samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The result was that the krona was devalued several times from the mid-1970s onwards. The economy underwent "boom-bust-cycles” with alternate sudden braking and strong stimulus for acceleration. This policy had devastating effects on many aspects of economic developments. Sweden lost ground in terms of prosperity, while growth in real wages was largely non-existent. This situation finally become untenable and after the fixed exchange rate system was abandoned in November 1992 there was a clear shift in stabilisation policy regime. When one looks back over the period since then, I believe that most people will agree with me that the new regime has been successful. Sweden is no longer afflicted with excessively high inflationary trends, recurring cost crises and high interest rates. The more stable environment has contributed to better growth in prosperity. The new regulations have also created other, better frameworks for wage formation, a point often emphasised by LO representatives. Trade union organisation no longer need to play along in a destructive game where high nominal wage increases are eaten up by inflation and real wage increases prove to be a disappointment year after year. The fact that inflation has been lower and more stable during the period with inflation-targeting policy is a good result, although perhaps not surprising. What may have received less attention and been less evident, given the theories in this field, is that there has been less fluctuation in the real economy.

At the Riksbank we are working continuously on, for instance, improving our analyses and forecasting methods to provide the best possible basis for making decisions. Our decision to publish inflation forecasts based on market expectations in the March Inflation Report was an example of this. One can assume that the Ministry of Finance conducts equivalent development work. I believe that an even deeper discussion of what is entailed in the considerations made between inflation targeting and the real economy can be a good thing. During the first years of inflation targeting, the Riksbank sometimes sounded like an “inflation nutter”. However, this stance was abandoned after a few years and since then we have communicated that we also take into consideration financial and real factors. A decision by the Executive Board of the Riksbank in 1999 clarifies our views on these issues. However, we can probably become even better at analysing and explaining the considerations we have to make when conducting a flexible inflation-targeting policy. The Executive Board has held several speeches on this theme over the past year and the aim is to publish some form of joint document on this subject in the near future. BIS Review 39/2005  3  With regard to fiscal policy, it has a stimulating effect on the economy primarily through what are known as the automatic stabilisers, i.e. through systems for taxes and expenditure, which are very extensive in Sweden, being designed to allow some “automatic” adjustment to cyclical developments.
The nub of the matter is that euro services will be called for whether or not we join the area. The use of euro will be directed by the market. Naturally the euro would not replace the BIS Review 41/1997  -3-  krona as Sweden's currency if we remained outside but we could probably expect a demand for euro from some agents. According to the Stockholm Stock Exchange, trading in the shares of major companies will gradually switch to euro because handling two currencies would be too costly. In time the money and bond market may be affected in that renewals and new issues are denominated in euro and account for a growing proportion of bond trading. According to the Securities Dealers Association, for instance, large companies and financial markets will also become less interested in kronor. It is too early to say how this transition from kronor to euro will occur in detail. Neither can we foresee how quickly it will proceed or how far. Probably it will be gradual and ultimately also affect private individuals. If the euro turns out to be stable and strong, households will also prefer to have pension savings, for example, in euro securities. Thus, this scenario points to a development where financial markets, companies and even individuals are active in euro, while the public sector continues to use kronor as declared, for instance, in the report from the Ministry of Finance on practical preparations for the euro.

