samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Ravi Menon: Money at a crossroads - public or private digital money? Summary of panel remarks (virtual) by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the IMF Seminar on Money at a Crossroads, 18 April 2022. * * *  Summary of remarks by Ravi Menon A crypto asset or token is about digitally representing anything we regard as having value, putting encryption around it on a distributed ledger, where the ownership of the asset can be ascertained and verified, and it can be transferred securely. In Singapore and in MAS, we are excited about the potential to build a crypto or tokenised economy. Cryptocurrencies, about which there is so much excitement, is just one sliver of the crypto ecosystem or economy comprising a variety of tokenised assets. Cryptocurrencies are crypto assets which perform a payments function and try to mimic money. Private cryptocurrency is unlikely to perform the functions of money because its value is unstable and it is not backed by the central bank or the government. Stablecoins are pegged to a fiat currency and therefore derives stability, but it is not clear that all stablecoins, which purport to have a backing, are indeed backed adequately. Without such backing, it is hard to imagine how they will fulfil the function of money. Stablecoins will become a more prominent feature as long as their backing is strong. They could potentially challenge the currencies of some smaller emerging market economies.

Although the financial sector has made significant progress in terms of cyber resilience, the never-ending development of cyber threats means that we too must continue to improve our defenses. In this regard, there remains many issues which the Bank of Thailand, along with other central banks in the region, intend to drive forward, such as overseeing more comprehensive cyber resilience policies and promoting the development of human resources. In response to cyber-attacks that may target vulnerable customers, it is crucial that we strive to increase consumer technology literacy to nudge them towards safer cyber behaviors and ensure a sufficient level of Cyber Hygiene. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Thai Bankers’ Association and TB-CERT for organizing “ASEAN Banking Cybersecurity Conference 2019” which has brought our ASEAN members together today. This is an opportunity not only to gain knowledge from expertise in different areas, but also to enhance connectivity and collaboration among professionals which is vital to improve our Cyber Resilience going forward. I wish all of you a fruitful conference and an enjoyable stay in Bangkok. Thank you. 4
To foster transparency, the resulting assessments are made public, together with an overall review of compliance with the Basel standards. Some comment that this effort, well intended as it is, will ultimately be fairly limited in its impact because the Committee has no enforcement power and cannot override the sovereign regulatory power of national authorities. It is true that the Committee does not have this power, and nor should it. But that does not mean that the peer reviews and the RCAP process as a whole lack impact. We have thus far published five monitoring reports, and completed assessments on the final Basel III rules in Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and China. In all cases, the implementation of Basel III was deemed compliant with the international standards. But importantly, in all cases the assessment process also generated a number of changes to the domestic regulatory framework to fill gaps and improve the alignment with the international standards. This shows that a peer review programme, coupled with transparency, can make an impact even without a suite of legal powers to back it up.

We also continue to monitor and improve our system of banking supervision, in recognition of the fact that one reason we did ride out the Asian financial crisis was undoubtedly that banks were strong. Some observers have suggested throwing some sand in the wheels of international finance. By limiting capital flows, the argument goes, it becomes easier for central banks to maintain monetary and financial stability in turbulent times and to cope with the potency of international finance that comes with globalisation. Indeed, control in one form or another has become quite popular in this region. But, for an international financial centre such as Hong Kong, whose main source of income stems from an ever-growing economic and financial integration with the rest of the world economy, such a policy is, to us, clearly undesirable. Moreover, the Basic Law of Hong Kong also bars any foreign exchange control policies and any restrictions on the free flow of capital within, into and out of Hong Kong. Others suggest that the Hong Kong economy would be better able to withstand economic shocks and disturbances if the currency board was adjusted or gave way to something else: different observers have different pet ideas and there seems to be no agreement on what that alternative would be. I have spoken a great many times on this topic and I do not propose to do so again today.
For the euro area as a whole, the fall in GDP projected by the IMF and the European Commission for 2020 is, respectively, 7.5% and 7.7% (and the related whole-world decline would be 3% and 3.5%). These scenarios incorporate the effect of the measures approved in the fiscal, monetary and prudential areas, to which I shall later refer, such that the declines in activity would be significantly greater in the absence of these measures. In any event, what has been confirmed in recent weeks is that the recovery will not be free from difficulties, and that scenarios more unfavourable than those currently considered cannot be ruled out. These macroeconomic scenarios also offer an estimate that the budgetary cost of the crisis will be very high, owing to the dual effect of the alleviating measures adopted and, above 3  These are scenarios 2 and 3 constructed using the Banco de España quarterly model in the analytical article cited (see footnote 2). The assumptions on which scenario 1 rested, where a virtually full lifting of the restrictions on activity was assumed after eight weeks, appear to have been exceeded already by events. 12  all, of the operation of the automatic stabilisers. That will lead to a very high budget deficit this year, with its subsequent pass-through to overall general government debt.

