samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In case of a favorable macroeconomic scenario, particularly one in which the job-rich growth observed in 2004 and 2005 continues over the period 2006-2008, the deficit could decline more than set forth in the Convergence Programme, even in the absence of consolidation measures but also without the introduction of new, deficit-increasing legislation. A stronger deficit reduction could be additionally supported by the implementation of the new Public Finance Act, which should contribute to more efficient fiscal management. Unfortunately, these upside risks to deficit targets in the Convergence Programme are far outweighed by downside risks in the form of new deficit-increasing legislation. This includes the recently proposed 4.5 point cut in social contribution rates. While this measure would bring about the much needed reduction of the tax wedge on labour income, it would cost the budget more than 1% of GDP in foregone revenue. Therefore it is essential that it should be accompanied by cuts in spending. Instead, it is more likely that spending will increase, with, among other measures, salary hikes promised to various groups of public employees, as well as more generous social assistance and pension indexation formulas. To sum up, in the medium-term horizon, Poland should be in a position to achieve a general government balance in line with the Maastricht fiscal criteria. This would require moderate discipline in public spending, which unfortunately does not appear very likely at the present moment.

In the Bank of Thailand’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting held last month, the committee also shared the view that the global economy is returning to growth with the main impetus being the policy stimulus and a turn in the inventory cycle. Looking ahead, prospect for the recovery to continue into next year appears strong given the policy room that exists in the advanced economies to support growth. Nonetheless, it also needs to be said that downside risks to recovery remain, as uncertainty that can hold back the recovery momentum remains large. In the case of the advanced economies, the key uncertainties include: first, the high rates of unemployment which could stifle the momentum of consumer spending and private demand – the US unemployment rate in October was 10.2 percent; second, the large fiscal debt positions which could heighten investor’s concern on fiscal sustainability and put upward  pressure on long-term interest rates; and third, problems in the advanced economies’ banking systems that could act as a drag on growth because of limited credit availability. These are the uncertainties in the advanced economies that could mark down the pace of global recovery going forward. Moreover, high and rising oil prices could also act as a deterrent to economic recovery worldwide. Therefore, notwithstanding the consensus on the next year’s return to growth, there remains a risk that global economic recovery going forward could be choppy and sluggish.
Broad money growth, adjusted for transactions between financial intermediaries, is now rising at around 4½% a year, a rate that should, if maintained, show up in a recovery during 2013. Credit conditions have improved, and should improve further as the impact of the Funding for Lending Scheme kicks in. Mortgage rates have fallen, especially for high loan to value mortgages. Big companies have large holdings of cash and ready access to capital markets. Equity prices are nearly 10% higher than last January. If the policy prescriptions I mentioned earlier were adopted, then confidence that we were moving in the right direction should translate into higher business and housing investment, and underpin the recovery. Recent actions by central banks and governments in a number of industrialised countries have raised questions about the frameworks within which monetary policy is being conducted. In the UK, the inflation target was introduced almost 21 years ago, and it has now come of age. It would be sensible to review the arrangements for setting monetary policy. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Last October I reviewed the first two decades of experience with the inflation target. In that speech, I argued that there were times when a concern for financial stability might justify deviating from the inflation target, but that policies aimed directly at preventing too rapid an expansion of financial balance sheets, of the kind now available to the Bank’s Financial Policy Committee, might be a less costly way, in terms of lost output and employment, of achieving overall stability.

We wish to support your efforts to enhance the adequacy of capital in a manner that conforms with your institutions’ risk profiles, strengthens the management of risk, and fortifies the stability of your financial systems. Concluding thoughts on the New Accord Clearly, all of us have come a long way since 1988, regardless of whether we were the first or simply the most recent supervisors to adopt the original Accord. As we develop new approaches to capital adequacy, none of the milestones we’ve achieved, and none of our success in resolving open issues, would have been possible without the dedication that you, the members of the global supervisory community, have demonstrated. You have been enormously supportive of our work and have undertaken considerable pains to share your views and ideas. The members of the Committee and I are particularly grateful to our friends and colleagues in the rest of the supervisory community for your advice and counsel. We know that none of us will be able to claim individually the success of the New Accord as our own. Instead, it is dependent on all of us to work hard and promote the virtues and benefits of the New Accord in our own countries. Press releases and some encouraging words from supervisors will not suffice. Success will demand our mutual and dogged determination to encourage our banks, to prepare our staff, and to cooperate with each other.
Not only the Riksbank, but also several other central banks have in recent years faced a situation where the economy has grown strongly, while inflation has been below target, despite very expansionary monetary policy. Let me therefore go on to discuss an important issue that has arisen due to developments in recent years, namely how to deal with a situation where structural changes contribute to inflation remaining low over a long period of time. In Sweden, the upswing in world trade has contributed to strong growth in Swedish exports. Over the past year, domestic demand has also developed strongly, partly due to stimulation from expansionary monetary policy. At the same time, inflation has been kept down by high productivity growth and weak growth in import prices. This is partly related to developments in economic activity. However, there also appear to be factors of a more structural nature behind the low inflationary pressure. This is probably to some extent connected to the fairly comprehensive investment in new technology. However, it is clearly also largely concerned with the effects of increased global competition. Our analyses thus indicate that the low inflation rate has in many cases been the result of a number of changes in the supply side of the economy. Our forecast is that growth in the Swedish economy will remain high over the coming years. We also envisage inflation rising as capacity utilisation increases.

