samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
According to the World Bank, 170 million people in the ten member states of ASEAN with mobile phones remain unbanked. Some 53 million people still receive agriculture payments in cash. Financial technology or FinTech is making significant headway in bringing these under-served markets into the formal financial economy. Example: Digital financial transactions have increased by 30% in Thailand from 2014 to 2017. The FinTech revolution in Southeast Asia is being driven by three forces. First, there is a thriving FinTech start-up scene in ASEAN. These start-ups are building large digital businesses and changing the face of financial services while doing so. Take for example Wing in Cambodia, Wave Money in Myanmar, Momo in Vietnam, and MatchMove in Singapore. They have quickly scaled by providing unbanked individuals with the means to store value and transact digitally. And by extending their services to SMEs, these FinTech firms are facilitating the digitalisation of entire supply chains. Second, the advent of pervasive e-commerce platforms has provided an Asian model for financial inclusion. These platforms rapidly develop a consumer base and offer a broad stack of services, expanding into areas such as payments and credit. E-commerce platforms are among the best-funded ASEAN businesses. Grab, Go-Jek, Carousell, and Lazada have together raised nearly $ billion in 2018. According to a study by Google and Temasek, e-commerce is projected to grow explosively in ASEAN, from $ billion in 2015 to $ billion in 2025.

Our current forecast – which is scheduled for review in June, September and December – is for Spanish GDP to grow by 2.8% over the course of 2015, and by 2.7% in 2016. As to employment, the March figures reinforce our view that the unemployment rate should continue to fall, down to around 20% of the labour force by the fourth quarter of 2016. In Europe, the figures appear to support the view that the risks of deflation have been averted and that the economies of the Monetary Union and of the European Union as a whole are recovering and gaining momentum. If the Spanish economy is to benefit from these changes and likewise enjoy sustained higher growth, it will be essential to persevere with the reforms geared to adding market flexibility and boosting investment. Admittedly, however, the European and international financial context is unprecedented. The US exit from quantitative easing, with the interest rate rises that the markets expect, and the proliferation of negative interest rates on various financial and government debt markets, make for an unprecedented scenario that poses undoubted risks to financial stability with potentially highly volatile movements in financial asset prices. But if the risk of deflation in the euro area has finally been averted, and the US economic recovery continues apace, we may expect the financial markets to return to normal and yield curves to move back in step with normal, sustained economic growth. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches
I am acutely aware of the fact that the HKMA is only one of eleven central banks and monetary authorities in the EMEAP group and that the ABF project is an EMEAP project, and not an HKMA project. As I said earlier, I cannot speak for EMEAP, although ABF1 and ABF2 were developed while the HKMA had the honour of chairing the relevant Working Group. Indeed, we are scheduled to hand over chairmanship in May next year, having exceptionally provided the chair for two consecutive two-year terms. But allow me to tell you, nevertheless, what we in the HKMA think could be possible directions to be explored. 20. There are two such directions, which hopefully could lead to an ABF3. First is to enlarge the scope of credit acceptable to the central banks as investors, but address the problem of inadequate credit quality through credit enhancement or guarantee arrangements. Second is the securitisation of bank assets. Both are familiar concepts to the financial markets, and so there is no need for me to elaborate, other than to say perhaps that we favour simple products that can be readily understood not just by simple-minded central bankers but also by the not-so-sophisticated investors in the region. We  BIS Review 79/2005  3  support the EMEAP and other regional fora to further look into these ideas. And we look to the private sector to participate fully in this continuing effort. 21.

