samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Similar to the American Depository Receipts or Global Depository Receipts offered in many other American or European exchanges, the Global Depository Receipts to be offered by SGX will allow foreign companies greater exposure in the Singapore market and provide them with a wider international shareholder base. It will help to boost the company's prestige in its local market, in being traded internationally, while also encouraging greater liquidity for the company's shares. We believe that this new product will provide investment bankers in Singapore with a wider range of solutions when advising companies keen on tapping Singapore's capital markets for fund raising. MAS is also considering how best we can treat corporate bonds as regulatory liquid assets of banks. This is in response to market feedback from SIBA, and is expected to increase demand from banks in Singapore for corporate bonds. This will eventually attract more corporate debt issuance in Singapore and further the development of our debt markets. MAS will be consulting the industry on this initiative in due course. To help generate further buzz in the Singapore market, SIBA can make use of its extensive network of experts to organize seminars and conferences to bring investors, bankers and other market practitioners to discuss new areas of interest and to gain wider understanding of the developments in the Singapore capital markets. SIBA and its members can also help to identify investment instruments that will better service clients' needs, and facilitate the development of such instruments in Singapore.

For instance, equity derivatives is a rapidly growing area, as it offers a more flexible alternative to investing in the underlying assets. This is especially attractive to institutional investors and hedge fund managers. To this end, SIBA is establishing a task force to explore the potential of equities derivatives and structured products. I understand the task force will identify the range of derivative products that Singapore could focus on, study the competitiveness of Singapore as an equity derivative centre, and determine the infrastructure necessary to support the growth of this industry. I look forward to the active participation of SIBA members in helping to grow the product offerings available here. Conclusion Over the last 30 years, SIBA has made significant contributions to the development of Singapore's investment banking industry and capital markets. Going forward, it is vital for the association to remain relevant in the ever-changing market environment in order to ensure its continued success. MAS is committed to working in partnership with SIBA, to develop Singapore's financial sector and to raise industry standards and best practices. We look forward to working closely with SIBA, and trust that SIBA will emerge as an even stronger industry champion of investment banking activities in Singapore in the years to come. Thank you. 3/3
It is a remarkable demonstration of political commitment that the eleven participating countries - against all the odds as seen only a couple of years ago - could reasonably have been judged to have met the criteria, enabling the Heads of Government to agree to the launch of a broadly based monetary union at their meeting in Brussels in May. But the risk of divergent domestic policy needs - or of potential regional tensions within the single currency area - did not simply disappear during that momentous weekend in Brussels. Remaining cyclical differences are reflected in the persistence of interest rate differentials among the first eleven, which will, of course, have to be eliminated by the end of the year. It may then prove necessary in some countries for fiscal policy to be tighter than would otherwise be necessary in order to offset the easing of monetary policy as a result of the move to a single interest rate. Even without that, a number of Euroland countries enter monetary union with very high ratios of public debt to GDP. And virtually all - to varying degrees - face the prospective burden on their public finances of ageing populations. All of this means that there will be a continuing need for rigorous fiscal discipline throughout the area well into the future - as was very clearly recognised in the EMI’s Convergence Report. That indeed is very much the purpose of the Stability and Growth Pact.

