samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In the Festschrift for former Norges Bank governor Hermod Skånland, Professor Preben Munthe writes the following: “There is a tradition that expects central bank governors to be parsimonious with words. This built up the aura that should surround a man in that position. He possessed knowledge about the secret black box – monetary policy with a capital M – and how it functioned. Without asking others, he changed the discount rate and thereby intervened in the economy with authority and deep insight. On seldom occasions did he step down from his cloud of wisdom to impart life’s economic truths to a gaping public.” 4 A change in views and practices relating to transparency first occurred in recent years, both in Norway and other countries. 5 It can safely be said that the change has been swift and radical. Today, most central banks are open about (i) the objective of monetary policy, (ii) its strategy for reaching the objective and (iii) the background for and the process behind interest rate decisions. Norges Bank is no exception in this respect. In some areas, Norges Bank has gone further than others. For example, Norges Bank is one of the few central banks in the world that publishes forecasts of its own interest rate decisions. 6 What then can explain this tendency towards greater transparency? I would highlight two main reasons. First, there has been a general trend in society towards greater transparency. Second, economic thinking has changed considerably.

On the other hand, such transparency may inhibit the actual discussion. Members may come to meetings with pre-drafted statements, impairing a constructive exchange of views. Researchers have compared tapes of the Fed’s FOMC meetings before and after it was decided that the minutes should be published. 31 The tapes show that the form of discussion changed. During the period following the decision to publish the minutes, there was a greater tendency for members to read prepared statements. Detailed minutes also entail a risk of moving the real discussion from the official meeting into closed rooms. In that case, a real increase in transparency has not been achieved. The US was aware of this risk and introduced legislation to prevent such informal meetings. They called this law the “Government in the Sunshine Act”, 32 where the name symbolises that important decisions should be taken in the public light. The law defines a meeting as a consultation between a quorum of committee members. Stretching it somewhat, this means that if some members are chatting in the corridor, they must stop talking about the interest rate and start talking about the weather if the group grows to a certain size. The notion that increased transparency can hamper a free exchange of views is not new. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 decided to veil the deliberations in secrecy. According to the Virginia delegate James Madison, who later became the fourth US president, secrecy was crucial for succeeding in the work on the US Constitution.
It also shows the problems they face in deciding which transactions are indeed “appropriate” where the rules of the game in the various markets in which they operate may not be clearly defined, or where the rules are shifting in line with changing standards of what is right or wrong. The global reach of many businesses creates practical problems of control and of enforcement of compliance with regulatory and ethical standards, as the collapse of Barings Bank clearly showed. But these issues also arise in domestic markets as the banks diversify into fee-related businesses such as the sale of insurance and investment management and advice. Leaving aside the possible risks from rogue fund managers, these activities can raise conflicts of interest and the issue of whether particular products are suitable for the needs of their customers. The classic case of how things can go wrong is the recent pension mis-selling scandal in the UK. Hundreds of thousands of employees were persuaded by pension salesmen and the companies they represented (including major banks and insurance companies) to switch from occupational pension schemes provided by their employers into BIS Review 98/1999  2  personal plans provided by the companies. It turned out that in many cases, the employees were much worse off than if they had stayed in their original schemes. The banks and other pension providers stood accused of failing to give their customers suitable advice and sufficient information on the costs and benefits of making the switch.

