samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
While there is arguably some logic to this argument, investors clearly have other alternatives if they seek exposure to the price of gold. There is no doubt that no hedging at all would have been better from a shareholder’s perspective than the kind of pro-cyclical policy that was followed in the past. Nonetheless, it seems to me, we cannot rule out that the gold mining industry will start increasing its hedging activities again at some point in the future. Fifth argument: central banks will adopt a homogenous attitude towards gold. At the end of 2005, central banks had officially declared reserves of around USD 3,500bn. Of this amount, around 15% was invested in gold (Graph 3). The proportion of gold varies considerably from one country to another. For instance, it amounted to more than 70% for the United States, 50% for the Eurozone, 40% for Switzerland, 4% for India, 2% for Japan but less than one percent for Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Korea or Malaysia. These variations have always been a source of market rumours. At the end of the nineties, the prevailing question was: what if European central banks would reduce their gold holdings to 10% of their reserves? Now, the question is: what if Asian central banks would increase their holdings to 10% of their reserves? I doubt that in the foreseeable future, these national discrepancies related to gold reserves will diminish significantly, let alone disappear.

Countries have different geopolitical situations, different historical backgrounds, different levels of development and different functions for their official reserves. These differences give rise to different priorities with regard to the role of gold reserves. 4  BIS Review 61/2006  Graph 3: Evolution of World Official Reserves  in USD billion  Gold Reserves  Currency Reserves  4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 Jan 95  Jan 96  Jan 97  Jan 98  Jan 99  Jan 00  Jan 01  Jan 02  Jan 03  Jan 04  Jan 05  Sixth argument: increasing living standards will boost private gold demand in emerging Asia My comments on this last argument will be brief. As often when looking at economic issues, there are substitution and income effects at work. On the one hand, prosperous Asian workers will be able to save and consume more, which should be reflected by an increased demand for gold. On the other hand, as financial markets and banking systems become more developed and more secure in today’s emerging economies, the palette of alternative saving vehicles will increase and we should expect the relative proportion of wealth invested in gold to decrease. In other words, we might expect the income effect to be strong at the beginning before receding and giving way to the substitution effect. Conclusions Despite the demonetisation of gold, the yellow metal continues to have a special significance for central banks.
14  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Annex 1: The UK balance sheet and the crisis  Chart 1: Private saving and investment Prior to the crisis the private sector financial balance had moved from small surplus of around 2% of GDP in 2003 to a slight deficit (Chart 1). Housing investment increased by around 1.5pp of national output; but private sector saving fell by around the same amount. That was the counterpart of a doubling in the UK’s net borrowing from abroad, the current account deficit, to reach around –3% of GDP. Chart 2: Household saving and financial flows The household sector accounted for the fall in private sector saving (Chart 2); its saving rate fell to just 3%. Younger households, including first-time home buyers, accumulated mortgage debt to acquire properties whose value was appreciating. Older households, including “last- time sellers” and those scaling down, realised housing equity and invested the proceeds in financial assets. BIS central bankers’ speeches  15  Chart 3: UK household debt Overall, household debt rose from 90% of income in 1997 to 160% by 2007 (Chart 3); and from 30% of financial wealth to over 50%. In real terms, house prices rose to nearly 2½ times their level a decade earlier; and the ratio of house prices to earnings almost doubled to approach 9x, up from around 5x in 1997. The corporate sector was a net saver in the five years prior to the crisis, running a financial surplus of 2–3% of GDP.

