samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
It thus became fully clear  BIS Review 73/1999  2  that Switzerland was going to demonetise gold and to progressively transform a part of its stock into interest bearing assets. But why did we decide to fund the Foundation with gold and not with other assets? In order to understand this, one must take a closer look at the structure of the SNB’s balance sheet. 2. From revaluation of the gold stock to gold sales 2.1. The SNB’s balance sheet If, in relative terms, Switzerland is leading among all industrialised countries as far as gold holdings are concerned, the Swiss National Bank is also a special case with respect to the structure of its balance sheet. The bulk of the SNB’s assets consist of foreign exchange and gold. Swiss franc denominated assets constitute a mere 20% of the total. Compared to the balance sheets of the Bundesbank prior to the introduction of the euro, the SNB’s balance sheet exhibits only a small proportion of domestic assets (see graph 3). Graph 3 Assets Structure of the Bundesbank and the Swiss National Bank 20% 54% 50%  30% 30% 14% BUBA  Gold  SNB  Foreign Claims  Domestic Claims  Other Assets  On the liabilities side, the most striking feature are the bank’s own capital and reserves to which will be added the revaluation gain on the gold stock (see graph 4).

Our domestic assets are too low and a transfer of foreign reserves would have a negative impact on the Bank’s operations: • •  the SNB would be impeded in conducting its monetary operations (interventions, money market operations) the bank’s profitability and liquidity would diminish drastically. Consequently, a transfer in gold of a part of the valuation gain is the obvious solution. A group of experts has been asked to make an estimate of the excess reserve of the bank. 2.2 The proposals The group of experts has come to the conclusion that a capital corresponding to 1300 tonnes of gold could be withdrawn from the SNB’s balance sheet to be used for other purposes than monetary policy. Of these 1300 tonnes, 500 tonnes are to be set aside for financing the Swiss Foundation for Solidarity previously announced. What to do with the remaining 800 tonnes? A first idea would consist in transferring the remaining excess reserves to a public investment fund having more extensive investment possibilities than the SNB. Currently, our asset management policy is basically limited to fixed-income investments. The fund’s regulations should provide for investment in shares in order to achieve a higher long-term yield. But there is usually no limit to the imagination of politicians when money is to be distributed! Other concrete proposals exist. Some would like the excess gold reserves to be earmarked for specific goals such as improving the capitalisation of our social security schemes or for educational purposes.
Paul Fisher: Financial markets, monetary policy and credit supply Speech by Mr Paul Fisher, Executive Director for Markets of the Bank of England, Member of the Monetary Policy Committee, to Richmond University, London, 2 October 2013. *  *  *  Thank you for having me back at Richmond University. In this lecture today, I aim to review the behaviour and development of financial markets over the past year, including the period of heightened volatility since May and the introduction by the Monetary Policy Committee of explicit forward-looking monetary policy guidance in August. I will also assess the working and impact of the Funding for Lending Scheme over its first year of operation. Developments in financial markets When I spoke to you a year ago, financial markets were still scarred by the crisis years and there remained a number of significant downside tail risks to the global economy. Contacts were citing: the risks of a breakup of the euro-area; the possibility of a “fiscal cliff” in the US; a slowing in China, alongside already weak growth in the advanced economies; and tensions in the Middle East – especially around the Straits of Hormuz. But those tail risks were seen to be offset in large part by the commitment of central banks to respond. The ECB had announced its Outright Monetary Transactions programme and had been interpreted as publicly committing to do whatever it takes to keep the euro-area together.

