samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Among the currencies (graph 1), the US dollar and the euro predominate with shares of 42% and 46% respectively. The maturities of the investments extend over the entire interest rate curve, with the average maturity being around five years. In the debtor categories, government paper predominates, accounting for a share of more than 50%. The rest comprises claims against international organisations and banks or bank-like borrowers with an above-average rating. Aside from these traditional bonds, US mortgage-backed securities were introduced in 2000, a new investment category which represents an ideal addition to the portfolio. In the context of the primary requirements specific to a central bank – extremely high liquidity, investment focus on the major currencies US dollar and euro, a mainly passive investment style – risk/return considerations are of prime concern. The goal is to achieve the highest possible return by means of all available concepts and techniques of modern asset management with adequate risk control. The investment strategy is developed by inhouse investment specialists. It is mostly implemented internally by a team of eight portfolio managers. We resort to external asset managers for the investment of approximately Sfr 4 billion (global bonds and mortgage-backed securities). Our entire investment activity is systematically monitored by risk specialists. In 2001, a yield of 5.2% was achieved on foreign exchange reserves. The average yield in the past four years was 6.3%.

These are liable to result in a negative overall yield in about three out of ten years. Due to this fluctuation risk, but mainly because of the currency reserves required for the conduct of monetary policy, the National Bank has to rely on adequate provisions. Part of the earnings are to be allocated to provisions in order to enable these to grow in step with the Swiss economy. The remainder is available for distribution to the Confederation and the cantons. Currently, the provisions are well funded. Due in part to the high yields on foreign exchange reserves in the last few years, provisions exceeded the level aimed at by around Sfr 13 billion at the end of 2001. This cushion makes it possible to increase the distribution to the Confederation and the cantons over the next eleven years as agreed. With a view to the future, various decisions relating to investment strategy are beginning to take shape, aside from the transfer of the free assets. Based on the consultation procedure it is becoming clear that the revision of the National Bank Law will again extend the leeway for investment. Particular attention is devoted to corporate bonds, a significant investment segment. Moreover, it must be examined whether and to what extent equities can improve the risk/return features of monetary assets in a meaningful way. In addition, the allocation of monetary assets to the various investment sectors must be optimised on an ongoing basis. Such questions are studied and clarified internally.
Prasarn Trairatvorakul: Financing tomorrow – the Greater Mekong Subregion Keynote address by Dr Prasarn Trairatvorakul, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the Euromoney Greater Mekong Subregion Investment Forum, Bangkok, 13 June 2013. *  *  *  Excellencies, Honorable Speakers, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, 1. It is a great pleasure to be here at the Euromoney Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Investment Forum once again and an honour to give some remarks on the topic of ‘Financing Tomorrow: The GMS’. A year ago, I had the opportunity to talk about this topic once. At that time, I shared my thoughts on the roles of Thai financial intermediaries as a ‘connector’ bridging between global financial players and small local institutions. 2. This year, we are gathered during a time when the GMS is undergoing tremendous economic reforms. Member countries are transitioning towards higher degrees of openness and are integrating with the global economic mainstreams. The GMS economies have grown at some of the fastest rates in the world since the early 1990s, averaging close to 8%, despite the gloom of the recent global financial crisis. This transformation has contributed to economic convergence and narrowed the development divide within the region. The gap of income differences between the GMS and the rest of Asian countries in their neighbourhood has been reduced continuously. 3.

Besides, it has also estimated that roughly 8 trillion US dollars2 will be required to meet the infrastructure needs of Asia over the next decade. Although this amount is daunting, I believe that it can be fulfilled, given the current global capital surge and the fact that Asian savers put away around 7 trillion of US  1  2012, ADB website (http://www.adb.org/countries/gms/news-releases)  2  http://www.adbi.org/files/2009.08.31.book.infrastructure.seamless.asia.pdf pp.181  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  dollars3 each year. Like directing the flow of flood to the right river so that it can become benefit for those living in the area, this overflowing capital can be harnessed to benefit needed long-term projects. 7. To meet the region’s financing requirements, we should look into new means to attract funding. Firstly, by promoting private sector participation in infrastructure development through public-private partnership (PPP). The PPP model can improve the efficiency of long-term projects by adopting the private sector’s expertise and reducing the burden on government budget. Although the PPP model has long been discussed, the implementation of this model is still a trial-and-error practice. Regardless, I believe that through clear governance and suitable regulatory framework, PPPs could promote private sector’s participation and bring in the untapped resources. Secondly, by customizing innovative financial instruments. This calls for inter-agency collaborative efforts to introduce innovative financial instruments which link specific funding requirements and market preferences. To name a few, Thailand has recently launched its first infrastructure fund to finance its sky train extension.
The Single Resolution Mechanism contains three essential elements: First, a single regulatory framework. This will be established with the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD). The trilogue of the Council, the European Parliament and the Commission is currently ongoing and from an ECB perspective a desirable trilogue outcome would contain two elements. First, bringing forward bail-in to 2015 as markets will anticipate bail-in anyhow. Having the rules in place earlier will give investors’ bigger security. Second, the flexibility and scope for national solutions should be somewhat reduced so that market participants will have sufficient confidence about the rules of the game in Europe. The second element of the single resolution mechanism is the single resolution authority and the third, a single resolution fund, funded by contributions from the financial industry. The last two elements are currently in the legislative process and we strongly support the envisaged timeline for their entering into force (1 January 2015), as it ensures that the establishment of the Single Resolution Mechanism would follow shortly after the effective start of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. Private banking union The “private banking union” in the US is created by its integrated financial market, which includes both the banking sector and capital markets. In the banking sector, the US has genuinely nationwide banks, which allows them to better diversify risk.

