samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Malaysia has a comparative advantage in this area. The Malaysian bond market is the largest in the ASEAN region, and it is the leading global centre for sukuk issuance. The regulatory framework and supporting infrastructure for bond issuances here is comprehensive. In the past, many 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  foreign corporations including multinationals have issued bonds and sukuk out of Malaysia. With the increased financing requirement by Chinese companies for infrastructure development throughout the Asian region, estimated to be more than USD1 trillion in the initial stage, investment banks should seize the business opportunities in bonds origination, distribution, investment and trading services. Our markets have already seen issuances of ‘dim sum’ bonds which were highly successful, such as the previous Axiata and Cagamas issuances. 4. Fourth, is to offer competitive trade financing and settlement services. From our industry engagements through Bank Negara Malaysia’s Financial Markets Committee, a key area that we need to strengthen in support of our international and regional trade is trade financing. Given the importance of China to us in this, renminbi trade financing should be given special attention. For corporations which trade predominantly with China, there are many benefits to settle trade in renminbi, in particular, lower foreign exchange conversion costs and greater access to new markets in China.

The bulk of the requirements effectively describe controls that each Direct Participant must have in place – and these controls collectively are designed to mitigate the key risks to the end-to-end CHAPS system and support financial and operational resilience. Importantly, this includes risks the participants pose to each other. For example, the ‘Throughput’ rules require direct participants to process a certain proportion of payments by value by fixed times in the day. By  7  https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/payments/chaps/chaps-reference-manual 3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  3  smoothing the flow of payments across the operating day rather being concentrated at stress points such as the end of day, this approach contributes to both financial and operational resilience. We require participants to attest to meeting the CRM requirements and we also undertake verification. But risks to the payment system are constantly changing and we need to ensure that the CRM adapts accordingly. Outages of CHAPS may disrupt the smooth flow of critical and time-sensitive payments that are core to the smooth operation of the financial system and real economy. Such outages would hurt end users and, if frequent and prolonged, potentially undermine monetary and financial stability. We are currently working on three sets of requirements to further mitigate these risks: cyber, incident management and Cloud.
This discussion highlights that current account surplus countries can forego, at least temporarily, the required adjustment by accumulating international reserves instead. The sustainability of these imbalances, and the extent to which they have contributed to the recent global financial crisis, is still under discussion. BIS Review 65/2010  1  The question of the reserve asset has often been at the center of the debate. But as Mark Carney has recently argued, the adjustment mechanism may be more important than the choice of reserve assets. If adjustment were rapid, symmetric, and global, and if adjustment costs were fairly distributed amongst countries, we probably would not need to gather here today. Unfortunately, this is not the world we live in now. Historically, exchange rate flexibility has often been the answer. While it is not a silver bullet, it remains true that adjustment through the exchange rate is usually faster, and in the end less costly than adjustment through prices and wages. At the same time, of course, discontent with what is often perceived as excessive exchange rate volatility has been an important source of dissatisfaction with the present international monetary system. What constitutes excessive exchange rate volatility, and whether domestic policies or the international monetary system are at the root of it, is a matter of legitimate debate. III.

It is higher than in Sweden and the UK, but lower than in Denmark and the Netherlands. Norway is among the countries with the highest share of owner-occupied dwellings, at around 80 per cent. This high proportion partly accounts for the high mortgage debt of households. In recent years, new loan products have also been launched, facilitating mortgage equity withdrawal. Housing wealth has become more liquid. Borrowers have greater scope for choosing repayment profiles. We cannot identify the exact level of household debt that can be sustained over time, but the rapid build-up of debt makes households more vulnerable. BIS Review 28/2007  11  Housing investment for the household sector as a whole is now being fully debt-financed, which means an increase in net debt. It would appear that household saving has fallen markedly in Norway in the recent past. Saving was negative in the latter half of 2006, which is the first time saving has fallen since 1988. The pronounced fall in saving indicates that households are taking greater chances. At the same time, government revenues and savings are high. The long period of prosperity and government budget surpluses may have engendered a sense of security which is also affecting household saving and house purchases. Petroleum and the Government Pension Fund – Global  High oil and gas production and high prices, combined with high returns, have resulted in a rapid rise in the value of the Government Pension Fund in recent years.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are convinced that our approach to managing our foreign exchange reserves is appropriate given the requirements of our mandate. More active management in the environmental field would severely limit our investment options. It could further accentuate the fluctuations in our results – fluctuations that are already significant as our balance sheet has to absorb exchange rate movements without recourse to hedging. Besides, it is not clear that an investment strategy based on ESG criteria would generate superior risk-  Page 10/12  adjusted returns. 13 In addition to this, given the particular profile and size of our portfolio, a more targeted selection of our investments would increase concentration risk, which would compromise our neutrality in the markets and hinder the implementation of monetary policy. Our approach is therefore the result of a careful weighing-up of interests. The benefits of more active management in terms of superior returns, risk management and climate risk impact are still highly uncertain. On the other hand, the costs of such an approach are very considerable indeed, particularly with regard to market neutrality, concentration, and – above all – the politicisation of our portfolio management. Let me illustrate this last point with an example. As I mentioned earlier, we invest a portion of our reserves in environmentally-friendly investments. Now imagine if our portfolio were overweight in this segment and the SNB had to shrink its balance sheet. To accomplish this, it would have to sell a significant proportion of its socially responsible investments.