3  The full implementation of this phase will require a political agreement that is up to the scale of the challenge we face and that will foreseeably run for several legislatures. The rest of my address today is structured in three major sections. In the first, I shall provide some details on the scale of the economic shock we are undergoing, including its effect on financial stability. Next, I shall review the role the different economic policies are playing in this shutdown phase of our economy. Finally, I will offer some thoughts on the function that, in my opinion, economic policies should perform once we are over the worst of the crisis. 4  Short-term developments and reference macroeconomic scenarios  Globally, the expansion of the pandemic and the necessary containment measures have sharply disrupted the world economy. The evidence coming to light in recent months reveals a marked slump in activity and employment, acutely so in the services sectors and in those countries which, affected by a more severe outbreak of the epidemic, have pursued more stringent containment measures. In China, the first economy to be hit by the illness, the first quarter of the year saw a fall-off in GDP close to 10% quarter-on-quarter. In the United States, the decline was smaller, around 1.2% quarter-on-quarter. Admittedly, though, the spread of the disease was belated.
At the conclusion of discussions, the Supervisory Council concluded that the monetary conditions remain appropriate for meeting the medium-term inflation target and decided to leave the key interest rate unchanged at 5.25 %. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches

Svein Gjedrem: Monetary policy and cyclical developments Speech by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at a meeting hosted by Sparebank 1 at the University Center, Svalbard, 22 April 2004. The text below may differ slightly from the actual presentation. The address is based on the assessments presented at Norges Bank’s press conference following the Executive Board’s monetary policy meeting on 21 April, Inflation Report 1/04 and on previous speeches. The Charts in pdf-format can be found on the Norges Bank’s website. *  *  *  In many countries, the conduct of monetary policy is delegated to the central bank. In Norway, the responsibility for interest rate decisions was delegated to Norges Bank in 1986. The mandate for the conduct of monetary policy was laid down by the Ministry of Finance in the Regulation on Monetary Policy of 29 March 2001. The operational target of monetary policy as defined by the Government is inflation of close to 2.5 per cent over time. The target is symmetrical - it is just as important to avoid an inflation rate that is too low as an inflation rate that is too high. The inflation target provides economic agents with an anchor for inflation expectations. It influences their decisions concerning saving, investment, budgets and wages. Experience shows that there is no long-term trade-off between lower unemployment or stronger economic growth and higher inflation. The task of monetary policy is to provide a nominal anchor. The inflation target is such an anchor.
BIS central bankers’ speeches  Together these dynamics have raised desired savings and lowered desired investment. With more savings chasing fewer investment opportunities, equilibrium safe returns have fallen sharply towards zero (Chart 8 – see also Annex). Colleagues at the Bank of England estimate that these factors can explain around 400 of the 450 basis points fall in global longterm equilibrium rates since the 1980s. 4 The persistence of many of these trends suggests that the global neutral real rate could settle around 1% over the medium to long term. Chart 8 Secular drivers pushing down on rates  Why does that matter? Central banks must set their policy rates with regard to equilibrium interest rates in order to maintain demand growth in line with supply growth and to stabilise inflation. Setting real interest rates substantially above the equilibrium rate would, in time, generate rising unemployment and falling prices. The opposite is true of setting rates substantially below the equilibrium rate. The substantial variance of the equilibrium rate over time means that a 4% policy rate would have been highly stimulative in 1980 but would be highly contractionary today. At the onset of the crisis, as households and firms sought to de-lever, the equilibrium rate fell sharply, calling for reductions of conventional policy rates to unprecedented levels. The necessary easing, however, went well beyond what central banks could deliver with short rates alone.

