samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Chart 2: National Bureau of Statistics, China Chart 3: Associação Nacional dos Fabricantes de Veículos Automotores, Brazil Chart 4: Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan Chart 5: Bundesbank, Germany Chart 6: Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Chart 7: ONS Chart 8: Baltic Exchange Chart 9: Consensus Economics and Bank calculations  BIS Review 8/2009  1  Governments and central banks around the world responded decisively and boldly with large fiscal injections and cuts in interest rates, and the provision of hundreds of billions of pounds in capital and funding to support banks. The scale and urgency of their actions embodied an audacity born out of pessimism. Tonight I want to ask: what went wrong? How can we limit the impact of the banking crisis on the wider economy? And can we design a better approach to the management of our economy and financial system in the future? So what went wrong? The origins of the crisis lie in the imbalances in the world economy which built up over a decade or more. The entry of the rapidly growing economies in Asia into the world trading and financial systems provided a huge new pool of savings. But their development and exchange rate strategies meant that they were running large current account surpluses. In other words, their domestic saving was more than enough to finance investment at home. Significant amounts were channelled into foreign financial assets.

The relevant legislation contains a number of mechanisms designed to ensure the SNB’s independence. One of these is our distribution practice, which has been developed on the basis of the provisions of the National Bank Act (NBA). We are happy to make distributions to the Confederation and the cantons; we can only do so, however, where the balance sheet and annual results allow for this. As we announced some days ago, this will unfortunately not be the case for the 2013 business year – the first time since we began our profit distributions in the current form, over 20 years ago. Thus the provisions regarding profit distribution clearly set out in the NBA have come into effect. This ruling takes automatic account of the fact that the risks in our balance sheet have increased as a result of combating the crisis. According to the legislative authority, a strong SNB balance sheet is more important than distributions to shareholders or to the Confederation and the cantons. It therefore supports the SNB in its conduct of an independent monetary policy, something which is particularly valuable in difficult times. Nevertheless, I am conscious that the lack of a distribution can be very distressing for the Confederation and the cantons, in particular, and will be a challenge. However, distributions will not be assured in the future either, since our results will continue to be subject to considerable fluctuations.
We need to work together to ensure that the longstanding confidence in the Treasury market is sustained in the future. This conference provides an excellent opportunity to continue this discussion and work on these issues. Thank you for coming. I look forward to today’s dialogue and the ongoing engagement between the Joint Member Staffs and the public. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches

In this regard, measures need to be developed to quickly put Africa’s high potential economic growth on a path that is environmentally sustainable. Deliberate actions need to be taken in successfully transferring environmentally friendly technologies to Africa. A case in point is the use of solar technology, for which achievements thus far are promising. Most of Africa is endowed with solar energy, and transforming it into usable energy would substitute the widespread use of wood fire energy by the majority of the continent’s population. In addition, because this is proven technology no more resources need to be devoted to Research and Development. Further, solar energy circumvents the costs related to the generation and distribution of yet another clean source of energy, hydroenergy. In addition to generation, distribution of hydroelectricity presents Africa with a unique challenge of supply network or grids due to the vast landscapes that constitute the rural setting where majority of the population resides. This is part of the wider infrastructural constraint that the continent is yet to overcome. 4. Africa and the world economy  In the real sector, a number of African exports experienced an overall increase in prices in 2003. International gold prices increased, much to the benefit of the continents top producers, South Africa and Ghana. Likewise, oil prices increased during the same period leading to higher revenues for countries such as Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Chad (ADB, 2003).
The role of the euro in Sweden After this glance at what is happening on the euro markets, allow me to turn to the role of the euro in Sweden. I intend to begin with the effect on the securities markets and move on to euroisation and competition. What has the euro meant to the Swedish securities markets so far? My view is that it has so far had relatively little effect. We should remember that developments on these markets are primarily influenced by globalisation and technological developments. And as elsewhere, this has led to frantic activity in consolidation and improving efficiency. Within EMU the introduction of the euro has clearly hastened this process, but in Sweden the euro's influence is of a more indirect nature. The euro market exists as an important alternative, and can thus be said to sharpen competition on the Swedish securities markets through its mere presence. It first and foremost fulfils a need that the krona market cannot completely satisfy. The euro market is perceived as deeper and more liquid, and thus provides an opportunity to borrow large volumes. I am thinking here of, for instance, the large Swedish corporations' need of capital to finance the major structural deals made in recent years. In order to borrow really large volumes, companies like Volvo, Vattenfall and Ericsson have largely turned to the euro market to issue bonds.

