samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
These include moving to risk-based capital requirements and allowing brokerages to enter new businesses such as fund management and corporate finance. This will encourage them to go into higher value-added activities such as product origination. Debt We have made significant headway in developing the $ debt market. Last year saw $ bn worth of non-government $ issues, more than double the amount raised in 1998. To promote the bond market further, MAS will address both the government as well as statutory board issues. We will improve the efficiency and liquidity of the SGS market, and do more to encourage institutional investors to participate in the market. We have worked out a package of measures for this purpose, which we will announce soon. We will encourage more GLCs and statutory boards to tap the bond market for their funding needs. To broaden and deepen the debt market, we are studying ways to promote asset-backed securitisation, in particular mortgage-backed securities (MBS). We will also look at the feasibility of establishing a mortgage corporation. This would pool mortgages from financial institutions so as to jump-start the development of the MBS market. Sustaining a flow of foreign issuers remains the fundamental challenge. Global issuers will seek to diversify their funding currencies, and we have to offer Singapore as an efficient and credible marketplace, with the Singapore Dollar a stable and reliable currency of funding. Asian borrowers will also turn increasingly to the bond markets to reduce their reliance on bank funding.

The officers responsible for supervision will naturally be more conservative than those promoting the financial sector. Managed well, this tension is constructive. Officers must continue to speak up and express their views, even though they may sometimes be overruled. With this approach to regulation, it is imperative for MAS to foster closer cooperation with the industry. We have made a serious effort to build a constructive exchange and dialogue with the private sector. We must continue to strengthen this culture of openness. Central bankers must treat some matters with the utmost discretion, to be discussed only in hushed tones among a select priesthood. But we cannot do all our business this way. In our day-to-day dealings with the financial institutions, we have to be constantly willing to explain the rationale for decisions and policies. At the same time, we must listen to proposals and ideas from the industry and feedback. As we continue to liberalise, we will need inputs from industry participants on many issues. We have to understand the industry’s point of view, and yet not be captured by the industry we are regulating. This mindset must permeate the whole of MAS, to every staff member. 5. Industry specific issues  Banks The first priority for banks is to upgrade their capabilities and strengthen their management teams. This is the only way for them to hold their own in the new environment, either by themselves or linked up with others in a strategic alliance or merger.
Last year, the Mainland of China ran a trade surplus of $ billion, equivalent to 4.5% of GDP. Foreign direct investment amounted to $ billion. Its foreign reserves are the second highest in the world. Its foreign debt amounted to only about 14% of GDP and consisting of mostly long-term loans from official sources such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and the debt service ratio at well below 10% of exports. The fiscal deficit in 1997 was small at below 1% of GDP and the monetization of such deficits is now prohibited. My contacts in Beijing have told me that even on the basis of very extreme assumptions with the amount of foreign direct investments and the growth rate of exports being halved in 1998, there will still be a balance of payments surplus. In the circumstances there really is no pressure to devalue the RMB. 17. The stability or otherwise of the RMB, understandably, would appear to some observers to have implications for the Hong Kong dollar’s link with the US dollar, particularly given the economic closeness between Hong Kong and the Mainland of China. But this does not necessarily mean that the Hong Kong dollar will need to move in sync with the RMB, in the highly unlikely event that the RMB is devalued. The Hong Kong dollar is linked to the US dollar and not to the RMB. The economic relationship has always been very close between Hong Kong and the Mainland of China.

