samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Meanwhile, the tendency to increase prices was down quarter-on-quarter as implied by the diffusion indices for core indicators, while our alternative core inflation indicators posted a more solid decline. In conclusion, considering all indicators capturing the underlying trend and the pricing behavior, I would like to say that underlying inflation continued to improve in the third quarter. Esteemed Guests, Economic activity slowed in the second quarter as we predicted in the July Inflation Report. The GDP grew by 0.3 and 3.1 percent in quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year terms, respectively (Chart 12). We observe that the main driver of annual growth was final domestic demand, whereas net exports provided more negative contribution to growth due to the tourism slump (Chart 13). The contribution of final domestic demand to growth has been through both public and private consumer spending, while investments remain subdued. Public spending provided a large (1.7 points) contribution to growth as in the first quarter. On the other hand, value added gains were limited in industrial and services sectors with strong linkages to tourism. 6 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches  Indicators for the third quarter of 2016 point to further deceleration in economic activity. In addition to the deepening tourism slump, the mid-July domestic turbulence and working day losses due to religious holidays dampened production activities. Therefore, although the sharp drop in July’s industrial production was offset by a rapid recovery in August, we expect production to fall below the second-quarter level in the third quarter.

Moreover, the persistent contraction in the tourism sector and the gradual decline in the favorable effects of commodity prices are likely to cause some increase in the current account deficit in the short term (Chart 14). Esteemed Guests, As you all know, food, energy and import prices also play a great role in inflation forecasts. Therefore, before moving on to forecasts, I will briefly talk about our assumptions regarding these variables. We revised our assumptions for crude oil prices for the upcoming period upwards compared to 7 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches  the July Inflation Report, while our assumptions for USD-denominated import prices saw some downward revision (Charts 15 and 16). As depicted on the slide, in terms of annual averages, we kept our oil price assumption constant at 44 USD for 2016, and increased it to 54 USD for 2017. On the food front, food inflation remained far below the level envisaged in the July Inflation Report due to unprocessed food inflation in the third quarter of 2016. Taking account of the current trend of unprocessed food inflation as well as the decrease in the demand for food stemming from the fall in tourism revenues, food inflation, which we assumed to be 8 percent by end-2016 in the July Inflation Report, was revised downwards to 6 percent.
The Programme gives investors the option of buying Icelandic krónur at the auction exchange rate (near the offshore rate) in order to invest in the domestic economy, provided they sell a corresponding amount of foreign currency in the domestic foreign exchange market. The Investment Programme, which was introduced in detail on 18 November, has been described elsewhere; therefore, I will not go into the fine print here. It is designed to be neutral vis-à-vis the foreign exchange reserves in the short term and positive in the long run. This is achieved by requiring that half of the currency used for the investment be converted in 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  the domestic FX market and by stipulating a minimum holding period of five years for the investment. It is hoped that this will tie up a sizeable share of the most volatile offshore krónur. How large a share that is will depend primarily on the scope of the investment projects on offer and the actual amount of volatile krónur, both of which are quite uncertain. It is hoped that the Investment Programme will attract significant foreign investment. It is a misunderstanding, however, to assume that the Programme aims at releasing almost the entire stock of offshore krónur through foreign investment. This would require an investment that it is unrealistic to plan on in the next two years. On the other hand, it is realistic to expect to release the most volatile krónur in this way.