4  Represented by, for example, Bernanke (2005), “The Global Savings Glut and the US Current Account Deficit”. 5  See King (2011), “Global imbalances: the perspective of the Bank of England”. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  So we need richer stories to make sense of what happened. It is precisely in that spirit that colleagues at the Bank for International Settlements6 have stressed the importance of gross capital flows. As Cecchetti has emphasised, whereas global current account balances (the counterpart of net capital flows) expanded in the twenty years to 2007 from about 1% of world GDP to about 3%, the gross capital outflows of all countries increased from around 3% to over 15% of world GDP (Chart 5). And the aggregate international investment position of all countries7 increased from under 50% to over 150% of annual world GDP. Opening up the possibility that gross capital flows matter transforms the picture. For example, as Borio points out, Europe’s gross capital flows were enormous, accounting for around half of gross inflows into the US in the run up to the crisis. And sufficient of that was invested in US ABS for the US’s mortgage crisis to be transmitted across the Atlantic, including to France and Germany, pretty well instantly in 2007 – and before the solvency of the banking system was in doubt. Even if gross and net flows had been equal, wouldn’t the composition of those flows have made a difference?
Being a modern bank, it conducts business principally on the Internet. IIB has a series of quite attractive Internet pages where its products are offered. These pages spell out the products, deposit terms and interest rates, and loan terms and interest rates. All agreements are governed by the law of Atlantis. All deposits are deemed received over IIB’s “counters” in Atlantis, and all loans are paid out of Atlantis. Atlantis has an enjoyable ambiance even exceeding that of Nice and Saint Paul de Vence; therefore, I see no need to leave the island. I do receive and entertain customers when they visit Atlantis. I do place telephone calls to customers who have responded to my Internet page, but I do not make cold calls to customers. Communications with customers over the Internet are state-of-the-art secure. Customers receive account statements over the Internet, issue payment instruments to IIB over the Internet, and request loans over the Internet. All payments to and from accounts are made by wire transfer to IIB’s correspondent account maintained on the books of Atlantis Bank, the only bank chartered under Atlantis law authorized to engage in banking transactions with Atlantis residents. Customers may instruct IIB to make payments for their account. These too are consummated by means of payments out of IIB’s account at Atlantis Bank. Loans are disbursed and paid the same way. The question presented is whether IIB is violating the law of the countries in which its customers are located.

The time lag in product markets can, however, delay this effect somewhat, as was the case when the krone appreciated in 2001 and 2002. In addition, a weaker krone increases activity, profitability and the capacity to pay in the Norwegian business sector. Higher demand and wage growth may lead to higher inflation through enterprises’ price-setting. In the long run, wages must be commensurate with the value added that is generated by workers. Real wage growth is thus determined over time by developments in labour productivity in all sectors of the economy. With productivity growth at the historical level of about 2 per cent, wage growth of about  BIS Review 50/2003  3  4½ per cent over time will be consistent with Norway’s inflation target of 2½ per cent. Wage growth that is lower than 4½ per cent will boost employment and wage growth that is higher will reduce employment. Through 2003, the differential between Norwegian and foreign interest rates has narrowed considerably. This has also contributed to a substantial depreciation of the krone. The depreciation of the krone will make imported consumer goods more expensive, but will also improve competitiveness for Norwegian enterprises. Interest rate differentials are also affected by cyclical developments abroad. Subdued economic growth internationally, high levels of activity and a sharp rise in labour costs in Norway resulted in a wide interest rate differential between Norway and its trading partners in 2001 and 2002. This made it profitable to invest in NOK, and the krone appreciated.
Thus the modern central bank is really akin to keeping peace in the nation through enhancing stability and it’s other people’s jobs to create wealth or turmoil as the case may be, the turmoil being a necessary instrument in coming to the right policies or at time the wrong ones or in an ever worse ending turmoil without apparent purpose as is so often the case in emerging markets. But it certainly is not now deemed the function of the central bank to be doing this sort of thing. So central bankers can now claim that they are basically trying to create peace and hopefully in a peaceful economy, there will be better prosperity than a wildly gyrating one. In a peaceful economy, growing stably at a high but sustainable rate, one cannot expect that there will be no criminals hidden deep down somewhere inside the society. A new instrument has therefore been added to the arsenal of monetary policy and financial supervision in the anti-money laundering legislations. The first anti-money laundering legislation was issued in 1970 by the US government. The mechanism is generally that cash deposit of more than the minimum stipulated amount would be examined. In the case of Thailand, this legislation was issued in April and became effective in August 1999. The central bank participated fully in the draft and cooperates with its implementation.