Mark Carney: Redeeming an unforgiving world Remarks by Mr Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England and Chairman of the Financial Stability Board, at the 8th Annual Institute of International Finance G20 conference, Shanghai, 26 February 2016. *  *  *  The global economy risks becoming trapped in a low growth, low inflation, low interest rate equilibrium. For the past seven years, growth has serially disappointed – sometimes spectacularly, as in the depths of the global financial and euro crises; more often than not grindingly as past debts weigh on activity (Chart 1). This underperformance is principally the product of weaker potential supply growth in virtually all G20 economies. 1 It is a reminder that demand stimulus on its own can do little to counteract longer-term forces of demographic change and productivity growth. Chart 1 Serial growth disappointments Actual GDP growth 2011 Dotted lines = Emerging economies Solid lines = Advanced economies  2012  2013  2014  2015  Per cent 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1  2010  2011  2012  2013  2014  2015  0  Source: IMF. That is not to suggest that such stimulus is without value or impact. Accommodative monetary policy can support activity while parts of the economy delever. Monetary stimulus can avoid hysteresis in the labour market. And monetary stimulus can buy time for structural adjustments which shift activity from public to private, external to domestic, and declining to rising sectors.
François Villeroy de Galhau: Parisian momentum Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, at the Bloomberg "Future of Finance" Paris forum, Paris, 9 May 2023. *** Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great pleasure for me to give this keynote address at the first Future of Finance – Paris forum organised by Michael Bloomberg and his team. After the first panel, which gave precious insights on how Paris can lead the way in the reshaping of financial markets, it will cover the whole range of most topical issues. This first Bloomberg forum in Paris is more broadly a very timely and welcome initiative, which echoes financial players' growing interest for the French capital. Paris has indeed kept asserting itself as a major financial centre over the last few years, and stands out as unique in the network of European financial centres. I can only invite you to read the excellent Bloomberg article published on 18 April, which perfectly captures this multifaceted trend.1 Its title, Banks betting on Paris say there is life after London, should bring definitive reassurance to other banks, and encourage them to make the same winning bet.

From a portfolio theory point of view it could be argued that the optimum result is achieved through using a combination of all three approaches, and that this combination is far better than any of the individual options alone. Rules constitute a very direct approach and one that offers the greatest clarity to institutions on what supervisors expect from banks, thereby leading to a higher level of transparency from both the perspective of the banks and the supervisors, and promoting comparability between institutions. However, adopting a rules-based option alone, even if they are market friendly, entails certain disadvantages. It tends to be inflexible and therefore might preclude innovation. It could also fail to take account of bank or business line specificities. This is why the Committee decided to complement the minimum capital requirements with the second pillar, known as supervisory review. This allows a discretionary approach according to the situation of specific banks or types of business - very much like the principles-based policy approach. The benefits of such an approach are flexibility and adaptability to specific needs, both now and over time as situations and responses change. 2  BIS Review 47/2003  But this approach alone would also have its shortcomings. Market participants could find it difficult to compare banks. The lack of a common standard across institutions might actually reduce transparency, since markets might not know or understand why supervisors established particular requirements for certain banks but not for others.
Business model and relationship with customers I would like to offer some thoughts now on the reputation of banks and the relationship with customers in the context of the sustainability of banks’ business model in the long run. Needless to say, banks face the challenge of re-forging their image before the public at large and their reputation with customers. As regards reputation, banks are hostages to their past, as has occurred with the credit crisis. The economic and reputational losses they have incurred are directly related to past actions and behaviour. Here, we must accept that it is very difficult to combat the sector’s negative image while cases from the past are cropping up. I believe the lesson here is the same as that for bank solvency: we must draw a line in the sand. We must move forward, and change behaviour and the relationship with customers to construct a viable business model for the medium and long term. Four years back the Banco de España reinforced its conduct-related supervisory activity. We have observed how, in general, banks have been striving to set in place the measures needed to correct behavioural practices. But much remains to be done. I stated once that we should be fair to the financial sector and acknowledge that customerprotection regulations have changed significantly in recent years. True, society has also evolved, and with it the demands in respect of the transparency, diligence, rigour and integrity expected of banks.