Similarly, it reached a turning point in mid-2022, when the other indicators were still rising. That said, the PCCI is based on a complex statistical methodology and the signal provided by its recent changes remains to be confirmed. Along the same lines, indicators that focus on “momentum” and on quarterly rather than annual changes can provide useful additional information in the current phase. At this stage, there are no clear and convergent signs in all of these indicators that would allow us to assert that underlying inflation has indeed reached a turning point. Lastly, we are closely monitoring the changes in wages, which are notably crucial for services inflation. Nominal wage growth is still accelerating across the euro area, although has so far remained below price growth; however, this is not leading to a wage-price spiral beyond what is included in our projections. The inflation expectations of households and businesses As I mentioned in the first part of my speech, market expectations have clearly improved, admittedly against a backdrop of falling energy prices. However, the inflation expectations of economic agents (households and businesses), particularly over the medium term, are also essential as they are the ones that determine the path of prices and wages. These expectations, which traditionally change more slowly than those of the markets, are giving more mixed signals.
Indeed it is possible that the attractiveness to those seeking funds of debt relative to equity is greater at higher interest rates. This is because interest payments are tax deductible whereas dividends are not. The scale of that subsidy to debt gets bigger as debt payments rise, which will happen as interest rates rise. A more formal version of this story goes like this: Suppose that nominal interest payments by issuers of debt, paying an interest rate r, are deductible against corporation tax (levied at rate tc) but that returns on equity paid by issuers have to come from post-tax income. Assume that all nominal returns received by holders of debt and equity are taxed at a common rate – a single rate that is charged on interest received, dividends and nominal capital gains. Because all receipts of income from financial claims are taxed at the same rate then the payments that need to be made by companies on debt and equity would, on average, need to be the same (because we ignore risk considerations). But companies can deduct interest payments against tax which means that the cost advantage of debt over equity to the company is measured by the nominal interest rate multiplied by the corporate tax rate – r x tc. This is increasing in the nominal interest rate. In this case, all else equal, the tax consideration is likely to lead to an increase in leverage when the nominal interest rate is higher.

But for any firm with less than average systematic risk and less than average leverage, the cost of equity would be lower; and at zero leverage, much lower, perhaps as low as say 6 percent. At that rate, even an all-equity bank with an expected return on assets of only 8 percent would not only be viable, but would presumably sell for a 1.3 premium over book value..... An essential message of the M & M Propositions as applied to banking, in sum is that you cannot hope to lever up a sow's ear into a silk purse. You may think you can during the good times; but you'll give it all back and more when the bad times roll around...... I can't  BIS Review 133/2010  11  who says “equity capital is very expensive to a bank” appears not to understand this. It might be fine for most people not to understand this – just as it is fine that most people do not understand what tensile strength materials need to have to be suitable to build a bridge with. But it is not fine if those that run banks, or regulate them, don’t understand it, any more than if engineers who design bridges don’t know about the strengths of building materials. In retrospect I believe a huge mistake was made in letting banks come to hold much less equity capital – relative to un-weighted assets – than was normal in earlier times.
Philipp Hildebrand: Overview of the Swiss and global economy Introductory remarks by Mr Philipp Hildebrand, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the half-yearly media news conference, Berne, 16 June 2011. *  *  *  The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is maintaining its expansionary monetary policy. The target range for the three-month Libor remains at 0.0–0.75%, and the SNB intends to keep the Libor within the lower part of the target range at around 0.25%. The global economic recovery is continuing, even if the outlook has dampened somewhat in the past few weeks. The level of capacity utilisation in the Swiss economy is rising. Despite the strong appreciation of the Swiss franc, the economy continues to benefit from robust international demand. However, margins in the export industry are coming under increasing pressure. For 2011, the SNB is maintaining its forecast of real growth in Swiss GDP of around 2%. Overall, however, downside risks predominate. These include, in particular, the debt problems in the euro area periphery. In addition, high deficits require several countries in various parts of the world to undertake fiscal consolidation measures, economic fragility notwithstanding. The recent commodity price increase weighs on global economic growth and poses upside risks to inflation. In Switzerland, the main risks remain, on the one hand, the effects of the strong Swiss franc on the export industry and, on the other, the danger of overheating in the real estate sector.

