samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The only data relevant for the assessment of the situation in the money market are those on sight deposits and interest rates. We will therefore continue to publish these on a weekly basis. From now on, data on individual balance sheet items and monetary policy operations will only be published in the SNB’s Monthly Statistical Bulletin. Thus, the SNB essentially continues to report on its monetary policy operations in a transparent manner, the only difference being that certain data will be published less frequently. Our Guidelines on monetary policy instruments have been revised accordingly. These will enter into effect on 1 January 2009. BIS Review 157/2008  3  Transaction with UBS On 16 October, the SNB announced that it had concluded an agreement with UBS on the long-term financing and orderly liquidation of troubled assets in the amount of no more than USD 60 billion. To facilitate this transaction, a special purpose vehicle was set up at the end of November called SNB StabFund Limited Partnership for Collective Investments, which is domiciled in Berne. The company is structured as a two-party limited partnership. It comprises a general partner, which bears unlimited liability, and a limited partner, bearing limited liability. Both will be wholly owned by the SNB. The SNB and UBS formed a joint project management team, which is supported when necessary by external specialists. In the meantime, the SNB chose Northern Trust to act as custodian of the securities. We also commissioned specialised agencies to carry out an independent valuation of the portfolio.

For purposes of comparison, the dash-dotted green curve shows the inflation forecast of the September monetary assessment, which was also based on a three-month Libor of 2.75%. The new forecast indicates that inflation will rise in the first half of 2008. It is likely that it will breach even the 2% level. However, this increase will be temporary and will be chiefly due to the rise in oil prices. After that time, inflation will settle at around 1.5%, with a slight upward trend at the end of the period. The slowdown in the international economy explains the downward revision in the inflation outlook for 2009 and 2010. Naturally, any forecast is uncertain, and at present both upside and downside risks are greater than usual. Consequently, we will continue to keep a close watch on developments in the financial markets, the international economy, oil prices and the Swiss franc exchange rate, in order to assess their impact on the inflation outlook and to be in a position to react swiftly should the need arise.
Speech  Embargo 20 September 2018, 5.30 pm  Third Karl Brunner Distinguished Lecture Introduction of Otmar Issing, ETH Zurich  Thomas J. Jordan Chairman of the Governing Board Swiss National Bank Zurich, 20 September 2018 © Swiss National Bank, Zurich, 2018  Page 1/4  Ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to welcome you all to the third Karl Brunner Distinguished Lecture. In this Lecture Series, the Swiss National Bank pays tribute to academics whose research is of particular relevance for central banking. This year, we are expressing our appreciation of an outstanding monetary policy theorist and practitioner, an independent mind and a leading voice in economic affairs. From this description, you may doubt that I am talking about just one person. But I am. That person is, of course, Otmar Issing. Professor Issing’s life has been extraordinary and widely admired. His scholarly activities and policymaking contributions have been both impressive and mutually reinforcing. His publication list includes numerous articles in scientific journals and periodicals. His collected speeches and articles in the library of the Bundesbank amount to 21 volumes of about 10,000 pages. His textbooks have shaped the understanding of monetary theory and policy of entire generations of students, myself included. While there are many reasons for the SNB to honour Otmar Issing with this Karl Brunner Lecture, three stand out: his role as chief architect of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) monetary policy strategy, his tireless commitment to price stability, and his significant influence on general economic debate.

Who better to speak to us this evening on this topic than Otmar, with his extraordinary talent for communicating with an interested general public? Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Otmar Issing with a big round of applause. Page 4/4
Stefan Ingves: The role of the central bank after the financial crisis – the challenges ahead Speech by Mr Stefan Ingves, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank and Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, to the Swedish Economics Association, Stockholm, 12 June 2013. *  *  *  The last five years have been an extraordinary period for the global economy, with crisis management and major fluctuations in growth and economic development. For politicians and authorities in many countries, it has been – and still is – a complex world that is hard to navigate. Five years after the financial crisis broke out, many countries are still in the process of cleaning up after it. It can be ascertained that financial crises are expensive, timeconsuming processes, and that far too little has been done previously to prevent them from occurring. The financial crisis has made it clear that the monetary policy framework needs to be developed so that it takes greater account of the importance of financial stability. While the crisis was indeed not caused by monetary policy, a lesson nevertheless learned is that price stability does not suffice to ensure financial stability and a stable development in the real economy. The financial crisis has also brought to light deficiencies in financial stability policy, in that microprudential policy does not guarantee financial stability. Hence, financial stability policy must also be developed. It needs a clearer mandate as well as tools for managing systemic risks.

