samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
While consumer spending has held up well in the past two years, it is expected to gain momentum as the economic environment brightens. Consumption will thus continue to support growth, though it will probably cede pride of place to more cyclical components such as capital expenditure and exports. It will benefit, in particular, from the gradual improvement that will be seen on the labour market. At this stage of the economic cycle, of course, we must first expect gains in productivity, which means that unemployment will only decline slowly. Nevertheless, here too, the medium-term outlook is now good. The scenario for a recovery that I have presented is, needless to say, full of imponderables. The risks are everywhere. They may take the shape of an uptrend or a downtrend. We can thus not rule out the possibility that the international economy will show more robust growth than anticipated. A swift build-up of inventories, for example, would appreciably accelerate the cycle. But the downside risks could also be triggered at any time by new political disorders. Given the significant internal and external imbalances throughout the world, such unrest could fuel greater volatility on the currency and equity markets. The strength of the recovery is also uncertain. In the United States, the economic recovery, which has been driven largely by tax breaks, is not yet firmly in place; households, labouring under a heavy debt burden, may be frightened by the slow pace of job growth.

Switzerland’s neighbours saw an upswing in industrial output and exports, although domestic demand in these countries remained - and still remains - sluggish. In Switzerland, too, the long-awaited but oft-delayed upswing finally began to make itself felt. The first signs of the upturn became apparent in the summer. These were initially in isolated areas but then became increasingly widespread. The confidence indicators began rising, and order books swelled. The turnaround was facilitated by a marked weakening of the Swiss franc, which was itself triggered by a renewed easing of our monetary policy in March. This downward correction in the franc, which continued for the rest of the year, came as a welcome respite for Switzerland’s export industry, which had been buffeted by the weak global economy and the fall-off in international trade. The Swiss franc’s slide against the European currency was gradual, extending over almost a year. Our currency’s exchange rate dropped from CHF 1.46 against the euro in March 2003 to CHF 1.55 today, thus depreciating by about 6%. The franc’s fall is even greater in real terms owing to the higher inflation rate which prevailed - and still prevails - in the euro zone. Also in real terms, the Swiss franc is worth less in euros than when the single currency was launched five years ago. This development shows that, as the new European currency has gained in stature, the markets have taken a different view of the safe-haven role traditionally played by the franc.
Philipp M Hildebrand: Albert Gallatin, one of the financial founding fathers – what can we learn from him today? Speech by Mr Philipp M Hildebrand, Vice-Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce, Geneva, 10 September 2008. I would like to thank Signe Krogstrup for her valuable support in drafting this speech. I also thank Rita Kobel and Urs Birchler for their very helpful comments and discussions. * 1. *  *  Introduction  As always, it is a great pleasure to be in Geneva. I want to thank the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce for its kind invitation. My remarks today are unusual in the sense that I will not structure them around monetary policy, the ongoing financial turmoil, or any other current monetary topic. Instead, I have the privilege to step aside temporarily from my day-to-day preoccupations and indulge in a little bit of history about a remarkable man whose origins are firmly rooted in Geneva’s beautiful “vielle ville”. Ladies and Gentlemen, it is an honor for me to pay homage to Albert Gallatin – the Geneva-born fourth – and to this day longest – serving United States Secretary of the Treasury. 1 Those of you who enjoy economic history will be familiar with the extraordinary accomplishments of Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, appointed by President George Washington in 1789. Hamilton built the foundation of the U.S. federal financial system in the late 18th century.