Cecilia Skingsley: A new playing field for monetary policy – what can a small, open economy expect? Speech by Ms Cecilia Skingsley, Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at Kammarkollegiet capital market day, Stockholm, 19 May 2016. *  *  *  I would like to thank Mikael Apel for his help in writing this speech, Goran Katinic for help with the diagrams and Claes Berg, Hans Dellmo, Gabriela Guibourg, Ulf Söderström and Anders Vredin for useful comments. Any remaining errors are strictly my own responsibility. As difficult as it is to believe today, it was only ten years ago that monetary policy was considered to be a relatively straightforward and uncomplicated business. It was assumed that essentially all that the central bank needed to do was to set the policy rate so that inflation ended up close to the target at the same time as production and employment developed in a satisfactory manner. There was a widespread perception that the central banks had finally gotten a grasp of how monetary policy should best be conducted, and this, it was assumed in turn, was an important explanation for the “Great Moderation” – the fairly long period of unusual macroeconomic stability that preceded the financial crisis. How different the situation is today. Conducting monetary policy is now rightly seen as anything but easy by both central bank representatives and economic analysts in general.
Rodrigo Vergara: Chile’s latest Monetary Policy Report Presentation by Mr Rodrigo Vergara, Governor of the Central Bank of Chile, of the Monetary Policy Report before the Finance Commission of the Honorable Senate of the Republic, Santiago de Chile, 3 April 2012. The Monetary Policy Report of March 2012 can be found at http://www.bcentral.cl. *  *  *  Introduction Mr. President of the Senate’s Finance Commission, Senator José García Ruminot, senators members of this Commission, ladies, gentlemen. I am grateful for your invitation to present the vision of the Board of the Central Bank of Chile on recent macroeconomic developments, their prospects and implications for monetary policy making, which is contained in detail in our March 2012 Monetary Policy Report. When we presented our previous Report to this Commission last December, the international financial markets – and, though to a lesser extent, the Chilean market too – were going through significant tension. The outlook for growth in Chile and in the world at large reflected great uncertainty, and there was significant risk of the situation in the Eurozone aggravating and becoming the Lehman Brothers’ downfall of September 2008 revisited. We then were emphatic in saying that the Chilean economy was healthy, but that the crisis abroad could end up affecting our growth prospects. We also said that the magnitude of those effects was difficult to estimate.

In that context, we lowered the growth range forecast for 2012 and pointed out that, given the international threats facing us, the balance of risks for growth was biased downward. We stated our willingness to take action in order to mitigate the impact of the external scenario on the Chilean economy, having the necessary tools to deal with adverse situations. Thus, in late December we took exceptional measures to ease the frictions present in the domestic money market and, in January, we preemptively reduced the monetary policy rate (MPR) by 25 basis points. Facing the uncertain external situation, the expectations of most market analysts and brokers anticipated the need for further reductions of the MPR. With the passing of time, we have seen a somewhat more favorable evolution of the external scenario. In general, confidence has partially returned to global financial markets, expressed in lower risk spreads and higher commodity prices. The outlook for world growth is still weak, even lower than our expectations in December, but the likelihood of a more adverse scenario has decreased. In Chile, domestic demand and output have outperformed December’s projections. Meanwhile, inflation has also exceeded projections and core inflation measures have normalized rapidly. All this has modified the balance of risks for the Chilean economy from December to date. Some months ago, the biggest risk was that a deteriorated external scenario could trigger a sharper deceleration of domestic demand and output and, thus, of inflation too.
Various adjustments to this set-up might reduce some partial imbalances, but if the cause of the problem is not tackled head on, the effects of such adjustments will be short-lived and it will only be a matter of time before the whole system comes crashing down. Now let’s move forward in time some 20 years, to the split of the Czechoslovak currency following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993. For many years, fiscal transfers had masked the significantly inferior performance of Slovak economy relative to its Czech neighbour to the west. This performance gap was further widened by the closing-off of the Slovak armament industry from the federal centre at the beginning of the 1990s. After the country split in two, the stated goal of keeping a common currency came under market pressures as Czech and Slovak entities transferred their deposits to Czech banks and capital flowed out of both countries. As a result, this goal was abandoned in less than two months and an independent Czech crown – or koruna – was introduced. I should add that the CNB had its plan B and had been running preparations for the currency split since the second half of 1992. Consequently, after it had decided to act, it was able to act fast. So, what lessons can we learn from this event? The lack of political will to preserve the federal Czechoslovak state had quickly recognisable consequences for the common currency.