No one thought that it should be abandoned. And we have received a few suggestions on how we should improve upon the operation of our system. We welcome these discussions which have sharpened our own thinking in the process of debate and analysis. Whilst one or two of these idea may have some psychological but possibly only short term value, they also carry considerable downside risks of undermining confidence in a well tried system. I am also pleased to say, therefore, that we have indeed been quite thorough in our monetary reform in the past ten years. (a) Role of interest rates 36. One school of thought promoted by a group of academics in Hong Kong with specific proposals for various schemes, which I must confess I have found difficult to appreciate, seems to be based on the notion that one could maintain stability in both the exchange rate and the interest rates at the same time. No matter how these schemes are dressed up, involving insurance products, guarantees, options or other fancy derivatives of one type or another, I fear that they have very little likelihood of success. Keeping interest rates artificially down when there is capital outflow amounts to providing cheap funding to those who are shorting the currency. It requires massive intervention in the forward market or a contingent commitment of foreign reserves that even those with very large foreign reserves would find the situation difficult to hold.
A second dimension along which diversity may matter is in supporting the resilience of social systems in the face of uncertainties and shocks, be it organisations or nation states. Courtesy of behavioural economics, we now know that individuals suffer from a heady cocktail of behavioural biases. 28 Two of the more important are hubris bias (an exaggerated individual sense of ability) and conformity bias (a tendency to act in line with consensus). 29 The first leaves decisions vulnerable to the whims of an over-confident individual, while the second generates insufficient challenge of prevailing orthodoxy, so-called “groupthink”. What links these biases is that they increase greatly the chances of a large, perhaps even catastrophic, error of judgement. History, including economic history, provides a rich catalogue of these errors, from autocratic emperors, kings and rulers overtaken by hubris to inert academics and policymakers consumed by consensus. Fortunately, social institutions have often adapted to lean against these biases. Indeed, some have argued that these institutional safeguards are the reason some nations succeed and others fail. 30 One bulwark against bias comes from placing decision-making in the hands of a committee, diverse in its composition, independent in its mindset. Experimental evidence suggests that, so comprised, committees make for more robust decisions. They do so by avoiding large  21  For example, McKinsey (2015). 22  For example, O’Reilly (1998). 23  Florida (2002), Ottaviano and Peri (2005). 24  Florida (2003). 25  Goldin et al (2011).

TCFD: strengthening the foundations of sustainable finance Speech given by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England  Tokyo, TCFD Summit 2019 08 October 2019  I am grateful to Jennifer Nemeth for her assistance in preparing these remarks, and to Ryan Barrett, Jennifer Bell, Benjamin Bowry, Kaja Chhapia, Lawrence Dimery, Benjamin Guin, Christopher Gynn, Sini Matikainen, Gordon Readhead, Mathesh Sripraba, Quynh-Anh Vo and Matthew WIllison for background research and analysis, as well as to PwC for their research work. . 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  Introduction It is an honour to join this inaugural TCFD Summit. There could be no better host than Japan. Prime Minister Abe made climate change an important theme of the Japanese G20 presidency, calling on nations to put ‘promises into practice’. And Environment Minister Koizumi recently said Japan is “committed to realising a decarbonised society.” Japanese companies are heeding these calls. In the past year, almost 200 Japanese firms have joined the TCFD, bringing Japan to the top of the TCFD league table.1 This welcome progress, and that of the TCFD more generally, must be set against growing challenges. Over the past five years, global carbon emissions have risen by 20% and sea levels by over 3.3mm per year.2 Global temperatures are on course to increase by 3.4°C by 2100.3 Chart 1: Global warming projections to 2100 under different policy pathways  The physical impact of these changes will not be evenly distributed.
China Finance: What needs to be done to meet the challenges to the credibility of Euro posed by persistent dispersions of inflation, current account deficit and public finance among the member economies? Trichet: The first 10 years of the euro has brought low levels of inflation overall in the euro area, lower than the levels in the individual countries before. The existing differences are no bigger than if you compare differences in price levels, for example, between various states in the United States, which is as you know similar in size to the euro area. The single currency also enhanced price transparency, increased trade, and promoted economic and financial integration within the euro area and with the rest of the world. As for public finances, the Stability and Growth Pact was created precisely to substitute for a more uniform fiscal arm of the euro area. As you are aware, there was an agreement reached in the EU late last year to provide fiscal stimulus corresponding to the current economic slowdown, however, on behalf of the Governing Council I reiterated several times that these packages should be provided by countries only if they have the leeway granted in the SGP. China Finance: In view of the increasing interests of adopting Euro from non-member countries in times of financial turmoils, how do you see the need to balance between the expansion of the Eurozone and maintaining its stability? Trichet: As said before, the financial crisis certainly reemphasised the value of belonging to a large, single currency area.