It is very difficult to increase the income level and change the saving tendency in the short term. For this reason, the domestic savings deficit should preferably be met by direct foreign capital investments. Graph 10: The Shares of Public and Private Investments in GNP  30 Public  25  Private  (%)  20 15 10 5  2004  2003  2002  2001  2000  1999  1998  1997  1996  1995  1994  1993  1992  1991  1990  1989  1988  1987  0  Source: SIS. Due to the current economic program and the structural reforms in the scope of the program, a transition from a public sector-supported capital accumulation model to a private sector-supported accumulation model occurs, where market conditions are taken as indicators and criteria. The share of the private sector in the national income increases, whereas the share of the public sector declines. It is clear that the private sector-oriented growth plays a major role in achieving sustainable growth by boosting both exports and total industrial production. However, it should be noted that the private sector could not meet the expectations because it could not exploit sufficient resources. This was due to the dominance of the public sector borrowing requirement in the finance sector. Furthermore, the factors that slow down the capital accumulation process include the incomplete tax reform and the  12  BIS Review 36/2005  poor relationship between banking sector and real sector.
In fact, what is more important than the figures is that central banks were first established mainly as the lender of last resort and banknote issuer, rather than as an institutional body of monetary policy. Today, there are 160 central banks operating around the world. Some of them are also responsible for supervision and regulation of financial system and have been publishing financial stability reports, and some of them are targeting a certain measure of general price level and have been issuing inflation reports. Thus, in a broader perspective, the evolution of central banking has followed a course from maintaining liquidity when it is necessary and issuing banknotes, towards keeping inflation low and stable, and preserving stability in financial markets. In some sense, this evolution process can be characterized as the converging of the objective functions of central banks all around the world. To be more precise, it is generally accepted that in the case of both industrialized nations and emerging economies, the main contribution that a central bank can make to economic welfare in the long run is achieving and maintaining price stability. Moreover, maintaining price stability is not merely an issue of maximization of economic welfare. It gives people the confidence that money will retain its value over time, ensures that price signals function as a guide for markets to function efficiently and establishes trust in the interaction among economic agents, in property rights, in society and in the future in general 1 .

The MPC regularly monitors more than 1,500 data series, of which around 1,000 are for the UK. The point of doing this is that often there are puzzles and questions about the behaviour of the economy to which no single piece of data can provide a complete answer. But we may build up a convincing picture by piecing together a range of indicators. The housing market provides a classic example of this approach. There is an enormous array of indicators of housing market activity - data on mortgage approvals and lending, house price indices from the main lenders (the Halifax and the Nationwide), the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Land Registry, and various surveys of estate agents and house builders. One approach would be to pick out a single indicator, and monitor that. But experience shows that none of these indicators individually has consistently given a plausible indication of developments in the housing market; the indicators provide a better guide when taken together. So we monitor a full set of housing market indicators, and we have found that the clearest signals come when all of the indicators are pointing in the same direction. In economic assessment, there is safety in numbers. Awareness of data quality But looking at a large array of indicators can be bewildering without some way of narrowing the focus. So the second element of our approach is to recognise explicitly that data vary widely in their quality, and hence in their usefulness for policy assessment.
The paradox of the Eurozone The Eurozone paradox is that the best possible members of the club are the countries that are so stable themselves in monetary and economic terms that they don’t need “to buy in stability and credibility”. Such countries have fewer and fewer reasons to adopt the euro. Conversely, the more a country begs to have the euro, the bigger the problem it will represent. This explains why almost no one is conducting a euro debate in Sweden, even though it does not have a derogation and many would like to see it in the Eurozone. Canonically, the same goes for us: either we can continue to stabilise ourselves, in which case we don’t need the euro, or we will destabilise ourselves, but in that case we will potentially harm others in the euro club and Eurozone membership will be a hindrance in bad times. There’s no story in our case The Baltic states took the euro as a geopolitical and security safeguard and paid an economic price for permanently fixing their currencies to it. Slovenia wanted to cut itself off from the Western Balkans. Slovakia wanted to seal the reforms of former Prime Minister Mikuláš Dzurinda. Germany gained unification in exchange for the euro. The southern countries (Italy, France, and Spain) gained the stability of the German mark because they were unable to create such a currency at home.