Subsequently, growth in non-reserve liabilities such as currency and reductions in the Fed’s securities holdings caused reserve levels to decline. As the level of reserves has come down, we stepped up our monitoring of the effect of reserve levels on interest rates. The level of reserves consistent with “ample” is inherently highly uncertain, so we have been actively looking for signs that reserves might be growing scarce. Along with in-depth analysis of conditions in money markets, we conduct surveys of banks and other outreach to market participants to understand the factors that influence the demand for reserves.4 To smooth the transition to a level of reserves consistent with the framework, the FOMC announced a slowing of the pace of the reduction in securities holdings at its March meeting this year and stopped it outright at the July meeting.5 Based on a variety of metrics and information, the supply of reserves appeared ample during the summer and into early September. The funds rate traded well within the target range and money markets functioned well. Recent Developments in Money Markets With the stage set, I’ll turn to market conditions over the past month and the Fed’s actions. Conditions in money markets became highly volatile about a month ago. Secured and unsecured rates moved higher and became more disparate on Monday, September 16, and this intensified the following day. We had expected a number of factors—including corporate tax payments and the settlement of newly issued Treasury securities —to put some upward pressure on short-term rates.
Its adoption so far has in part been due to the push from regulators, but it needs to be used by a wider set of participants – we at the Bank are continuing to support that wider uptake, including for corporates beyond the financial sector. It needs to be included in new areas such as payment messages – we will soon be mandating the use of LEIs in payments through our CHAPS system. More broadly, LEI systems and processes need to continually evolve to ensure they can meet the demands of a digital world. 5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  5  The LEI shows that standards take time to be designed, refined and adopted, and so reaping their benefits requires patience and persistence. That will be the case for our collective journey, too. Our approach to developing standards  So how do we plan to go about expanding and improving the use of common data standards in the financial sector? Two key principles underlie our approach to helping develop and adopt data standards. First, this will be no Big Bang event. As the LEI journey shows, developing standards takes time. We, the FCA and industry will need to move forwards step-by-step, use case by use case, delivering value and benefits as we go. That means taking one area of data at a time, with the right specialists participating in the work to develop standards for those data.

We are committed to transforming our data collection from the financial sector, to make it more effective and more efficient, and to ensure that it delivers us the data we need to fulfil our mission, at the lowest possible cost to industry. We see the development of common data standards as key to that transformation. These standards may not lead to the construction of anything quite as spectacular as those gothic cathedrals of the past. But standards can have benefits way beyond simply our data collections: improving data management and use in the financial system, to the benefit of customers and to financial stability. I hope many of you listening or reading will help us to get there. 8  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  8
In addition, these objectives have established the importance of rating agencies for financial institutions, both in determining the conditions of their funding and in defining the structure of their portfolios. Fourth: restructuring to cope with this increased competitive pressure If they are to survive, traditional financial intermediaries must expand and/or innovate. •  The current consolidation of the financial industry is driven by the search for market power and/or economies of scale. Mega-institutions emerge, more and more internationalised and diversified. These developments give rise to financial conglomerates aiming at economies of scale. •  Product or process innovation is an alternative - or complement - to the search for a size effect. It can translate into a variety of strategies: developing new products to exploit market niches, entering into partnerships with other service providers - financial or not - in order to consolidate market share, or developing remote service offers to attract new customer segments and cut costs. In Europe, the pace of this restructuring is accelerated by the euro. BIS Review 85/2000  2  2. These various trends have three consequences for efficiency and stability  The first consequence: improved macroeconomic efficiency in financial systems Free capital movements, interconnected markets, the integration of market segments and the hedging opportunities provided by the new financial instruments allow a better fit between the financing capacities and borrowing requirements of general governments, households and companies. Market interest rates, which represent the markets’ consensus on the risk incurred, are fully beneficial to the efficient allocation of capital.