Looking ahead, we expected that positive fundamental factors – notably strong global demand and robust earnings in the euro area – would contribute to a certain pick up and a broadening of economic activity. The latest data and indicators have not changed this assessment. According to Eurostat’s flash estimate, real GDP grew at a quarter-on-quarter rate of 0.3% in the second quarter of this year, compared with 0.4% in the first quarter of 2005, confirming that the underlying growth dynamics remained subdued in the first half of 2005. At the same time, the most recent survey indicators have, on balance, supported the view that economic growth could improve in the second half of this year. Looking further ahead, conditions continue to be in place for positive fundamental factors to influence the outlook and for economic activity to pick up beyond the short term. On the external side, ongoing growth in global demand and improvements in euro area price competitiveness should support euro area exports. On the domestic side, investment should benefit from the exceptionally low level of both nominal and real market interest rates prevailing across the entire maturity spectrum, as well as from the robust growth of corporate earnings and ongoing improvements in corporate efficiency. Consumption growth should gradually rise, broadly in line with expected developments in disposable income. This picture is consistent with the most recent ECB staff projections, which envisage euro area real GDP growing at rates of between 1.0% and 1.6% in 2005 and between 1.3% and 2.3% in 2006.
Lives and Livelihoods A Delicate Balance Dr. Mohammad Y. Al-Hashel Speech by Chairman of the Higher Steering Committee for Economic Stimulus and Governor of the Central Bank of Kuwait 7 June 2020  Taken aback by a pandemic the world had not seen in seven decades, we are left with no choice but to do our best to protect lives. Hurriedly and feverishly imposed measures, as extreme as total lockdowns, brought about the worst global recession since the Great Depression of the early 20th century. Forecasts suggest a drop of 3-5% in gross domestic product, while growth in Europe is forecast to go down 8-12%. With unemployment hitting unprecedented highs, 1.6 billion workers are negatively impacted by the pandemic. The International Labor Organization expects a loss of around 305 million full-time jobs in the second quarter of 2020, and estimates that one of six young people is now out of the job market as a result of the pandemic. And as companies continue to suffer, more are going out of business and this phenomenon would blow up even further. The Organization expects that the “Lockdown Generation” would face even higher unemployment and lower pay for the next five years. These factors combined lead to uncertainty regarding the true extent and severity of the crisis, causing fear and panic among consumers, investors and the business sector as a whole, intensifying further the economic and social impact of the pandemic.

While this is a unique crisis, it brings in tow unique opportunities for us to recalculate our approach, correct structural imbalances, and construct economic components on stronger, firmer foundations so that we may build a brighter future for our homeland and ensure sustainable prosperity for all. We hope that everyone stays safe. Central Bank of Kuwait - Public ‫ عام‬- ‫بنك الكويت المركزي‬  -9-  Sources:           International Labour Organization. International Monetary Fund. Google COVID-19 Community Mobility Report as of 25 May 2020. Bensirri Public Relations COVID-19 Kuwait Business Impact Survey 13 May 2020. McKinsey Kuwait Business and Employee Sentiment Survey 26 April 2020. Ajar Report on Boosting Rent Collection in the Coronavirus Crisis. World Health Organization. Official press statements. Press coverage of official press releases. Central Bank of Kuwait - Public ‫ عام‬- ‫بنك الكويت المركزي‬
But still, being for the euro is simply a total political non seller. If I were to summarise the arguments against joining, be it on the side of the general public or professionals, they would be roughly threefold: A. The first one is sentimental rather than economic. We have been living with our Czech koruna, or crown, for quite some time and our country has a long history of monetary stability and stabilisation. By the way, we have had the same name for our currency ever since 1892, from the times of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (the crown is a monarchist name – what a paradox in our republic) and there has never been any reason to rename it. The old adage says: If it ain’t broke, why fix it? If you have low and stable inflation on your own, you don’t need any credibility for your currency from abroad. B. The second argument is more economic. Money matters. And monetary stabilisation matters. If you have shocks in the economy, something has to move to offset the shock. Something has to be flexible. It is easier to accommodate shocks through flexible interest rates or a flexible exchange rate than through wages, unemployment or budget expenditure. We discussed yesterday how hard it can be if you don’t have monetary policy to adjust to shocks. This is a classical argument of monetary economics for the active role of elastic money when you don’t have flexible prices or wages. Simple as that.