Before you ask, we are of course trying to rectify this, trying to get banking down to 55% of total credit by the year 2010, and in the last three years, somehow we have got the debt market which was before then nonexistent to be double the size of the stock market. But it takes life times and generations to change people’s habits and the nature of the country. The world monetary system could in fact be monitored quite easily if the superpowers of the world would only wish it to be done. It sends forces to keep peace in other countries, so it could quite just as well impose a system , a world monetary system that would significantly reduce this kind of crisis. But the only crisis which might have affected the superpowers were the LTCM crisis of the 1998 and the Asian crisis of 1997 and it soon became apparent that the suffering could mainly be kept to the poor nationsand so it looks as though nothing good is going to happen in the international arena. Let me end my statement therefore by saying that before coming here I looked at the list of speakers and participants and was truly impressed by the diversity and excellence. I have therefore tried to put some interesting thoughts in the area of national central banking for your perusal. All of us here wish for peace and prosperity in the world.
In the slightly longer term, however, developments in indebtedness and also property prices will slow down. Quite simply, it is not sustainable in the long run for households to allow their debts to grow more rapidly than their incomes. Households would ultimately be unable to pay their loans. In the long run it is more probable that indebtedness and house prices will increase roughly at the same rate as nominal growth in the economy. This type of adjustment to more restrained growth rates will normally occur smoothly, as households begin to feel that their finances cannot tolerate a higher level of indebtedness. If there is an overly sharp correction, it could lead to weak growth in the economy for a long period of time. In this case it would also have effects on inflation. Given these consequences, it is not reasonable to entirely ignore the risks with such rapid growth in house prices and loans. There may also be justification for taking these factors into account when we make our monetary policy decisions. To contribute to some extent to a smoother adjustment, we have therefore chosen on a couple of occasions to raise the interest rate slightly sooner than planned. This method of reasoning was also one reason why I entered a reservation against the decision to keep the repo rate unchanged at the most recent monetary policy meeting at the beginning of May. I advocated raising the repo rate by 0.25 percentage points.

A review of the national accounts shows that the level of consumption over the last three years was ultimately much higher than we had thought: almost $ billion more. Moreover, the speed of the economy's adjustment has been slower than expected. In the projection scenario that I will now share with you, the improved performance in early 2023 leads to an upward revision of this year's GDP growth projection. However, the economy will continue adjusting in the coming quarters. Therefore, for 2024 our projection is corrected downward. With this, the cumulative growth between 2023 and 2024 does not differ much from what was forecast in the December Report. Total inflation will continue to decline in the coming quarters. According to our projections, it will return to single digits during the second quarter. However, I want to be emphatic in pointing out that this does not mean the inflationary problem has been solved, much less inflationary convergence is assured. Our goal is to bring inflation down to 3% in two years. Higher inflation is very costly for everyone. The global economic outlook has turned more difficult since early March. For the Chilean economy, this will imply facing lower external demand and tighter global financial conditions. Overall, the current scenario is associated with a higher degree of uncertainty than usual. On the one hand, there is the risk of a sharper deterioration of the external scenario, with more profound implications for Chile.
In its conduct of monetary policy, Norges Bank focuses on the fundamental preconditions for achieving exchange rate stability against the euro. First, price and cost inflation must be brought down towards the corresponding aim for inflation for the European Central Bank (ECB). At the same time, monetary policy must not in itself contribute to deflationary recessions as this could undermine confidence in the krone. There are few significant differences between Norway's actual response pattern and that of countries with explicit inflation targets. Price and cost inflation must be steered towards that aimed at by the ECB. However, in Norway fiscal policy has traditionally had an important role in stabilisation policy. This has reduced the burden on monetary policy. In addition, the Norwegian wage determination system has probably contributed in periods to dampening the impact of shocks hitting the economy. Monetary policy influences price and cost inflation with a time lag of perhaps one to three years. In consequence, projections for price and cost inflation with a horizon of a couple of years play an important part in the setting of interest rates. From the time interest rate decisions are taken until the interest rate has an impact on prices and costs, various types of disturbance occur which influence price and cost inflation. Thus it is not possible to maintain full control over developments in prices and costs. Actual price and cost developments normally deviate somewhat from earlier projections.