Innovation – serving real needs while managing associated risks Whether we like it or not, the world of finance is rapidly moving into uncharted waters. There are tremendous opportunities in innovations that can be tapped to develop and expand microfinance, but also real risks to be appreciated. This includes risks associated with the disintermediation of finance, a borderless society and cyber threats to name a few. It is important that we understand and manage these risks as we steer microfinance forward, to ensure we are doing so boldly but not blindly. There will be many lessons we can learn from those who are here at this Symposium. These are individuals with rich experience in the microfinance industry, whose successes and failures in developing unique product offerings and new business models will be equally instructive. The global financial crisis may be a decade past, but one of its key lessons remain true – finance and its innovation must exist to serve real needs. The costs of financial failures are disproportionately higher for the poor and for this reason, there should be a higher burden to 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  ensure that experiments in microfinance are careful and purposeful. Over the next few days, we will be exploring these themes in greater depth. As we look forward to these discussions, it is worth recalling why we are here. The words of Mr. Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General, come to mind.
Those SME financing fault-lines have been clearest at times of financial stress. During the Global Financial Crisis, many UK SMEs struggled to access bank credit on reasonable terms or, in some cases, at all. Constrained credit to companies was, in turn, a potent factor behind the UK’s anaemic subsequent recovery. These same fault-lines were re-exposed during the Covid crisis. The good news, this time around, was that large numbers of loans – in excess of one and a half million of them – were made to UK businesses by UK banks in the space of a few months. The bad news is that the vast majority of these loans would not have been made at that speed without a 100% guarantee from Government. Only by effectively nationalising SME lending were the Macmillan gaps bridged in crisis. Over the years, several initiatives and institutional fixes have been attempted to close the Macmillan gaps. These include the British Growth Fund (BGF), the British Business Bank (BBB) and Innovate UK. While individually helpful, none of these has had either the scale financially, nor the scope regionally, to close the Macmillan gaps. Fintechs, using new data and new technologies, have sought to bridge these gaps with some success but, realistically, are likely to do so only slowly. To my mind, what is needed to bridge the Macmillan gaps, durably and comprehensively, is the equivalent of a UK Development Bank, operating on a decentralised basis.

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say there has been a revolution in how the Bank goes about securing monetary and financial stability and how it communicates about both. The catalyst for this revolution has been crisis. Having discussed this historical evolution-cum-revolution, I discuss some of the key issues facing central banks today. This is the “dreaming” bit - looking around corners to judge not only what is coming but how to reshape it, seeking out the biggest issues not just of today but tomorrow. It is the Wayne Gretsky approach  For those who don’t follow football, the title of this speech is a line from the England football team song “Three Lions” released ahead of the 1996 European Championship tournament, 30 years after England’s last international triumph at the World Cup in 1966. 1  2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  2  to public policy - skating to where the puck is going, not where it is.2 That can be unconventional and sometimes misunderstood. But it is, for me, the essence of effective policymaking. Imagining a different future is not sufficient for policy success. It is the imagined made real that matters. The Bank is blessed with having the capacity to both think and do, both brain and hands. When former Governor Cobbold said “the Bank is a bank and not a study group” he was wrong. The Bank is both.
This is to say that crises can happen in any economy, whether it is large or small, developed or emerging, with or without a sophisticated financial system, and regardless of whether the country has a fixed or flexible exchange rate system. And once a crisis happens, the impact will be large because of the globalized nature of markets that drives the spillover and contagion. For emerging markets, this means that the risk of future crises is wide-ranging and can be both internally and externally induced. The externally-induced crisis can either be because of imprudent policy choices elsewhere or because of failures of systemically important markets or institutions. And we have seen in the current crisis, the impact from an externally-induced crisis through contagion can be as, or even more severe, as an internally-induced or a home-grown crisis. BIS Review 36/2010  1  Therefore, to lessen the risk of future crises, prudent and good policy choices must be made in all countries. If not, the chance of crises repeating will remain high in this globalized world because of the interdependence between economies in policies, and because of the interconnectedness of countries in trade and financial flows. The second lesson is that, while monetary policy must remain focused on maintaining low and stable inflation environment, which is crucial for sustainable growth, it is clear from the current crisis that low and stable inflation alone is not sufficient for ensuring financial stability.