According to this Act, the objective of monetary policy is to maintain price stability. The Riksbank has specified this as an inflation target, which states that the annual rate of change in CPI should be 2 per cent, with a permitted deviation of ± 1 percentage point. The Riksbank shall also promote a safe and efficient payment system. The preliminary work to the Sveriges Riksbank Act also makes clear that the Riksbank as a public authority under the Riksdag, without neglecting the price stability target, should support the general economic policy objectives of sustainable growth and high employment. The Sveriges Riksbank Act also established increased independence for the Riksbank. Since 1999, decisions on the repo rate have been made by the Executive Board of the Riksbank and the members of the Board are expressly forbidden from seeking or receiving instructions when carrying out their monetary policy tasks. Price stability is thus the objective of Swedish monetary policy, but like Norges Bank and most other inflation-targeting central banks we conduct monetary policy that also to some extent takes into account activity in the real economy. The fact that the interest rate is often adjusted in relatively small and predictable steps can partly be regarded as an expression of this. If the aim had instead been to bring back inflation to the target as quickly as possible, without any other considerations, it is probable that larger and more frequent adjustments would have been warranted.
Given that Swedish banks also have a very strong position in terms of savings in funds and life insurance it therefore is difficult to dismiss the Swedish banking sector’s lower branch and employee numbers by saying that the range of products is stingier than elsewhere. 2/4  In one area, though, the Swedish banks are stingiest in Europe, and that is with regard to how easy they make it for their customers to access their bank funds through cash withdrawals – undeniably a fairly significant aspect for a bank customer. Interestingly, Sweden has the lowest number of ATMs per capita of all the EU15 countries – and some 20 per cent lower than Finland, which is second from bottom (see Figure 3). It could quite simply be that Swedish bank customers prefer to use charge cards instead of cash, but that is not the case. On the contrary, Swedes make far more ATM withdrawals than the average European. That leads to the common sight in Sweden of long queues winding their way up to ATMs, which in fact is very unusual is most other countries (if we disregard planned economies). Swedish banks simply ration their customers’ possibilities to make ATM withdrawals. It is perhaps not that strange that Swedish banks are not overly eager to provide an expensive service that is difficult to charge for. That does not necessarily have to be the consequence of weak competition but it results nonetheless in a poorer product for the customer.

Ravi Menon: Emerging Asia – restructuring for sustained growth Remarks by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at JP Morgan Singapore’s 50th Anniversary Dinner, Singapore, 31 October 2014. *  *  *  Mr Jamie Dimon, Chairman & CEO, JP Morgan Chase & Co Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen I am delighted to join you this evening to mark JP Morgan’s 50 years in Singapore. During these last 50 years, JPM Singapore has grown to become an important node in the bank’s global network.   It is the Asia hub for commodities and treasury services.   It is the hub for FX and private banking in South and Southeast Asia.   JPM Singapore entities together employ about 2,800 people. This is projected to increase to 3,500 over the next few years. JPM has had an even longer presence in Asia – close to a century.   JPM has thus had a front row seat witnessing Asia’s remarkable transformation and shift in the global economic centre of gravity to the region.   And it is now positioned to participate in the next exciting chapter of the Asian growth story. As we approach 2015, the economies of Emerging Asia are at an inflection point.   Externally, they have to deal with the normalisation of monetary policy and interest rates in the United States.   Domestically, they have to sustain growth and macro stability amidst ongoing structural reforms.
Second, our OMT programme is limited to the short end of the yield curve – i.e. to maturities of between one and three years – as the Eurosystem’s other monetary policy instruments have also traditionally been aimed at this period. The third distinction between the OMTs and the SMP is the transparency of our actions, through the publication of relevant information on OMT interventions. A fourth way in which the programmes differ from one another is that, under the OMT programme, we are not only able to buy government bonds, but also to sell them again, and their valuation is based on market prices rather than on final maturity. Fifth, we announced that our OMT interventions would be ex ante “unlimited”. We have no doubt that this strong signal was required in order to convince market participants of our seriousness and decisiveness in pursuing the objective of price stability. At the same time, however, the design of OMTs makes it clear to everyone that the programme is effectively 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  limited, for one by the restriction to the shorter part of the yield curve and the resulting limited pool of bonds which may actually be purchased. OMTs – in the event that they are conducted – will not give rise to any inflationary risks. For every euro that the Eurosystem spends on government bonds, one euro will be withdrawn from the money supply in the euro area.