The board of directors has an important role to play in establishing the overall culture of an organisation. It is also the ultimate body for resolving the type of complex ethical dilemmas I referred to earlier, and ensuring in particular that the reputation risks in new business strategies or products are carefully addressed. I hope that this conference and my speech, have demonstrated that high ethical standards in banks are neither a luxury nor an abstract ideal. Rather, they are a vital aspect of protecting and enhancing the bank’s brand image, and ensuring its long-term business survival. Behaving ethically is not only the right thing for banks to do, it also makes sound business sense. BIS Review 98/1999  4
But maps of the topology or wiring of the financial sector can be revealing about the strength, direction and complexity of the counterparty links between, and interactions among, financial firms. As one example, Chart 6 looks at the interbank connections between UK banks in 2013. 10 This suggests the wiring of the interbank network is messy and dense. The network’s epicentre is a small set of large banks with a very large number of connections – “superspreader” banks. There are, in addition, a large number of peripheral banks with few connections. In other words, the interbank system has all the properties of a classic scalefree network. Chart 7 looks at the pattern of interbank funding exposures among UK banks. It, too, suggests a complex web with scale-free properties. Networks with these properties are prone to failures among the super-spreader nodes. Since these are likely to be the entities most exposed to “too complex to manage” problems, this topology harbours a potential systemic vulnerability, the type of which was exposed in 2008. 9  “True Cost of complexity in the banking sector”, Simplicity Consulting (2012). 10  It is taken from Langfield, Liu and Ota (2014). Exposures comprise unsecured loans, marketable securities, CDS sold minus CDS bought, securities lending and repo and derivatives exposures. BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  Complex interactions are not confined to the banking sector. The non-bank (“shadow” banking) sector has become increasingly important over recent years.

Regardless of whether you have decided to pursue your studies in economics or start a professional career, I am sure that the knowledge and habits you have acquired in the past two years will prove to be extremely helpful in your endeavours. I wish you every success in your careers. Thank you very much. 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
This is because, unlike the unsecured TOIS fixing, SARON, as the secured overnight reference rate, is risk-free. Although the volume of SARON swaps is still small, many players are in the final stages of preparing to enter this market. Both the transaction volumes and acceptance of this market among market participants are expected to increase in the coming weeks and months. The Swiss National Bank is supporting and assisting in continued efforts to establish SARON on the Swiss money market. Page 2/5  Berne, 15 June 2017 Andréa M. Maechler  News conference  New code of conduct for global foreign exchange market transactions  That brings me to the new global code of conduct for foreign exchange market transactions known as the FX Global Code. Published at the end of May, this new code aims to define clear rules of conduct for all those transacting business on the foreign exchange markets, with a view to enhancing efficiency. A well-functioning foreign exchange market is in the interests of all market players, not least the central banks. Various central banks, including the SNB, have therefore been working alongside private sector partners to draft the FX Global Code. The code of conduct affects all foreign exchange market activities – from communications with market participants to risk management and the execution of transactions. As a global set of rules, the new code replaces all existing codes of conduct for foreign exchange markets and, as such, establishes clear and uniform guidelines.

IT is also a necessary condition for the methods used to calculate financial risks in portfolios of securities or credits. The new Basel Committee rules on capital adequacy in banks, to take an example, are entirely dependent on such calculations. Network effects in the payment system The banking sector in Sweden is, as we know, strongly concentrated. This can raise questions in certain contexts as to how well competition functions. However, the concentration has also enabled, as I pointed out earlier, a more rapid exploitation of network effects and economies of scale connected with IT developments. Let me go into this in more depth, hopefully without becoming too abstract. The development of payment services is governed, just as on other markets, by supply and demand. Supply is affected by costs and technology, while demand is affected by factors such as price, acceptance, comfort and accessibility. Advantages of scale within the production of payment services arise as these services are often connected with high fixed costs and relatively low flexible costs. Building up a new computer system is expensive, but every transaction that passes through the system costs less. The economies of scale effects provide incentive for various types of co-operation and joint solutions, where producers join forces to utilise the economies of scale and spread costs over greater volumes. There are also advantages of scale on the demand side, the in the form of positive network effects. Positive network effects mean quite simply that a particular system becomes more usable the more people who use it.
Balance between innovation & growth and security  Talking about balancing between innovation & growth and security, in the world of digitization, it is a challenge to find the right balance between innovation & growth and security which lie in our responsibilities. First of all, we have to understand the creation of the matters as well as their main drivers. Innovation and growth result from consumer’s and business’s demands for variety, speed and lower cost that come with competitions to develop such technology facilitating financial transactions and creating sophisticated banking products. Seeing that, their main drivers are users’ demand for financial facilities and technology together with a need for proper uses of banking products and services, leading to security concerns, which have occurred in parallel with the innovation and growth. Security of IT system uses are prioritized as one of the most considerable issues, due to its importance and interconnectedness, to accomplish our own goal of financial system stability that is at the heart of effective supervision. So, it is our responsibility to prevent such fragility before it is too late. 2. Regulatory schemes, bank business models and IT platform  In the world of highly competitive markets, in particular the banking sector, players have continuously tried to create new banking products to serve the needs of consumers and to move forward to penetrate market shares. As a result, sophisticated banking products along with adaptive bank business models have emerged. Unfortunately, once regulators respond to the changes steps after, financial crisis comes.

