samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Figure 9 Commodity prices  (index, 01/01/2007=100) 300  300  250  250  200  200  150  150  100  100  50  50  0  0 07  08 Copper  09 WTI oil  10  Agricultural products (*)  11 Gold  (*) Using the Godman Sachs aggregate index. Sources: Central Bank of Chile and Bloomberg. Figure 10 Nominal interest rates on Central Bank of Chile bonds (*) (percent) 6.50  6.50  6.25  6.25  6.00  6.00  5.75  5.75  5.50  5.50  5.25  5.25  5.00  5.00  4.75  4.75  Jun.11  BCP-2  Jul.11  BCP-5  Ago.11 BCP-10  (*) Dotted vertical line marks date of publication of June 2011's Monetary Policy Report. Source: Central Bank of Chile.

Also, it is foreseen that the weakening of the developed world will have an impact on emerging economies which, in any case, will continue to outperform their developed counterparts. This projected world growth forecast is lower than consensus, which at the closing of this Report probably does not reflect the full effect of current financial turmoil. Nonetheless, incoming reports by investment banks do carry significant downward corrections for these developed economies, in line with the assumptions that make up our baseline scenario. As I said, concerns about an overheating of the emerging world and its consequences on inflation have subsided. Adjustments already made to the monetary policies of several economies, the weakening of the global economy, and the recent drop in commodity prices are behind this assessment. So, several countries have already suspended their cycles of policy rate increases and, in general, market expectations have adjusted to expect a flattened rate. In the developed economies, it is most likely that monetary policy will hold on to – or possibly even intensify – its current degree of expansiveness for some time. The Federal Reserve has just announced its intention to keep the fed funds rate at a minimum at least through mid-2013 (figure 11). All these facts combined will result in that the external impulse that the Chilean economy will be receiving over the coming quarters will be milder than previously estimated. On one hand, the worsened global performance will have a negative impact on our trading partners’ economies.
To do that, it has involved not only the stakeholders in the euro area, but also those in other countries of the European Union, Poland obviously included, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Communities outside the euro area will thus have the opportunity to participate in euro payment systems, and will be able to adopt SEPA standards and practices, thereby contributing to the establishment of a single market for payment services. The EPC plans first SEPA products to come on the market at the beginning of the next year. Therefore, today’s Bank Forum is an excellent opportunity for an in-depth discussion on the role and place of the Polish payment infrastructure in the SEPA world. Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to present you the discussants of our panel, in alphabetical order: Mr. Ryszard Drużyński, Vice President of Raiffeisen Bank Polska, Mr. Krzysztof Kalicki, President of the Management Board of Deutsche Bank Polska, Mr. Ronnie Richardson, President of the Management Board of Kredyt Bank, Mr. Witold Zieliński, Vice President of the Management Board of Citibank Handlowy. I would like this discussion to be broad and dynamic, that's why feel free to join it. First, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that changes ahead of us are needed to move towards a more integrated payments market, which will bring substantial economic benefits. The SEPA will not only introduce more comparable services, but will also foster competition and drive innovation.