8  Contrary to what the party’s name suggests, the Republican Party established by Jefferson in the late 18 century was in fact the forerunner of today’s Democratic Party. 9  Hamilton only served as Treasury Secretary until 1795, after which Wolcott, a fellow Federalist, took over until 1801. But Wolcott is generally perceived as having continued and completed the policies of Hamilton until Dexter took over, for a few months only. Gallatin took office in May 1801. 2  BIS Review 106/2008  th  and, finally, the creation of the first Bank of the United States. 10 The Bank of the United States gave the federal government a tool to manage short-term credit and cash flow and to influence – and thereby help safeguard – the stability of the emerging financial system of the United States. 11 The Bank also significantly extended access to credit for private enterprise. During these extraordinary years, Gallatin first served as a representative in the state legislature of Pennsylvania. He was involved in the adoption and ratification of the state constitution. After a brief period as a senator, Gallatin became a member of the House of Representatives in 1795, where he served until 1801. 12 As a congressman, he established himself as a leading figure in the emerging Republican Party led by Thomas Jefferson. Gallatin quickly gained the reputation of being the member of his party with the most profound understanding of public finance.
This massive and rapid action was welcomed but raised questions, particularly in Germany: is the ECB not going beyond its mandate, endangering price stability? And even more "fundamentally ", where do these thousands of billions created all of a sudden come from? I will start with the second question: the specific feature of a central bank is its ability to create money virtually and without limits. However, it must be borne in mind that the money created by central banks is never simply “given away” permanently: it is loaned for a limited period; and it is channelled into the economy and eventually comes back to the central bank. The central bank can buy time through its monetary creation, and this is important. But it cannot sustainably increase wealth; only our work and economic growth can. I will now return to the first question, on whether or not we are fulfilling our mandate. In its founding Treaties, and under the legitimacy afforded to it by economic actors and public opinion, the ECB’s measures are bound by two interlinked anchors: its price stability mandate and its independence. They are inherited from the Bundesbank and in my view vital. Independence : the ECB is subject to neither national governments, nor to the pressures of the financial markets nor of passing trends. The ECB’s monetary policy must continue to support economic activity, for the sake of its own mandate of price stability.

In the short and medium term, the crisis will have desinflationary effects that are already noticeable, with inflation temporarily falling in August by 0.2% in the euro area, and by 0.1% in Germany. For a year as a whole, we are expecting a slightly positive inflation of 0.3% in 2020 and 1.0% in 2021. As you know, we unfortunately remain well below our inflation target of "less than, but close to 2%". The other aspect of the response to the health crisis are fiscal measures, primarily at the national level. Germany clearly made greater use of the financial leeway it had built up since the 2009 crisis. Its fiscal stimulus package (as a percentage of GDP) is at this stage greater than France’s. The effectiveness of its stimulus package is still difficult to anticipate: in particular, the 2/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  temporary reduction in VAT appears costly. The French government also announced a EUR 100 billion stimulus package last week. I wish to mention three positive features. It focuses on business supply and investment, and not household demand. This is fully justified, since households, protected by short-time working measures, except for the most vulnerable ones, will have saved nearly EUR 100 billion this year. This plan also has a strong focus on transformation, including ecological reconstruction - a third of the funds are allocated to this area.
In conclusion, the yards will be hard I’m afraid, and we must stick to the task. The hard yards ‐ speech by Andrew Bailey | Bank of England  Page 5  I am grateful to Nishat Anjum, Jamie Bell, Justin Beresford, Ben Broadbent, Alan Castle, Pavandeep Dhami, Jonathan Haskel, Andrew Hauser, Karen Jude, Catherine Mann, Dave Ramsden, Fergal Shortall, Sophie Stone and Silvana Tenreyro for their assistance in helping me prepare these remarks. 1. Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, “A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960”, Princeton University Press, 1971, p. 493 2. The furlough scheme, meanwhile, has pulled down measured average wages. The scheme has helped workers stay attached to their jobs but generally at lower pay than usual. But the compositional effect has more than offset this. 3. Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, “A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960”, Princeton University Press, 1971, p. 498  Andrew Bailey Governor, Bank of England  Sign up for latest updates  The hard yards ‐ speech by Andrew Bailey | Bank of England  Page 6

