samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
For one thing, it may well happen that policymakers, in the light of new facts and figures on ongoing developments, come to the conclusion that the interest rate pattern currently followed needs to be corrected quite considerably. This would mean correcting a pattern that, from today’s vantage point, was not optimal in the past. For another, it may be desirable in certain situations to take the markets by surprise and cause expectations to be revised. Second, it is in the nature of the concept that the information content of a pre-announced interest rate target is much smaller with respect to the time dimension than used to be the case for money supply targets. Under the aspects of transparency and central bank accountability, this is a drawback. We have therefore taken effective countermeasures by defining price stability and deciding to publish our inflation forecast, thus submitting our decisions to public discussion. This has made it clear - and equally clearly communicated - how our actions are oriented and how they are to be measured. I have thus addressed issues that have all seen a particularly large number of changes in the past few years: independence, transparency and accountability. 3  BIS Review 35/2000  3. Independence - mandate - transparency  Independence Right into the 1980s, independent central banks were the exception - such as those of the US, Germany and Switzerland - rather than the rule. This has changed on a broad front in the past ten years.

On the one hand, deregulation and the opening of markets for products and factors and, on the other hand, the phenomenal progress in information and communications technology.3 On a macroeconomic level, the explanations lead to three possible conclusions. First, to the conclusion that the economy has lost some of its cyclical dynamic, a change which is explained by the increased transparency and more efficient steering of entrepreneurial processes as well as the fact that inventories have been cut or completely eliminated. Second, that there has been a permanent reduction in the natural rate of unemployment which results in an upward shift of the potential output curve and thus to significantly higher growth rates in the transition phase. Third, that there is a gain in long-term productivity growth, ie a steeper potential output curve in future. Academic economists usually react with scepticism to these basically supply-side hypotheses. In fact, they are assumptions which, plausible as they may be, have not been empirically tested. Monetary policymakers cannot simply ignore them because they relate to interconnections which are important for the formulation of policies. It would be just as foolish, however, to accept such theories uncritically and to include them in the decision-making process simply because they sound plausible. In any case, the assertions put forward under the label “new economy” create additional uncertainties. In this particular state of uncertainty, there is growing interest in an ongoing analysis and interpretation of indicators. In this way, one searches for early evidence for the pros and cons of these hypothetical changes.
Is the economy flexible enough to accommodate country-specific economic problems and unexpected shocks that do not affect the whole euro zone? 3. Will joining the euro zone create better long-term investment conditions for companies? 4. How would joining the euro zone affect the financial sector? 5. Will joining the euro zone promote economic growth, economic stability, and long-term employment? Estonia scores five out of five on these tests. The European Union gauges an applicant country's readiness for successful participation in EMU according to the Maastricht criteria (inflation, interest rates, exchange rate, budget balance, and public debt criteria). •  The Estonian economic situation today is in many ways unique compared to the other accession countries: the inflation rate is low - 1.3% in 2003; Estonia is one of the few new members states where the state budget balance is under control; public debt is one of the smallest in the EU; and the exchange rate of the Estonian kroon has been fixed against the euro for some time already. •  Still, meeting all the Maastricht criteria requires major efforts also from Estonia. Difficulties might arise both from the ideosyncrasies of the Estonian economy as well as from the results of economic policy decisions. •  From the standpoint of the Maastricht criteria, the greatest peculiarity of the Estonian economy is the comparatively low level of income, but on the other hand, the country´s economic growth is faster compared to the current EMU member states.

