samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Pension Funds It is estimated that the assets of the pension funds which are available to pay pensions, stood at 345 billion kronur at the end of 1997, an increase of more than 39 billion kronur, or 12.7 percent, in the course of the year. The composition of pension fund assets has change somewhat. Holdings of market listed securities expanded by 25.6 billion kronur while holdings of other securities declined by 3.7 billion kronur. At the end of 1997, the pension funds held 21.7 billion kronur worth of domestic shares. The pension funds’ holdings of foreign securities grew sharply in 1997, or by 12.6 billion kronur, about one-half of which was in shares. At the end of 1997, the pension funds held foreign securities valued at 22.2 billion kronur. Payment Intermediation Over the last two years, the Central Bank has increasingly turned its attention to payment systems, both to specific payment forms and to settlement systems. The Bank has released two reports on this subject, one on electronic payment forms and another on a comparison of payment intermediation in Iceland with international practice. In recent years there has been growing international concern that settlement systems do not adequately take into account settlement risks. Two responses have been adopted. First, strong conditions have been imposed on net settlement systems which lower risk, and plans have been laid for the contingency that a settlement party is unable to meet its obligations.

In January, the Bank forecast that inflation would average 2.6 percent between 1997 and 1998, and 2.3 percent in the course of the year. It seems clear that inflation during the first quarter of this year has been lower than expected in January. Government Finances In 1997, the Treasury recorded a welcome surplus of 1.3 billion kronur on a cash basis despite tax cuts, a rise in the wage bill and special interest payments associated with government bond redemptions. In order to compare the outcome with the budget it is necessary to exclude the special interest payments of 3.5 billion kronur. Thus adjusted, the Treasury’s surplus was 4.7 billion kronur. A Treasury surplus had not been recorded since 1984. On an accrual basis, which includes accrued interest and pension liabilities, the Treasury’s finances appear to have been close to balance in 1997. The Treasury repaid debt during the year. Amortization of foreign debt exceeded new borrowing by 6.5 billion kronur, or the equivalent of 5 percent of the Treasury’s foreign debt; this marked the first time since 1986 that amortization of foreign debt exceeded new borrowing. Domestically, new borrowing exceeded amortization by 3.4 billion kronur. While this turnaround in the Treasury’s finances is certainly to be welcomed, it is, nonetheless, a somewhat mixed blessing.
Significant institutional reforms were implemented in areas such as governance, competition policy, labour markets, privatisation and enterprise restructuring. It is also true that, in order to comply with the accession preconditions, we had to take some measures a little bit faster than theory and other countries’ experience would have advised. I am referring, for instance, to the liberalisation of capital flows while still having a significant inflation differential and, therefore, a significant interest rate differential. We learnt before long how challenging it is for monetary policy to manage aggregate demand and expectations in a small open economy amid a flood of capital, particularly when having to cover also for an excessively loose fiscal policy. Some of the side-effects of liberalizing the capital flows are still haunting us today. I am referring here to the Swiss franc loans, which have lately become a thorny issue, even if the scale of the problem is by far the smallest among peer countries – less than 5 percent of the outstanding loans and just 2 percent of the total number of individual debtors at the time the problem erupted in early 2015. Its magnitude was from twofold to fivefold larger in Croatia, Poland or Hungary. I dare say the macro-prudential action taken by the National Bank of Romania is not unrelated to this outcome. Turning back to the EU entry in 2007, all things considered, I could say that we probably caught the last train, especially in the new post-crisis environment.