The infrastructure of business laws, accounting rules and public disclosure requirements must also be conducive to prudent management and market transparency. Payments systems must be enhanced to reduce the risk of systemic instability. 29. These are all areas where progress is being made throughout the region. I detect few signs of complacency among my fellow regulators or of a tendency to rest on past successes. We all recognize that banking stability is something that requires constant attention to keep up with changes in the economic environment and with market developments. There is also, I believe, a strong appreciation of the need to work together to promote stability. This is shown by the regional initiatives, through groupings such as EMEAP, to promote cooperation in supervision and in other financial sector issues. International institutions such as the Asian Development Bank also have an important role to play in encouraging financial market development. I am sure that this Forum will be helpful in addressing some of the issues involved, and I am grateful to the ADB and the IIF for organizing the event and for giving me the opportunity to speak. BIS Review 55/1997
The existence of alternate routes that can be used if the main systems malfunction enhances the security of retail payment intermediation. Physical cash in the form of banknotes and coin plays the same role. But it is consistent with the requirements of our time that there must also be electronic payment routes that are independent of foreign card systems’ core infrastructure. Elsewhere in the Nordic countries, such independent electronic solutions have been in place for some time. A comparable technological solution is now ready in Iceland — a payment solution based on domestic financial institutions’ core infrastructure — but it has not yet been put into general use. This is not acceptable, given the possibility that this solution will improve security and enhance efficacy and efficiency for the benefit of Icelandic society. Bills of legislation providing for the merger of the Central Bank and the Financial Supervisory Authority have been introduced before Parliament. This is a large and complex project that I do not have time to discuss at length here. In important ways, the changes provided for in the bills are major improvements. Chief among them is the fact that they make monitoring financial stability more effective and efficient, and they allow for better harmonised formulation of monetary, financial stability, and financial supervision policies. In addition, it is ensured that the Central Bank, as lender of last resort, will have a good enough overview to take the best decisions possible when the need is greatest.

At the same time, the regulatory framework for the banks’ operations was improved significantly. Now we have a banking system that primarily serves domestic households and businesses and, in terms of total assets relative to GDP, is about 15% of its precrisis size. As can be seen in their high capital adequacy ratios and sound liquidity position, the banks are quite resilient. Their capital ratios have fallen in recent years as a result of dividend payments, and it can be said that there was scope for such a reduction. But now their capital ratios are much closer to the Financial Supervisory Authority’s capital requirements, and under current conditions of elevated economic uncertainty, it would be imprudent to lower them much more with dividend payments. In this context, it is important to bear in mind that the current capital requirements also include buffers that can be used without the banks being deemed to have failed. These capital buffers are a sort of cushion, and if they are tapped, resilienceenhancing measures such as restrictions on payments of dividends and bonuses will be adopted. Furthermore, the countercyclical capital buffer can be lowered very quickly if conditions warrant it, although it has been decided to increase it to 2% in the coming term. On the whole, the 2008 IMF programme objective of rebuilding the banking system on firmer foundations was met successfully.
Let me conclude by mentioning how much we have achieved in Europe over the last fifty years. The EU has reached a diversified but, broadly speaking, very ambitious level of integration: it is complex because the degree of integration is largely dependent on which areas are at stake, it is ambitious since, in some areas precisely, the system is completely integrated and relies on one single policy. The euro, in that regard, is both the symbol of our achievements and our best hope for the future of European integration. Thank you. 2  BIS Review 51/2007

The so-called “U6 measure” captures unemployment, underemployment (meaning workers who would like to work more hours) and marginal attachment, namely those workers that are not competing very actively in the labour market, for example because they are not available to start a new job at short notice. This measure currently covers just below 18% of the labour force and is thus considerably higher than the unemployment rate.4 We are experiencing a solid and broad-based economic expansion that is contributing to a narrowing of the output and unemployment gaps. But there still appears to be a disconnect between growth and inflation. As slack in the economy continues to be absorbed, reflationary forces will gradually build up and the traditional Phillips curve relationship between inflation and the business cycle should eventually reassert itself. That being said, current estimates of the slope of the Phillips curve still appear to be flatter than in previous times, which could be interpreted as an indication that the relationship between economic slack and inflation has weakened. A mismeasurement of slack (because of structural changes in the labour market) or an unstable relationship between slack and inflation over time could be among the reasons. At the same time, this effect could also result from discrete parallel shifts in the Phillips curve. Such parallel shifts can arise due to temporary changes in wage and inflation mark-ups, or – more concerning from a central bank’s perspective – the incipient dislodging of inflation expectations.
Secondly, it is necessary that central government finances continue to be in surplus in the next 10-15 years, which can be used for amortisation. A lighter debt burden creates scope for future increases in costs. The government’s expenditure ceiling and balance targets aim at creating such space. At present, the prospects for growth in the economy are so good that the surplus in central government finances is expected to be sufficient to amortise central government debt at a rapid rate and to reduce income tax. The challenge lies in maintaining this ambition over a long period. It is therefore important that economic policy is focused on creating the conditions for growth. In this perspective, it would in my opinion be unfortunate to take decisions on a shortening of working hours since it would worsen the prospects for growth by reducing the supply of labour. By taking responsibility for stable prices and financial stability, the Riksbank can make a contribution to creating favourable conditions for long-term good and even growth. 1  BIS Review 98/2000  Stable inflationary prospects and free resources make possible low interest rates The strong upswing that we are now experiencing has been supported by the Riksbank being able to keep the interest rate at a relatively low level due to low inflationary pressure. Despite us being ahead of Europe in the cycle, we have an instrumental rate which is one per cent lower than in the euro area.