12 Ongoing efforts to recreate safe, transparent and consistent securitisation may, to some extent, support the  supply of safe private collateral. 13 Against this background, rebalancing the euro area fiscal stance towards faster debt reduction in high debt  jurisdictions, and using fiscal space where it is available, would yield benefits for the supply of safe collateral. 14 See e.g. Corradin, S., F. Heider and M. Hoerova (2017), “On collateral: implications for financial stability and  monetary policy”, ECB Working Paper No 2107. 15 See e.g. Mancini, L., A. Ranaldo and J. Wrampelmeyer (2015), “The Euro Interbank Repo Market”, The Review of  Financial Studies, Vol. 29(7), pp. 1747–1779. 16 See the Opinion of the European Central Bank of 8 November 2017 on amendments to the Union framework for  capital requirements of credit institutions and investment firms (CON/2017/46). 17 See Cœuré, B. (2017), “The known unknowns of financial regulation”, panel contribution at the conference on  Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy IV, Washington D.C., 12 October. See also the ongoing FSB-led review of incentives to centrally clear, the Derivatives Assessment Team (DAT). 18 See FSB (2015). 19 See FSB (2017). 10 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches
And for an asset to be considered a unit of account, it must be able to be used as a medium of exchange across a variety of transactions over time between several people. 5  The hierarchy points to the reality that money is a social convention. We accept that a token has value whether made of metal, polymer or code because we expect that others will also do so readily and easily. 4  These characters currently feature on banknotes issued by private banks in Scotland. For this reason, some economists consider the operation as a unit of account to be the most important characteristic of money. Indeed, it is commonly argued that a defining feature of monetary policy lies in central banks’ control of the unit of account. See Ali, R., Barrdear, J., Clews, R. and Southgate, J., (2014) ‘The economics of digital currencies’, Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, 2014 Q3. 5  3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  3  Figure 2: The three functions of money  The tokens representing money have taken many forms over the millennia from cowry shells in ancient times to cigarettes during the Second World War and mobile phone minutes in modern Kenya. And so it was when the Bank of England was founded in 1694 by a Scot, William Paterson. Originally its mission (“to promote the good of the people”) was fulfilled by issuing hand-written banknotes, backed by and exchangeable into gold, to help finance King William III’s war with France.

Pointing to the Future I trust you have gathered by now that for many reasons the crypto-assets in your digital wallets are unlikely to be the future of money. But that is not meant to dismiss them. Their core technology is already having an impact. Bringing cryptoassets into the regulatory tent could potentially catalyse innovations to serve the public better. Indeed, crypto-assets help point the way to the future of money in three respects:  -  By suggesting how money and payments will need to adjust to meet societies’ changing preferences, particularly for decentralised peer-to-peer interactions;  -  Through the possibilities their underlying technologies offer to transform the efficiency, reliability and flexibility of payments; and  -  By the questions they raise about whether central banks should provide a central bank digital currency (CBDC) accessible to all. 27  In the EU, the revision of the 4th AML Directive will bring exchanges and wallet providers in the scope of the anti-money laundering and combatting the financing of terrorism rules. In the US, virtual currency exchanges are regulated as money transmitters and required to abide by Bank Secrecy Act obligations. 11  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  11  Let me take these in turn. First, crypto-assets are part of a broader reorganisation of the economy and society into a series of distributed peer-to-peer connections across powerful networks. 28  People are increasingly forming  connections directly, instantaneously and openly, and this is revolutionising how they consume, work, and communicate.
Figure 12 Interest rates on CBC instruments and VIX (monthly averages, percent) 8  70  7  60  6  50  5  40  4  30  3  20  2  10  1  0  04 BCP-10 BCU-10  05  06  07  08  09 VIX  Sources: Central Bank of Chile and Bloomberg. 14  BIS Review 65/2009  Figure 13 Monetary policy rate and forward curve (percent) 9  10 9  7  7  10  8  8  5  6 5  3  3  6  4  4  2 1  2 1 0  07  Jul. 08  Jul. 09  Jul. MPR January 2009 Report  10  Jul. 11  0  September 2008 Report May 2009 Report (*)  (*) Estimated using financial asset prices at 8 May 2009. Source: Central Bank of Chile. BIS Review 65/2009  15

Ravi Menon: The next phase in Islamic finance Opening address by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the 3rd Annual World Islamic Banking Conference: Asia Summit (WIBC Asia 2011), Singapore, 5 June 2012. *  *  *  Dr Ahmad Mohamed Ali Al-Madani, President, Islamic Development Bank, Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. And to all our foreign guests, a warm welcome to Singapore. An increasingly difficult conjuncture We are meeting here for the 3rd Annual World Islamic Banking Conference Asia Summit, at a time of increasing stress in the global economy and financial system. •  The effects of monetary stimulus, which had helped to support the economy and prevent a full-blown financial crisis, are now levelling off in both the Eurozone and the US. •  The labour market remains a significant drag on growth in the advanced economies. Unemployment has hit new highs in the Eurozone while employment and production numbers in the US are showing signs of weakness. •  The story of a two-speed global economy is coming under strain, with demand weakening across emerging Asia. The moderation in China’s economic growth appears to be somewhat sharper than expected. India is undergoing an even more pronounced and broad-based slowdown. But the key risk that has increased in recent months and poses the biggest threat to global economic prospects is the situation in Europe.
In this spirit, I would like to share with you this morning some thoughts on two issues: how important are the terms of trade cycles for the economic and financial situation of the exporting poor countries and their neighbours? And how to mitigate shocks? 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  1. How important are terms of trade shocks for poor and vulnerable countries? To illustrate my point, I will take the example of sub-Saharan Africa. The super cycle of commodity price growth has coincided with over a decade of strong economic growth in subSaharan Africa. The degree of causality between these two developments is the subject of debate. Before the cyclical downturn, a large majority of observers emphasised the endogenous nature of African growth and minimised, or even denied, the role of the terms of trade appreciation. However, the current terms of trade shock has led to a reversal of the perception of the African outlook. For oil-exporting countries, the twofold decline in prices between mid-2014 and early 2016 resulted in large budget and external deficits, calling for a rapid adjustment, due to the weakness or lack of countercyclical leeway. The savings accumulated during the upswing in oil prices proved largely insufficient and the borrowing capacity of the countries concerned remains very limited, although some benefited from debt cancellations under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative.

Second, the objective of the IMF should be to find ways of making the least costly fiscal adjustment in terms of growth, while strengthening its recommendations on the prevention of this type of shock. This brings me to focus on the second type of objectives: the objectives of prevention and better resilience to terms of trade shocks. The first priority to improve prevention and resilience is to create sufficient countercyclical fiscal leeway, by limiting public debt, or even by accumulating budgetary reserves. In this regard, controlling the public payroll, which is the most dynamic item of expenditure in times of growth in many poor and vulnerable countries, as well as improving the efficiency of public spending, are essential. Consideration should also be given to setting up fiscal rules on the basis of deficits excluding commodity-related receipts, adopting stricter debt ceilings for the public sector and creating an adequate savings buffer for countercyclical purposes, taking into account the scale and length of commodity price cycles. In countries exporting non-renewable commodities, in particular oil, this savings buffer must be even more substantial since it must aim to cover not only the decline in the value of receipts but also part of the decline in the value of reserves. The second priority concerns the diversification of the economy. Industrial policies based on sectoral subsidies or tax expenditures are not viable in the event of a fall in commodity prices and make the policy of diversification pro cyclical.
When attempting to assess risks, we are indeed confronted with numerous conceptual challenges that require adapted tools: the diversity of drivers and impacts; uncertainty over the time horizon (which may be relatively short for biodiversity-related risks), the importance of tail risks and non-linearities associated with tipping points; the limited substitutability of ecosystem services (for instance, forests provide flood protection services that can only partially be replaced by costly infrastructure, while ignoring many other services provided by forests), interdependencies between phenomena (climate change, biodiversity, land use pollution and fresh water use, as mentioned earlier), etc. A particular issue relates to the need for data and metrics, which is targeted by several initiatives. These include the Global Biodiversity Score (GBS), developed by CDC Biodiversité using the GLOBIO model of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) – hence a good example of fruitful French-Dutch cooperation. This tool assesses the impacts of economic activities on biodiversity and synthetizes them into one metric, the Mean Species  Page 7 sur 13 Abundance (MSA) km². It can be applied at the level of individual companies, but also allows for a global measure of our impacts: in 2010, losses were equivalent to 32% of biodiversity globally; by 2050, it is estimated that such losses could increase to 41.5%. Such an aggregated metric is not a silver bullet, but it helped us to better understand the materiality of the issues. Advances on these metrics will further enable efforts to bring forward biodiversity-related disclosure.