Issuers, though, transferred much of the risk and did so comprehensively, as they needed to demonstrate that they had transferred risk irrevocably before they could get capital relief. But in the absence of adequate monitoring, originators could chase volume at the expense of lending standards. 5  See for example, the Bank of England Financial Stability Report, October 2007. BIS Review 93/2008  7  27 Therefore, two elements at the heart of the benefits of financial innovation – the ability to pool and transfer risk – contributed to an endogenous increase in the level of underlying credit risk. 28 There is also a potential incentive problem arising from the separation of legal ownership from economic exposure – although this is at the moment a possible difficulty for the future. Credit default swaps transfer the risk of economic loss to the seller of protection but the right to trigger covenants or put a firm into administration remains with the underlying asset holder. A protected asset holder, therefore, has little incentive to monitor a company closely and trigger covenants or force it into administration at the first signs that its business may have become unsustainable. And the seller of protection lacks an alternative legal remedy. Companies may therefore continue to operate for longer than they did in the past once they get into trouble. So, the use of credit default swaps may reduce the probability of default but increase loss given eventual default.
Second, studies have focussed on the impact of central bank communications on the key information intermediaries – Markets (M), Economists (E) and News (N) – rather than the general public. Empirical studies of central banks have been dominated by MEN. This is a notable gap. It is the general public who, ultimately, make decisions about spending and saving in the economy. And it is the public who decide, ultimately, whether central banks are serving society well or poorly. 38  Third, when it comes to assessing the impact of central bank actions on the trust and understanding of the public, little if any attention has been paid to some of the richer informational channels through which news 36  See Bholat et al (2015) for a summary of these methods. Ongoing work by Hansen, McMahon and Tong uses these techniques to analyse the Bank’s Inflation Report and finds that its text moves financial markets, even after controlling for the Report’s quantitative aspects. This suggests that the narrative explaining what drove the forecasts and how the committee interprets the data matters, not just the numerical forecasts. 38 For example, Blinder et al (2008) suggest that “Virtually all the research to date has focused on central bank communication with the financial markets.

MAS has played a critical role in Singapore’s economic development – keeping inflation low, managing Singapore’s official foreign reserves, preserving financial stability, and promoting Singapore’s development as an international financial centre. What MAS has achieved reflects the strategic vision of its past leaders – its Chairmen and Managing Directors – and deep professionalism of generations of MAS officers. They worked hard, to keep our exchange rate strong, our reserves healthy, and our financial sector safe yet dynamic. MAS was fortunate in the outstanding leaders it has had. This evening, we are honoured to have one of them, PM Lee address us. PM has a long history with MAS. This is the third time he is speaking at a MAS anniversary; he spoke to us when we were 30 years old, then 40 years, and now when we’re 50. And of course, PM was Chairman of MAS from 1998 to 2004, when he spearheaded a series of bold reforms to liberalise the financial sector. But MAS could not have done it alone – even with its exceptional staff and outstanding leaders. 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  MAS has succeeded because Singapore has succeeded. If Singapore’s public finances were not strong, our monetary policies would not have worked as well. If Singapore did not have a sound legal and enforcement framework, our regulatory policies would not have worked as well.
But the political leadership, and eventually the younger economists who started at the Ministry, had other plans.5 The economy was to be managed. Keynes’ idea that the budget should be used actively to manage demand and output over an economic cycle was to them an obvious truth. In a Kuhnian sense, the older civil servants had to go for the new thinking to gain ground. The legal experts at the Ministry had to give way to the young economists. The new regulatory regime was enthusiastically implemented after the war, and crowned with success. The contrast between the blight of the interwar years and the postwar boom was stunning. The ambition was not only to keep unemployment low. Which industry sectors should be allowed to invest? What type of dwellings should we build? Who should be able to buy a car and have a telephone installed? In the 1950s and 1960s, these were questions in respect of which the central government had firm views. Keynes, regulation and planning were predominant truths in the former government building for several decades. Yet neither did these truths remain eternal. In the 1970s, deficits ballooned when the government used countercyclical policies to “build a bridge” over the global downturn. But it was a bridge to nowhere. Inflation took off and government finances were strained to breaking point. The policy of micro-managing the economy had gone too far. Wage and price controls at the end of the 1970s, the last gasp of the postwar paradigm, did little to help.

