samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
As a result of the work I have been talking about today, Norges Bank expects to build up further detailed information on companies’ climate risk and climate plans. We will share this information with the Council on Ethics. Divestment and exclusion are the final link in our chain of tools, but far from the most important. We plan to be a driver for change, pushing companies to make the transition to net zero emissions. Active ownership is our most important tool. Conclusion Before I finish, I should also mention that we invest in companies that can contribute to climate solutions, both through the environment-related mandates and in the rest of our equity management. We are also now building up a portfolio of high-quality wind and solar power assets. The environment-related mandates were originally introduced in December 2009 and have brought positive learning effects in several parts of our organisation. As we wrote in our letter to the Ministry of Finance, we intend to draw more on the expertise of the managers of the environment-related mandates in other areas of our management. To sum up: Our ambition is to be a leader in responsible investment. Together with other large investors, we will contribute to the development of standards and methods for reporting. We will increase both the breadth and the depth of our dialogue with companies on climate issues, and we will use the full toolbox we have as an investor.

The Bank is already doing a great deal to address climate risk, and we outline even more ambitious plans for the future. As a long-term and global investor with holdings in thousands of companies, we have a financial interest in companies adapting well to the risks and opportunities presented by climate change. Norges Bank intends to be a driver for change, pushing companies to make the transition to net zero emissions. The companies we invest in reflect the transition that the whole world needs to undergo. The fund as an investor Our characteristics as an investor The climate risk in the fund reflects who we are as an investor and our overall investment strategy. In a nutshell: the fund is large, broadly diversified, long-term and index-based. Chart: Large, broadly diversified, long-term and index-based 70 percent of the more than 12 trillion kroner in the fund is invested in equities, making us one of the world’s largest shareholders. We have holdings in 9,000 companies in 70 countries. And we are a long-term investor. Since only the real return can be spent by the government, the fund could, in principle, last forever. 1/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  Put simply, the strategy for the fund is to strike the best balance between expected return and risk by spreading our investments far and wide and owning a little of everything in the market. There is a solid body of research to support such an approach.
Thus, world growth is expected to average 3.5% in 2017–2018, with trading partners that will grow 3.3% in the same period, significantly matching the March forecasts. The copper price is also expected to remain at USD 2.55 per pound this year and USD 2.5 next year, and the oil price will average a little over USD 50 per barrel in the same time span (table 2). In the baseline scenario, monetary policy will remain expansionary through the entire projection horizon. Estimates use as a working assumption that the trajectory will be consistent with the various measures of expectations as of the closing of the Report (figure 10). As always, it must be stressed that this is a working assumption, not a commitment. Therefore, the conduct of monetary policy and possible adjustments to the MPR will be contingent on the effects of incoming information on the inflation outlook. Risk scenarios Abroad, the main sources of uncertainty remain linked to the factors identified in previous MP Reports. On the one hand, there is the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy in the United States and its impact on the global economy and on financial conditions. Also uncertainty about the political environment. In Europe, recent election results have been dissipating some of the political risks, in a context where growth has consolidated and data has been higher than expected, so a new boost from the region on the global economy cannot be ruled out.

The lack of supervision also applied to Long Term Capital Management, LTCM, some years earlier. One might wonder whether function rather than company type might not be a better base for supervision. There is otherwise a risk that functions essential to society and thus needing protection will be transferred to companies not subject to supervision. At the same time, the public sector is in practice forced to intervene if the failure comprises a threat to the system, regardless of whether it has been able to exercise supervision. To what extent Enron was involved with functions that can be assessed as worth protecting is a question for discussion, but it is an important question of principle. We cannot and should not regulate all companies involved with financial operations, e.g. in managing their own funds. Secondly, it appears obvious that accounting regulations, at least those in the US, have not developed at the same rate as the instruments and forms for capital acquisition on the financial markets. Is it really reasonable in the long term for an increasing number of companies' risks to be reported off balance sheets? In the case of Enron, it also appears that there were risks that did not need to be reported at all, according to the regulations in force, such as liquidity risks that were triggered by a down-rating.
These guidelines will include prior approval by the ECB for transactions exceeding thresholds to be specified and will also apply to member states’ transactions with their foreign exchange working balances. The ESCB will have the technical capacity to conduct, if need be, foreign exchange intervention in order to counteract excessive or erratic exchange rate fluctuations of the euro against the major non-EU currencies (e.g., the US dollar). The need for intervention could also arise either in the context of G7 concerted operations or within the framework of the ERM II. To this end, the ESCB will use the pool of foreign assets transferred from the NCBs to the ECB. The framework that has been designed for domestic as well as foreign exchange operations allows the ESCB to build on the expertise that NCBs have acquired over the years and to make an extensive use of existing operational capacities in NCBs (dealing room, front office, back office). Common sense dictates making use of equipment, human resources and expertise currently available at NCBs. 2.4. A decentralised execution of operations A key feature of the single monetary policy is indeed that it will be decided in a centralised manner, by the Governing Council of the ECB, and executed in a decentralised manner, by the national central banks.