And as we can see, the shocks are pretty asymmetric among countries in the EU and the Eurozone. I believe in the stabilisation role of monetary policy and its ability to make cycles smoother and shallower. But you have to be prepared to use monetary policy. For instance, the population in my country is not happy with zero interest rates and the weaker crown, but we nonetheless believe it is one of the key reasons why we now have the lowest 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  unemployment rate in the EU and increasing real wages. C. The third reason is that some expectations regarding euro adoption were, to say the least, not fulfilled. The euro was supposed to help the Eurozone countries become richer and outperform those outside the Eurozone. As the data show, this has not been the case so far. My article for the forthcoming issue of the New Direction magazine calculates that on average the Eurozone countries grew by 1 percentage point less every year after the euro was established, compared to the countries staying outside. This is significant. Add to that the fact that many people realised during the crises that the euro project was probably not well prepared for bad times and that the Eurozone is now looking for new creditors rather than anything else, and you will understand the low attractiveness of the euro in the Czech Republic. However, it was not ever thus.
17 Overall, observations from testing and reports from market participants suggest that ON RRP operations generally work the way we have expected, with market participants evaluating the attractiveness of ON RRP investments relative to other opportunities available to them in the market. Indeed, take-up in the operations generally increases as the spread between alternative market rates and the ON RRP offering rate narrows, and aggregated usage patterns differ across counterparty types. 18 Take-up, particularly for prime money market funds, substantially increases around quarterand year-ends, when cash investors’ access to other short-term investments can become more limited. All else equal, the decline in the supply of short-term investment alternatives can create volatility in market rates, so the Federal Reserve’s ability to provide investment capacity through ON RRPs at these times may be important for monetary control. Tellingly, the only time the $ billion aggregate cap on ON RRP operations was reached was in the September 2014 quarter-end operation, soon after the cap’s introduction surprised market participants, leaving them searching for investment options when less than two weeks remained before quarter-end. Money market rates softened over that period as lenders sought to protect themselves against the risk of not having their bids fully filled in the Fed’s  15  An October 29, 2014, policy statement announcing the details of the test plan is available at http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/opolicy/operating_policy_141029.html. 16  A similar dynamic is present in the brokered Eurodollar data. 17  Money market prices also appear to reflect some stickiness.

Much money market activity is over the counter, potentially leading to search frictions and bargaining. Anecdotal evidence suggests that lenders typically interact directly with a small number of counterparties, perhaps because a portion of the activity is derived from costly relationship lending. These factors may contribute to imperfect competition. 18  Money market funds account for a substantial majority of take-up, and their participation is particularly responsive to rates on ON RRPs relative to those in the tri-party repo market. Government-sponsored enterprises account for the next largest share of take-up, with participation sensitive not only to market rates but also to non-price factors like their intra-month cash flow cycles. Not surprisingly, participation by banks and primary dealers tends to be more limited, because banks have access to higher-yielding IOER and primary dealers are typically net cash borrowers in the repo market. However, primary dealer take-up does increase when repo rates, particularly in the inter-dealer market, fall below the ON RRP rate. Take-up data by counterparty type, updated with a quarterly lag, are available under “Historical Data” at http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/omo/dmm/temp.cfm. BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  quarter-end operation. Indeed, requested bids in the September 30 operation exceeded the cap by about $ billion, some bids were only partially filled, and ON RRPs were awarded at a stop-out rate of zero percent.
In the first three quarters of  4  BIS Review 20/2008  2007, the Gross National Product (GNP) increased by merely 4 percent, remaining at a level lower than previous years. Sorting out the underlying dynamics of growth developments is critical in shaping monetary policy decisions. It should be emphasized that while the limited GDP growth compared to previous years can be attributed essentially to the impact of monetary tightening; the marked contraction in the agricultural sector also had a significant influence, especially on the reduced growth rate in the third quarter. In other words, the slowdown in growth resulted partially from the supply shock. As I have emphasized at the beginning of my speech, the contraction in the agricultural sector did not only affect the growth unfavorably, but it also pushed inflation up for a temporary period in 2007. Figure 6: Private Final Consumption (Real, quarterly, seasonally adjusted)  Monetary Tightening  26000 25000 24000 23000 22000  2007-III  2007-II  2007-I  2006-IV  2006-III  2006-II  2005-IV  2005-III  2005-II  2005-I  20000  2006-I  21000  Source: TURKSTAT, CBRT. Figure 7: Contributions to Annual GDP Growth (Percentage Points)  20  Final Domestic Demand Net Exports  15  GDP  10 5 0  2007-III  2007-II  2007-I  2006-IV  2006-III  2006-II  2006-I  2005-IV  2005-III  2005-II  2005-I  -5  Source: TURKSTAT, CBRT.