We have kept the interest rate markedly lower than that level since autumn 2003. Since the economic recovery started, it has gradually broadened. Capacity utilisation is now at a very high level. There are reports of limited capacity in most industries and regions and labour shortages in almost every occupational category. There are shortages of drivers, pre-school teachers, supervisors, engineers, carpenters, architects, auditors, accountants, IT personnel and health workers. It has probably not been since the 1970s that we find such widespread reports of purely physical production constraints, for example now in the form of shortages of rigs and other equipment in the petroleum industry or shortages of plank, concrete and insulation in the construction industry. 4  BIS Review 15/2007  When we reduced the interest rate in 2003, demand and output rapidly picked up. However, it took a long time for employment to rise and the next phase from a pick-up in employment to a fall in unemployment was also long. But now the upturn has entered into a mature phase. As illustrated in the chart, capacity utilisation was higher than its normal level in 2006. Nevertheless, wage growth has thus far been moderate and inflation is clearly lower than the target of 2½ per cent. The decline in import prices, increased labour flows and higher productivity came into clear evidence when wage and price inflation fell markedly 3-4 years ago. A period of low real interest rates would nevertheless have been appropriate in order to realise the added growth potential.
But the upshot is that the efficient organisation of production at the global level is a public good that needs to be preserved. The role of multilateralism after the COVID crisis Trade aside, the present juncture is, in fact, a particularly suitable one for giving fresh impetus to multilateralism. Healthwise, the crisis will clearly not be resolved until immunity against the virus has been achieved in all countries. On the economic front, divergences in the rate of recovery may be particularly harmful for economies that are in a more vulnerable situation. Concerted global action is fundamental both for accelerating vaccine production and for making distribution affordable and fair for everybody. In the economic arena, we need some coordination of crisis exit strategies and, in parallel, support for the most vulnerable countries. Here, international institutions have a crucial role to play, in coordination with regional institutions and mechanisms. The aim is not only to entrench the global economic recovery. We must also combat the backsliding in inequality and poverty as a result of the pandemic, and jointly address the common structural challenges arising, for example, from digitalisation and the fight against climate change. And, more generally, as former ECB President and now Italian Prime Minister – Mario Draghi – put it: “one of the main reasons why multilateral institutions exist is to create regulatory convergence, and therefore to increase trust between countries”.2 A role for multilateral institutions that goes way beyond their pure economic mandate.

An additional important step that it´s still missing is related to the need to conclude the process of financial integration that was key to resolving the sovereign debt crisis. This is, namely, the Banking Union, through the agreement on a fully mutualised European Deposit Insurance Scheme. It would contribute decisively to guaranteeing financial stability in the euro area and avoiding problems of financial fragmentation, both in the short and medium-term. In parallel, capital markets in Europe remain relatively under-developed and under-integrated. Hence the need to move resolutely 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  towards implementing all the measures that are necessary to create a true capital markets union. It was Jean Monnet who said that “Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises". Let´s do not waste the opportunity that this new crisis has offered to us. Forging requires sufficient temperature to mould, but not so much as to melt. There has been much work on how to avoid reaching melting temperature in the last few years. Now is the time to mould both the European project and the multilateral institutions. Our aim is that, when the temperature drops, we find ourselves with a new, stronger global economic architecture. I´m convinced that, among the students graduating today at Barcelona GSE, there is a good number of molders who will contribute crucially to this endeavor in the following decades. Thanks you in advance for this contribution, congratulations to all and good luck.