samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
BIS central bankers’ speeches  You can see why it is referred to in the business as “the dot chart.” The best guesses of the entire panoply of participants in FOMC deliberations – 19 when we have a full complement (the 12 Fed bankers and the maximum of seven governors appointed by the president subject to approval of the Senate) – are summarized in dots with the expected level on the “y-axis” and the year at the end of which it is thought likely to occur on the “x-axis.” I use the term “best guesses” deliberately. The participants in the FOMC have sophisticated econometric models, a deep knowledge of theory and a great breadth of experience to draw upon. But truth be told, however we dress up our forecasts as rigorous analysis, they are no more than the very best educated guesses of the superbly trained but still human staffs of the 12 Fed bankers and the active governors. And the composition of those among the FOMC participants who actually vote on policy changes periodically. With the departure of Governor Jeremy Stein at the end of this month, we will have eight people, including me, who vote on policy for the remainder of this year. We are hopeful that the full Senate will confirm the two governors who have now come out of the Senate Banking Committee, but we don’t know when that will occur. That will bring the total number of voters to 10.

Moreover, underlying inflation continues to be muted. The weaker economic momentum is slowing the adjustment of inflation towards our aim. At the same time, supportive financing conditions, favourable labour market dynamics and rising wage growth continue to underpin the euro area expansion and gradually rising inflation pressures. Today’s decisions will support the further build-up of domestic price pressures and headline inflation developments over the medium term. Significant monetary policy stimulus will continue to be provided by our forward guidance on the key ECB interest rates, reinforced by the reinvestments of the sizeable stock of acquired assets and the new series of TLTROs. In any event, the Governing Council stands ready to adjust all of its instruments, as appropriate, to ensure that inflation continues to move towards the Governing Council’s inflation aim in a 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  sustained manner. Let me now explain our assessment in greater detail, starting with the economic analysis. Euro area real GDP increased by 0.2%, quarter on quarter, in the fourth quarter of 2018, following growth of 0.1% in the third quarter. Incoming data have continued to be weak, in particular in the manufacturing sector, reflecting the slowdown in external demand compounded by some country and sector-specific factors. The impact of these factors is turning out to be somewhat longerlasting, which suggests that the near-term growth outlook will be weaker than previously anticipated. Looking ahead, the effect of these adverse factors is expected to unwind.
Ravi Menon: Building a culture of trust in the financial industry Opening address by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Monetary Authority of Singapore-Singapore Academy of Law Conference, Singapore, 23 January 2015. *  *  *  Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon Justice Steven Chong Mr Timothy Massad, Chairman, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission Distinguished guests, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, Bad behaviour in finance Six years ago, the Global Financial Crisis tipped national economies into recession and brought to their knees some of the most hallowed names in the financial industry. But the biggest casualty of the Crisis could well be trust: •  trust between regulators and financial institutions;  •  trust among financial institutions; and  •  trust that the public places in the financial industry – that their bankers are honest and their financial advisors are acting in the best interest of their clients. And six years after the Crisis broke, the global industry continues to be dogged by shocking revelations of financial malfeasance, mis-selling, and dishonesty. •  In the US, large banks are paying billions of dollars to settle charges against them for mis-selling mortgage-backed securities which led to massive losses for their buyers. •  In the UK, over 13 million complaints have been made against retail banks for the aggressive mis-selling of so-called Payment Protection Insurance (PPI).