Here is a graph that shows the margin of difference in employment performance:  According to Bureau of Labor Statistics’ payroll employment data, Texas has created 1,100,600 jobs since November 2007; the rest of America is still 349,600 jobs shy of the prior employment peak. Texas has been the crucible of job creation in America. More than oil and gas; jobs well-distributed It is a common perception that the jobs that have been created here are primarily in the burgeoning energy sector. It is true that Texas is an energy powerhouse: We produce more than 3 million barrels of oil and 21 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. To put this in perspective, Texas produces more oil than Kuwait or Venezuela or, if you’d like, more oil than the amount the U.S. imports from the Middle East. With regard to natural gas, Texas produces more than all 28 countries of the European Union combined. Of course, the energy sector is a significant driver for the Texas economy. Last year, the state saw an increase of 16,100 jobs related to oil and gas extraction and associated support services. We are grateful for every one of them. Yet there are seven other sectors of the Texas economy that produced more jobs than the energy sector last year.
There is a lively debate in the US at the moment about the most appropriate regulatory structure for all financial institutions, and particularly for investment banks. This tends to be regarded in the US largely as an internal matter. But the fact that the large US financial institutions have a global reach inevitably makes that debate a matter of great interest and concern to the international financial community. We are optimistic that legislation will soon be enacted to address these concerns. It would certainly be disappointing if it is not. Conclusions Though I have attempted this morning to identify some features of regulation on which we might well agree, I doubt whether there is such a thing as an ‘optimal’ regulatory structure. Each country has its own legacy of supervisory structures and approaches. But an appropriate international structure is one which works as seamlessly as possible and has clear lines of responsibility (at least, that is what we expect from international banking groups’ controls). One co-ordinating regulator for each institution could play a crucial role in such a structure. The question of the number of regulators is, in my view, less important; no one has yet suggested we set up one body world-wide to carry out all supervision, so whatever our own vision of an optimal regulatory structure, it will have at its centre a requirement for supervisors from different disciplines and in different countries to communicate effectively with one another. This weekend’s conference is a good opportunity to do that. BIS Review 21/1997

6  BIS Review 31/2008  Chart 1: Current account balances in the first wave of financial globalisation  Chart 2: Number of sovereign wealth funds since the 1950s  Per cent of own GDP United Kingdom Germany 15 Western Europe France 10  Number of SWFs 30 25  5 0  20  -5 15  -10 -15  10  -20 Canada Australia Argentina  -25 'New World' countries  5  -30 -35  1870  1877  1884  1891  1898  1905  1912  Source: Taylor, A (2002), “A century of current account dynamics”, Journal of International Money and Finance, pp 725-748. 0 1950s 1960s  1970s 1980s  1990s 2000s  Source: Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank  Global map 1: Current account positions (% of own GDP) in 1997  Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook, 2007  BIS Review 31/2008  7  Global map 2: Current account positions (% of own GDP) in 2007  Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook, 2007  Chart 3: Global holdings of fx reserves (excluding gold), 1995-2007 $  China Japan Russia Other Asia (a) Other EMEs Developed countries (b)  7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0  1995  1997  1999  2001  2003  2005  2007  Source: International Financial Statistics. (a) Excluding China and Japan. (b) Excluding Japan.
Paul Tucker: Discussion of Lord Turner’s lecture, “Reforming finance – are we being radical enough?” Remarks by Mr Paul Tucker, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, at the Clare Distinguished Lecture in Economics, Cambridge, 18 February 2011. *  *  *  Master, it is a real pleasure to be here this evening. And it is a real pleasure to kick off the discussion of Adair’s paper. We spend a great deal of time together – constructive and productive time – at international fora, and this evening Adair has typically provided a splendidly thorough survey of responses to the financial crisis. Adair casts it as about “Radicalism”. I don’t think it’s necessary to frame the issues in that way. In his monumental survey of the long-eighteenth century revolution of ideas and practice, Radical Enlightenment,1 Jonathan Israel argues that the “true” force of the Enlightenment was the democratic urge of a loosely allied group of thinkers underemphasised by mainstream historiography. But even if he is right, the so-called “mainstream Enlightenment” still, surely, turned the world upside down. One does not need to sign up to Whig views of history to believe that, by largely separating the world of enquiry from the world of faith, it set in train profound forces. But if I do not see a need for one of the organising rhetorical constructs of Adair’s lecture, I do most certainly think that we need to deliver fundamental change in the “rules of the game” for the financial system.