In addition to all these developments, global financial conditions tightened, and 2022 was marked by exceptionally high levels of geopolitical, economic and financial uncertainties. In 2022, the Turkish economy continued to grow uninterruptedly despite global supply shocks and unfavorable geopolitical developments stemming from the RussianUkrainian War. Economic activity was particularly strong in the first half of the year and maintained its robust outlook in the second half of the year despite the decrease in external demand. Accordingly, in 2022, the Turkish economy grew by 5.6%, ranking among the top G20 and OECD countries thanks to its growth performance since the last quarter of 2019. In addition, Türkiye ranked ninth in terms of national income calculated according to purchasing power parity and doubled its share in the global economy. In 2022, the Turkish economy reached the highest level of national income in terms of US dollars since 2014. In the first half of last year, annual consumer inflation increased rapidly due to the sharp rise in global energy, commodity and food prices, disruptions in supply processes, and price formations in FX markets detached from economic fundamentals in the last  1/4  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  quarter of 2021. As the effects of global supply shocks waned and FX markets stabilized, a gradual normalization process started in the underlying trend of inflation as of the second half of 2022.
This is a remarkable achievement in the face of global and regional uncertainties, political and economic crises, wars and conflicts and the volatilities of the oil and currency markets. SAMA's focus on achieving and maintaining financial stability is premised on the belief that it is a fundamental precondition for sustained and dynamic economic growth in which all market participants are able to make optimum contribution to the economy. Financial stability not only promotes efficient domestic investment activity but also creates a positive environment to attract foreign capital and foreign investors. Dear Audience, Over the past decade, the Saudi Arabia's financial system has been changing at an escalating pace. The banking sector, being one of the pillars of the financial system, has 20 licensed banks including 16 that are operational and 4 that are planning to become operational over the next year. The newly licensed banks include 6 regional and 3 major international banks. As for the Insurance Industry, SAMA has recently been involved in licensing of 14 Insurance companies that are now in the process of becoming operational within this year. SAMA also continues to regulate a number of money-changer organizations as well as a few lease finance and consumer finance companies. The financial sector also includes several autonomous government financing agencies as well as the state-owned pension fund and the General Organization for Social Insurance.

§  Progress in these areas, even if only incremental, will have important implications for what is possible and necessary in the future. For example, having stronger bank and corporate balance sheets, with lower leverage, expands the scope for using interest rates and asset price adjustments as stabilizing devices. Better liquidity management at both the micro and macro levels - - longer maturities, and greater reserve coverage and back-up financing - - will create margins to ride out financial shocks. And more  5  effective insolvency regimes would make decentralized workouts more feasible, particularly in cases where systemic stress is better contained. •  The approach to crisis management and resolution also needs to be creative. In part, this can be accomplished by relying as much as possible on the efforts of debtors and private creditors to work things out on their own. The perception in some circles that private creditors are not interested in resolving payment problems expeditiously is mistaken, and stands at odds with recent experience. If nothing else, investors are interested in restoring liquidity to debt instruments in order to move on to new opportunities. There is also scope for exploring creative market-based ways to lever in private participation and stretch the impact of public sector funds. G  •  The various experiences since the late 80s with buybacks, partial guarantees, and debt exchanges provide some hints for how targeted deployment of public moneys can spur tendencies in a direction consistent with public policy goals.
In the United States, these include the run-up in the value of the dollar in the mid-1980s, the stock market rise and crash in 1987; the compression of spreads due to convergence trades in the run-up to the Long-Term Capital Management debacle in 1998; the technology stock market boom of the late 1990s; and the credit and housing price bubble and crash of recent years. All these episodes were marked by spectacular price booms, followed by subsequent collapses. An examination of some of these recent bubbles suggests that while asset bubbles are idiosyncratic in terms of their causes, institutional features, duration and severity, they often share several significant features. These shared features are important in assessing how policy might be used to temper incipient bubbles in the future. In my view, asset bubbles often come about through a particular sequence of events. First, there is typically an innovation that changes the fundamental valuation in a meaningful, but uncertain way. 3 Asset valuations associated with the innovation change (as they should), but there is significant uncertainty about how valuable the innovation will turn out to be. This leads to a divergence in expectations concerning how much the fair value of the assets should increase. I believe that this uncertainty about what constitutes fair value is important in fueling the bubble. 1  See Vernon L. Smith, Gerry L. Suchanek, and Arlington W. Williams. 1988. “Bubbles, Crashes, and Endogeneous Expectations in Experimental Spot Asset Markets.” Econometrica 56, no. 5 (September): 1119–51.