Its principal mission is to ensure price stability in the medium term, while contributing to the stability of the Swiss financial system as a whole – two key conditions for our country’s prosperity. After all, can economic agents be expected to plan their spending, savings and investments sensibly and manage their liabilities if prices fluctuate widely? If they go up, the value of savings goes down. If they go down, debt suddenly becomes more costly to service, especially as wage levels tend to move in line with prices. In short, a financial system that can withstand shocks is essential for a wellfunctioning economy and the successful implementation of monetary policy. 7  Bank of England (2018), ‘Transition in thinking: The impact of climate change on the UK banking sector’, September, pp. 27–29. Page 5/12  Measures taken by the SNB In its assessment of the economic and monetary situation, the SNB endeavours to take into account all relevant risks, including those linked to the climate. Economic forecasts for both the international and Swiss economies factor in the effects of climate events that depart from the norm. More broadly, the SNB regularly updates the tools and methods it uses to analyse monetary developments and financial stability, in terms of both data sources and the structure of the models. We continually adapt our models to integrate new economic realities and structural changes, particularly those induced by climate change.
4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The expansionary monetary policy has had an effect. There are signs that inflation has now bottomed out and is on the way up. Food prices began to rise faster in 2014. Prices of services also began to rise faster last year. On Tuesday the inflation figures for the month of March were published. Over the past twelve-month period, consumer prices have increased by 0.2 per cent. When adjusted for interest-rate cuts the increase is 0.9 per cent. If, moreover, we disregard the effects of energy prices, the rate of inflation is 1.3 per cent. Yesterday the most recent survey of inflation expectations was published. Expectations of inflation two years ahead are now at an annual rate of 1.3 per cent. If we instead look at the longer term, five years ahead, yesterday’s figure was 1.9 per cent. There are thus several signs that the expansionary policy is showing results and that inflation has begun to rise. Inflation expectations have also begun to rise. But inflation is still a rather long way below the target. There are also threats to the upturn in inflation. The krona strengthened at the end of February and the beginning of March. This risked stopping the upturn. That was why the Riksbank decided in March to cut the repo rate further and to extend the purchases of government bonds to supplement the decisions made in February.