Such “regulatory arbitrage” is problematic if the resulting non bank forms of financial intermediation replicate the systemic risks posed by banking itself. It is therefore of some importance that, during the crisis, elements of liquidity and de facto solvency support were extended, especially in America, to a number of non-bank  1  A good narrative of the events around “shadow banking” is the USA is provided by Kroszner and Melick in “The Response of the Federal Reserve to the Recent Banking and Financial Crisis”, presented at An Ocean Apart? Comparing Transatlantic Responses to the Financial Crisis, in Rome, 10-11 September 2009. See also William Dudley in “More lessons from the crisis”, remarks at the Center for Economic Policy Studies (CEPS) Symposium, Princeton, New Jersey, November 2009; and Adrian T and Shin H S (2009), “The Shadow Banking System: Implications for Financial Regulation”, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Report no. 382. 2  See Tucker P M W (2009d), “Regimes for Handling Bank Failures: Redrawing the Banking Social Contract”, at the British Bankers’ Association’s Annual International Conference, London. BIS Review 6/2010  1  financial intermediaries, underlining the question of whether the perimeters of the banking system had been in the right place. I am not, therefore, using “shadow banking” to refer to any old channel for credit intermediation other than bank lending. The corporate bond markets do not amount to a shadow bank.
The FSAP is also expected to include implications of international interlinkages but I admit that this part has become gradually more difficult as a result of the increased scale, scope and complexity of financial institutions and markets conducting cross-border activities. To be blunt: How do you assess the effects on the Swedish financial system from our internationally-active banks which practice centralised funding activities and even to some extent credit registration? How do you look at banks organised along product lines, while regulation and supervision mostly is national? This is the rationale for moving to regional FSAPs in order to catch issues we might miss if we focus on monitoring single country financial systems only. The FSAP has significant added value embedded in its integrated approach. The integrated approach implies that we assess, for instance, whether weaknesses in public institutions or in other preconditions undermine efficient regulation and supervision; or whether volatile macro economic conditions hinder the effective functioning of financial markets and institutions. We also assess whether there is an appropriate balance in the financial sector; as an example, some countries are excessively reliant on a dominating banking sector. Finally, stress tests are performed to identify possible causes for threats to financial sector stability and also to identify where the first signs of instability might emerge – such as in banks, other financial intermediaries or in the payments system. This approach links together the different parts and presents an integrated view of the overall situation.

The IMF may certainly to some extent assist Europe in such assessments, but the EU should also make its own arrangements for selfassessments. BIS Review 52/2006  5
Figure 12 The effect of an amortisation requirement on household indebtedness according to current proposals Per cent 220  220 Scenario without measures Amortisation requirements  210  210  200  200  190  190  180  180  170  170  160  160  150  150  140  140  130  130 05  10  15  20  25  Note. Broken red line shows an estimate of developments over the next 10 years without further measures. Shaded area indicates a feasible lower limit for when the risks are elevated in the economy. Broken yellow line shows an estimate of the effect of an amortisation requirement according to current proposals. Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank. A change to tax relief on mortgage interest could lead to a faster and more direct effect on household indebtedness, as it affects all borrowers. However, as a reduction in tax relief initially raises mortgage costs, it is likely that existing mortgage borrowers do not pay down their loans immediately. The effect on the total debt-to-income ratio therefore occurs gradually, even in the case of changes to tax relief. According to these calculations, it is only  19  A borrower with medium indebtedness in Sweden taking out a new mortgage, or increasing existing loans, only amortises at a rate which leads to the new loan being repaid in 56 years.

Since 2017, MAS has been issuing warnings about the substantial risks of investing in cryptocurrencies. MAS sees good potential in stablecoins provided they are securely backed by high quality reserves and well regulated. Stablecoins are tokens whose value is tied to another asset, usually fiat currencies such as the US dollar. They seek to combine the credibility that comes from their supposed stability, with the benefits of tokenisation, that allow them to be used as payment instruments on distributed ledgers. Stablecoins are beginning to find acceptance outside of the crypto ecosystem. Some firms like Mastercard have integrated popular stablecoins into their payment services. This can be a positive development if stablecoins can make payments cheaper, faster, and safer. But to reap the benefits of stablecoins, regulators must ensure that they are indeed stable. I will talk more about this later. MAS sees good potential for wholesale CBDCs, especially for cross-border payments and settlements. CBDCs are the direct liability of, and payment instrument, of a central bank. This means that holders of CBDCs will have a direct claim on the central bank that has issued them, similar to how physical currency works today. Wholesale CBDCs are restricted to use by financial institutions. They are akin to the balances which commercial banks place with a central bank today. Wholesale CBDCs on a distributed ledger have the potential to achieve atomic settlement, or the exchange of two linked assets in real-time. They have the potential to radically transform cross-border payments, which today are slow, expensive, and opaque.
Really important people are treated by teams rather than a single doctor, and when legal decisions reach the highest level of appeal it is to a panel of judges such as the Law Lords and the Supreme Court, not a single individual, to whom the case is referred. Decisions that depend on technical knowledge seem, by revealed preference, to be given to groups rather than individuals, and setting interest rates by committee is no exception. A wide-ranging survey undertaken by the Centre for Central Banking Studies at the Bank of England found that 79 central 1 banks out of a sample of 88 use some form of committee structure when setting monetary policy. But there is, by its very nature, rather little empirical evidence on the relative merits of decision-making by individuals versus groups. And, even if one accepts that some decisions should be delegated to technical experts, what is the best way to weight together the opinions of those experts? This problem motivated Alan Blinder - a former Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board - and his colleague John Morgan at Princeton to adopt a different approach: carrying out two ‘laboratory experiments’ using groups of Princeton students to test whether groups do indeed make decisions 2 differently. Their first experiment was purely statistical: subjects were asked to identify when a one-off change in the proportions of red and blue balls in an electronic urn took place.