Eddie Yue: Join us and be part of the change Keynote speech by Mr Eddie Yue, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, at Hong Kong Fintech Week 2019, Hong Kong, 6 November 2019. * * * 1. Good morning everyone, a very warm welcome to the Hong Kong Fintech Week. For those of you visiting from outside Hong Kong – a special welcome to our city. 2. This is the fourth year we are hosting Fintech Week. I guess many of you were at previous ones. If you came to the first in 2016, you might have noticed how this event has evolved in just a few years. 3. Back then, the HKMA had just set up the Fintech Facilitation Office, or FFO. We hosted the first Hong Kong Fintech Week – basically as an “experiment” – at the relaxing PMQ heritage site in Central. We weren’t sure at that time whether people like you would be interested in coming along! Frankly, there wasn’t much talk about Fintech in Hong Kong at that time. Certain people in the industry did tell us, to our faces, that the HKMA was a big hindrance to Fintech development because our regulatory approach was too conservative! 4. But that’s fine! We always value your feedback. 5. That Fintech Week three years ago turned out to be a great first step. It genuinely started a dynamic and constructive dialogue between everyone involved in Fintech development in our region.
The recent litigation in New York involving claims under surety bonds is perhaps a much reported incident of this sort. And uncertainties in a world dependent on expeditious performance of contracts has to be a real issue in financial stability terms. Second, we have seen the emergence of large multifunctional financial groups. So my observation is that whatever thinking might have gone into the Basel II Accord for banks, we would be wise to focus further, on the way in which capital adequacy and other prudential supervisory techniques fit together, for different parts of the financial world, including insurance. The wisdom in earlier days was that systemic risk, in a financial stability sense, was largely confined to banks. Not any more. It has been recognised for some time that the securities arena and the process of securitisation has changed all that. And more recently, growing interlinkages with the insurance sector are giving rise to the need for a further rethink. II  Looking beyond capital adequacy: the importance of liquidity  Secondly a rather different angle. Viewed from the point of view of financial stability, capital adequacy is clearly a vital and valuable policy tool. That is why Basel II is so important. But systemic crises do not always emanate from capital inadequacy. The first indication of trouble ahead may well come from a completely different area. What I am talking about is the question of liquidity.

Niklaus Blattner: System stability and security of the systems Summary of a speech by Prof Dr Niklaus Blattner, Vice-Chairman the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Luzerner Tage für Informationssicherung (LUTIS, conference on information security), Lucerne, 25 May 2004. The references for the speech can be found on the Swiss National Bank’s website. *  *  *  The stability of the banking system and the security of the financial market infrastructure - including the stock exchanges and especially payment and securities settlement systems - have become an important concern of central banks all over the world in recent years. This has notably happened against the background of the numerous financial crises witnessed during the past decades. Moreover, events such as 9/11 have heightened awareness for the security of the financial markets and other infrastructures. In Switzerland, the growing importance of system stability has also been reflected in the new National Bank Act, which entered into force on 1 May 2004. Within the framework of its principal mandate of pursuing a monetary policy in the interests of the country as a whole while at the same time ensuring price stability, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) is legally obliged to make a contribution to system stability and to facilitate and secure the operation of cashless payment systems. In implementing its mandate, the SNB takes preventive measures as well as measures aimed at overcoming crises. For instance, in a crisis the National Bank plays an important role in providing liquidity.
Norman T L Chan: A new era of smart banking Opening keynote speech by Mr Norman T L Chan, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, at HKIB (The Hong Kong Institute of Bankers) Annual Banking Conference 2017, Hong Kong, 29 September 2017. * * * Dr Patrick Fung, Ms Carrie Leung, Vice President Pan Guangwei, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning to all of you! The theme of my speech is “A New Era of Smart Banking”, “智慧銀行新紀元 ” in Chinese. In the last few years, we have frequently come across two comments amongst the fintech community. The first comment is that Hong Kong is very backward in fintech, quoting mobile payment developments in Mainland China as the evidence. The second is that fintech will disrupt or displace traditional banking. I must say I don’t agree with these two comments for two main reasons. First, Hong Kong has not been slow in developing and adopting fintech. It is not entirely appropriate to use mobile payment as the only benchmark for measuring the state of development in fintech. There are many other important aspects of developments that define the maturity of fintech developments, such as the use of digital or internet banking and the robustness of cybersecurity. Even in the field of mobile payments, we should appreciate that Hong Kong already has a well-developed electronic payment ecosystem. In 2015, each Hong Kong citizen had on average 2.6 credit cards, compared to 0.3 credit cards per person in Mainland China.

