samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
But we need to be careful to give the world confidence that we will conduct policy in a manner that will keep inflation expectations stable, at low levels. Second, to fiscal policy. We now face a substantial and unsustainable gap between our fiscal commitments and our resources, not just over the longer term with respect to Social Security and Medicare, but also with respect to budget projections for the coming ten years. Reducing this gap to a more sustainable level is vital. The decisions we make this year and over the next few years will be important to building more confidence that we have the will to act in a manner commensurate with the challenge. Achieving a substantial and sustainable reduction in our fiscal imbalance is important to decrease the risk of lower future growth in private investment which could dampen future productivity gains. Reducing our fiscal imbalances is also important for reducing the risk of adverse shocks to financial markets, and for maintaining the willingness of investors to invest in our economic future. Improving the credibility of our commitment to this fiscal challenge is the most important contribution we can make towards improving the chance of a more benign adjustment in our external imbalance. Third, the U.S. and the major economies have an important role to play in guiding further evolution in the international monetary system. Policy makers in Asia are well aware of the complications and costs involved in sustaining their current regimes. Many are moving toward more flexibility in their exchange rate regimes.

Timothy F Geithner: Further investments to strengthen the financial system Remarks by Mr Timothy F Geithner, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, before the Economic Club of Washington, Washington, 9 February 2005. *  *  *  Good evening. I am honored to be here. It’s good to be back in Washington and to have a chance to talk with such a distinguished group. Much of our nation’s financial history and the history of our central bank is a story of contest for influence and over ideas between political leaders in Washington and the financial center of New York. I think it is important that ideas shuttle back and forth between our cities, and I am pleased to have a chance to share a few tonight. My overall argument this evening is this. We face a delicate balance between genuinely positive near-term economic conditions, and some fundamental challenges. If we are to increase the likelihood of continued strong growth in living standards, we should use this time of relative prosperity to address the imbalances that hang over our economy. Even with good policy choices, and with considerable luck, these imbalances will take time to unwind. During this time we face some risk of a more volatile and less benign overall financial environment. This makes it important that we continue to invest in making our financial system stronger and more resilient. Markets now reflect a fairly positive view about overall economic prospects.
The positive example is actually none of the strong economies in eastern Europe, not Estonia, Poland or Hungary, but Ireland – which made good use of all opportunities to compete with its cheaper and increasingly well-educated labour force after EU membership, while gradually reforming its tax and subsidy system. During the 1990s, Ireland doubled its growth rate from just over 3.5 per cent a year to over 7 per cent – well in line with the most dynamic Asian economies – and GDP per capita, which was 40 per cent below the EU's average as recently as in the 1970s, is now above. We must hope for the sake of both the EU and the candidate countries that the new members will follow the example of Ireland and not that of the former GDR. It is important to focus the enlargement process on what is relevant to the real economy. What is important for the candidate countries and the current EU economies is that the new members are given the chance to catch up with the EU. Free trade (as in the Europe agreement), stable institutions (adopting and applying the EU's fundamental regulations, what is known as the "acquis") and a wise macroeconomic policy are the things we should hope for and expect – no more than that.

Changes in the exchange rate should only be resorted to when everything else has failed. They should be a measure of last resort. Besides, they only produce the desired results if they are accompanied by a comprehensive set of complementary policies implemented in a controlled environment. Speculating about the exchange rate without producing conclusive proof that it is the root cause of the economy’s difficulties is, therefore, inappropriate and can have serious repercussions. The national interest requires all of us to concentrate rather on the more immediate, and well documented, reasons for the economy’s slow growth. I have elaborated on this aspect in a recent interview carried by another local newspaper. 1/1
It is particularly useful in that it offers an overview of overall Spanish general (central, regional and local, including the Social Security system) government budgetary policy, providing a broader time perspective of four years. In a country as decentralised as Spain, it is impossible to properly assess public spending and revenue policies without this overview. At the same time, an effective fiscal policy, particularly when the starting point is a budgetary imbalance like ours, should be part of a consistent multi-year plan with specific measures. The Budget and the Stability Programme include macroeconomic projections that point to increases in real GDP in Spain of 2.7% in 2018, and slightly lower levels in the following 5/9  years: 2.4% in 2019, and 2.3% both in 2020 and in 2021. Nominal GDP is expected to increase by around 4.3% over the entire forecasting horizon. The growth forecast and its composition are broadly consistent with the baseline scenario of the Banco de España’s macroeconomic projections I outlined earlier. The Stability Programme envisages an overall general government deficit of 2.2% in 2018, in line with the requirements of the Stability and Growth Pact. That should be conducive to Spain exiting the “excessive deficit” situation still prevailing. For the following years, further declines in the budgetary imbalance are envisaged, until resuming a slightly positive balance in 2021, for the first time since 2007. All tiers of government, including Social Security funds, should attain budgetary equilibrium in this horizon, according to the Programme.