We are in the midst of an unusual dynamic in financial markets, in which low realized volatility in macroeconomic outcomes, low realized credit losses, greater confidence in the near term path of monetary policy, low uncertainty about future inflation and interest rates, rapid changes in the nature of financial intermediation (role of hedge funds and the change in how credit risk is bought and managed), and a large increase in the share of global savings that is willing to move across borders, have worked together to bring risk premia down across many asset prices. There is no reliable analytical framework one can use to determine whether we are experiencing an unwelcome or unjustified decline in expected volatility, or whether investors are giving too much weight to the relative stability of the recent past and too little to the uncertainty posed by the challenges ahead. And analysts can point to good fundamental reasons and some plausible theories to support this collective judgment of market participants about low future risk and volatility. But there is much we do not understand about how these transitions ahead will unfold - in fiscal positions, the U.S. external imbalance, and in the exchange rate system and portfolio preferences. The recognition that things that are not sustainable will eventually come to an end does not give us much of a guide to whether the transition will be calm or exciting.
In other words, the critical point for the Bank is to assure that the impacts of the above-mentioned developments are confined to 2006 and avoid any deterioration in expectations, which stand as a significant determinant of the inflationary process, for the sake of achieving medium-term targets. At this point, I would like to draw your attention to a few important points about the interest rate policy of the Bank and underline some issues once again. Short-term interest rates are the main policy instrument of the Central Bank. The Central Bank makes its policies and interest rate decisions in line with its main goal of achieving price stability and inflation targets. The Bank makes all its policies and decisions in view of medium-term trends rather than daily or shortterm ones, and these policies and decisions are grounded on main trends. In this framework, while making its interest rate decisions, the Bank uses a very wide data set including supply-demand conditions, costs, model forecasts, expectations, domestic and external developments; and evaluates all these data with a forward-looking perspective. This process is certainly a dynamic one, and every new piece of data and development is being closely monitored within the framework of the Bank’s inflation forecasts. Another significant fact about the interest rate decisions of the Bank is that the impacts of these decisions are observed with a time lag. The impact of the decisions on economic activity becomes evident within a period of 3-9 months, while their impact on inflation is observed within a period of 9-18 months.

A key next step will be for the U.S. and other major jurisdictions to put in place regulations and supervisory measures that will require non-bank counterparties of GSIBs to trade with the  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  GSIBs on terms equivalent to those found in the ISDA resolution stay protocol. This further step is needed in order to limit the potential for arbitrage within the market and to promote greater stability in the event of a necessary resolution. As we move this work forward, we should acknowledge and take stock of the significant advances achieved over the past few years, while at the same time remain focused on our responsibility to address the challenges that remain. Thank you for your kind attention. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
As I mentioned earlier, the National Accounts have recently been revised and the new results indicate a strong growth in both GDP and productivity in Sweden during the period 1993-2002. Such revisions show that there is considerable uncertainty in the statistics and that it is important not to overreact to the most recent figures. When we make assessments of inflation in connection with monetary policy decisions we normally look two years ahead. In this context we also calculate potential growth with the aid of more detailed data. This includes labour market data, for instance, to assess labour force developments with reference to developments in the working population, people in regular education and labour market policy training and the number of people on sick leave or early retirement pensions. A digression on demography Allow me, before I finish, to comment further on demographic developments. One factor that we, like many other countries, will need to grapple is the adverse demographic development that will take place in few years' time. This will entail the percentage of elderly people in the population increasing significantly and resulting in a considerable reduction in labour force participation. Large demands will be made on public finances and the labour supply and growth trends will be subdued. My last slide shows the growth in actual hours worked during the period 1981-2001, together with a calculation for growth during the period 2002-2050 (Figure 10).