Congress learned of the availability of the transcripts shortly after this, and in February 1995, insisted that they be published with a five-year lag. Once committee members became aware that their meetings were being recorded, the structure of the discussion appeared to change. Before 1995 meetings had begun with prepared speeches followed by a freeflowing debate characterised by a frank exchange of ideas. But after 1995, there appears to be a much greater tendency for meetings to become an exchange of prepared statements, and some of the colour of the previous discussion may have been lost. Explanations of decisions in the form of press statements issued at the time of the announcement of decisions on interest rates have become less frequent. But this is principally because there have been fewer interest rate changes recently. In its first three years, the Committee moved rates 16 times and issued press statements on 14 of those occasions. It also issued two statements when it had not moved rates. Over the past two years the Committee changed rates seven times, accompanied by six statements, with no statements when rates were left unchanged. The purpose of a press statement is to explain a decision reached, by definition by a majority of the Committee. Because it is brief it cannot do justice to the richness of the discussion at the Committee, and the balance of views is not represented.
To give you just some data, if we compare the result of bank surveys in the euro area and the US in October, we see that the percentage of banks adopting tighter credit standards with medium and large corporations has risen to 84% in the United States compared with 68% in the euro area, and where residential mortgages and home loans are concerned, that figure stands at 69% in the United States as opposed to 36% in the euro area. That said, the European economy, which is also suffering a major slowdown, shows a great deal of inflexibility on the supply side, with a big drop in productivity and persistent unit labour cost dynamics, which instead remain more moderate in the United States. Inflation could thus drop more slowly in the euro area, especially in its domestic component, and have a more serious impact on employment. For example, in the second quarter of this year wages increased by 3.1% in the US, more or less in line with the 3.5% in the euro area, but due to higher labour productivity growth in the US unit labour costs have increased only by 0.6%, against 3.2% in the euro area. Finally, despite the different developments in the monetary policy stance, market interest rates, especially those that really matter for households and firms, have not been substantially divergent. In some cases, they are actually more favourable in the euro area.

The EU Member States’ constitutions, on the other hand, tend more towards the principle of proportional representation, which some consider to be in favour of universal programs designed to benefit various groups and thus higher government spending. 25 It is common knowledge that, in an effort to avoid the pitfalls of unsustainable budget policies, the Maastricht Treaty and the 1997 Stability and Growth Pact lay down the conditions necessary for safeguarding budget discipline within a monetary union. The Pact’s underlying philosophy in the budget field is that countries must structurally pursue breakeven budgets or a budget surplus, in order to then allow automatic stabilisers to function without any restriction. This institutional setup, comprising constraints of an almost constitutional nature in the field of budget policy, is different from that in the United States where tax regulations are in some ways more flexible, although they have been much altered in recent decades. It has been repeatedly proposed to introduce a break-even budget rule in the United States, but it has not happened yet. Another example of the importance assigned to discretionality over regulations in the United States can be seen in the fact that, while the overall debt is nominally subject to a ceiling approved by Congress, that ceiling is in fact regularly modified, thus in actual fact it is not binding at all. For example, the deficit targets established in the 1985 Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act (Gramm-Rudman Act) were abundantly breached and later relaxed.
As you are aware, finance can be looked at as the oil that lubricates smooth economic growth and therefore any impediments to accessing this important resource has an adverse impact on the country’s economic growth prospects. The Study and this Conference have come at an opportune time when we are focusing on enabling all Zambians to be empowered financially and ultimately economically so that we reduce the high levels of poverty in the country. I have no doubt that the findings of the study, will stimulate profound discussions which will shape the efforts going forward on financial inclusion and promulgate the financial inclusion agenda to all Zambians. Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, It will, however, take deliberate policies and long-term commitment from all stakeholders beyond the study for us to ensure financial inclusion of women. It will further require constant review of the policies, re-assessment of priorities, and adequate financial resources to effectively implement interventions to promote women’s access to finance. This entails integration of gender-specific perspectives at the design stage of policies and programmes to provide for inclusion of clauses more equitable access to financial assets and services by women. In the past few decades, the state of the financial sector in Zambia has been characterised by low financial intermediation that witnessed limited access to financial services particularly for the rural population and the low-to-middle income earners, high cost of funds and underdeveloped money and capital markets.