When the Executive Board met for the first time, it clarified the approach to be adopted in monetary policy. It was already the case that inflation measured by CPI was to amount to 2% with a tolerance interval of plus/minus 1 percentage point. The Riksbank had also previously announced that the target horizon would be 1-2 years in normal cases. We clarified that we can decide to disregard certain factors affecting prices which are not related to resource use in the economy and which only have a temporary effect on inflation. However, the prerequisite is that the effect on prices is temporary and should thus not affect inflation expectations. Subsequently, we have also said that there may be reasons for taking into account developments before and after the target horizon. When  3  BIS Review 98/2000  we depart from the main rule, we have undertaken to say that we are doing so and give reasons for why we are departing from the rule. The monetary policy decisions are based on forward-looking assessments of inflation measured as CPI. This assessment is based on the interest rate being unchanged during the forecast period. An important factor for determining inflation is the degree of resource use in the economy, the output gap. The thinking underlying this is that inflation will be stabilised if the increase in output is in accord with the long-term growth track.
Although there are no simple answers, it is in our collective interest to reduce the dependence of so many households and businesses on so few institutions that engage in so many risky activities. The case for a serious review of how the banking industry is structured and regulated is strong. By international standards UK banking is highly concentrated. There are four large UK banking groups. Of these four, two are largely in state ownership and their assets are a multiple of the assets of the next largest bank. As in the English Premier League, getting into the top four will not be easy for those outside it. But in both cases I hope greater competition will produce less rigidity in the composition of the top four. Whichever approach to the “too important to fail” problem is adopted, there is growing agreement that such financial institutions should, as I argued at the Mansion House in June, be made to plan for their own orderly wind down – to write their own will. I welcome that, but without separation of the utility from other components of banking it will be necessary to develop detailed resolution procedures for a very wide class of financial institutions. The options may turn out to be separation of activities, on the one hand, or ever increasingly detailed regulatory oversight, with the costs that that entails for innovation in, and the efficiency of, the financial system, on the other.

Encouraging banks to take risks that result in large dividend and remuneration payouts when things go well, and losses for taxpayers when they don’t, distorts the allocation of resources and management of risk. That is what economists mean by “moral hazard”. The massive support extended to the banking sector around the world, while necessary to avert economic disaster, has created possibly the biggest moral hazard in history. The “too important to fail” problem is too important to ignore. There are only two ways in which the problem can – in logic – be solved. One is to accept that some institutions are “too important to fail” and try to ensure that the probability of those institutions failing, and hence of the need for taxpayer support, is extremely low. The other is to find a way that institutions can fail without imposing unacceptable costs on the rest of society. Any solution must fall into one of those two categories. What does this mean in practice? Consider the first approach. To reduce the likelihood of failure, regulators can impose capital requirements on a wide range of financial institutions related to the risks they are taking. This is the current approach underpinned by the Basel regime. In essence, it makes banks build a buffer against adverse events. It has attractions but also problems. First, capital requirements reduce, but not eliminate, the need for taxpayers to provide catastrophe insurance.
2 This line of reasoning was so widespread, propagated by the media (and not just the AngloSaxon media), that anyone making different choices was subject to criticism. The European Central Bank (ECB), which had refused to cut interest rates to the same level as the Federal Reserve, keeping them at 2% (compared with the Federal Reserve’s 1%), was for a long time the subject of criticism. 3 Not just academics, commentators and market analysts, but also Heads of State and Government were moved to call upon the ECB to ease monetary policy. It was as if the only criterion when deciding on interest rates were not the underlying economic conditions, from a medium-term perspective, but the need to act at all costs, in a single direction, in imitation of what had been done on the other side of the Atlantic. Some even called on the ECB to intervene in the exchange rate markets to establish parity between the euro and the dollar. If this had been done, the speculative bubble would have been larger and the effects of it bursting even more devastating, particularly for Europe. When the ECB decided in December 2005 to raise interest rates, it again met with a flood of criticism. Many observers thought that the decision would hinder economic recovery. 4 With hindsight, the policy followed by the ECB, with a more medium-term orientation, clearly turned out to be appropriate.