The Executive Board described the background for the decision as follows: •  Underlying inflation has been lower than projected in recent months. Nevertheless, several factors point to higher inflation ahead. Capacity utilisation is high and there is little spare capacity in the Norwegian economy. Employment is rapidly rising and unemployment has exhibited a marked decline. There are signs of higher wage growth and expectations of rising inflation. At the same time, the krone exchange rate has depreciated from strong values. •  The interest rate path presented in Inflation Report 3/06 will provide a reasonable balance between the objective of bringing up inflation towards target and the objective of stabilising developments in output and employment, conditional on the information currently available to Norges Bank. •  Monetary policy influences the economy with a lag. Over several years, interest rates have been considerably lower than what Norges Bank considers to be a neutral level. The interest rate may gradually be raised to a more normal level at a somewhat faster pace than envisaged earlier, although it is unlikely that rates will be raised at every monetary policy meeting. Based on Norges Bank’s current assessment, the interest rate will thus continue to be raised in small, not too frequent steps if economic developments are broadly in line with projections.
The Swiss National Bank (SNB) has also faced a number of challenges since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2007. We have repeatedly been forced to counteract the adverse effects of enormous shocks to the Swiss economy, in line with our mandate to ensure price stability, while taking due account of economic developments in Switzerland. At the current juncture, the economic uncertainty in the euro area, in particular, is of great concern to Switzerland and the SNB. While we cannot influence the developments in the euro area, we can act in a resolute and timely manner to dampen the negative implications for our country. The most visible measure we have taken is undoubtedly the introduction, almost exactly one year ago, of the minimum exchange rate. In the current situation, a further appreciation of the Swiss franc would constitute a very substantial threat to the Swiss economy, and would carry with it the risk of deflationary developments. With this in mind, we will continue to enforce the minimum exchange rate with the utmost determination, in line with our mandate. Today, however, I do not want to talk primarily about monetary policy, but about the Swiss financial industry. Allow me to start by explaining why the financial industry, in general, and a healthy and stable banking sector, in particular, are of vital interest to the SNB. There are two main reasons. First, the banking system fulfils a key financial intermediary role in the economy.

François Villeroy de Galhau: Parisian momentum Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, at the Bloomberg "Future of Finance" Paris forum, Paris, 9 May 2023. *** Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great pleasure for me to give this keynote address at the first Future of Finance – Paris forum organised by Michael Bloomberg and his team. After the first panel, which gave precious insights on how Paris can lead the way in the reshaping of financial markets, it will cover the whole range of most topical issues. This first Bloomberg forum in Paris is more broadly a very timely and welcome initiative, which echoes financial players' growing interest for the French capital. Paris has indeed kept asserting itself as a major financial centre over the last few years, and stands out as unique in the network of European financial centres. I can only invite you to read the excellent Bloomberg article published on 18 April, which perfectly captures this multifaceted trend.1 Its title, Banks betting on Paris say there is life after London, should bring definitive reassurance to other banks, and encourage them to make the same winning bet.
That was potentially a very important supportive step as a good proportion of businesses in the UK had floating rate loans which were linked to the LIBOR rate. GDP stabilised by the end of 2009, and grew at close to trend rates in the first half of 2010. The prospect of deflation, which had been a hot topic during early 2009, now seems much less likely. Indeed, press commentary through 2010 has instead mostly been focused on the elevated rate of CPI inflation (which reflects the temporary impact of a series of short-term price level shocks). 7 Why we did it the way we did Although QE was an “unconventional” monetary policy operation, it was not totally without international precedent, having been tried most notably in recent times by Japan. The Japanese programme is generally considered to have been a mixed success at best. Such a judgement is perhaps unfair but there were a number of lessons to be learned from their  3  For further discussion, see Cross, Fisher and Weeken, (2010), “The Bank’s Balance Sheet During the Crisis”, Quarterly Bulletin, 50, 1, pages 34–42. 4  See Benford, Berry, Nikolov and Young (2009). “Quantitative Easing”, Quarterly Bulletin, 49, 2, pages 90–100. 5  Joyce, Lasaosa, Stevens and Tong (2010). “The Financial Market Impact of Quantitative Easing”, Bank of England Working paper number 393. 6  London Inter-Bank Offer Rate – see http://www.bbalibor.com. 7  For more discussion see Fisher (2010), “Why is CPI inflation so high”. Speech to the Merseyside Young Professionals, June.