As there is normally great uncertainty in the inflation assessment of the main scenario, the Riksbank also produces risk scenarios; we also publish estimates of the probability distribution of different inflation outcomes. The distribution around the probable outcome is taken into consideration when decisions on the interest rate are taken. In the third place, we can make different assessments as to how monetary policy is to be conducted to strike a reasonable balance between fluctuations in growth and inflation. As I mentioned earlier, the Executive Board has agreed that we can decide not to bring inflation back to target within one to two years if CPI is affected by temporary factors or if the economy is affected by extensive disturbances. Making assessments and evaluating when - within these frameworks - there are sufficient reasons for avoiding output variations by extending the control horizon is far from self-evident, however. To maintain the credibility of monetary policy aimed at price stability, it is important therefore to justify such departures. In the fourth place - and I am now starting to sound as if it is not at all possible to conduct monetary policy with a demand for clarity - we do not know exactly the stimulation or tightening produced by a particular interest rate. This depends on our, like everybody else’s, limited knowledge of the “transmission mechanism”. It is also due to it being difficult to exactly define at what real interest rate, monetary policy has a neutral effect on demand.
The Ordinance confers no powers to arbitrate disputes, to name and shame, or to require banks to pay compensation or rectify mistakes. There are no penalty kicks or yellow cards or red cards available under the Ordinance. To use the powers or sanctions available under section 52 to settle a consumer complaint would be rather like sending off the whole team for a simple case of offside. Needless to say, the present arrangements give rise to a certain amount of frustration. The complainants naturally assume that the body that supervises banks - the HKMA - can sort out their complaints against banks and recover financial losses. Not surprisingly, not every complainant who discovers that we cannot do this is satisfied with the kind of explanation of our legal powers that I have given to you this evening. Some get angry, and persist with their complaints. A few have taken the matter to other authorities. We have diverted staff resources to the time-consuming task of dealing with the rising number of complaints. But there is a limit to what we can do without affecting our main responsibilities under our mandate. Clearly, something needs to be done. What are the options available? What are the steps to be taken? An obvious solution is to tackle the problem at its source by reducing the grounds for complaint. This requires the banks to maintain and improve the quality of their service and to improve their complaint-handling procedures so that customer dissatisfaction is dealt with quickly and decisively.

Norman T L Chan: What does it take to develop a Global Offshore RMB Hub? Speech by Mr Norman T L Chan, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, at the Treasury Markets Summit 2014, Hong Kong, 15 September 2014. *  *  *  1. A very warm welcome to all of you to this year’s Treasury Markets Summit. 2. The theme of today’s Summit is: “Development of Hong Kong as the Offshore Renminbi Hub”. This is indeed a very timely topic as we have just marked the 5th anniversary of the launch of the pilot scheme for the use of renminbi (RMB) in cross-border trade transactions in the summer of 2009. We of course started the RMB banking business back in 2004, but until 2009 our business was restricted to the development of personal accounts for Hong Kong residents and use of credit cards. The major milestone was clearly the start of offshore RMB trade settlement and other businesses for corporates five years ago. 3. So what have we accomplished in the last five years? It is probably fair to say that very few of us could have envisaged the rapid progress that we have achieved in turning Hong Kong into the global offshore RMB business hub in such a short time. In terms of deposits, including Certificate of Deposit (CDs), we have grown from around RMB90 billion in end-June 2010 by nearly twelve times to RMB1.1 trillion now, which makes us the largest offshore RMB liquidity pool in the world.
The rapid progress of information technology in recent years has brought new risk measurement models to aid in the measurement of market risk. The most widely accepted of these is the ”Value-at-Risk” model, called ”VaR” for short. VaR is the maximum loss that can occur in the value of a portfolio having a certain investment horizon under a certain probability. Since it is a simple and clear-cut concept, the VaR model is widely used for measuring market risk. It permits comparison of the market risk of different investment instruments, so that portfolio performance can be evaluated in terms of the risk undertaken. Especially for measuring  market risk to determine capital adequacy, this model has become a necessity in many countries and financial institutions. Another method widely used for measuring market risk is ”Scenario Analysis”. Scenario Analysis is a technique used to see how the value of a portfolio would be affected by various probable changes in market conditions. A last widely used method for measuring risk is the ”Stress Test” method. The Stress Test is used to estimate how the value of a portfolio would be affected by large, unexpected fluctuations in the markets, such as have been observed during the global crisis which is still with us. Though similar to Scenario Analysis, the Stress Test mainly aims to predict the maximum value that would be lost by a portfolio under certain extraordinary market conditions. The success of this method depends on successfully predicting market conditions.