However, formulating the right policy responses to monetary policy spillovers requires a better understanding of various spillover channels as well as mitigating factors that help reduce the sensitivity of EMEs to global monetary policy shocks. I would therefore like to thank you all for taking the time to join our Workshop today, which brings together seasoned researchers and policymakers dedicated to understanding these vital issues. I look forward to their insights and I hope you enjoy the Workshop. Thank you. Last revision date : 25 August 2022
New surprise in June – but in the opposite direction Prior to the meeting in June, we received the National Accounts figures for the first quarter. These showed that productivity had developed much more weakly at the beginning of the year than we had anticipated. The labour supply was also still lagging behind the assessment we had made, which indicated that the labour market had tightened. This of course changed our assessment of how quickly cost pressures could rise and we revised up our forecast for the repo rate by an average of around one half a percentage point in relation to the February one. BIS Review 112/2007  3  The differences between our forecast and market expectations were small over the coming year, but our interest rate forecast was still lower than market expectations in the longer term. Despite this, implied forward rates rose over the entire forecast period by approximately 0.15 percentage points when we published our forecast. Market reactions were thus actually stronger than in February. But why were market reactions so strong in June? Of course, we have no interest in creating major fluctuations in the financial markets through our decisions and our communication. It is therefore important to us to understand why the market reacted the way it did. This is a natural part of the work on making communication as clear as possible. One reason for the rise in interest rates in June was that international interest rates rose on the day we published our interest rate decision.

The reactions and comments regarding a couple of our speeches in the early summer indicated that some analysts perceived them in a way that was not intended. The speeches were interpreted as though they pointed forwards although we had provided information on changes in our way of signalling and said that we did not intend to make any forward-looking comments that would provide clues regarding the next interest rate decision. Some concluding reflections on communication The fact that our message had not entirely come across is partly due to some market agents not understanding what we actually had communicated. But it is also partly because we have not been sufficiently clear in our communication. I believe this is quite simply a learning process. We at the Riksbank and those we want to communicate with – the general public, journalists and market analysts – must learn to understand one another. In this respect we will try to improve. One step in this direction is the decision to name the Executive Board members in the minutes of the meetings. In this way it is possible to follow how each member has reasoned. A further step that we recently decided on is to also publish forecasts for the repo rate and a small number of key variables at the monetary policy meetings held between the publication of the Monetary Policy Reports. If, for example, we had published a new interest rate path in May, I believe that the market would have been less surprised in June.
The assets managed by Singaporebased fund managers grew by 24% to almost $ in 2006. 4  BIS Review 76/2007  Second, the sources of funds flowing into or through Singapore continue to diversify. The Middle East has becoming increasingly important, along with South Asia. Funds sourced from the Middle East and South Asia grew by 21% and 36% respectively year-on-year. One of our local banks, DBS Bank, recently formed a joint venture with a group of Arab investors to set up Singapore’s first Islamic bank. This will spur the development of Islamic financial products in Singapore. I understand that Japan is also moving into Islamic finance. We can learn from each other and work together. Third, the critical mass of asset management activity in Singapore is continuing to grow. In 2006, 57% of the total AUM in Singapore was invested in the Asian region. Fund managers continue to use Singapore as their regional headquarters because they see Singapore as a prime location to service clients, raise capital from the region, as well as invest into the region and beyond. Singapore has also grown as a centre for hedge fund managers. Not only have these alternative investment managers contributed to the growth of our asset management industry, they have also added to its breadth and depth. Why has Singapore seen such strong growth as a financial centre? I think much of it has to do with our continuous efforts to enhance Singapore’s position as a gateway to Asia by transforming Singapore into a global city.

When India diversifies its economic base in this way, its weight will increase, and its effect on the region will be felt more keenly. Despite several changes of governments and Prime Ministers, India and its leaders have continued on the reform path. A billboard at the 2006 WEF meeting in Davos proclaimed: “15 years, 6 Governments, 5 Prime Ministers, ONE DIRECTION”. The message is clear: reform and liberalisation in India are irreversible. China serves both as an example of what a large country can do and a compelling reason for India to grow faster to keep up. I believe that India will continue to grow at a high rate. I have met Indian leaders across the political spectrum. I am persuaded that they will continue to open up the economy and welcome foreign investments. Take the case of West Bengal in Kolkata, a state that has been under communist rule for 30 years. The Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, one of the politburo members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), candidly said that he welcomed foreign investment, “whatever the colour – be it yellow, red or white”. 2  BIS Review 76/2007  Against this dynamic backdrop, individual ASEAN countries have been strengthening their economies and competitiveness. Collectively, ASEAN integration is quickening and deepening. In January this year, ASEAN Leaders committed to establish by 2015 – five years ahead of the original target – an ASEAN Economic Community.