Since then, reform of the policy regime to increase flexibility, especially the exchange rate, has contributed importantly to greater resiliency and abilities of the economies in Asia to adjust to changes in the external environment. So, the fact that the Asian economies have done better this time is not only because of the policy response during the crisis, but also because of the policy choice that was made long time ago to increase flexibility. Let me now turn to the second part of my talk on the post-crisis environment and the challenges for emerging markets. The challenges for emerging markets in the post-crisis world will be shaped importantly by the forces of change that will emanate in the new global economic and financial environment. Some of these forces will relate to cyclical shifts in trade and financial flows in response to  2  BIS Review 36/2010  new configuration of risk and opportunities that arises. Others will represent a more fundamental change as the new structure of economic and financial relations between countries emerges to replace the old structure that had been dismantled by the crisis. Recent discussion on this issue has pointed to the new normal global growth, the rise of Asia, and the increased role of government in the economic system as the new economic realities in the post-crisis world. But amongst these three possible new changes, I think the most important that will have far-reaching implications for emerging economies will be the durability and the composition of global growth.
It is becoming increasingly evident, for example, that a proper analysis of the system’s robustness requires detailed statistics about entities for which data are currently either not available or are fragmented. This is particularly the case of the non-bank financial sector, and also of the corporate and household sectors, although in this latter area some progress is being made through the joint efforts of the Bank, the Authority and the National Statistics Office. BIS Review 50/2004  3  Another aspect warranting particular attention is that of financial crisis management. While the current institutional and regulatory framework has been successful in keeping at bay any major systemic disturbance, further progress is required, for example by defining the specific roles and responsibilities of the Bank, the Authority and the Government. In this respect, the Joint Contingency Plan for systemically important banks drawn-up by the Bank and the Authority already takes into account the involvement of the Ministry of Finance with respect to the possible use of public funds and the Bank’s lender of last resort function. This framework is currently in the process of being refined further.

Article 4 (2) of the revised Act specifically states that it shall be one of the objective of the Bank to “ensure the stability of the financial system.”  2  The core principles recommended by the Committee on Payment and Securities Settlement Systems of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). 2  BIS Review 50/2004  committee dealing with financial stability, the Banking Supervision Committee, and at the EU level the Bank also participates in the Economic and Finance Committee and in its Financial Stability Table. The importance of two-way cooperation with the MFSA The initiatives I have described have strengthened the Bank’s ability to monitor and analyse developments in the financial system in a wider context. It is nevertheless becoming increasingly clear that to carry out this role effectively, the Bank’s efforts in this area need to be supported by the activities of the overall supervisor in the financial field, that is the MFSA. It is, therefore, reassuring to note that good co-operation already exists between the Bank and the Authority. More specifically, the Authority’s focus on the health of individual service providers complements the Bank’s macroprudential analysis of the financial system as a whole and its oversight of the payment and settlement systems. In undertaking their respective tasks, both these institutions have access to information that may not be readily available to the other.
The conditions for understanding and evaluating our actions were probably improved further when the Riksbank in 1999 began to publish the minutes from its monetary policy meetings. Now it is also possible to examine the arguments put forward. Were they the right arguments or not in the light of what has happened? On the whole, I believe that we have laid a solid foundation during these years for an in-depth assessment of our decisions. Inflation and inflation expectations So how well has the Riksbank succeeded in achieving its target in the past ten years? (Chart 3.) Looking at the average inflation rate since the target was introduced in 1993, CPI inflation has been 1.8 per cent, while the measure of underlying inflation that we in practice have used over a large part of the period to explain our policy, UND1X, has been 2.1 per cent. If we instead make the comparison from 1995, the year when policy began to have its full impact, the corresponding figures are 1.4 and 1.9 per cent, respectively. Even when average inflation has stood fairly close to the target, sharp deviations can of course occur periodically. This has also been the case; during shorter or longer continuous periods inflation has been above or below target. At the same time it is also evident that the size of the deviations depends somewhat on the inflation measure in question. UND1X has fluctuated less as it is not affected as much by changes in interest rates and taxes.