There is no guarantee that these measures will be taken in a uniform manner and in line with the need for stability within the Single Market. Competition between national financial centres in reality risks deterring national authorities from adopting measures proposed by the European authority. 6  K. Assenmacher-Wesche and S. Gerlach (2008), “Can monetary policy really be used to stabilise asset prices?”, available at www.voxeu.org. 7  J. C. Trichet, “Closing address at the Fourth ECB Central Banking Conference” on “The role of money and monetary policy in the twenty-first century”, Frankfurt, 10 November 2006 ( http://www.ecb.int/press/). 8  Report of the High Level Group on financial supervision in the EU, Brussels, 25 February 2009. BIS Review 66/2009  3  It is not only in advanced economies that monetary policy has encountered problems. Alan Greenspan has claimed in particular that the increase in global liquidity of the past few years was not caused by the interest rates decided by the US central bank, but by the financing flows stemming from Asia, and China in particular. 9 In other words, in a world characterised by high levels of financial integration, the monetary conditions within individual countries, including large ones, are no longer determined solely by the respective policies of those countries, but also by those implemented in emerging economies, particularly if the latter, as China has done, fix their exchange rates at levels which lead them to accumulate extensive foreign exchange reserves.
The first generates an elevated perception of risk, the second an asymmetric balance of risk. Both are relevant to explaining the path of interest rates, the likely fortunes of the economy and the optimal setting of monetary policy. Dread risk In their classic account, Friedman and Schwartz (1963) believed pessimism among households and businesses played a key role in explaining the severity and persistence of the Great Depression: “The contraction instilled an exaggerated fear of continued economic instability, of the danger of stagnation, of the possibility of recurrent unemployment.” In other words, economic depression contributed to psychological depression, and vice-versa, in a feedback loop. Subsequent research has lent support to Friedman and Schwartz’s hypothesis. Psychological studies show that catastrophic events generate an exaggerated sense of fear and insecurity. This causes people to over-estimate systematically the probability of these dread events re-occurring, relative to their true probability. 3 Perceptions of risk, in other words, are exaggerated. Psychologists call this “dread risk” (Slovic (1987)). 3  2  As a corollary, people also tend systematically to under-estimate the probability of risks with a higher probability but which affect a smaller number of people, such as car crashes (Gigerenzer (2004)). BIS central bankers’ speeches  Dread risk has been shown to be associated with events which, although low probability, are high impact. Specifically, they are associated with large losses among a large number of people occurring at the same time.

Moreover, even these estimates may overstate the future path of interest rates implied by financial markets. Market interest rates are probability-weighted averages of different possible interest rate paths – they are a mean. Model estimates of the modal – or most likely – path for interest rates are lower still (Chart 3). Estimates of the modal path of interest rates are drawn from estimated models, so are no more than illustrative. Nonetheless, the modal interest rate three years ahead in the US is  1  Expected lift-off here refers to a 25 basis point increase. 2  The path of forward interest rates will also be affected by term premia. See Shafik (2015). BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  only 1.1%. In the UK it is 0.8%, little changed from current levels. According to these estimates, the glue holding interest rates to the floor looks stronger still. There is an old English aphorism, due to Walter Bagehot in the 19th century: “John Bull can stand many things, but he cannot stand 2%”. Prior to 2009, the Bank of England had been careful to avoid the wrath of Mr Bull: Bank rate had never been below 2% in its then-315 year history. For the past six years the MPC has been testing the patience of Mr Bull, with the 2% threshold consistently breached. If financial markets are to be believed, Mr Bull, Mrs Bull, and their children are set to have their patience tested further: UK rates are not expected to reach 2% until 2019.