6  BIS Review 35/2009  Figure 4 Lending interest rates without increase in risks after September (percent) Consumer loan rates at 3 years or more  Commercial loan rates at 30-89 days  Mortgage interest rates  40  40  20  20  5.5  5.5  36  36  17  17  5.0  5.0  32  32  14  14  4.5  4.5  28  28  11  11  4.0  4.0  24  24  8  8  3.5  3.5  5  3.0  20  Jan. 08  May 08  Sep. 08  Jan. 09  Effective  20  5  Jan. 08  May 08  Estimated  Sep. 08  Jan. 09  Jan. 08  May 08  Sep. 08  Jan. 09  Simulated rate without increase in risk after September  Source: Central Bank of Chile. Figure 5 Corporate Bond and Long-Term Interest Rates (percent) 6  6  5  5 4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  Jan.08  May 08 EE.UU. (1)  Sep.08 Chile (2)  Jan.09  0  Chile corporate (3)  (1) Nominal 10-year interest rates in the U.S. (2) Interest rate on Central Bank's BCU-5. (3) Interest on domestic 5-year corporate bond. Sources: Central Bank of Chile and LVA indices. BIS Review 35/2009  7  3.0
11  In the literature on determinants of foreign direct investment it has been emphasized that an investing firm needs to have some advantage over a potential local investor in order to overcome the disadvantage of doing business in a foreign environment (see e.g. Dunning 1977). 12  The standard theory of so-called horizontal foreign direct investment is based on the idea that firms selling in foreign markets face a trade-off between the benefits of concentrating production in one place (because of economies of scale) and the benefits of avoiding costs associated with exporting the good (see e.g. Horstmann and Markusen, 1992, Markusen and Venables, 1998, 2000; for an overview of this literature, see Barba Navaretti and Venables, 2004, Chapter 3). BIS Review 82/2010  17  the expansion of Western European banks in Central and Eastern Europe during their transition to market economies. Western European banks had expertise and know-how that local banks lacked, and by establishing themselves in Central and Eastern Europe – in many cases through the acquisition of local banks – they were able to quickly gain market shares. Another motive, perhaps more specific to the wholesale operations of banks is to follow the cross-border expansion of clients, sometimes referred to as “the defensive expansion approach”. 13 The rationale for this would be to preserve existing banking relationships in the home country. Indeed, many of the European banks entering the US initially did so to provide services for their home-country clients that were starting US operations.

8 The further countries are located from one another, the less likely it is that their banks will be active in one another’s markets. Many of the banks operating in Central and Eastern Europe originate in Western Europe. Right after the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening up of strictly regulated markets, the presence of foreign banks from Western Europe exploded. Today, many of the countries in the region report foreign ownership in excess of 80 per cent of total banking assets. Also here we see a strong geographical component. A large share of the foreign banking assets in  3  By the end of 2009 these countries accounted for nearly half of the global banking system measured in terms of gross global cross-border banking assets. 4  Other advanced economies include the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland. 5  See Table 1 in Barba Navaretti et al. 2010. 6  Inside the euro zone, cross-border loans have more than doubled from € 152 billion in 1999 to € 361 billion in 2006, while cross-border deposits have increased from € 221 billion to € 316 billion, respectively (see Heuchemer, Kleimeier and Sander (2008)). 7  The regional dimension of cross border banking activities was also emphasised in a speech given by José Manuel González-Páramo (24 February 2006).
NBER Working Paper No. 13502. De Gregorio, J. (2001). “La Política Cambiaria.” Economic Policy Paper No. 2, Central Bank of Chile. _______. (2003). “Mucho Dinero y Poca Inflación: Chile y la Evidencia Internacional”. Cuadernos de Economía 40(121): 716-724. BIS Review 150/2008  7  _______. (2006). “Esquema de Metas de Inflación en Economías Emergentes”. Economic Policy Paper N° 18, Central Bank of Chile. Friedman, M. (1959). A Program for Monetary Stability, Fordham University Press. García, P. and R. Valdés (2003). “Dinero y Conducción de la Política Monetaria con Metas de Inflación.” Cuadernos de Economía 40(121): 698-706. Gonçalves, C. and J. Salles (2008). “Inflation Targeting in Emerging Economies: What Do the Data Say?” Journal of Development Economics 85(1-2): 312–318. Goodfriend, M. and B. McCallum (2007). “Banking and Interest Rate in Monetary Policy Analysis: A Quantitative Exploration”. Journal of Monetary Economics, 54(5): 1480-1507. Gürkaynak, R. (2005). “Econometric Tests of Asset Price Bubbles: Taking Stock”. Federal Reserve Board, Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-04. Kilponen, J. and K. Leitemo (2008). “Model Uncertainty and Delegation: A Case for Friedman’s “k”-percent Money Growth Rule”. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 40(2-3): 547-556. Plosser, C. (2007). “Two Pillars of Central Banking: Monetary Policy in Financial Stability.” Opening Remarks at the PACB Convention, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Roffia, B. and A. Zaghini (2007). “Excess Money Growth and Inflation Dynamics”. ECB Working Paper No. 749. Taylor, J. (2008). “Housing and Monetary Policy”. In Housing, Housing Finance and Monetary Policy, Proceedings of the Jackson Hole Symposium 2007, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

But the commitment to our objective also implies alertness to future risks and a readiness to respond to them should the medium-term outlook continue to deteriorate significantly. In this case as well, the ECB will adopt all the monetary policy actions that are necessary and proportionate to achieve its objective. We are not short of instruments to deliver on our mandate. 1 See Draghi, M. (2018), “The outlook for the euro area economy”, speech at the Frankfurt European Banking  Congress, Frankfurt am Main, 16 November. 2 Three-month-on-three-month percentage changes; CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. 3 See De Bondt, G. and Hahn, E. (2014), “Introducing the Euro Area-wide Leading Indicator (ALI): Real-Time  Signals of Turning Points in the Growth Cycle from 2007 to 2011”, Journal of Forecasting, 33:47–68. 4 See Anderson G. and Y. Liu (2012), “On the Road to Recovery, Soft Patches Turn Up Often”, The Regional  Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, pp. 12–13. 5 Leverage is calculated by dividing total liabilities net of shares and other equity by total assets. 6 Consolidated gross debt is defined as the sum of total loans granted to NFCs net of intra-sectoral lending, debt  securities issued and pension liabilities. 7 See Botelho, V. and Dias da Silva, A. (2019), “Employment growth and GDP in the euro area”, Box 3 in Economic  Bulletin, Issue 2, ECB.
We have an ‘author in the room’ policy so that expert staff can always explain their papers in person and challenge conventional wisdom. Our core values (which include being Inclusive and Collaborative) are embedded in everything that we do, including feeding directly into the performance management and remuneration of all colleagues. We are proud to have a number of thriving and influential employee network groups including Women in the Bank, LGBT+ and Allies, Bank of England Ethnic Minority (BEEM), Mental Health, Disability, Carers, Parents, and three Faith Networks. The Employee Network Groups help Bank colleagues bring their whole selves to work. I will talk more in a moment about the important work our BEEM network does to support BAME colleagues. Third, inclusive communications Inclusion also means engaging with all our stakeholders, internal and external, and being aware of the many ways in which the economic situation affects different people. Active engagement with a range of expert and non-expert stakeholders across the UK has always been important, but it is taking on new prominence in the information age. 4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  4  Our agents and Bank officials meet thousands of business contacts across the UK each year to take the temperature of the UK economy.