a Deviation in the level of cumulative GDP in 5 years, the time considered necessary to reach the new "long term". The two simulations assume a "no-deal" that includes a long-term scenario under WTO rules. FORECASTS FOR THE SPANISH ECONOMY: MAIN RISKS. SURPRISES ON THE DOWNSIDE FOR INFLATION OIL PRICES  OVERALL INFLATION  3  CHART 6  %  Projections  70  Dollars/barrel  Projections  65 2  60 55  1  50 0  45 40  -1  35 -2 2013  2014  2015  2016  LATEST PUBLISHED PROJECTIONS  2017  2018  PROVISIONAL UPDATE  2019  30 2016  2017  2018  2019  ASSUMPTIONS USED IN LATEST PUBLISHED PROJECTIONS UPDATED PROJECTIONS  SOURCES: ECB, INE, Reuters and Banco de España. which Spanish general government has been immersed since 2009, as part of the “corrective arm” of the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact. Specifically, the budget deficit is expected to be below 3% of GDP both in 2018 and 2019. 1.3  Main risks and elements of vulnerability  The macroeconomic and financial scenario I have just sketched, which prolongs the expansionary phase of the Spanish economy, is, however, subject to certain downside risks. It should also be added that these risks have tended to increase recently and are being reflected in sharper downward revisions of analysts’ opinions on the outlook for the global economy in 2019 (see left-hand panel of Chart 5).
Eurofi – Prague, 9 September 2022 Mobilization of the Eurosystem against inflation Speech by François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Banque de France  Page 1 sur 3 Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to be talking to you today at this Eurofi edition, although I very much regret that I cannot be in Prague in person today. I extend my warmest thanks to David Wright and Didier Cahen for organising this event. Let me first express my heartfelt sympathy to our British friends: the Queen brought a sense of duty and a sense of stability which will hopefully remain a powerful lesson in this very volatile period. These are indeed times of extremely high uncertainty and difficulty. The European and French economies will face next year a significant slowdown, and we cannot exclude a limited recession. Let me quote, as I did some days ago in Jackson Hole,i two compatriots to give us some light: first, a philosopher – Voltaire – who said that “uncertainty is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd”ii; second, an economist – Olivier Blanchard – with the following words “monetary policy must be closer to art when it is frequently confronted to new, poorly anticipated and poorly understood, contingencies”iii Well, between art and science, how did we deal yesterday with the present uncertainty? We decided to frontload on our monetary policy normalisation.

Philipp Hildebrand: Financial stability Summary of a speech by Mr Philipp Hildebrand, Vice-Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Lausanne, Lausanne, 16 September 2008. The complete speech can be found in French on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  During the period of financial market turbulence, central banks have gone far with their interventions to stabilize the financial system, taking into account the high costs that can be imposed by a banking crisis onto the real economy. Central banks by themselves, however, cannot guarantee financial stability in the long term. In particular, we cannot exclude that their interventions create incentives for banks to be less cautious in the future. The first line of defence therefore consists of banks having sound risk management practices and holding appropriate levels of capital and liquidity. The Financial Stability Forum has made a series of recommendations in this respect. Given the size of the big Swiss banks in relation to our national economy, we should be especially prudent. For this reason, the Swiss National Bank supports the project undertaken by the Swiss Federal Banking Commission (SFBC) to strengthen capital adequacy requirements and to revise the liquidity requirements for the big banks. As the SFBC has pointed out on several occasions, these measures have to be implemented gradually – to ensure that banks have sufficient time to adapt. These measures will contribute to the solidity and credibility of the Swiss financial centre.
If accompanied by continued wage moderation, these factors alone should not be expected to threaten the current outlook for price stability. Accordingly, the results of the wage bargaining round for the year 2000 will play a particularly important role for the further assessment of price developments in the euro area. The only way to prolong a non-inflationary recovery, and hence to substantially re-absorb the still very high unemployment, is for all responsible parties to act decisively, in the near term, to increase flexibility in the labour, product and service markets. This would also be the best way to allow the economy to take full advantage from the present stance of monetary policy. Taking all this information into account, the Governing Council decided to maintain the prevailing ECB interest rates. In addition, it stressed that low inflation and therefore low interest rates should encourage higher investment, helping to prevent the emergence of capacity constraints during economic expansion. At the same time, the expected improvement in economic activity offers greater opportunities to cut fiscal deficits further and to enhance structural reforms. Indeed, the creation of this virtuous circle depends on all policymakers playing their part. Let me now give the floor to the Vice-President to introduce three additional topics which we discussed during our meetings. In addition to reviewing the main monetary, financial and other economic indicators, we discussed issues relating to the transition to the Year 2000. We are now approaching the final phase of testing activities in connection with preparatory work for the Century Date Change.

Consequently, for the sake of transparency, efficiency and accountability, the Governing Council decided to establish an external Supervisory Committee to enforce an Anti-Fraud Scheme at the ECB. This Committee will establish a cooperative relationship with the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF). 3  BIS Review 96/1999