Michael Gondwe: Women’s access to financial services in Zambia Opening remarks by Dr Michael Gondwe, Governor of the Bank of Zambia, at the “Women’s Access to Financial Services in Zambia – Dissemination and Consultation Conference”, Lusaka, 24 June 2014. *  *  *  •  Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance;  •  Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Gender and Child Development  •  Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Commerce  •  Bank of Zambia Board Members  •  Your Excellences, High Commissioners and Ambassadors to Zambia present;  •  The United Nations Development Programme Country Director, Ms Viola Morgan;  •  The African Development Bank Country Representatives; Dr Freddie Kwesiga;  •  Representatives from the International labour Organisation (ILO);  •  Deputy Governor Administration, Bank of Zambia Dr. Tukiya Kankasa-Mabula  •  New Faces, New Voices Representative, Ms Nomsa Daniels  •  Chairpersons of the Boards of Commercial Banks,  •  Chief Executive Officers of Banks and Other Organisations;  •  Senior Staff and Colleagues from Bank of Zambia;  •  Members of the Press;  •  Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen. It is my honour and privilege to welcome you all to this conference on Women’s Financial Inclusion in Zambia. May I extend a special welcome to delegates that have come from abroad. I wish you a good stay and hope you will have time to visit the various places of interest and sample the food that Lusaka offers.
The two questions relate to two different externalities. The first is a network externality. Money overcomes the constraint of the double coincidence of wants implied by barter exchange, a view set out in detail by Carl Menger (1892) and which is modelled explicitly in Nobuhiru Kiyotaki and Randall Wright (1989). More recently, the existence of money has been linked to the information structure of the economy. Agents have imperfect information about their potential trading partner’s credit history which explains the emergence of a private sector medium of exchange as an alternative to an extension of credit (Narayana Kocherlakota, 1998). Our willingness to use and hold money is greater the more that money is used by other people. There is, therefore, a network effect. One can imagine, and indeed Friedrich Hayek (1976) advocated, a system in which anyone is allowed to issue money. The private sector may well co-ordinate on using the money of the ‘best’ issuer, and that issuer’s behaviour may be kept in check by the threat of entry. But competitive monies have arisen only rarely and in situations where government money is either absent (as, for example, in Robert Radford’s (1945) study of cigarette money in POW camps) or very badly managed (as in periods of hyperinflation). Despite the abolition of foreign exchange controls, as recommended by Hayek, competition among national currencies has not lessened the dominance, within each economy, of a single public money. Network externalities make it difficult for competing currencies to emerge.

First, they expand the possibility frontier of the technology of collective decisions and can be designed to raise the cost of those decisions deviating from pre-announced contingent paths. Second, they are set up explicitly to exercise a degree of discretion - “constrained discretion” - subject to the broad objective of price stability. Discretion is inevitable because of the need to learn about the economic environment. Institutions thereby become repositories of experience and knowledge which they communicate to society as a whole. III. Case Study I: Exchange rate regimes in Brazil and the UK  I want to illustrate the importance of institutions and the credibility of their stability by three case studies. My first example concerns the collapse of exchange rate regimes in Europe and Latin America. It demonstrates that economic institutions require a broad base of political support if financial markets are to believe that those institutions are likely to survive. For a while fixed exchange rate regimes enjoyed a degree of support in both Europe, with the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), and Latin America. But experience shows that, in terms of credibility in financial markets, the design of those policy regimes was less important than the fact of their having broad political support. Brazil in 1998-99 is a case in point. In 1998 Brazil operated a crawling peg exchange rate regime.