From the start, the program included five main parts: - Macroeconomic stabilisation policies: a restrictive fiscal and monetary policy to remove the monetary overhang and to reintroduce macroeconomic equilibrium. - Liberalisation of prices: after 40 years of central price fixing, the bulk of prices were freed. - Liberalisation of external trade - and introduction of partial convertibility (for resident firms’ current account transactions). That required initial devaluation toward an exchange rate seen as viable from the point of view of the balance of payments. - Massive and rapid privatisation, including the use of the voucher scheme. - Social safety net to protect people whose standard of living dropped below poverty line. These adverse impacts of economic transformation were to be contained within tolerable limits. The programme aimed at re-establishing the role of prices and markets for an efficient allocation of resources. For the start, rationalisation of price relations implied a rise of the price level, owing to a monetary overhang, and to low downward price elasticity. In a small open economy, it made no sense to free internal prices without opening the economy to external competition and to world price relations. And, there could be no meaningful liberalisation of imports and exports without current account convertibility, introduced at least for resident firms. The short Polish and Hungarian experience showed, however, that free trade and partial convertibility should not be attempted without a preceding macroeconomic stabilisation.
Many players in the financial markets also appear to be governed by a “follow the leader” principle. There are probably some who avoid going their own way because of the risk of making bad investments and being depicted as losers. It then seems simpler to follow the others, as if things do go wrong, at least the player is not the only one in disgrace. The reward structure in the fund management field probably also reinforces this behaviour. As long as a person has not done a worse job than the average among the competitors, he can look forward to a bonus. It would probably be a better idea if the personal income were more closely connected to the absolute result achieved by the fund. However, the desire to follow others is probably also an expression of uncertainty. The players have too little information to really dare to act independently. It is doubtless the case that players in the financial markets, including the mutual fund investment companies, live in a complicated world. In this world it can be rational to do as the larger players do in the hope that they are better informed. However, this is not always the case, which means that the strategy of following the big players could contribute to worsening financial crises. When everyone rushes for the door at the same time, there is often a crush. And in a crush, it is easy to panic.

Benoît Coeuré: Adjustment and growth in the euro area economies Speech by Mr Benoît Coeuré, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at the Nova School of Business and Economics and the Bank of Portugal, Lisbon, 22 February 2013. *  *  *  Introduction1 Dear Governor Costa, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great pleasure to be here today and share with you my thoughts on the adjustment under way in the euro area. This is a challenging issue, especially here in Lisbon, as Portugal is at the heart of this process. Taking the Lehman collapse as a starting point, the economic and financial crisis has now lasted four and a half years, almost one-third the age of the euro. For the stressed countries, this has been a tough time. It saw a sharp decline in GDP and a sharp rise in unemployment, with young people particularly affected. People’s daily lives have not yet visibly improved. This is why it is important to focus on the progress made during the past five years and on why and how reforms can create income and jobs. I have in mind three questions: (i) How much adjustment is still needed? (ii) Why have the costs been so high? (iii) Are conditions in place to restore growth? The public would probably formulate these questions differently: can we hope that things will get better? Will the policies work? And will we see an improvement in our daily lives?
Jacques Necker, who had been born in Geneva, was Minister of Finance under Louis XVI. After the French Revolution, Geneva began to evolve into an important wealth management centre. 1 In 1857, the first Swiss stock market was founded in Geneva, before those in Zurich and Basel. The Geneva stock market soon ranked fifth among European stock markets. Geneva remains one of the major world financial centres today, particularly when it comes to private wealth management. 2 The financial sector in Geneva is an engine for the regional economy. In 2014, around 120 banks were based in Geneva. The financial sector creates a significant part of cantonal value added and is a major employer. 3 A strong financial sector, such as that in Geneva, makes a substantial contribution to economic growth. It is therefore a crucial foundation, both for the regional economy and for the Swiss economy as a whole. A robust financial sector is also very important for the Swiss National Bank (SNB). The SNB interacts closely with the financial sector, and in particular with the banking sector. I will talk about this later. In my presentation, I will begin by explaining how the SNB and the financial sector are interlinked. Then I will discuss the importance of an independent monetary policy in providing stability as a long-term asset. However, in the short term, this long-term stability may generate costs. I will then explain the SNB’s current monetary policy and our reaction to international developments.