Staying connected with Main Street is also important because the effectiveness of our policy actions is enhanced when private actors have a clear understanding of what our actions are intended to accomplish. For these complex policy decisions, the Federal Reserve System needs accurate and timely information on business and financial conditions, and the perspectives of participants in markets throughout the United States. Economic conditions often differ in various parts of the country, and it is important that the Fed takes all of this into account when it formulates policy. This input is particularly important for the Second District of the Federal Reserve, where we sit today, because the forces that drive economic conditions here often do not mirror the forces driving other regional economies. BIS Review 49/2010  1  In order to monitor and understand the various aspects of local economic conditions, we utilize a number of different measures. Two of these measures we have developed here at the New York Fed – a survey of manufacturers and indexes of economic activity. We regularly produce the Beige Book and report information on local credit conditions. These measures supplement and extend the understanding gleaned from public data sources. We also seek input from regular meetings with several advisory groups representing different facets of the District’s economy – such as our Small Business, Upstate New York and Thrift Institutions panels – and from interactions with key academic researchers at local universities and public policy organizations.
A lot of our advisors asked why banks cannot behave in the way of best interest to the bank, doing whatever they wish. This, of course, applies to many other things that we do not allow banks to do and the answer really is that we still wish to see “banks doing other services”, rather than “other businesses also offering banking services”. This is because banks are critical organs of an economy and they should be separately supervised and examined such that they are safer than other activities which might be allowed to fail more easily. 3  BIS Review 86/2000  Virtual banking, defined as banking without counter services, is still not allowed. The only thing that we have decided in this new and expanding area of the economy is that if the e-commerce service takes deposits, a banking license must be sought before the services could be offered. But like many things in life, it is not where you are, but how fast you are going, how fast you are catching up that is more important, and in this respect we are working assiduously to formulate the new rules so that we can join the leaders in the change to the New Economy - new rules with the reliability that is always so necessary in any kind of good banking.

The relevant monetary policy trade-off at this juncture, then, is not the traditional one between inflation and growth but between inflation and growth on the one hand, and financial stability on the other. How, then, should central banks respond to this new trade-off? I see three main avenues. First, central banks need to expand their set of policy tools. Measures to limit excessive risk-taking in the boom and limit losses in the bust, such as counter-cyclical capital requirements, leverage limits, and stable funding ratios are the most obvious additions. These fall under the heading of macroprudental tools. For emerging markets where the brunt of the impact from excess global liquidity 6  has been felt in exchange rates, capital flow management measures would help to alleviate these pressures. Moreover, central bank operational frameworks – such as collateral rules that dictate which types of securities can be pledged for central bank liquidity, the types of assets central banks choose to hold, or the structure of liabilities that they choose to issue – offer ways to influence certain segments of financial markets directly. The challenge going forward is to operationalize these micro and more targeted policy tools in a systematic way. Here it is important to stress that any one set of instruments working alone is unlikely to be sufficient. Interest rate policy, macroprudential levers, and capital flow management measures all interact and their application should be viewed as a whole rather than in isolation.
Capital, in effect, helps protect firms against “runs,” both traditional “runs” where short-term funding and liquidity are at issue, and more gradual, but just as damaging “runs” on franchise value, where customers turn elsewhere for services because they question the long-term viability of a firm. Consolidation has resulted in larger and more diverse financial institutions at the core of the U.S. financial system. Deregulation has enabled firms to better optimize the scale, geographic spread, and scope of operations. The result has been the creation of some extremely large and diverse financial institutions with high earnings capacity. In 2003, 18 U.S. bank holding companies and six securities firms each earned more than $ billion, with the five largest bank holding companies earning a combined total of nearly $ billion, over 40 percent of the banking industry total. Along with capital, these earnings provide a substantial cushion to absorb losses, significantly moderating the consequences of an adverse event. The wider scope of activities and greater domestic and international geographic diversification of these firms also provide a more stable revenue base. Advances in risk management have also enabled firms to hedge risks more effectively and, in the aggregate, to disperse risk more efficiently across firms in the financial system. Given advances in data collection and risk modeling, banks and other financial firms are able to do better risk-based pricing. Firms now have the capacity to view credit and other key risks from a portfolio perspective rather than in isolation, leading to more efficient risk sharing and better capital allocation.

It is the challenge of ensuring that the strength of the infrastructure of controls within financial institutions will stay abreast of the pace of change in the complexity of risks and the tools we have to manage them - a process that we as supervisors will actively reinforce. A second issue relates to the degree of concentration in some core financial intermediation functions. The two largest government-sponsored enterprises in the mortgage market now hold 36 percent of Agency mortgage-backed securities, as compared with less than 10 percent at the end of 1993. The  BIS Review 33/2004  3  exposure of banks to these GSE’s, primarily through holdings of the GSE debt funding these MBS positions, is as a consequence very large. Two institutions now account for essentially all of the market for the clearing function for government securities and agencies, as well as for tri-party repo activity. A relatively small number of institutions now account for a large share of activity in the over-the-counter derivatives business generally, as well as in certain categories of risk-transfer instruments. These developments have different sources. Some are the result of public policy choices. Some are the consequence of the economies of scale inherent in these businesses. Overall, we have a very competitive financial system, with a larger diversity of institutions, and therefore a stronger overall system of financial intermediation.