M R Chatu Mongol Sonakul: National Central Bank and building world peace  Speech by Mr M R Chatu Mongol Sonakul, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the 27th International Conference on World Peace “Building a Culture of Peace in the New Millennium”, held in Bangkok on 1 December 2000. *  *  *  Members of the Professors World Peace Academy, Participants of the 27th International Conference on World Peace, Ladies and gentlemen. The history of central banking is normally agreed to have begun around four thousand years ago in the Greece, Roman and other empires up to the middle ages when banks were put up primarily for the purpose of getting finance for governments to wage war. So the first period of central banking cannot very well be said to have been in conformity with the topic I’ve been asked to talk about here today, which is entitled “National Central Bank and Building World Peace”. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and especially later on when industrialisation began in earnest, there were great needs for finance for the many various industries that sprang up around that time. Commercial banks and great finance houses became common but the limitations of the technology of that period of using precious metals as currency became quickly apparent. Commercial banks began issuing their own paper notes, for the amount of the valuable metals that they had in stock being much more transportable.
The Japanese economy has been surprisingly robust and the market is becoming more optimistic not just at the cyclical pickup, but also at better prospects for structural improvements. Asia is improving too, supported by easy monetary and fiscal policies and the more favourable outlook in the developed economies. Asian stock markets have been buoyant, and Asian merger and acquisition activities are on the rise. Investors are regaining interest in the region, as shown by strong capital inflows, particularly into equity markets. Growth is picking up. SARS failed to dent China’s growth, which is expected to reach 8% this year. South-east Asia is also looking up, especially Thailand which is expected to register 6% GDP growth this year.1 Malaysia has also recently projected its GDP to grow by 6% per annum for the next two years.2 The IMF believes that the world economy has turned the corner. Economic activity is expected to pick up strongly over the next 12 months, growing 3.2% next year, up from this year’s 2.3%.3 Likewise, the World Bank expects the East Asian economies to expand by 6.1% this year and by a more robust 6.7% next year.4  III. Singapore’s economic and financial landscape  Singapore’s economic and financial outlook In Singapore, following a dismal second quarter because of SARS, the economy rebounded strongly in the third quarter, posting a reassuring 17% quarter on quarter growth. With the improvement in the external environment, the outlook has improved considerably in the last quarter.

If the shift continues, the price-dampening effects of increased imports from low-cost countries in Asia and Central and Eastern Europe will persist longer than assumed. The change in China’s exchange rate regime and the revaluation of the Chinese currency will probably not cause noticeable changes in price developments for imported consumer goods. Partly due to very high growth in demand for oil, the average price of Brent Blend rose to almost USD- 40 per barrel in 2004. Strong economic growth, particularly in the US and China, has resulted in high energy consumption. In the first half of this year, the price of Brent Blend has generally fluctuated between USD 45 and USD 55 per barrel. Oil prices have risen further this summer and have been more than USD 60 per barrel in August. Prices for oil futures have also increased. Rising or persistently high oil prices may gradually dampen growth among our most important trading partners. The slowdown may occur gradually, and will not necessarily be particularly pronounced. As long as oil prices remain high and there is robust growth in other parts of the world, as in China, other commodity prices and shipping activity will remain buoyant. Activity may then remain high in key sectors of the Norwegian economy, such as petroleum-related industries and the shipbuilding industry. At the same time, higher oil prices and lower external interest rates may, other things being equal, lead to an appreciation of the Norwegian krone, which will contribute to keeping domestic inflation low.
The reason for this is that those investing our money today are to a greater extent assessed – and thereby also rewarded – in relation to other agents and on a shorter-term basis than was the case in the world of traditional banking. It is also simpler to follow in others’ footsteps, as there is more information on what others are doing. The crises we have experienced in recent years have recurrently shown that events assessed as almost improbable can nevertheless occur sometimes and will then have a severe impact. To use Tage Danielsson’s words, this type of risk could be described as follows: Before the event occurred, it was extremely improbable that what happened could actually happen. There are still those who believe that what happened was so incredibly unlikely that it probably did not really happen. And one can understand that they have their doubts, because according to their probability calculations, this sort of event happens so rarely. And if what happened was really true, the risk of it happening  2/5  again is ridiculously slight. Actually, it was lucky it did happen. Because now we know that it is almost definite that it will not happen again. It is possible that there are some inherent mechanisms in the agents’ ways of acting that may lead to these risks being undervalued. One such mechanism could be the fact that they are evaluated in the short term.