Timothy F Geithner: Restoring market liquidity in a financial crisis Welcoming remarks by Mr Timothy F Geithner, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the Second New York Fed-Princeton University Liquidity Conference, New York, 13 December 2007. *  *  *  Welcome to the New York Fed and to this conference on liquidity. You are addressing some of the most important issues affecting financial markets today. Your timing is good, perhaps too good. We are all going to need some time and perspective before we will know enough to draw conclusions and recommendations from the events of the past six months. The conditions that led to this crisis took a long time to develop and they will take some time to resolve. I think it is appropriate, though, that as central banks act to address the challenges in markets today, we also begin to define the agenda for future research and policy. On December 12, the Federal Reserve and several other major central banks, announced a series of actions in response to the elevated pressures in funding markets. Together, these actions provide a more flexible and potentially more effective set of instruments, alongside our conventional monetary policy instruments, to help mitigate the risks that liquidity pressures in markets going forward could pose to the broader economy. With this framework of tools, we have the capacity to calibrate our response as market conditions change.
Elimination of the unfavorable conditions in bureaucracy, politics and taxing regulations that are the primary items of the list of the factors affecting competition negatively in Turkey bear great importance in this respect. 2 The key factor for this is ensuring development in the principles 3 of governance both for the public and the private sector. A great improvement is recorded in terms of the principles of governance as of the year 2000 and improvements in almost all of the indicators are observed. It is not a coincidence that the improvement in the principles of good governance and the one in macroeconomic performance to intersect. However, it is clear that there is too much to achieve compared to the European countries. Good governance has a key role in ensuring the macroeconomic stability and rendering this process permanent. Therefore, it is one of the pre-requisites of a sustainable growth process. Structural reforms bear great importance in this regard. The research carried out with respect to the OECD countries 4 reveals that the economic growth rates of the countries engaging in rapid and comprehensive structural reforms increase in vast amounts. Additionally, structural reforms are complementary. Halt of the progress of structural reforms in one field prevents the attainment of favorable outcomes of the reforms made in other fields.

Some parts of the subregion sometimes have problems with floods, but in many parts there is permanent lack of even drinking water. Macedonia’s track record within the relations with the World Bank, can be assessed as quite successful. The World Bank has been one of the most important partners in the process of designing and implementing important structural reforms. The strong focus of the World Bank programs on the financial and the enterprise sectors, public administration, and business environment, has proved to be an important trigger and contributor to the productivity gains and real convergence of the economy. Personally, I am deeply grateful to the World Bank and the IMF for the contribution they have made in overcoming our existential problems. It is my personal opinion, however, that our need for the cooperation with and support of the World Bank is more than necessary. We have made some progress, but we have also encountered a lot of problems. The global crisis emphasized a number of structural issues that are bottleneck for the growth of the Macedonian economy. A comparative analysis shows that Macedonia has pretty low level of investments (on average about 15% of GDP during 1997–2007). Thus, further support which will lead to higher investments and higher stock of capital will play an important role for the long-term growth. We substantially lag behind those we want to keep up with. The unemployment rate is still staggering (32.4%).
As technological advances in payment systems are seldom used at their maximum capacity, the increase in their efficiency is a gradual, rather than spasmodic process. In order to better estimate the impact of technology-driven change on the velocity of money in circulation and thereby on monetary policy, central banks thus need to use data from a variety of sources In sum, payment systems are an essential precondition for the implementation of operational monetary policy and their degree of sophistication has a direct impact on the velocity of money circulation, thereby influencing monetary policy itself Turning to financial stability, there is a strong link between efficient payment systems and financial stability. Financial stability implies that the financial system is robust to systemic risk, i.e. the risk that problems in one financial institution lead to problems in other previously sound institutions. Financial stability allows the financial system to withstand shocks without giving way to cumulative processes which impair, first, the processing of payments in the economy, and second, the allocation of savings to investment opportunities. A robust and resilient market infrastructure is essential for financial stability The provision of credit to commercial banks led the central bank to establish a function to control the creditworthiness of the borrowers. This function eventually developed into “banking supervision”. A commercial bank can be the source of financial instability if it faces technical difficulties or if it fails to repay funding. This funding can come either from the regular operations of the central bank or from other depositors.