And we can see this clearly when we study developments adjusted for absence due to sickness (Figure 8). Here we can see that the average working hours have shown a declining tendency even when adjusted for people who have not worked due to illness. Compared with the period 1994-1995, average working hours have declined by around 3 percentage points and the negative tendency is particularly strong after 1999. Moreover, the other curve in my diagram - for the number of employed shows that the growth in working hours last year was curbed by a lower increase in employment. This was in turn a result of the economic slowdown no longer affecting just manufacturing, but also the services sector. The decline in working hours appears to depend on three main factors, apart from increased absence due to illness. The first factor is an increase in other types of absence than illness, e.g. holidays or looking after sick children. The second is a decline in the amount of overtime worked and a reduction in the working hours agreed between employers and employees. The third factor is a shift where more people choose to move over from full-time to part-time work. The relative significance of structural and economic factors in this context is again difficult to assess. There are many indications that variations in overtime are particularly affected by economic activity. Although it is more difficult to determine how this relates to the other factors.
I will not repeat here the figures already published and explained and which were yesterday commented on by the Minister for Economic Affairs and Competitiveness before the Economic Affairs Committee. BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  However, I do want to say that the exercise performed is unprecedented in terms of its depth and detail, the severity of the macroeconomic assumptions accepted and the scrutiny to which it was subject throughout by experts from the institutions I have mentioned above. But there is still some way to go in the clean-up and restructuring of our banking system. The Memorandum of Understanding signed last July sets out the steps now to be taken, which the Spanish authorities – and, rest assured, the Banco de España – will comply with as precisely as possible. The restructuring or resolution plans for banks owned by the FROB must be approved before December 2012. Also, before November, we shall have at our disposal the recapitalisation plans of banks which cannot meet their capital shortfall without State aid, on the understanding that banks which are not considered viable will be resolved orderly in accordance with the terms of the corresponding resolution plan. Banks that can meet their capital shortfall without resorting to State aid will be required to implement their recapitalisation plans before June 2013. The other key component of the Clean-up Programme is the Asset Management Company which should be operational at the beginning of 2013.

The increase from 2011 to 2012 will amount to 16 pp of GDP, of which: 7 pp are explained by the deficit (4 pp by the primary balance and 3 pp by interest); nearly 1 pp is due to the fall in nominal GDP nominal, and 8 pp are attributable, essentially, to the financing of the Plan to Pay Suppliers and € billion of the amount estimated by the FROB to be drawn down from the European Financial Facility before year-end. This ratio is projected to grow more moderately in 2013, from 85% to 91% of GDP, i.e. an increase of 6 pp compared with the 16 pp we will record in 2012, and will be almost exclusively due to the increase in the interest burden on public debt because, if the projections are fulfilled, the primary deficit will be 0.7% of GDP in 2013. Clean-up and restructuring of the banking system I would not like to conclude without commenting, albeit very briefly, on the programme for the clean-up and restructuring of our banking system. As you know, a further step has been taken with the publication of the estimates of capital needs, based on the stress tests performed by an independent appraiser, supported by audit firms and real estate appraisal companies under the supervision of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and with the participation of the Ministry for Economic Affairs and the Banco de España.
The reason for this is simple: insurance products can be complex and coupled with the sophisticated needs of clients such as individuals and SMEs, the human and personal touch of an agent can come in handy. It is these functions that will remain relevant in the Digital Economy; those that require intuition, discretion and sometimes, empathy; traits that are not easily programmable. Having said that, the Digital Economy will revamp the distribution landscape for general insurance and these changes are currently in progress as we speak. General insurance agents must accept and embrace the shifting business dynamics towards digitalisation. The agency force must not only reinvent themselves to reflect the latest digital trends, but also upgrade their capabilities in line with the latest technological developments. Thus, I would like to suggest three strategies that general insurance agents can take in not just surviving, but also thriving in the Malaysian Digital Economy, namely: First, improving the customer experience by enhancing your service capability. Compared to other financial products, such as banking products and investment products, insurance products are inherently more complex to understand. It is perhaps not a surprise that customer satisfaction of the local insurance industry is lower than other financial services industries. According to BrandIndex , in its study of the health of brand names in Malaysia, the top 5 insurance brands in Malaysia scored relatively lower than that of their top 5 counterparts in other financial service sectors (especially banking).

Another important feature to note is the decentralisation of knowledge: With a touch of their screen, consumers are now able to access an almost infinite repository of information about the products that they want; including comparisons and peer reviews. The days of the insurer or agent knowing best have passed, and it is important to recognise how this tilts the bargaining power in favour of the consumer. From this, there are fundamental questions that need to be asked of the agency force: Are the current incentives of the industry aligned with the best interests of consumers? Should insurance companies still be thought of as the main principals that agents serve, or should consumers be seen as an equal principal in that relationship? How can the remuneration and more generally, culture, change from one focused on volume of sales to one where agents are recognised for more customer-centric, and a consultative role? These are some of the questions that I hope this convention will touch on, and perhaps for me to share some thoughts. 1/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  There are many concerns over the potential upheaval of the status quo arising from the digitalisation of services. But I can share with you that we firmly believe that the agency force will continue to have a role to play in the general insurance sector even as it evolves into the Digital Economy.