Therefore, under the assumption that oil and food inflation will follow a more benign path in 2008 than 2007, we expect some contribution to disinflation from the base effects. Figure 11: Response of Inflation to Monetary Tightening 18  11  17  10  16  9 8  15  7  14  6  13  5 Policy Rates H (right axis) H exc. Processed Food (right axis)  12 11  4 3 1207  1007  0807  0607  0407  0207  1206  1006  0806  0606  0406  0206  2 1205  10  H: Unprocessed food, energy, alcohol beverages-tobacco, and gold excluded CPI. Source: TURKSTAT, CBRT. We believe that existing supply and demand conditions continue to support disinflation. The sharp slowdown in the second half of 2006 created an ample slack in the economy (Graph 12). Although domestic demand showed some signs of recovery in the second half of the year 2007, the pace of economic activity does not appear to be fast enough to eliminate the output gap. Moreover, the uncertainty created by the ongoing difficulties in the mature credit markets is expected to hold back the domestic consumer and investment spending in the forthcoming period. Accordingly, our medium term projections are constructed under the assumption that demand and capacity conditions contribute to the disinflation process throughout 2008. 2  Official core inflation measures, published under the name “Special CPI Aggregates“ (SCA),do not exclude processed food prices.
With regard to the more current developments in the labour market, unemployment looks to be slightly lower and wage increases to be slightly higher than we assumed in the previous Monetary Policy Report in February. We will present a new assessment of economic activity and inflation prospects in our next Monetary Policy Report in June. This will also show our views on the labour market situation and what consequences this will have for monetary policy. Thank you for your attention! 6  BIS Review 52/2007

In addition, the decline in the growth of loans to the private sector has come to a halt and credit demand has recently strengthened. These developments need to be closely monitored, as they may start to point to upward risks to price stability, in particular during a period of economic recovery. BIS Review 40/2002  1  Overall, the outlook for price stability is now less benign than it was in November 2001, when we last adjusted the key ECB interest rates. Inflation has so far declined less steeply and less rapidly than we expected at the turn of the year. This has been partly due to the temporary factors I mentioned before, and to the renewed increase in oil prices in the first quarter of 2002. At the current juncture, even though the appreciation of the exchange rate of the euro will contribute to easing inflationary pressures, we will continue to closely monitor all relevant developments, against the background of the risk that the deviations from price stability, which followed the exceptional clustering of upward shocks on inflation over the past couple of years, may be transmitted into longer-term inflation expectations, thereby potentially affecting wage and price-setting behaviour. In order to maintain price stability, it is crucial that wage moderation prevails in the future. In this respect, we are concerned about recent trends in wages. The importance of wage developments in line with our definition of price stability cannot be overemphasised.
One reason for this is that our data allow a more comprehensive description of student debt delinquency and repayment rates than was previously possible. Our data come from consumer credit reports 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  for a 5 percent random sample of the population – that is for 12 million individuals aged 18 and older. Instead, existing knowledge of student federal loan defaults is based mainly on the three-year cohort default rates computed and released by the Department of Education each year. An institution’s cohort default rate is calculated as the percentage of borrowers in a cohort who default before the end of the second fiscal years following the fiscal year in which the borrowers entered repayment. In research that will be released later this month in a series of blog postings on our Liberty Street Economics blog, we use our data and a slightly different definition to compute comparable 3-year cohort default rates. Importantly, we find that three years out, we haven’t seen the full picture of borrowers who will default. Our calculations indicate that the 3-year default rate for the 2009 cohort rises by more than a third by year 5. This is also true of earlier cohorts. The 2005 cohort had a 3-year default rate at 13 percent – but this is only half of the defaults that we see nine years out. Taken together, these findings indicate that the student loan delinquency problem is much worse than currently understood.