Boris Vujčić: Adapting to climate change has no alternative Speech by Mr Boris Vujčić, Governor of the Croatian National Bank, at the online event "The role of banks in greening our economies", 29 April 2021. * * * Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, Let me first welcome all of you who have gathered in front of your screens and decided to devote a couple of hours to join today’s conference. It is yet another event that the Croatian National Bank organizes jointly with EBRD, with whom we have a long lasting and productive relationship. Both our institutions have recognized our responsibility to put the issue of banks’ role in climate transition into the spotlight, and open a discussion on how banks, other financial institutions, and central banks and regulators can properly address the climate emergency that is already transforming our living and working patterns. Until recently, it was uncommon for central bankers and bankers in general to talk about environmental issues. So, how did we get to this point, and why should we study the dynamics of climate change and environmental degradation and incorporate it into our business decisions? For more than fifty years people have known that the technological advancement and development that we enjoy comes at a price – the destruction of the environment and a perilous rise in global temperatures. As worrisome scientific discoveries heated up the activism and triggered a grass-roots ecological movement, global institutions and politicians soon embraced the environmental concerns as well.
The first is the entanglements and conflicts that can exist between home and host insolvency and resolution laws. There is, for example, a first-order difference between, on the one hand, countries whose regime effectively permits a de facto ring-fencing of locally domiciled assets for local depositors and, on the other hand, those that treat liquidation as a joined-up, global exercise, with all unencumbered assets shared pro rata across senior unsecured creditors. These issues are not new. They were highlighted nearly twenty years ago by the closure of BCCI’s operations around the world. 8 Subsequently, in Europe, insolvency law for banks was improved through the Credit Institutions Reorganisation and Winding-Up Directive. There is a single-entity insolvency regime for any bank incorporated in the EEA, applying to the parent bank and also to all its branches throughout the EEA. We also have, in the Settlement Finality Directive, a sound legal basis for the integrity of wholesale payments transfers in the event of a default, without which the effects of failure could be truly devastating. And in the Financial Collateral Directive, we have an assurance that national insolvency or reorganisation measures cannot be applied to prevent or delay counterparties of a failed institution from exercising their rights to close out, net and/or enforce their security interests  6  Financial Services Authority Turner Review Conference Discussion Paper, “A regulatory response to the global banking crisis: systemically important banks and assessing the cumulative impact”, FSA DP 09/4. 7  King Mervyn A.

A recovery plan for maintaining a going concern. And a resolution plan for firms that, however regrettably, need to be laid to rest. The objective in each case is to maintain the financial system’s provision of essential services to the economy. Firms themselves need to play a leading role in drawing up “recovery plans”. At least two components are needed, roughly corresponding to liquidity and capital. First, a contingency funding plan (CFP). Too few banks of any size seem to have had one in any serious way. There was, for example, too little focus on the effects of ratings downgrades on collateral calls and on the availability of lines of credit. And too little attention was paid to core liquidity holdings: a treasury portfolio comprising the FRNs issued by other banks does not leave a distressed bank with many options in the face of system-wide stress. Banks need to know exactly what assets they hold in which securities-depository systems; how long it would take to deploy them; and which are eligible in which central banks’ routine facilities. Too few banks had that information readily to hand. Maybe they do now. They should. The FSA has very kindly agreed to share with the Bank of England the CFPs of banks (and building societies) where relevant to our functions. As well as helping us to discharge our financial stability responsibilities more broadly, this will be useful in making sense of requests to draw from our Discount Window Facility.
Those are absolute prerequisites for stability in banking. Active, and sometimes intrusive, supervision of banks, and particularly of global banks, has to be at the foundation for stable banking and finance. I don’t think any reconfiguration of the structure of banking and finance is going to get us to an intrinsically safer system, taken as a whole. And we have to remember that this last global crisis, which is still with us in many ways, started not with large universal banks or large global banks, but with narrow or specialised players. Countrywide (the mortgage provider) in the US, Northern Rock in the UK, investment banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. It was accentuated through AIG’s Financial Products division, which played a prominent role on the derivative markets. But it was not global banks that sparked off the crisis, although they helped propagate it globally. It bears reminding ourselves of that. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  No matter how we restructure the system, no matter how we cut down or dice the pieces, banking will involve risk. And without the right culture – whether it’s about an investment bank or commercial bank or a mono-line player – and without the active and intelligent supervision, we’d have the same problems over and over again. The problems that underpinned this global crisis were old-fashioned problems – property booms that were misjudged by banks, regulators and borrowers; and the problem of banks relying too heavily on borrowing short term to invest long-term.