Why we did it and how well it worked The global financial shock associated with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG in September 2008 triggered a sharp and synchronised downturn in the world economy. In the UK, GDP fell nearly 4% in 2009 H1 alone, and by the end of that year was some 10% below where it would have been, if growth had continued at its previous trend. This was one of the largest falls in output ever recorded in the UK. At its March 2009 meeting the MPC cut Bank Rate to just 0.5%, the lowest level in the Bank of England’s 300 year history. While that represented a significant loosening of monetary policy, the MPC agreed that more stimulus was required to mitigate the risk of depression and deflation. Given that Bank Rate was close to its lower-bound, the MPC decided to increase the supply of money in the economy directly, by embarking on a programme of asset purchases, financed by the creation of central bank reserves (QE). This largely took the form of purchases of UK government bonds – “gilts” – but included small purchases of corporate bonds and commercial paper undertaken in order to improve conditions in those markets. I won’t say any more about the latter today.
This has led not only to a reduction in the interest rates on such transactions, but also to a revival in a market which had dried up, or even to the establishment of such markets in countries where they did not yet exist, such as Italy. It is difficult to ask more of monetary policy in a market economy. Our role is limited to the provision of liquidity to solvent banks. This role does not include the recapitalisation and restructuring of the banking system, which is an important step to restore trust in the financial sector. We expect banks to take a more active role in the process of recapitalisation. As the ECB has stressed a number of times, banks must take full advantage of government measures to support the banking sector, in particular as regards recapitalisation, not least because the banking system cannot be supported indefinitely by the extraordinary measures taken by central banks. An exit strategy will inevitably need to be implemented in due course. Banks which decide not to make use of government support measures must find alternative sources, in the market, in order to be ready to step up their lending to the real economy once the recovery begins. While the slowdown in bank lending observed in recent months can perhaps in part be explained by the fall in economic activity, the failure of banking flows to pick up when demand recovers would be more difficult to justify.

Background charts: Chart A: Short-term MFI interest rates on new loans (percentages per annum, monthly averages)  12  BIS Review 129/2009  Chart B: Long-term MFI interest rates on new loans (percentages per annum, monthly averages)  Chart C: MFI loans to households in the euro area: contributions by country (percentage points; annual percentage changes; quarterly, quarterly data are averages, nsa)  Source: ECB. BIS Review 129/2009  13  Chart D: MFI loans to non-financial corporations in the euro area: contributions by country (percentage points; annual percentage changes; quarterly, quarterly data are averages, nsa)  Source: ECB. 14  BIS Review 129/2009  Chart E: MFI loans to households in the euro area: annual growth by country (percentage changes)  Source: ECB. BIS Review 129/2009  15  Chart F: MFI loans to non-financial corporations in the euro area: annual growth by country (percentage changes)  Source: ECB. 16  BIS Review 129/2009
8 Some of the current conversation about a shortage of safe assets appears not to treat bank reserves or other  central bank liabilities as safe assets. This view comes up particularly with regard to quantitative easing programs, where the claim is made that central bank purchases of sovereign debt reduce the supply of safe assets. This claim is incorrect because the growth of central bank liabilities that fund these purchases are safe assets themselves. I explore these points more deeply in my “Discussion of ‘The Safety Trap’ by Ricardo J. Caballero and Emmanuel Farhi,” remarks at the Bank of Korea International Conference, June 2-3, 2014. 9 In some cases, it may be possible to design instruments with features that help to mitigate any such  undesirable effects. For example, the Federal Reserve’s overnight reverse repurchase agreement (ON RRP) facility has a cap on individual use of $ billion, and from September 22, 2014, through December 16, 2015, ON RRP operations were subject to an overall size limit of $ billion. These issues are discussed in Joshua Frost, Lorie Logan, Antoine Martin, Patrick McCabe, Fabio Natalucci, and Julie Remache, “Overnight RRP Operations as a Monetary Policy Tool: Some Design Considerations,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, no. 712, February 2015. 10 Financial firms can also issue very short-term commercial paper or certificates of deposit, but these  instruments can also create stability concerns. 11 Importantly, in considering the stability of a bank’s deposits, the LCR distinguishes between operational and  non-operational deposits.

For example, during the money fund reform period, as money flowed from prime to government funds, prime funds used the facility to become more liquid in advance of redemptions and government funds used it to temporarily absorb new investments.31 Finally, the Treasury General Account (TGA) has grown substantially in recent years as the U.S. Treasury has decided to hold a precautionary buffer of cash generally sufficient to cover five business days of outflows, subject to a minimum balance of $ billion. Given the daily variability of TGA balances, this type of account would be also expensive for the private sector to offer under new regulations. Further, as the buffer has been funded mainly through increased bill issuance, it has increased the supply of money-like assets to the private sector. Conclusion Central banks are uniquely able to produce money-like assets that are viewed as safe during non-normal times. In more normal times, regulation and supervision are the best tools to mitigate risks from the private creation of money-like assets, but there is a role for the central bank to use 7 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches  its balance sheet to smooth fluctuations in the supply and demand for money-like assets. 1  I would like to thank Marco Cipriani, Gabriele La Spada, Deborah Leonard, and Antoine Martin for their assistance in preparing these remarks.