It is important to deal with them in time. 5/5
Another is procedural requirements for using Norges Bank’s expertise appropriately. The Bank may, for example, have the right and a duty to issue an opinion. Finanstilsynet should in principle have to follow the advice provided by the Bank. If the advice is not followed, an explanation must be provided and made publicly available. In order to ensure a disciplined decision-making process, the relationship to the other components of economic policy must be clear. Macroprudential supervision must seek to reduce systemic risk and take monetary policy and fiscal policy as a given. The objective of monetary policy is low and stable inflation and to contribute to dampening fluctuations in output and employment. Monetary policy takes into account that pronounced movements in credit growth and house prices can feed through to inflation and output, but is not geared directly to stabilising the financial system. Conclusion Allow me to conclude. Norges Bank is no longer in search of a role. We no longer take part in corporatist processes. Norges Bank now has a less prominent role as advisor. We do not believe in economic fine-tuning, but we do have instruments that can ensure low and stable inflation over time. Macroprudential supervision is now being moulded. Norges Bank must critically evaluate the funding structures of banks that have access to our lending facilities. We must develop  16  BIS Review 154/2010  instruments that can induce banks to limit their short-term borrowing in domestic and foreign markets.

Exchange rate adjustments in the face of large capital inflows, however, are not without costs. An excessively rapid appreciation of the currency could be disruptive to the real economy, since there often are constraints in the adjustments of the real economy, from labor market frictions to pricing behaviors. Here we have a challenge and need to balance well. In general, we would allow the currency to appreciate to the extent that the movements are broadly consistent with the economic fundamentals and that they would not cause undue disruptions in the real sector. Let me note here that I think the Thai economy, over the years, has become more capable in coping with exchange rate movements. We see more risk protection via financial market instruments on the part of the private sector. Exporters, in particular, have been able to diversify in terms of product lines and market destinations. Nevertheless, from time to time there is still a need to dampen the pressures on the exchange rate, and central banks often resort to exchange rate intervention. While such intervention could help contain excess exchange rate volatility, its focus is at the end of the process. In other word, FX intervention is a “passive” mechanism in dealing with capital inflows. By the time of intervention, capital would have already flowed into the economy. Imbalances could have already built up.
Today, this kind of dominance is manifested through the inability or unwillingness of fiscal authorities to control long-run expenditure/GDP ratio. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  The recent period has outlined a different form of dominance: financial dominance, defined as the inability or unwillingness of the financial sector to absorb its losses. The presence of financial dominance constrains the manoeuvre room of both fiscal and monetary policies, due to the fact that fiscal authorities and/or central banks have to bail-out the financial sector. As pointed out by Benoît Cœuré (2015), for monetary policy, the problem stems mostly from inadequate supervision, at both micro-level (if supervisors show too much forbearance to under-capitalised banks, they can end up effectively shifting the burden onto monetary policy) and at macro-level (if supervisory policies allow banks to grow too rapidly, and then deleverage too slowly, it can also push the central bank into doing more), which can turn out in the ineffectiveness of monetary policy transmission mechanism. Let me say a few words about the issues of central bank independence in the context of required cooperation with the government in the post-crisis world. As we all know, from a historical perspective the prevalence of central bank independence is a relatively new institutional development, seen as a solution to the problem of time inconsistency of monetary policy and the stagflation of the ’70s. Is the post-crisis reality likely to dissolve the consensus about central bank independence?

Thomas Jordan: Switzerland – developments and challenges in 2012 from a monetary policy perspective Speech by Mr Thomas Jordan, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of the Swiss National Bank, Berne, 26 April 2013. *  *  *  Mr President of the Bank Council Dear Shareholders Dear Guests Once again, the European financial and debt crisis has dominated events of the past year. And, once again, the Swiss National Bank has been faced with considerable challenges in the conduct of its monetary policy. The crisis in Europe intensified in spring and summer and triggered strong upward pressure on the Swiss franc. This was pressure we had to withstand. In an already fraught global economic environment, an appreciation of the Swiss franc would have caused an inappropriate tightening in monetary conditions for Switzerland. This in turn would have compromised price stability and had potentially serious consequences for the Swiss economy. The SNB therefore enforced the minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20 per euro with the utmost determination. This called, at times, for a high level of activity on the foreign exchange market on the part of the SNB. The extensive purchases of foreign currency were reflected on our balance sheet. In my remarks today, I would like to start by addressing the key developments and challenges in 2012 from a monetary policy perspective and, at the same time, present you with our assessment of the current year.
In terms of the usual indicators of the financial development of a country – such as the size of the financial sector or access to financial services – Switzerland has one of the most advanced  1  Cf. Levine 2005. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  financial systems in the world.2 At the same time, the economic importance of the banking industry in this country is above average. It generates an annual gross value added of some 6% of GDP and currently employs about 150,000 people. In addition, at least in the years before the financial crisis, the industry made a significant contribution to overall economic growth.3 When banks are familiar with the local conditions and are also able to integrate knowledge concerning Swiss macroeconomic conditions into their business decisions, this enables them to provide particularly efficient services to the Swiss economy. It is therefore advantageous for our country to have locally established banks which make their decisions here in Switzerland. It is not only with services which benefit companies and households located in Switzerland that the Swiss banking industry creates value added. As we all know, the industry is also very active in the international arena – on the one hand, via exports,4 that is, through the cross- border provision of financial services from Switzerland, and on the other, through its actual presence abroad. In this respect, the most important source of income is the crossborder wealth management business for private customers.