17 Taking all non-cooked food items together, prices went up by 2.8% in H1 2014. This is higher than overall inflation. The greater volatility reflects the periodic shocks in global food prices that have become more frequent in recent years. 18 Domestic inflationary pressures, however, remain firm. These stem mainly from the passthrough of higher costs, particularly wages, to consumer prices. The cost of services most affected, given their high labour content. As a result, the cost of eating out, education, healthcare, and recreation rose at a faster rate compared to overall inflation in the first half of 2014. 19 Taking together imported and domestic sources of inflation, Core Inflation was higher than the historical average but well contained – the forecast for Core Inflation is unchanged at 2-3%. Core Inflation was 1.8% in the second half of 2013, rose to 2.1% in first half of 2014, and is likely to increase slightly over the rest of the year. 20 But overall or CPI-All Items inflation is on a different trend. All-Items inflation was 1.9% in the second half of 2013, came down to 1.7% in the first half of this year, and is likely to continue easing through the rest of the year. The MAS is therefore narrowing the 2014 forecast range for All-Items inflation to 1.5–2.0% from 1.5–2.5%. Overall inflation is falling due to the moderation in housing costs and car prices. Government measures to cool the property market have helped stabilise prices and rent and higher COE supply has lowered premiums.
Yet others see MAS as having struck the right balance, that “the crypto winter is proving MAS’ policies to be right”. What does MAS really want? Well, we know what we want but I think we need to do a better job of explaining it. Before I get to that, it is important to be clear what we are talking about. Public and media attention has tended to focus on cryptocurrencies. But cryptocurrencies are just one part of the entire digital asset ecosystem. To understand the issues more sharply and what the benefits and risks are, we need to be clear what the different components of this ecosystem are. I can understand why there is confusion about cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and digital assets. The inherent complexity of this ecosystem has made it difficult even for MAS to get its messages across. So, today, we will try to do a better job of explaining the ecosystem and its different components – and what MAS is actively promoting; what MAS is discouraging; and what are the risks MAS is seeking to manage. My apologies if the next couple of minutes sound like a tutorial but it is important that we are clear about the concepts we are dealing with. A good place to start is with digital assets. A digital asset is anything of value whose ownership is represented in a digital or computerised form.

MAS does not see a compelling case for retail CBDCs in Singapore. Retail CBDCs are issued to the general public. They are like the cash we carry with us, except in digital form. The case for a retail CBDC in Singapore is not compelling for now, given wellfunctioning payment systems and broad financial inclusion. Retail electronic payment systems are fast, efficient, and at zero cost, while a residual amount of cash remains in circulation and is unlikely to disappear. Nevertheless, MAS is building the technology infrastructure that would permit issuance of retail CBDCs should conditions change. MAS has been actively experimenting with digital currency connectivity since 2016. On the international front, MAS is participating in Project Dunbar, which the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub is working on in its Singapore Centre. The project is exploring a common multi-CBDC platform to enable cheaper, faster and safer cross-border payments. Domestically, MAS is working with the industry on Project Orchid to develop the infrastructure and technical competencies necessary to issue a digital Singapore dollar should there be a need to do so in future. ANCHOR PLAYERS WITH STRONG VALUE PROPOSITIONS AND RISK MANAGEMENT MAS seeks to anchor in Singapore crypto players who can value add to our digital asset ecosystem and have strong risk management capabilities. A vibrant digital asset ecosystem will encompass a wide range of value-adding activities. Let me cite three examples. JP Morgan has established its digital asset capabilities in Singapore via its Onyx division, which has pioneered several DLT-based products and initiatives.