Since 2011 and the end of the "too-big-to-fail" doctrine, these groups have become increasingly aware of this, and have drawn up their recovery plans and worked closely with the authorities to ready themselves for crisis situations. The role played by the authorities in these continued efforts is crucial. Accordingly, the ACPR in France, and the ECB and the SRB at Banking Union level, guide and support these efforts, while also preparing for failure scenarios. 4  To this end, as of 2015, the ACPR has provided a decisive boost that has led to the drafting of the first resolution plans by France's leading institutions. Today, all institutions under the authority of the Single Resolution Board have a resolution plan in place. As for the institutions under the direct responsibility of the ACPR, a first wave of plans has been completed and plans will be finalised for all the 142 institutions concerned at the end of 2018. These combined efforts to pre-empt and to manage crisis situations must therefore be maintained in order to ensure the continuity of banking operations that are essential to the functioning of the economy, to avoid harming financial stability, to protect the resources of the Member States and to strengthen protection for depositors and investors. 5
Legislators and other policymakers made substantial changes to the financial system to hold firms, and their managers and shareholders, more accountable. A great many of those changes have put both firms and the public sector in a better place. Today, regulators and supervisors expect systemically important financial institutions to be more resilient. They must be prepared for unanticipated losses and shocks to the financial system, including through rigorous (if not always popular) capital and liquidity standards. Supervised firms are also required to have a much greater understanding of the governance and controls supporting their critical operations. This includes, for example, governance frameworks, management information systems, and IT resiliency. This last point is particularly notable because, as many of you are now painfully aware from the data breaches at Equifax and Yahoo (and those are just the most recent ones), cybersecurity risk has increased dramatically in the last several years. Resilience goes a long way. It prepares firms to be ready to fight not only the last war, but also the unanticipated stresses of the next one. It prepares them not to rely on past performance as a guaranty of future performance. But, increased preparedness should not be cause for overconfidence. Supervision and regulation should not and cannot drive all risk from the financial system, and the probability of a systemically important institution’s failure will never be zero.

The Bank now has responsibility for end-to-end risk management for CHAPS including relationships with CHAPS direct participants, and clearer lines of responsibility and integrated governance, enhancing financial stability in the UK. The first glimpse of the new dawn: ISO 20022 – improving payment messaging June next year will be the first step in the UK’s migration to ISO 20022. Its implementation is a foundational step that will enable many of the future changes that are coming, both domestically in the renewal of RTGS and internationally including enhancing cross border payments. Payment messages are the vehicles for transactional data in the payments world. They provide a common data model and a set of rules for exchanging critical information for a transaction to take place for everything from consumer payments to corporate treasury operations. Increasingly used by payment systems across the world, many other key Payment System Operators are also on the journey to implement ISO 20022 including the ECB’s TARGET2 and the Federal Reserve’s Fedwire. In addition, starting in late 2022 SW IFT’s correspondent banking network will retire the use of the existing MT standard by November 2025 and mandate ISO 20022. ISO 20022 will bring enhanced data deliver significant long-term benefits for not only the UK’s payment systems but participants and their customers. It provides flexibility to adapt to changes in the economy, emerging technologies and innovation. It provides international harmonisation, supporting cross-border payments.
In addition, the depreciation of our peso, although an important incentive for the export sector, in the short term has negatively affected the imported components of domestic expenditure. Along with this, it is worth noting the decline in economic expectations in recent months, which, on one hand, are a reflection of this scenario of slower growth, but on the other, may end up negatively affecting domestic demand. Expectations for investment and consumption have been falling for quite some time already, and more sharply in the most recent past. The Economic Perceptions Index (IPEC) and the Monthly Business Confidence Indicator (IMCE) have posted continuous declines this year. As of July, the two are below their neutral levels (figure 1). Besides, they show significant deterioration in some specific items, most notably those related with the convenience of buying durable goods, the perception about employment and the appropriate level of inventories. Meanwhile, the Business Perceptions Report published by the Bank in August revealed that firms perceive an increase in uncertainty, which has influenced both their own and their customers’ investment and spending decisions. Increased uncertainty naturally results in investment projects being pushed back (the “wait-and-see” option in specialized jargon), which could partly explain the reduction in investment. As I said, monetary policy has responded strongly and decisively to the worsening of our domestic scenario, generating significant monetary impulse. By mid-2013 we expressed the  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  need to adopt a more expansionary monetary stance that would ensure that inflation would converge to the target.