At the same time, politicians and the authorities have the task of creating the business conditions which will support the banks in fulfilling these prerequisites. With the business conditions in mind, I will comment today on four factors which I regard as essential: First, relevant and effective regulations; second, maintenance of Switzerland’s economic and political stability; third, protection of the privacy of honest tax-paying bank customers; fourth, ensuring access to foreign markets. I would like to begin, however, by talking about the economic importance of the banking industry for Switzerland, as well as the fundamental challenges faced by this industry at present. Economic importance of the banking centre in Switzerland The banking system is often described as the life blood of the economy. With good reason. General economic prosperity and the development of the banking industry are closely related. When intermediation between capital supply and demand works well, a significant contribution is made to the prosperity of a country.1 It works the other way round, too. The banking centre benefits from a prospering economy, because the demand for financial services from companies and private households increases, not least in the area of management and investment of assets. Switzerland is a prime example of the positive interdependency between financial developments, on the one hand, and overall economic prosperity, on the other.
José Manuel González-Páramo: Central banks and the financial turmoil Speech by Mr José Manuel González-Páramo, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at the Eleventh Annual International Banking Conference “Credit Market Turmoil in 2007-08: Implications for Public Policy”, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Chicago, 25 September 2008. * 1. *  *  Introduction 1  Ladies and gentlemen, It is a great pleasure to be here in Chicago on the occasion of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Eleventh Annual International Banking Conference. Since its inception, this conference series has aimed to gather prominent academics, policy-makers and market participants to discuss issues of major importance for our banking industries, financial systems and economies at large, such as asset price bubbles, systemic financial instability, cross-border banking, or financial globalisation. Over time, a permanent concern of the organisers has been to focus on the implications for monetary and regulatory policies and, more generally, for public policies of such phenomena. It is fair to say that a great deal of knowledge has accumulated over time thanks to this series of conferences. It is also reasonable to reckon that the foundations of this body of knowledge have been put to the test by the financial market turmoil over the past year.

Many elements of requirements for the risk management framework contribute to risk governance. For instance, the requirement for effective board audit and risk committee, regular reviews of the effectiveness of the framework and its implementation and so on. The Board plays a critical role in risk governance. The Board sets standards and expectations that would influence the culture and management of the business, and ultimately, the quality of risk governance. Common shortcoming occurs when Board fails to serve as a sufficient “check and balance” on the activities of the senior management, causing the business to focus excessively on short-term growth at the expense of long term stakeholders’ interest. For this reason, Bank Negara Malaysia places greater expectation on the roles and responsibility of Board and senior management. This expectation can be found in many policy documents issued by Bank Negara Malaysia since the past several years and specifically provided for in the Financial Services Act (FSA) and the Islamic Financial Services Act (AFSA). For an institution’s risk governance to be effective, there must be a strong risk culture which is consistent with the institution’s espoused values and risk appetite. You may asked, how does Board assess risk culture? There isn’t simple and straightforward answer to this question. Some institutions undertake “climate review” among its management and staff to gauge the culture whilst another approach could involve focus group. Ultimately, audit, compliance and risk management functions would have opportunities in the course of their work to observe the risk culture throughout the business.