These arguments that were compelling at the dawn of central banking are most likely to ensure that modern payment systems continue to have a determined impact upon monetary policy and a positive influence upon the stability of the financial system as whole. Thank you for your attention. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
The return on the two asset classes is repre− sented by the fund’s benchmark indexes, measured in foreign currency, for the period June 2011 to May 2012. Sources: Statistics Norway and Norges Bank  Today, the fund is far larger than in 2011. As a result, return variations will have a greater impact. With the current size and composition of the fund, the same return as in 2011 would have resulted in a loss of almost NOK 1 000 billion, or close to 35 percent of mainland GDP. The fund has become important for the Norwegian economy. The fiscal rule links fiscal policy to the value of the fund. This year, 15 percent of general government spending is projected to be financed by transfers from the fund. Looking ahead, movements in global capital markets will be the main source of variation in the value of the fund, and at times in a negative direction. The actual stance of fiscal policy must allow for this uncertainty. The fund had several good years following the euro crisis. Markets turned around, and quickly the loss was more than reversed. We cannot take for granted that this will always be the case. Conclusion Let me conclude. The global economy finally appears to have fully recovered from the prolonged weakness that followed the financial crisis. Growth has also strengthened in Norway after the decline following the oil price collapse. The government’s solid financial position has been of considerable help.

We anticipate a growth of  Meanwhile, core inflation continued its  5.5 – 6.0 per cent in 2017.  upward trend in 2016, reflecting the firming up of demand conditions in the  Central Bank of Sri Lanka – ROAD MAP 2017  8  economy and the revisions made to the  eleven months of 2016, an increase of  tax structure in the latter part of the  14.7 per cent over the previous year. year. Core inflation, based on CCPI,  Workers’ remittances recorded a  increased to 6.3 per cent, year-on-year,  moderate growth of 3.1 per cent during  at end 2016 in comparison to 4.5 per  the first eleven months of 2016 and  cent at end 2015, while NCPI based core  amounted to around US dollars 6.6  inflation was 6.8 per cent, year-on-year,  billion. With these developments, there  in November 2016.  was a narrowing of the savings –  In response to preemptive monetary policy measures, monetary aggregates, which expanded at a high rate, decelerated, while growth of credit to the private sector showed some slowdown, mainly reflecting the impact of increased market interest rates. investment gap as reflected in the lower current account deficit during the first nine months of 2016. Foreign investment in the government securities market saw a net outflow, while longterm loans to the government recorded a net inflow.
As I shall be discussing, moreover, it is reasonable that the Riksbank considers developments in the real economy and tries, when making decisions, to avoid unnecessary disturbances and fluctuations in growth and employment. 3  BIS Review 98/2000  One reason why the Riksbank did not opt for a shorter target horizon is the time lag that normally occurs before interest rate adjustments affect the economy. I say normally because, for example, the exchange rate sometimes speeds up the effect from the interest rate. Moreover, a large interest rate adjustment is presumably associated with a quicker effect, for instance if household wealth is affected via share prices. Developments beyond the current two-year period are excluded by the target horizon because, for example, it is often difficult to predict what will happen so far ahead. But certain trends may be fairly clear at times and monetary policy should then take them into account. So although policy is guided by the prospects one to two years ahead, there are normally reasons for also paying some consideration to inflation’s forecast path in the coming year as well as beyond the target horizon. To date the Inflation Report has contained detailed assessments of inflation two years ahead. In the next report, in December, we intend to include a section with a more general description of inflation prospects two to three years ahead. This is intended to promote a better discussion of the choices that lie ahead. Another important matter is how strictly the rule should be applied.

Dimitar Bogov: Promoting Macedonia’s cultural and historical values Opening speech by Mr Dimitar Bogov, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, at the opening of the exhibition titled “Wall Paintings from the Episcopal Basilica in Stobi” on the occasion of the International Museum Day, Skopje, 18 May 2012. *  *  *  Honorable Minister Kancheska-Milevska, Your Excellency, Ambassador Wohlers, Distinguished guests, This year we celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the monetary independence of the Republic of Macedonia, recalling with respect the period of creation of the Macedonian Denar and the processes that led to the proclamation of the monetary sovereignty of our country on April 26, 1992. Undoubtedly, this is an opportunity when it is necessary to say that in the past twenty years, the main carrier of these processes – the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, with all its capacity has adequately served the new democratic society, as an institution that is responsible for maintaining the stability of the Macedonian national currency and its monetary and financial system. Besides its primary activity, in the past 10 years, our institution has sought to continuously and systematically contribute to the preservation, care and promotion of cultural and historical values of Macedonia.