Monetary policy Central banks in other countries are deploying strong measures to buoy up economic activity and inflation. Key interest rates in many countries are close to zero. Central banks in the US, UK and Japan have made large-scale bond purchases and thereby expanded their balance sheets in order to push down long-term interest rates. It is likely that the sharply expanded access to long-term liquidity from the European Central Bank (ECB) has reduced the risk of a banking crisis in the euro area. At the same time, ECB measures have contributed to stabilising government bond markets, and short-term funding costs for Italy and Spain have declined. BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  Chart 9  The EU is working on measures to restore financial market confidence – and public confidence. Greece has reached an agreement with its private creditors on a substantial debt restructuring. On this basis, euro area heads of state or government have approved a new loan package for Greece. Banks have been instructed to increase their core capital. Chart 10  10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The Norwegian economy is still well equipped to withstand the negative effects of the financial crisis. Oil prices are high, contributing to Norway’s favourable terms of trade. Growth is being sustained by high activity in the oil industry. We have room for manoeuvre in economic policy. However, a number of enterprises are feeling the impact of the downturn abroad.
17  Under full credibility, firms anticipate the full amount of the implied long-run increase in output, which leads to an immediate increase in asset prices and, hence, firms’ net worth, triggering more investment already in the short term. Similarly, households anticipate an increase in real wages and, hence, life-cycle income which in turn supports current consumption. In the case of imperfect credibility, firms and households instead partially  6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  case for a structural reform in the services sector – and we find the benefits of reforms are clearly brought forward, even in a situation where monetary policy is constrained by the zero lower bound (Chart 11). This provides a strong rationale to implement reforms in a way that is committed, credible and consistent. 18 And such an approach is in fact And such an approach is in fact even more important for reforms to yield short-term benefits in the special environment we face today. Following seven years of crisis marked by several false dawns, firms and households have become more hesitant about taking on economic risk. This is mirrored in the fact that medium-term growth expectations among forecasters have not only shifted downwards in that period, but the distribution of possible outcomes has also widened (Chart 9). In this uncertain context credibility is key, as the strength of the reform signal has an even stronger determination over the magnitude of the short-term benefits.

This potential trend, of course, would also depend on accounting standard and a regulation on fair valuations, which itself is still under much debate. Thus, strengthening of risk management and supervision is important. Indeed, the importance of this is highlighted by the rebound in many regional stock markets as well as upward pressure on the currencies. I have also observed from some reports that, within the many financial centres, the recent return generated by FX traders have been strong, while hedge funds, thought to have seen end of days, are starting to come back to life. We may be heading in for a sporadic period of increased risk-appetite. At the same time, many corporate borrowers, particularly the large conglomerates which used to fund from global market, may switch to domestic market, due to retrenchment of international debt market, as well as still heightened risk-aversion and retrenchment of global banks. This would be at the same time as increasing issuance of local sovereign debt to finance stimulus package. In the early stage of recovery, risk of crowing-out may not yet be high, but even at this stage, the investment portfolio of local financial firms may shift significantly, and may likely see increasing concentration risk due to increased exposure to major conglomerate which used to source overseas funds. But as momentum of recovery gathers pace, competition for funds and risk of crowding-out rises. Therefore, even abstracting from challenges of reshaping regulatory framework, managing the risks from the current market environment is demanding.
I am therefore not particularly surprised that interest rates with a somewhat longer duration have only partially adjusted to the path we published last week. It is natural that from time to time some agents will have a different view of what would be an appropriate repo rate in the somewhat longer term than the Riksbank has, and this is also reflected in the setting of the interest rates. I mentioned that we have made two changes in connection with the latest forecasts. The second change is that we have designed our report in a slightly different way. Our hope is that the new design will make the report more readable. The report has also changed its name and is now called the "Monetary Policy Report”. The reason for this is that the report will now contain monetary policy conclusions, as we are presenting our own forecast for the repo rate. There will be a clear link between the forecasts and the monetary policy considerations directly in the report. The idea is that the report will not only show how we think the repo rate should develop in future, but also as clearly as possible describe why we think the repo rate path we have chosen is the most appropriate. I will return shortly to our reasoning with regard to an appropriate interest rate path on this occasion. However, before doing so, I intend to look back at the past year. This is what we usually do at the first hearing of the year.