The National Plan to respond to the economic and social fallout of the war in Ukraine, approved by the Spanish Cabinet on 29 March,5 includes measures that will come at a direct cost of € billion in 2022, according to Government estimates.67 One area of fiscal policy where more resolute action would be desirable is the formulation of a credible commitment to budgetary stability over the medium term. This would help limit the risks of financial market tensions that could be fuelled by the current climate of high uncertainty. This commitment should take the form of a gradual fiscal consolidation programme, to be implemented once the recovery takes hold. A gradual adjustment process minimises the possibility of any abrupt changes in the budgetary policy stance that might hamper the recovery under way. Increasing the economy’s potential output would also help reduce the high level of government debt. This would require reforms that address the economy’s structural shortcomings. NGEU funds could also be particularly useful in implementing these reforms and the investments required to support the changes. 5  See Real Decreto-ley 6/2022 (available in Spanish only). 6  In addition to this amount, there is a contingent liability of € billion linked to the new ICO guarantee facility approved as part of the raft of measures to support business liquidity needs stemming from the temporary increase in energy and fuel costs.
The reward of an excellent work in an unknown domain is the 6900 students who have chosen to attend as an elective subject “Personal finance in your hands” published by the Bank of Albania. In cooperation with the Ministry of  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Education and Science, we are endeavouring to make this book available in every school and to each student with the ultimate goal for them to be educated financially and empowered to manage personal finance. Only in this academic year, high-school students in 36 districts of Albania chose this book as an elective subject, making us optimistic and forward-looking. We strongly believe that the today’s young generation will be the protagonists of tomorrow’s economic life. For this purpose, we need to make our utmost investment for their formation, in order to ensure not only their future, but also the country’s future. The youth are eager and capable to assimilate, process and convey information, habits, or new products in any field of life. They are the transmitters of innovation, the most energetic and progressive segment of the society. It is our moral, professional and institutional responsibility to invest for a qualitative education of the young generation. To us, enhancing financial literacy is crucial. A well-educated nation guarantees its country’s welfare and progress. Therefore, we have decided to choose the young generation as our strategic partner to realize this challenge. We believe in their idealism, positive energy and pure spirit.

2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Thanking you for your attention, allow me to announce the winners of the Best Diploma awards for 2011:   The third prize is awarded to Ardit Azizaj, an MA student of the New York University in Prague, for his dissertation “What Albania’s possibilities are, in future, regarding the world division of labour?” His dissertation focuses on the impossibility of a country to transform its economy successfully from a poor and centralised to a developed economy.   The second prize is awarded to Ledia Sulejmani, a student of the University of Tirana for her dissertation “Economic developments in Western Balkans, future challenges.” Her dissertation describes distinctions and characteristics of Western Balkan countries as regards economic indicators, in light of a common area and its future challenges.   The first prize is awarded to Borana Angjeli, an MA student of Marin Barleti University in Tirana for her dissertation “Pension systems”. Drawing on results from a survey to employees close to their retirement, the thesis points out some of the shortcomings of the pension system in Albania and makes recommendations on changes to the actual pension scheme, in line with European principles, without being a heavy burden for the state budget. Thank You! BIS central bankers’ speeches  3