It is for staff at the UK authorities to calibrate a range of holdings of liquid assets maturing within a week that would address financial stability risks from MMFs. However, it is easy to see how the illustrative scenario I talked you through earlier could be used to calibrate the appropriate resilience of MMFs. MMFs could have a range of holdings to reflect idiosyncratic and systemic risks. These holdings could be calibrated according to observed historical outflows, as seen in the dash for cash and LDI stress events. And as discussed in the discussion paper, the usability of these holdings will also be a key consideration for the UK authorities. Conclusion The FPC have recommended a framework for the steady-state resilience of LDI funds, built over three building blocks: baseline resilience, systemic resilience, and fund specific additional resilience. The first two building blocks amount to a 250 basis point minimum. And the framework also requires pension schemes to put in place operational processes enabling them to deliver collateral within five days and to support LDI funds in drawing down during stress. This framework provides us with a suitable framework for addressing non-bank vulnerabilities more generally. We can use this framework to contain non-bank vulnerabilities and so to mitigate their financial stability impacts. But this is a conference for pension funds, so I will leave on a message to the experts at this conference. Ensuring financial stability is not only a job for financial stability authorities and regulators such as TPR, but also for participants.
Shanghai could tap on Singapore’s role as a regional infrastructure-financing hub in ASEAN to jointly access infrastructure opportunities in the region. Additionally, both financial centres can work together to develop innovative capital market solutions for infrastructure projects in China, ASEAN and in third countries. Key financial institutions in China are already working closely with Singapore on this front. 4/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  They have significantly scaled up their BRI-related activities in Singapore over the past two years. China and Singapore financial institutions are tapping on each other’s strengths to help Chinese firms “go out”. For example: In June 2015, Bank of China (BOC) issued four currency “Silk Road” bonds in Singapore, which included a SGD 500 million tranche and a RMB 5 billion tranche. In August 2016, China Construction Bank (CCB) listed its first RMB 1 billion BRI infrastructure bond on the Singapore Exchange (SGX). In September 2016, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) signed an agreement with the Singapore Exchange (SGX) to support Chinese companies looking to list equities or bonds on SGX. Both parties will also explore collaboration in derivatives trading, bond trading and market making of RMB-denominated contracts listed on SGX. Since November 2015, three of China’s top four banks (ICBC, CCB and BOC) have signed MOUs with International Enterprise Singapore to deepen BRI partnerships in ASEAN. These MOUs brought in more than SGD 90 billion worth of financing for BRIrelated projects and to support Chinese and Singapore firms investing into BRI countries.