On credit markets, the financial position of banks can also be seriously jeopardised if they are tempted to reduce margins drastically in order to maintain or increase their market share, or if they make insufficient provisions during cyclical upturns. More generally, some of the most widespread management methods are not entirely without risk: •  The accounting practice of marking-to-market most of the assets in credit institutions’ balance sheets renders them more vulnerable to price fluctuations. The spread of market valuation through the concept of “fair value” could make banks’ total assets and profits highly volatile. This is why French prudential authorities have reservations about this method. •  In the same vein, the Asian crisis has highlighted the limits of systematically resorting to rating agencies, which can reinforce the herd behaviour of markets. These ratings, which can never be perfectly accurate and up-to-date, should be taken for what they are: just one of several instruments for risk management. •  The turbulence surrounding the Asian crisis also clearly showed that the models used for managing complex derivatives do not adequately take into account abrupt gyrations in one or several markets. BIS Review 85/2000  4  And lastly, the public authorities must meet new challenges. •  In general, the default of the LTCM fund in September 1998 underscored the risk of contagion between financial systems.
Under the second phase of the FSDP, access to finance by the various strata of society, including access based on gender is identified as a key weakness to be addressed. The development of the FSDP and its implementation, therefore, reflects the priority attached by the government to this subject. The Bank of Zambia as the lead coordinator for the Financial Sector Development Plan (FSDP) has also incorporated Financial Inclusion as one of the key objectives under its Strategic Plan for the period 2012 – 2015, namely; to increase financial inclusion to 50 per cent of the population by 2015. The strategies under this objective include the following: 1. Develop an index to measure the depth and breadth of financial services in Zambia. 2  Promote agency banking and mobile banking. 3  Develop guidelines for branchless banking framework. 4  Establish a unified collateral registry framework. 5  Establish Financial Education Coordinating Unit (FECU). 6  Undertake financial education interventions specific to BoZ mandate. 7  Revise legal and regulatory framework to promote financial inclusion. 8  Develop incentive mechanisms to encourage outreach of financial services to rural areas and other financially excluded citizens. In order to ensure that persons who are excluded, both in urban and rural areas do not encounter difficulties in opening bank accounts, the know your customer (KYC) procedures for opening and operating accounts has been simplified.

We have made substantial progress with respect to the labor market outlook since we began our current program of large scale asset  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  purchases in 2012. Because it looks very likely that the program will have fulfilled its objectives, I expect to support a decision to end the asset purchase program at the end of this month. At the same time, it still is premature to begin to raise interest rates – the labor market still has too much slack and the inflation rate is too low. The consensus view is that lift-off will take place around the middle of next year. That seems like a reasonable view to me. But, again, it is just a forecast. What we do will depend on the flow of economic news and how that affects the economic outlook. For example, firmer growth, higher inflation, and a more rapid tightening of the labor market could cause us to move earlier. Conversely, should economic growth disappoint, the timing of lift-off could be pushed later. I hope the economy cooperates. If it does and lift-off begins sometime next year, that will be something to be very excited about. It will signal that the economy is finally getting healthier and that the Fed is getting closer to achieving its dual mandate objectives of maximum sustainable employment and price stability. That would be very good news even if it were to cause a bump or two in financial markets.
This is definitely something the general public can require of us in our role as an independent authority. So, to refer back to the questions I asked at the beginning. No, I do not think we have made things unnecessarily complicated or tried to fix things that are not broken. We have made changes we consider to be necessary both to improve the base for making monetary policy  BIS Review 106/2007  5  decisions and to provide as true and honest a picture of how monetary policy is conducted as possible. What has happened on the financial markets? In principle, communication is always important to a central bank and is a corner-stone in most parts of our activities. When the world around us is marked by uncertainty and unrest, the question of communication becomes even more important. There has recently been considerable unrest in the financial markets. But the Riksbank has nevertheless seen no need to specifically go out in public and comment on these developments. Sweden has not been affected to the same extent as many other countries and the Swedish interbank market and the financial system have functioned comparatively well. But let me nevertheless say a few words about what has happened and about the role the Riksbank plays in this context. General uncertainty has increased the need for liquidity abroad… Over the summer we saw signs of problems in the US housing market.

•  MAS is working with several other banks and insurers on their plans to establish and expand their analytics and innovation teams in Singapore. At the heart of a Smart Financial Centre must be a progressive information technology architecture. Two key characteristics of such an architecture are: •  common standards; and  •  seamless data sharing. Common standards Let me begin with common standards. They are key to making systems interoperable and harnessing fully the benefits of new payments technologies. Lack of standardisation leads to fragmentation, inefficiency, and inconvenience. •  Take for example electronic funds transfer. •  Without a common standard, an application written to effect funds transfer for one group of financial service providers may need to be rewritten to work with another group of financial service providers that operate on different interface standards. Common standards allow systems and applications to operate efficiently and seamlessly when different financial service operators and solution providers come together. •  The EMV chip is one of the most impactful examples of a common standard. It is all the more impressive as it was an industry initiative without any government involvement. •  NFC, or near-field communications, represents the next big thing in common standards. It is enabling contactless payments on mobile devices like smart phones. Yet another good example of a common standard is ISO 20022. This is the international standard for electronic data exchange among financial institutions. •  Its growing adoption has helped to make payments platforms interoperable and reduce inefficiency.