfastness in economic policy, or what is termed credibility.
How confident are you about the state of the political European landscape now? Is there more of a momentum for reforms now? Constâncio: Crises are always bad for the social and political mood, and recoveries are always good. And so there is a bit of a recovery, which is becoming stronger, and that, of course, has had its effects, in the mood of societies, of public opinion, and also in the political sphere. That’s what I think the President indicated, and indeed, there were fears, especially from outsiders, that some of the political developments in some European countries would go in the direction of creating some doubts, which were dispelled. So that’s what he refers to. But throughout all this period there is one thing that is important to recall: if you go to the Eurobarometer that is the result of surveys in all Member States, you see throughout all these years, all these years, that the support for the euro – being in favour of the single currency, the euro – has been stable at around 70% of Europeans in the euro area countries; and that in all countries there was a majority supporting the euro. A majority in all countries. The numbers are different according to the different countries, but in all they are the majority. So this has been the support that the project has benefited from, and the present recovery has indeed reinforced those views. But we are talking about reforms as well.

The President, in the speech, precisely pointed out that looking to unemployment as an indicator of this slack in the economy, the unemployment rate now is 9.3%, according to the normal international standard of measuring unemployment; but if we adopt, as in the US, a broader concept of unemployment – which in the US they call U6 – then unemployment in the euro area is at 18%, where it is at 9% in the case of the US. Which would imply that the slack is then bigger than we could judge some time ago. That being the case, it justifies fully what the President said at the end of his speech: that we need persistence. If we want to bring inflation to our target of below but close to 2%, then we have to persist in the type of monetary policy that we have been adopting. But looking at the market reaction, the market took the speech quite hawkish, meaning concentrating on the optimistic comments about inflation, the economy, perhaps also the political tailwind. So is the market right to read your communication style as more hawkish than before? Constâncio: It’s always very difficult to interpret the reaction of markets. I will not try to say 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  rationalise or explain; the reaction of the market was what it was.
During the boom period from 2000 to 2006, home prices more than doubled in the Poughkeepsie area and increased by 150 percent around Kingston – exceeding the U.S. rise of roughly 90 percent and the average rise of roughly 50 percent that prevailed in our region. The price declines in the bust period, from 2007 to 2009, were somewhat less severe than the nation, falling by roughly 20 percent in both areas, compared with 30 percent nationally. Recently – and this is a hopeful sign – home prices in both areas have steadied. Next, how are families in the Hudson Valley doing in restoring their finances? During the recession, all across the nation, debt delinquencies soared and many families found that they needed to reduce their debt to a sustainable level. We keep track of the credit conditions in the Second District – including the average debt that people in area carry and whether they are current with their payments – using the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Consumer Credit Panel. In the Hudson Valley, debt per person with a credit report is now down by 5 percent from its peak level in 2008. As of the first quarter of this year, debt was continuing to fall modestly. At the same time, delinquency rates continue to rise. The proportion of debt that is at least 90 days delinquent has risen from 2 percent in 2005 – which was low for New York – to 9 percent currently, matching the delinquency rate statewide.

I will now be happy to answer some questions. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches