samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Our sights should be raised instead to achieve an order whereby those who are worst off benefit more than others, so that gaps in the world are narrowed. Today I shall begin with some reflections about the concepts of democracy and market. I am prompted to do so in that those who arranged this seminar first asked me to speak about “a democratic world economic order”. Then I shall concentrate on some of the issues of a mainly economic nature that have featured in the debate in recent years on globalisation. In doing so I will be drawing on some of my personal experience of economic cooperation. Then I shall sum up and draw some conclusions. Democracy and markets In my opinion there is no contradiction between democracy and markets. It is rather the case that they are two complementary components of a viable social system. A market economy is the form for organising economic activities that in almost every situation has proved superior to other alternatives, such as a centrally planned economy. Democracy is seen today as the self-evident form for political decision-making. One of the points about a market economy is that it allows for decentralised decisions about economic matters — agents can conclude agreements that are mutually beneficial. Political intervention is normally warranted only when a third party stands to lose. However, such situations are relatively common, for instance in environmental questions.

Or were high interest rates on the contrary needed to prevent the flight of necessary capital, a weakening of the exchange rate and the failure of companies with foreign-currency debt? Or was it perhaps the case that the high interest rates led investors to expect additional business failures and social unrest, so that they withdrew their capital for precisely this reason? As we do not know what a different direction of policy would have led to, even today we cannot tell what would have been most appropriate. But we do know that the tight nature of many of the programmes was eased as time went by, partly as the crisis became less acute and the shortage of foreign currency less troublesome. Another question concerns the structural changes and reforms that were required in connection with some programmes. Such conditions may be justified as regards the banking sector or bankruptcy proceedings, for example, as these are often clearly a part of the problems. They are more questionable, however, when they concern components of the economy that are not self-evidently connected with the current stabilisation problems. There were elements of this in, for example, the programme for Korea, which stipulated measures for the liberalisation of imports. Such matters are  BIS Review 2/2002  5  liable to discredit the IMF, besides leading to the IMF’s proposals encountering more opposition than otherwise in the borrower countries.
BIS Review 52/2002  1  Milestones Achieved Let me begin with the important milestones that we’ve achieved in this undertaking. As you know, we embarked on this voyage in the late 1990s because we realized that the original 1988 Basel Accord was becoming outdated. It was designed to be uncomplicated so that it could be applied to banks of various sizes and risk profiles in many markets and jurisdictions. Its subsequent adoption by more than 100 countries represented an important first step in the development of an international standard. But it has since become clear that the 1988 Accord has been overtaken by advances in the financial sector – and in the broader economy. New technology, the globalization of financial markets, and innovative financial products and services have changed the way that banks monitor and manage credit, market, and operational risks in a manner that the 1988 Accord could not anticipate and does not address. Consequently, the internationally active banks for which the original Accord was intended are quickly "outgrowing" its limitations. Today it’s quite clear that the 1988 Accord provides this class of banks with less meaningful measures of the risks they face and of the capital they should hold against those risks. To ensure that the New Accord remains flexible, forward-looking, and fit for the service of internationally active banks of the twenty-first century, the Basel Committee established several goals for its work, goals that the industry has embraced.

Nonetheless, we believe that this treatment helps to align regulatory capital more closely with the underlying risks. Procyclicality Another general concern expressed is that the New Accord’s increased sensitivity to risk will reinforce behavioral patterns in banking organizations that may increase the cost of credit precisely at times when its supply is falling, namely during downturns in the business cycle. While we are working to address this concern about procyclicality, it is not a reason to shy away from creating better risk management tools. Here, supervisors must articulate the need for banks to assess risks on the horizon. If banks fail to develop and manage to reasonable expectations about how their risk profiles may change over time, they may take on excess exposures today that they cannot administer responsibly tomorrow. At the same time, we should remember that the New Accord sets out the minimum amount of capital necessary to comply with banking regulations. All supervisors expect their banks to operate at levels above the regulatory minima, and nearly all banks manage to their economic capital needs, not to their regulatory capital requirements. So although deteriorating credit quality might drive up the minimum capital requirement, a bank should already be operating above that level, which should dampen the effects of a sudden downturn in business conditions and asset quality. Along those lines, the Committee recently agreed that banks adopting the "internal ratings based" approach to credit risk will be required under Pillar 2 to conduct meaningfully conservative credit risk stress testing.
Mainly: •  Proprietary versus public information  •  Principles versus Rules  •  Consistency of Accounting Standards and the New Basel Accord  Finally, I will review the present status of the Accord, the significant progress made in our last meeting in Madrid and I will outline the next steps in its rapid finalisation, as well as our plans for keeping it fit for the future. Basel II: a new, comprehensive approach to achieve greater financial stability To begin, I would like to re-emphasise the importance of market discipline to banking supervision, especially in a rapidly changing environment. Supervisors seek improvements in the public’s access to information on a bank’s condition precisely to bolster the ability of rating agencies, of business counterparties, and even of investors or depositors to evaluate the profile of a bank’s risks and the quality of its controls. Yet as safety and soundness regulators, we wish to fortify the stability and resilience of the financial system. In our view this goal requires not just greater transparency, but also  BIS Review 47/2003  1  significant advances in the state of the art of risk management and adequate capital when unexpected losses materialise. For the first time, the Capital Accord will include not only explicit economic incentives expressed in the minimum capital requirements but also implicit incentives built into the processes for supervisory review and market disclosure.

Andrew G Haldane: The age of asset management? Speech by Mr Andrew G Haldane, Executive Director, Financial Stability, Bank of England, at the London Business School, London, 4 April 2014. *  *  *  I would like to thank Sarah Breeden, Antonia Brown, Edd Denbee, Ronnie Driver, Ronan Hodge, Tamara Li, Pippa Lowe, Varun Paul, Jonathan Rand, Martin Taylor, Lewis Webber and Jack Worlidge for their help and comments. It is a great pleasure to be speaking at this London Business School conference on asset management. Given the topic and my area of responsibility, I thought I would discuss the links between asset management and financial stability. This issue is not new. But it has become topical recently as the asset management industry has grown and changed shape. Partly in response, regulators globally have begun to explore the risks to the financial system that might be posed by non-banks of various stripes, including asset managers. I want to discuss those risks and their potential policy implications. I want also, however, to discuss some of the opportunities asset management offers. The industry is a key bridge between end-savers and end-borrowers, between the financial and real parts of the economy. As the banking system continues to de-risk, strengthening that bridge could well strengthen both the financial system and wider economy. The evolution in asset management Let me start with some facts on the evolution of the industry. Asset management is, of course, an agency activity.
So, after growing at an average of near 3% (at market prices) during this decade, global GDP will shrink, something that didn’t happened even during the 1970s’ oil shock or in the crisis of the early 1980s. Moreover, global growth as measured at purchasing power parity (which gives more weight to developing countries, such as China, which grows faster) will be negative this year. This had never happened in the postwar period. As is obvious, and as we have insistently stressed since the beginning of this period, our economy does not stand aside in this global crisis. Although our financial system has proved to be healthy and sound, the crisis has let itself show on the real sector since the final quarter of last year. This is a major challenge for macroeconomic policies, since they are the ones meant to mitigate the impact of the crisis and, in turn, to open the way to an earlier recovery than the rest of the world. Our economy is healthy. It has a solid financial system and a strong fiscal and foreign reserve position, enabling our country to cope with much harsher financing scenarios than the current one and to generate a large scale countercyclical fiscal drive. We have a floating exchange rate system, which allows for an easy adjustment to reduced external demand, and we have no exchange rate straitjacket, so adjustments have no restrictions, thereby avoiding harmful consequences for output and employment. Finally, prospects for inflation have brought about a substantial increase in the monetary policy stimulus.

By the middle of this century, the median age of the world population is expected to increase by 10 years to 36 years. Globally, the proportion of persons aged 60 years and older is forecast to double. The fastest growing group of the older population is made up of those who are 80 years old or more. This age category is projected to increase more than five-fold over the next 50 years. While ageing is indeed a global phenomenon, it is likely to represent a more onerous challenge for developing countries than for developed ones. The majority of persons aged 60 and over will be found increasingly in developing countries; and as the pace of population ageing is much faster in these countries, they will have less time to adjust to its effects than the developed countries. Developing countries, moreover, will have to meet this challenge starting from a lower level of socio-economic development. For instance, the elderly in developing countries will be living mostly in rural areas and hence will face additional difficulties compared to their counterparts in developed countries who tend to live in urban centres. These differences imply that the policymaking capacity of developing countries will be tested more severely. More specifically, there will be important decisions to take regarding social security schemes, particularly traditional pension systems in which today’s workers pay for the benefits of today’s retirees.
Experience-sharing sessions can also be organized for successful members to share their experiences in achieving cost efficiency and productivity improvements. As important as achieving cost efficiency is the need to raise the level of value creation and to find new areas of growth. This will require shifting resources to new areas of competitive advantage. In striving towards long-term competitiveness, SMEs should adopt best practices in their governance and risk management processes. An aptitude for hard work and prudent  4  BIS Review 90/2008  practices, the agility to adapt to changing conditions, perseverance and entrepreneurial skills and the ability for reinvention € these are the qualities that will enable SMEs to ride through the near term challenges and allow them to grow and enhance their contribution to our economy. Ladies and gentlemen, Today's seminar provides a platform for SMEs to widen their knowledge on the numerous financing arrangements offered by the banking institutions. Take advantage and benefit from this opportunity. On this note, I would like to congratulate the Association of Banks in Malaysia for organising this important seminar on "Enhancing SME Awareness on Access to Financing". I wish you a productive and successful seminar. BIS Review 90/2008  5

As we have seen from numerous case studies during the financial crisis, weak corporate governance is often the key reason for the failures of financial institutions. 10. Much work continues to be done in developing regulatory requirements on governance in many jurisdictions. In Singapore, MAS has proposed enhancements to its corporate governance regulations and guidelines, drawing lessons from the recent financial crisis and international developments. The key proposals include strengthening the Board of Directors’ independence and oversight on risk management; ensuring that the Board has the appropriate skills and time to perform its role effectively; and requiring the Board to set appropriate remuneration policies to prevent excessive risk-taking. INCOME should benchmark itself against the best governance practices even though it is set up as a co-operative. Addressing the gaps in insurance needs 11. As for opportunities, there remain gaps in Singaporeans’ insurance protection needs. Studies commissioned by the insurance industry have suggested that Singaporeans are under-insured. Many are not insured at all while of those who are, many are underinsured. The under-insurance is greatest in the 30–49 age group. This is not surprising. Singaporeans in that age group tend to have heavier financial commitments and a greater number of dependants. So they find the cost of having to pay insurance premium a stretch. Unfortunately, if they were to meet an untimely death, critical illness or physical disability, their dependants would be caught without a breadwinner and saddled with financial commitments like mortgages and so on. 12. There are many reasons for the under-insurance.
At this point in time, Romania is fulfilling three out of the four Maastricht criteria, namely the sustainability of the fiscal position, convergence of long-term interest rates and exchange rate stability (although we are not technically in the Exchange Rate Mechanism). Meeting the price stability criterion is probably just a matter of months, until the recent low inflation numbers feed into the 12-month average rate used as a reference. I am fully aware that we still have a long and difficult road ahead, as several years of relentless efforts are needed in order to ensure a lasting fulfilment of the Maastricht criteria, to make further progress in the catching-up process in the area of real convergence, as well as to push forward the structural reforms required for enhancing the resilience and flexibility of the domestic economy. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Banking Union Obviously, euro adoption automatically implies Banking Union membership and therefore, since Romania has already set the changeover target date, joining the Banking Union is merely a matter of timing: should it occur on the euro adoption date or as soon as possible? There are strong arguments in favour of rapidly joining the Banking Union. First and foremost, I believe it is always preferable to have a voice in the setup of a mechanism the working of which will affect all EU countries anyway, irrespective of whether they are members or not.

In my opinion, a balance must be sought between the structure of ownership of a credit institution in resolution and the origin of the public funds which may be used in the process, with home country fiscal authorities covering the majority of the proceeds, once the asset quality review has proven that host country supervision was carried out correctly and effectively. I hope that an appropriate solution will be found to this matter, the same as in the case of the concerns voiced by some non-euro area countries in the early stages of the Banking Union project. What I have in mind is the issue of the representation in the decision-making mechanisms and that of the contribution requirements in the event of their opting in the Banking Union. Both concerns have been addressed during the negotiations. Specifically, the unequal status of non-euro area countries in the single supervisory mechanism decision-making bodies – given their lack of representation in the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, even though they enjoy representation in the Supervisory Board – has been addressed by establishing a mediatory body which would intervene in case a decision of the Supervisory Board is overturned by the Governing Council. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  Furthermore, the current decision-making setup of the Single Resolution Mechanism ensures equal treatment of the countries participating in the Banking Union, regardless of whether they are Eurozone countries or countries that have established “close cooperation”.
As a number of you are aware, between July 2013 and December 2015, the New York Fed conducted two counterparty pilot programs with small firms, the first focused on treasury operations and the second on mortgage operations. As we announced at the time, we initiated these programs to explore ways to broaden access to open market operations and to determine the extent to which firms beyond the existing primary dealer community could augment the New York Fed’s operational capacity and resiliency in its monetary policy operations. We very much appreciate the NASP’s efforts to encourage eligible firms to participate. The experience gained through these programs informed changes in the New York Fed’s eligibility criteria for primary dealers, which were announced in November 2016. At that time, the minimum net regulatory capital (NRC) threshold for broker dealers was reduced from $ million to $ million. And to better align the capital threshold for banks with the new NRC thresholds, the minimum Tier 1 capital threshold for banks was raised from $ million to $ billion. At the same time, a 0.25 percent minimum Treasury market share threshold was introduced to more directly quantify the business capabilities of firms expressing interest in becoming a primary dealer.

Forth, for emerging markets, the most threatening externally-induced crises going forward will be those that relate to the concentration of global liquidity, either too much or too little, in the form of large, persistent, and volatile capital flows that overwhelm the capacities of individual countries to manage and adjust to. And the most worrying aspect of this is that the trigger would lie outside the controls of emerging market’s policymakers since the flows would be the results of market conditions and policy prescription elsewhere. Let me now turn to my second observation on the implications that the changing nature of future crises can have for the conduct of EWE going forward. On this, I have four points to make. First, in view of the changing nature of future crises, it is therefore important that the thrust of the EWE is mindful of this possibility. In my view, the focus of EWE should expand beyond macro-misalignments based on historical relationships to include assessing the robustness and the resiliency of the systemically-important markets, system, and institutions. This means the key objective of EWE will not be to forecast future crises per se, but to identify vulnerabilities in the most important areas in advance, especially those risks that are not covered by market data or by the surveillance process elsewhere. Second, for EWE to be effective and comprehensive, it should be done at two levels to cover both the global dimension and the country-specific dimension of risk.
Central banks usually set policy not on the basis of past inflation but rather their expectations of future inflation, looking through temporary movements in inflation that result from shocks to commodity prices or indirect tax rates. During 2002–5, the FOMC judged that prospective underlying (“core”) inflation was considerably weaker than realised headline inflation, and that the latter would move down towards the former in the medium term once the temporary effects of one-off disturbances had passed through. Bernanke finds that merely substituting Greenbook inflation forecasts  2  4  Three broad drivers for the Great Moderation have been advanced: structural changes that reduced volatility, such as enhanced inventory management and easier access to credit; better policy making; and plain good luck in the form of smaller, or more benign, shocks. As yet, the academic literature has not reached a firm conclusion as to the relative roles of these factors, in part because of the difficulty in distinguishing the influences of good luck and better policy. BIS Review 111/2010  for actual inflation in an otherwise standard Taylor rule eliminates much of the discrepancy with the target Federal Funds rate. That, of course, still leaves open the possibility that the FOMC’s fears that inflation would turn out too low were, at least with hindsight, exaggerated. Whether or not policy was appropriate ex ante will always be difficult to answer because we do not know what would have happened under a different policy path.

Mr George’s closing speech at the Euromoney International Bond Congress Speech by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mr E A J George, at the Euromoney International Bond Congress in London on 10/02/99. Thank you, Padraic. I wasn’t quite sure what you had in mind when you asked me to wind up this Congress once again this year. I couldn’t remember what I’d done to wind you all up last year! But I am happy to join you anyway at what has become – in five short years – an unmissable event in the calendar for anyone with an interest in the international bond markets. And what an extraordinary year it’s been since we all last met here. Despite all the upsets – beginning in Asia, then Russia and most recently Brazil – which had everyone scrambling for liquidity and desperate to reduce risk, it proved, on IFR’s figures, to be a record year for international bond issues, with total issuance rising by some 17% to over a trillion dollars equivalent. That can’t have been bad for fees! And altogether it suggests you had a pretty good year – apart from those of you who chose to go on holiday in August leaving someone else to look after your long positions in Russian bonds. Inevitably issuance by emerging market economies fell away, but issuance by supranational and sovereign borrowers in aggregate still accounted for some 30% of total issuance.