The forecast for the repo rate that we presented last week agrees fairly well with the market expectations in October. But this does not mean that we will not need to revise our assessment in the future. I would once again like to emphasise that the path for the interest rate is a forecast and therefore uncertain. It is not a promise. But nevertheless it is our best current assessment of how the repo rate will need to be adjusted in the near future. It is reasonable that we report it in a similar manner to the way we talk about what we think will happen with production growth and the labour market and a number of other variables. Summary I have today emphasised that our decision to publish our own forecast for the interest rate should be regarded as a further step towards greater openness and clarity in monetary policy. When looking back, I observed that inflation in 2006 was held down by, among other things, the strong development in productivity. This has contributed to a high GDP growth without any significant rise in prices. Gaining a deeper understanding of the driving forces behind productivity growth is a difficult task. It is also an important one, to which we devote considerable effort. I have also described the background to our decision to raise the interest rate by 0.25 percentage points and to our assessment that a further increase is necessary over the coming six months before we probably pause before making another increase.
Since last May, the risk of higher domestic inflation has been weighted into our decisions. Whereas the  BIS Review 19/2002  3  Swedish repo rate at the beginning of last year was lower than its counterparts in the euro area and the United States, it is now higher. Looking ahead, we have as usual not committed ourselves. What we do or refrain from doing with the repo rate will depend on the new information that becomes available and on how we assess and analyse it. What happened last year is a good illustration of the appropriateness of this approach. Neither positive nor negative surprises can be ruled out. We have to be ready to cope with that. That said, we have inflation that is relatively high, even though we count on it becoming a good deal lower in the coming six months. Resource utilisation is probably relatively high, too. The path of the interest rate will then depend – as long as inflation expectations remain in place – on how economic activity develops. If activity continues to strengthen as expected and there is no reason to reappraise the economy’s inflation propensity, it is reasonable to assume that the repo rate in Sweden will be adjusted successively upwards. This does not come as a surprise to participants in financial markets.

The present adjustments imply that there are less unutilised resources that can be brought into production without this leading to a rising rate of price and wage increases. That in turn affects the prospects for future  2  BIS Review 19/2002  inflation, particularly as economic activity, in Sweden as well as elsewhere, seems to be improving and overall economic policy is expansionary. This analysis has ramifications in the labour market. The general weakening of demand during 2001 did not show up in employment. Unemployment has been more or less stable. Both the economy as a whole and the labour market show signs of a dichotomy; industrial output and employment have fallen, accompanied by an increase in demand and jobs in the services sector. At the same time it is mainly in services that wages and prices have risen. Thus, in the light of what has been happening to prices and wages during the past year, the Riksbank has gradually arrived at a somewhat altered view of the Swedish economy’s inflation propensity. Higher resource utilisation, together with higher wage increases and a weak exchange rate, has led to somewhat stronger inflationary pressure. This affects the forecast we are presenting today. Meanwhile, we are, of course, continuing the work of developing our analysis and interpreting new data as they become available. Rising inflation All in all, in the Inflation Report the Riksbank notes that incoming statistics confirm the impression that activity in Sweden has probably stopped falling.
According to Banque de France model estimates, the negative impact on GDP of higher import tariffs is 2 to 3 times larger when we account for these indirect channels. And this increase in uncertainty can produce front-loaded negative effects, even before the effective implementation of protectionist measures. That said, protectionism is first and foremost a negative supply-shock with stagflationary effects. As such, the adverse effects of protectionism cannot and should not be accommodated by monetary policy. In spite of protectionist threats, the global economy continues to expand strongly, at 3.7% this year. In our latest IMF meetings, we have often used the nice French word “plateau” to describe global growth. But this “plateau” is not even: the strong acceleration in the United States, even if it is temporary and fragile, is offset by a moderation elsewhere. In short, the challenge is that we 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  are moving from synchronised growth to economic divergence. Consequently, countries might be suffering from the ongoing rise in US interest rates. I do think however that the euro area – like Japan – can determine its own monetary course. The “transatlantic gap”, be it on long-term or on policy rates, is the widest since 2009. But if I turn to emerging countries, they seem to be arranged along a continuum, with some exhibiting total independence at one end to those with exchange rates pegged to the US dollar at the other.

Christian Noyer: Lessons from the crisis. A central banker’s reflections on some accounting policy issues Speech by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France, at the European meeting of the accounting profession, Paris, 11 December 2008. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to be taking part in this European meeting of the accounting profession. This discussion seems to me to be especially timely since the current crisis has raised a whole series of questions related more or less closely to accounting policy. It is no coincidence that the latest Banque de France Financial Stability Review is devoted to issues of valuation. I am convinced that the crisis will force us to carry out an in-depth assessment of the concepts and tools relating to valuation. I am not an accountant. The point of view I am putting forward today is that of a central banker who is responsible in particular for financial stability. With this perspective in mind, I propose that together we take a look at three topics. •  an overview of the crisis from the point of view of valuation  •  the issue of the neutrality of accounting conventions  •  the consistency of rules and practices with regard to valuation  Financial crisis, a crisis of valuation In many respects, the current crisis is about valuation. To be sure, the factors underlying and accounting for the crisis are numerous.