Short-term developments are not key, especially when they are largely determined by energy and food prices. The underlying trend and the firm anchoring of inflation expectations are decisive, as well as the orientation of the euro area as a whole. Low inflation rates in some Member States – even when negative – are not in themselves a breach of the target. They can be necessary to restore lost competitiveness. One could also argue about whether it is really necessary to consider further measures given that the measures already taken have not yet been able to have an effect. Monetary policy does not take effect immediately, but only with a certain time lag. As a rule we should take this time and wait and see. Which measures are we talking about here? The large-scale purchase of securities, including government bonds, is often seen as a panacea. As I said, even for innovative or unconventional measures, the costs and benefits, and the opportunities and risks must be carefully considered. Some central banks have used quantitative easing to quickly and decisively provide monetary policy impetus, adjusted to the specificities of their environment. It is these particular central banks and their measures to which we are compared. For me, these are idle comparisons. The following saying applies here: those who constantly compare themselves with others might become more like them, but they won’t necessarily become any better.
More generally, by emphasising principles in the rules - that an AMA must be credible, that it must adequately capture the  4  BIS Review 45/2003  risk of extreme events, that it must be used by banks in the daily management of their operational risk and not just for regulatory capital purposes - enhanced disclosure and transparency may actually result in more consistency in the application of advanced approaches than detailed quantitative criteria. Conclusion The Committee will need to spend the next few months discussing these three themes internally and with the industry to refine the qualifying criteria for the AMA, to determine how best to allocate operational risk capital, and to ensure a level playing field in the application of the operational risk framework. As we conclude today’s conference, I think all of us have a better sense of the work that is ahead for both bankers and supervisors. At the same time, it’s clear from the issues and themes that you’ve been discussing at this conference that we’ve moved beyond a discussion of the principles behind the rules and to a focus on preparing for their implementation. This seems appropriate, since we expect that, given the very good progress that we have noted in banks preparing to adopt the New Accord, supervisors and the industry will be ready to implement the new rules by the end of 2006.

Of the public comments on CP3 that touched on the operational risk proposals, it was gratifying that most sought refinement and clarifications of the proposals, and many acknowledged the value of the underlying principles. Respondents addressed a range of issues, but the AMA clearly captured the industry’s imagination. Three themes have emerged that are especially important to the Committee’s work on the AMA. One concerns the qualifying criteria banks will have to fulfil to adopt the AMA. Two others addressed the allocation of operational risk capital and consistency in the application of the AMA standards, across both banks and jurisdictions. I’d like to spend a few moments to give you a sense of the Committee’s deliberations to date on each theme. Qualifying criteria for AMA The first, and perhaps most pressing, of the themes concerns the minimum operational requirements that banks will soon need to meet in order to receive supervisory approval to use an advanced measurement approach. Many respondents felt that the Committee’s requirements spell out a tall order for the industry, especially in terms of the requirements to validate operational risk data and correlation assumptions. The Committee acknowledges that meeting the qualifying criteria will be a significant challenge for some banks. At the same time, the AMA offers banks an unprecedented degree of freedom in modelling their risk and determining their minimum capital requirements. The Committee considers it appropriate to pair this privilege with appropriately demanding standards.
This contribution is bound to further increase given these countries’ considerable potential for growth. I thank you for your attention. BIS Review 2/2003  9

Joseph Yam: Changes in Asia – a brief look at the dynamics within the region Statement by Mr Joseph Yam, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and Alternate Governor for Hong Kong, China in the Asian Development Bank, at the 40th Asian Development Bank Annual Meeting, Kyoto, 6 May 2007. *  *  *  I would like to thank the Government of Japan and the people of Kyoto for their hospitality in hosting this year’s Annual Meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). I would also like to congratulate Mr Kuroda on his re-election as the President of the ADB. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the ADB. Over the past four decades, Asia has achieved remarkable development, particularly in terms of economic growth and the reduction of poverty, and clearly the ADB has contributed significantly to this achievement and has established itself as a regional financial institution of strategic importance. Asia has undergone remarkable changes too over the past four decades and in many ways, in particular in terms of the economic dynamics within the region, and between the region and the rest of the world. Changes have been particularly marked in the past decade or so, under the influence of globalisation and the revolution of information technology. There has, for example, been rapidly increasing trade integration, encouraged obviously by the high degree of freedom in international trade, and consequently increasing economic interdependence within the region. Changes always present new challenges and opportunities.
Finally, I will take up the three issues I have just mentioned and explain the reasons for my views on these issues. For the sake of clarity, let me also add that the opinions I will be expressing in this speech are my own. They are not necessarily shared by my colleagues in the Executive Board of the Riksbank. The years prior to the financial crisis When I first arrived at the Riksbank, I did not suspect that we were about to experience one of the worst international financial crises of our times. I had been through two previous crises. The first of these was the deep recession at the end of the 1970s and start of the 1980s, when, through a series of devaluations, Sweden attempted to restore the competitiveness it had lost due to the severe price and wage inflation of the 1970s. The second was the crisis we experienced at the start of the 1990s. This was a fairly typical financial crisis, starting with the deregulation of the credit market and leading to a banking crisis, a deep recession and large public finance deficits. The Riksbank had built up its analytical capacity Its experiences in the Swedish banking crisis at the start of the 1990s had led the Riksbank to build up its analytical capacity before my time at the bank started. In 1997, the Riksbank started to publish a Financial Stability Report twice per year.

BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  need to create stronger linkages in the vital areas of trade and investment, business as well as financial linkages. There are several ways to achieve this: 6. Firstly, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has identified growing South-South economic linkages via trade and investment as a potential driver of global growth and emphasized the need for policymakers to further reduce barriers to trade and investment4. Trade between Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America has developed over the past two decades but still remains a relatively small 17% proportion of world trade. Asia’s share of total trade with the GCC grew from just 10% in 1980 to 36% in 20095. Having identified this as a priority area, ASEAN and GCC foreign ministers met in Singapore last year and agreed upon a Plan of Action to boost cooperation in trade and investment, among other areas. Islamic finance can potentially play a part in facilitating more trade between Asia and the Middle East with the involvement of more global and Islamic banks from both regions. 7. Secondly, the high level of savings and wealth accumulation in the GCC and Asia should also be mobilized by the financial sector and channeled towards more productive economic uses in both regions, especially to meet the demand for national infrastructure such as power plants, hospitals, roads and rail networks. The ADB Institute estimated that Asia will need $ trillion in infrastructure investment between 2010 and 2020.
This means that the companies can obtain financing by issuing commercial paper and selling to the banks, which can in turn use this as collateral to borrow from the Riksbank. The interest on the loans provides compensation for risk and time to maturity and the banks can only use the credit facility if they buy new commercial paper. If large companies outside of the financial sector gain greater access to credit, then the banks should have more scope to lend more money to small and medium-sized enterprises as well. Liquidity assistance on special terms The Riksbank has also provided special liquidity assistance to two Swedish financial institutions, namely Kaupthing Bank Sverige AB and Carnegie Investment Bank AB. These loans have been granted against collateral and at an interest rate that is higher than the normal borrowing cost. Although neither of these two market participants has a dominant position in the Swedish market, the Riksbank chose in both cases in the current turbulent market situation to grant liquidity assistance to prevent serious disruptions to the financial system and to maintain confidence in Sweden’s credit and payment systems. The decisions were based on assessments that the participants were solvent, but that they nevertheless were unable to acquire the necessary liquidity themselves to meet their payment obligations. With regard to this type of loan, liquidity assistance on special terms, it is important to remember why they are being granted. The issue is to safeguard the financial system and important social values.

The resolution of such a bank would involve ten national authorities, ten resolution funds and ten deposit guarantee schemes; needless to say, there would be many challenges involved in ensuring efficient coordination. The envisaged EU authority would spare us a great deal of these efforts. And I see no reason why such a vision should be considered unrealistic. Events are moving faster now than before. Crises make us reconsider things that we would have seen as beyond the feasibility horizon. For example, of the challenges that I have mentioned here today, the financing part is probably the biggest obstacle for such a quantum leap. However, in another dimension and for the euro area we already have the EFSF in place. Such a facility would have been simply unthinkable a couple of years ago. Similarly, I consider the setting-up of a permanent EU or euro area resolution fund to be one imaginable way to proceed. Of course, I am fully aware of the technical, legal and, most importantly, political complexities of such a move. Nonetheless, Europe could advance step by step. The euro area may be the most realistic starting point, since a stronger concept of the euro area as a legitimate entity has already been emerging. Likewise, fiscal coordination has been fundamentally strengthened during the crisis, paving the way for a specific economic governance concept for the euro area.