Those that had doubts about the importance of the innovation or the persistence of the gain in asset prices lose confidence in their opinions as they underperform and lose business and market share. Those who believed that the large gains in asset prices were justified by the innovation and who benefited from those beliefs become more dominant. Casual investors see the large rise in prices and jump in. This shift is important because, in markets, prices are driven by the marginal investor. As new and often less well-informed investors plunge in to participate in the boom, they can overwhelm the so-called “smart money” that gets frustrated after having lost repeatedly trying to take the other side. In this respect, a bias toward optimism may also play an important role. Studies have found that most people believe that they are above average in terms of their acumen, be it as investors, car drivers or in other activities. 5 This overconfidence may cause some people to keep investing in the asset, even when they are skeptical about its valuation because they are overly confident that they will anticipate the end of the bubble and be able to get out in time. Fifth, asset bubbles occur more easily when it is difficult to short the assets.
But more importantly, it comes from my current position as a policymaker from a small, open economy where the collapse of three cross-border banks was the most noticeable event in the unfolding of the financial crisis that hit the country in 2008. The combined balance sheets of these banks was 10 times Iceland’s GDP, and their combined bankruptcy, measured in terms of balance sheets, ranks second in size in the international history of corporate failures, only after Lehman Brothers. And this happened in a country that ranks among the smallest in the world. I will use the case of these banks to illustrate current problems with cross-border banking more generally and as a yardstick against which to measure current reform proposals. Cross-border banking expanded significantly in the years prior to the financial crisis, as is witnessed, for instance, by the growth in cross-border banking claims measured by the BIS International Banking Statistics. Attending this growth was a steady build-up of cross-currency liquidity risk. Such risk can take two forms: currency mismatches and maturity mismatches between foreign currency assets and liabilities. To take an example, the euro area as a whole had a more or less balanced current account position. A fact that drew less attention before the crisis, however, was that European banks had built up huge USD-denominated balance sheets that had mismatches, especially in terms of maturity. This became a major problem when there was a run on dollar-denominated bank liabilities of non-US international banks post-Lehman.

The service of electronic transactions (e-banking) as a banking product began four years ago, although it may be said that it has not reached satisfying levels as far as its introduction and the use by the public is concerned. So far, two banks have been providing this service to particular clients (mainly businesses) for the carrying out of transfers, different payments etc. Over the present year, other banks have planned to provide this service. Table 1: Number of cards and ATM/POS 2004  2005  2006  Cash cards  26,736  173,161.00  220,657.00  Debit cards  6,552  50,066.00  70,176.00  Credit cards  806  2,550.00  4,245.00  136.00  169.00  Pre-paid cards Total  34,094  225,913.00  295,247.00  ATM  93  205.00  266.00  EF/POS terminals  155  779.00  1,073.00  4. The network and services expansion through the bank offices  Over 2005 the banking system continued to expand its network rapidly within the Republic of Albania territory. It expanded with more than 50 branches and agencies throughout the country, although most of them were established in Tirana. A considerable number of branches and agencies have been opening in small towns, indicating that a large share of the population is now being provided with banking services. Almost all banks have established new branches and agencies, but just like in 2004, the opening of 29 branches and agencies by the small banks (G1 group) makes an impact.