17  Figure 10 Total corporate debt (*) (percent of GDP)  140  140 External  120  Domestic  120  100  100  80  80  60  60  40  40  20  20  0  0  09  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  (*) Based on administrative information at the firm level. Includes non-bank financial entities. Source: Central Bank of Chile using Achef, SBIF and SVS data. Figure 11 Real house prices and mortgage debt (*) (real annual change, percent)  16  Mortgage debt  HPI  HPI RM  16  CChC  12  12  8  8  4  4  0  0  -4  -4 11  12  13  14  15  16  17  (*) House price index (HPI), stratified method. CChC hedonic model for new homes in Metropolitan Region (RM). Source: Central Bank of Chile using SII, CChC and SBIF data. 18  Figure 12 Household indebtedness (percent of GDP)  50  Mortgage  50  Other  40  40  30  30  20  20  10  10  0  0 06  07  08  09  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  Source: Central Bank of Chile using SBIF, SUSESO and SVS data.
There is no other model to which we can refer – either in history or in a fully fledged political federation such as the US, and certainly not in comparison with centralised states such as Japan or the UK. But I’m always confident. In May we had additional proof of the capacity of Europe to cope with new challenges. Financial Times: Can you explain why [in May] the ECB changed its mind on government bond purchases? There was a lot of criticism in Germany especially. Jean-Claude Trichet: When I talk of “credible alertness” I really mean it. When we decided on 9 August 2007 that it was appropriate to embark in an unlimited supply of liquidity in our own money market, and we supplied 95 billion euros for 24 hours, that was not a decision that was in the textbooks. We were criticised a little bit at the time, and then, after a while, it was recognised that this decision had been wise and lucid. So in May this year I would say that we were in a situation where it was considered appropriate by the governing council of the ECB to take the decision, as I said earlier, to help restore a more normal functioning of our own monetary policy transmission mechanism. We had previously purchased covered bonds and we had not excluded intervening in other markets. Financial Times: What lessons do you draw in terms of euro governance from this crisis to date?

So “yes, sir”, the euro is there. The euro area faces a lot of challenges, as is the case for all major advanced economies. All their central banks have a lot of challenges today, and this is no time for complacency for any of us, but the success of the euro, measured as I just suggested, is obvious. Financial Times: What would you describe as the main challenges facing the euro today? Jean-Claude Trichet: I would say that we have all the challenges of major central banks in the advanced world. There is the challenge of coping, in terms of our own responsibility, with the “turbulent episode” in which we find ourselves since three years. We have to cope with the challenge of globalisation. We have to cope with the challenges of science and technology, which is developing so rapidly that it creates for the central bankers a lot of additional challenges, in particular in terms of assessing correctly productivity and the impact of IT on the financial sector. Population ageing is also a big challenge for all central banks. We have two other challenges that other major central banks do not have. One is the deepening and overall implementation of the single market with a single currency, which has been Europe’s ambition since the very beginning. We are the only central bank which is transforming, by virtue of its own activity, the economy under its jurisdiction. The second challenge is enlargement. We were 11 countries at the beginning.