Nevertheless, crises create opportunities for fixing policies and addressing structural issues. Policy makers have an opportunity to enact all the necessary reforms in order to lay the foundations of a more stable and prosperous future in the presence of today's overlapping crises. 5/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches
Banks hoarded liquidity in order to be safe from unexpected outflows or the unknown extent of write-downs. Because the usual market refinancing possibilities were blocked banks relied on highly rated collateral for their funding and the liquidity provided by the central bank. The spread between EONIA and three-month Euribor rose to the highest level ever at 70 bps and has remained high. Unsecured trading in the money market beyond one week effectively ceased to exist. II. Central bank reaction function  As liquidity retracted first from the credit markets, then money markets, intermediation vanishing, central banks had to move in: to restore orderly market conditions; ensure the integrity of monetary transmission channels, and to ensure financial stability or prevent a systemic crisis. In view of the confidence crisis among market participants, due to uncertainty about financial individual exposures, the issues at stake were: 1)  to have money market rates evolve close to the policy rates;  2)  to address the term structure problem to the extent that it was threatening the first issue;  3)  and thirdly to address the distributional problem of liquidity among market participants for reasons of financial stability. The somewhat more complex and elaborate toolbox of the Eurosystem proved very valuable in this respect.

At the same time, stock issuance up to the third quarter of 2007 is higher than that of 1996. Notice, however, that the persistent weakness of expectations indicators and the effect of the recent increases in inflation on families’ purchasing power imply a risk for private consumption growth. 2  BIS Review 120/2007  As a result of the above, the GDP and aggregate demand growth have been somewhat below the forecasts of the September 2007 MPR. There, the GDP growth forecast for this year was 5.75% to 6.25%, with a downward bias. The evidence accumulated so far, indicate that the GDP growth will be in the lower part of the range. The turbulences in international financial markets could be affecting expectations of consumers and entrepreneurs. In fact, consumer expectations have worsened and the forecast of the GDP growth in expectation surveys has fallen. The most important development in recent months, however, has been inflation. Inflation has picked up, reaching annual rates of 5.8% in September, both for total CPI and core CPI (which excludes perishable foods, energy and regulated tariffs). This surprising rise of inflation has been influenced by unusual (and simultaneous) increases in the prices of food items, given rises in their foreign similes and harsh weather conditions in Chile. These high prices have not only persisted but also intensified in the last months. Additionally, electricity power rates have also increased, as a result of natural gas restrictions coming from Argentina, and the replacement of hydro by oil-based electrical generation.
Some remarks about distributional effects As long as assets are unevenly spread across the population, shifts in their prices will have redistributive effects. Let me now say something about what those might have been. I’ll make only a few, and very broad points. First, as regards the distribution of wealth, one of the main sources of unevenness is age. There is certainly considerable variation within age groups. In Chart 7, a snapshot taken from the ONS’s first Wealth and Asset Survey (2006), the vertical lines are interquartile ranges for each 10-year age bracket. Among households headed by 45–54 year olds, for example, those 25% from the top had over £ more in net wealth than those 25% from the bottom of the distribution. But there is also significant variation across age groups. Even relatively wealthy 25-year-olds have significantly less in the way of net assets than the average 50-year-old. This means that, during the first phase of the decline in real rates, when all asset prices were rising, it was generally older people who benefited the most. Anyone who, in the mid-1990s, happened already to own a house, or whose pension was already well funded, would have benefited materially from these trends. Chart 8 plots the age profile of net wealth in 1995 versus that a decade later.11 It steepened considerably. 8  Eggertson and Krugman (2012) develop a model where deleveraging pressure has very protracted effects on (ex ante) saving and on equilibrium real interest rates.

2  BIS Review 48/2001  Now, let me be clear, I agree with those who argue that the single currency – by eliminating exchange risk within the participating countries – can make a significant contribution to increasing the depth and liquidity of financial markets and reducing transactions costs within the Eurozone. And indeed it already has had that effect, particularly in money and bond markets, especially the corporate bond market. It has no doubt also been a factor encouraging the tendency to, mostly national, consolidation as financial institutions prepare for greater competition from other euro-based institutions in their national markets. All of this is very positive for the competitive efficiency of Euro-zone financial systems both nationally and within the Eurozone as a whole. It is in fact one of the two main potential economic benefits of the single currency, the other, of course, being the positive effect of nominal exchange rather certainty within the Eurozone on trade flows of goods and other, non-financial, services and its impact in more efficient resource allocation. It is also the field in which the UK, through London, has been able to make a positive contribution to the development of the Euro even from outside the Eurozone. So I do not at all underestimate the contribution that the euro has made, and is making, to improving the efficiency of the Eurozone financial systems.