The few of us involved received a lot of criticisms as a result, and some of these were not pleasant, particularly the accusations that we betrayed the free market. But I hope the way the matter has played out, and the handsome book profits that we are making, will serve as a vindication of our decisions. And, in case it has crossed your mind, luck has had very little, if any, to do with it, although I do not mind luck being on my side. The whole explosion of international finance has simply gone too far. If it were not the default by Russia, some other event would have caused yield spreads to widen sharply. If it were not LTCM, then some other hedge fund would have needed the massive de-leveraging that, had it been allowed to take place, threatened dislocation even in the largest market in the world. Some event, large or small, would have triggered all that. As some of you may remember, the sharp correction in the stock market in Hong Kong in 1973 was triggered by the Fire Brigade being sent in to inspect overcrowding on the then rather small trading floor of one of the stock exchanges before unification. Incidentally, the widening of the yield spreads that caused problems for LTCM last year actually started when we entered the market in August, according to a chart prepared by Stanley Fischer of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It gathered momentum as Russia defaulted.
News conference  Zurich, 17 December 2020 Andréa M. Maechler  Introductory remarks by Andréa M. Maechler I will touch on two areas in my remarks today: First, I will review developments on the financial markets over the last half-year; here I will comment briefly on our foreign exchange market interventions in 2020. Then I will speak about the imminent changeover from Swiss franc Libor to SARON. Situation on the financial markets  Investor risk sentiment has been extremely volatile since our last news conference in June, mainly due to developments surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. Over the summer months, economic activity and investor sentiment recovered following the relaxation of the containment measures introduced during the first wave of infections. In the autumn, the second wave of infections dampened investor confidence again, especially in Europe. Then, in November, news that coronavirus vaccines might soon become available caused market sentiment to return to a positive footing. In addition, various political risks, such as the Brexit negotiations and the US presidential elections, influenced risk sentiment. Monetary and fiscal policy on both sides of the Atlantic also played an important role in market developments. Having taken extensive measures to stabilise the markets in the wake of the turbulence in March, the US Federal Reserve (Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB) have since confirmed the expansionary stance of their respective monetary policies. The ECB recently eased its monetary policy further by, among other things, increasing the size of its bond-buying programme.

With these words of welcome I now turn the floor over to Mr. Moises Schwartz, the Director of the IEO to set the scene for the discussion of the workshop. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
But what central banks can influence with monetary policy is the way inflation develops in the long term. Some changes in relative prices can occur when inflation is low if the price increases on the goods that have become relatively more expensive is compensated by a weaker growth in prices of other goods. The same relative price change can be achieved when inflation is high, if the prices of all goods rise, but at different paces. If food commodities and oil prices soar, this means that companies' costs will rise and inflation will be pushed up. It is not possible to immediately counteract such strong inflationary impulses with monetary policy, as monetary policy works with a time lag. But what a central bank with an inflation target then faces is the task of ensuring that the rising food and energy prices do not result in permanently higher inflation expectations and second round effects in the form of demands for higher wages and prices of other goods. Regardless of what happens to the relative prices, our task is – and this is important – to ensure that inflation is on average 2 per cent a couple of years ahead. …and we are only concerned with the lasting effects How should monetary policy respond to the rapid increases in food prices? This depends on whether the effects on inflation are assessed as temporary or lasting.

In the world market we have nevertheless been able to see a slightly calmer development in the price of some food commodities. The price of wheat has fallen. According to the Chicago stock exchange, the forward price in dollars fell by 30 per cent between mid-March and the end of April. But the price is still slightly above the average for last year. One factor contributing to the decline in the price of wheat is that the Ukraine has eased its restrictions on wheat exports. The price of rice has also fallen very recently, while maize prices have  1  2  According to The Economist's commodity price index for food. BIS Review 68/2008  continued to rise. 2 In total, food prices have fallen slightly in recent months, but are expected to remain at high levels in the future. 3 What significance does the fact that world market prices are rising rapidly have for monetary policy? One must realise that these are examples of changes in relative prices. That is, the prices of commodities such as food and energy are rising in relation to the prices of, for instance, manufactured goods. For monetary policy it is important to note that the changes in relative prices are not in themselves inflation. Inflation refers to a rise in the general price level, or the average of all prices. Central banks cannot and should not counteract changes in relative prices.