In order to evaluate in retrospect the monetary policy that has been conducted, we can also examine developments in actual inflation and the krone exchange rate. It should be mentioned, however, that we cannot solely consider whether developments in inflation and the exchange rate have been satisfactory in relation to the objective. We must also, on a discretionary basis, evaluate whether the exchange rate and inflation could have been stabilised at lower real economic costs. When assessing monetary policy in retrospect, the decision-making basis that existed at the time must be taken into account. The decision-making basis may change as a result of revisions to data or new information about economic developments, or our interpretation of the information available may simply change. Even though it is difficult to find a simple and precise performance measure, some general evaluation criteria may be identified. If the krone exchange rate is stable at approximately the initial range, as defined in the Exchange Rate Regulation, and inflation is approximately on a par with the level aimed at by the ECB, it may be said that monetary policy, on the basis of the objective established, has been successful. With a weak exchange rate and high inflation, it is natural to raise critical questions about monetary policy. It may then have been too expansionary. Similarly, with a strong exchange rate and with inflation close to zero or deflation, monetary policy has probably been too tight.
Through negotiations in the WTO, earlier on the GATT, agreements have been reached on removal of trade barriers, dismantling of tariff barriers, removal of subsidies, introduction of anti-dumping measures, and agreements have been entered into for textiles, agricultural products and other goods and services. Today, almost all countries participate as members or observers in these negotiations and the issues are far-ranging. Political changes in many regions have amplified the tendency of increased globalization. Over the past few decades, China has changed course and is now a member of the WTO. Its share of total exports is growing rapidly. The countries within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have increased their exports markedly since the early 1990s. India is at the starting-line. Many of these countries have large labour forces that offer their services at very low wages, and these labour resources are available to companies that compete on world markets. The working-age population in rural China for instance is nearly the same as that of the entire OECD area. Many are seeking new opportunities and work in the urban areas. Low labour costs and more efficient transport and communication attract labour-intensive production. Production of goods and services is being transferred from Norway and other high-cost countries to amongst others the Baltic countries, Poland, China, India or other emerging economies. There are many examples showing that competition in selling highly skilled services is also intensifying. Norwegians are offered myopia surgery in Turkey.

Christian Noyer: The outlook for the economies of the euro area and France Speech by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, at the Paris Europlace International Financial Forum, New York, 14 April 2014. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to be here with you today for this Paris Europlace International Financial Forum. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the whole Paris Europlace team for their great work on this specific event and, more generally, for their commitment to the French financial sector. I would like to provide you with a quick overview of the outlook for the economies of the euro area and for France. 1. The economic and financial situation in the euro area  I shall start by updating you on the current situation in the euro area. As you know, the second quarter of 2013 marked a turning point in that it put an end to six consecutive quarters of recession. The euro area economy finally saw a return to positive growth, with a 0.3% expansion, and this was confirmed in the third quarter with 0.1% growth, and again in the fourth quarter with 0.3% growth. The recovery in 2013 was modest and unequal across countries. However, it still reflects a sharp improvement in the overall trend, which is continuing and gradually getting stronger.
Looking ahead, volatility in global capital markets may have a pronounced impact on the value of the GPFG, to both the upside and the downside. Good institutions can enable us to use favourable periods to create long-term value. The same institutions can also help us through less favourable periods without permanent damage. And, unlike either good or bad luck, institutions, as a rule, are more permanent. The future management model for the GPFG is ultimately a matter of institutions that are supposed to be long-lasting. Norges Bank’s societal and constitutional role has provided a stable framework for the fund. Should the framework that the Bank can provide still be the decisive factor, or has the fund now become so large and investment management so extensive, that the assets can be best preserved and grown in a separate organisation? The Commission’s recommendation and the ensuing debate show that there is a wide range of views. The discussion reflects both the evolution towards an increasingly complex fund and the fund’s key role in Norwegian politics and Norway’s economy. But once the decision is made, the issue of the fund’s future organisation must be regarded as settled. Regardless of the outcome, we must be prepared to live with the chosen governance model for many years to come. Broad political consensus is an effective guarantee in this context. 1 Regjeringen.no: Pressemelding 16.02.2017 Økt aksjeandel i pensjonsfondet og justert anslag for  fondsavkastningen” 2 The non-oil deficit as a percentage of total general government expenditure.

Then, and provided that precedence is respected, the ECB can support the economic policies of the EU on a broader scale. The legal formulation of the Treaty is an abstract determination of priorities. To define the objective precisely and establish a relationship between the objective and the policy – consistently conducted and communicated – a strategy is needed. 1  I wish to thank Tobias Linzert, Stefano Nardelli, Massimo Rostagno and Arthur Saint-Guilhem for their contribution to this speech. I remain solely responsible for the opinions contained herein. 2  Michel Aglietta: “Money: a matter of credit and trust”, Journées internationales d’économie monétaire et bancaire, Lyon, 6–7 juin 2002. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  The strategy of the ECB makes the Treaty mandate more precise in three respects. First, it provides a quantitative definition of “price stability” by indicating a range for year-on-year changes in the harmonised index of consumer prices which the ECB considers consistent with conditions of stable prices. That does not necessarily mean zero inflation. The price stability range that the ECB considers equivalent to “stable prices” covers positive inflation rates lower than 2%. Second, the strategy identifies, within that range, inflation levels which the Governing Council of the ECB aims for, in its monthly policy decision. We aim at inflation rates that are below, but close to, 2%.