At the same time, over 1,100 renminbi correspondent accounts were maintained by overseas banks with banks in Hong Kong. The amount due to and due from such overseas banks amounted to RMB 128 billion and RMB 146 billion respectively. This is a clear indication that banks from around the world are using Hong Kong’s robust platform and large liquidity pool to offer renminbi services to their customers at home. As more and more companies and financial institutions conduct business and transactions in the renminbi, we will see an increasing number of financial centres offering offshore renminbi business in different parts of the world. These centres can benefit significantly from having an access to the offshore renminbi platform and liquidity pool in Hong Kong. The HKMA is taking proactive steps to aid the private sector in this endeavour. The private sector led Hong Kong – London Forum is an excellent example of this effort. The Forum just held its first meeting in Hong Kong in May this year, and agreed on a number of joint actions in the areas of renminbi liquidity, payment and settlement arrangements and development of products and services, to bring mutual benefits to the growth of offshore renminbi business in Hong Kong and London. One of the key action points agreed at the Forum is to expand cross-market renminbi funding activities through the cross-border collateral management arrangement that will be launched jointly by the HKMA, Euroclear and J.P. Morgan on 25 June.
Moreover, I suspect he would conclude that the political commitment to fiscal discipline should have been much more pronounced during the last few years when the global economy enjoyed broadly robust growth. As the world is entering what looks like a protracted period of lower growth, it will be extremely difficult to keep public debtto-GDP ratios constant, let alone reduce them. 5. Conclusion  After this very brief fiscal detour let me conclude by returning to Albert Gallatin. Anyone who loves the city of Geneva has many reasons to be proud of the achievements of Albert Gallatin. To my knowledge, he is the only son or daughter of Geneva who is honored in the form of a prominent statue in Washington D.C. He stands at the entrance of the Treasury building, and only a few steps away from the White House. On the statue, he is described simply as a “Genius of Finance”. As Secretary of the United States Treasury, he made a crucial contribution to the stability and development of the nascent United States financial system. Above all, he was deeply committed to reducing the size of the federal public debt during his first seven years in office. Only when tax revenues declined, as the threat of war loomed, did he allow debt reduction to be relegated to a secondary objective. 29  See Paul R. Masson and Michael L. Mussa, Long-term Tendencies in Budget Deficits and Debt IMF Working Paper No. 95/128, 1995.

But the refugee crisis means that we’re also facing a new challenge right now. Is this going to affect economic developments? It is a huge challenge, not only in Germany, but for Europe as a whole. But the refugee crisis is also a great opportunity for Europe if the refugees can be successfully integrated into the labour market. The more Europe stands together in the refugee crisis, the greater is the likelihood that it can be overcome. As a European citizen, I believe that we are now at a historic moment when the EU must demonstrate that it is able to reach a European solution. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Is that realistic? Europe has already overcome similar situations, for example during the debt crisis. In this case, given that we are talking about millions of people who are fleeing to Europe, I personally believe that the EU has a moral obligation to find a joint European solution. The European project is not first and foremost a financial project. Europe always was, and will continue to be, about bringing people together, not about dividing them. The euro area countries cannot even agree on whether or not there should be a common limit on payments in cash. What would you advocate? This is a matter for the EU finance ministers to decide on, not the ECB. There are countries in Europe where cash is very important, and there are others where cash plays a lesser role.
Most importantly, European economies and their financial systems, among which the Austrian financial system enjoys a significant share of the market, define the globalization for the region and are, to a large extent, important determinants for the success or failure of these economies. Given the large share of the European financial groups, they have and will play an important role in the transmission of global shocks in the region. What is more important, they have a significant role in the transmission of legislative and regulative shocks carried over by European monetary and supervisory authorities. The size is such that even a simple change in the future business plans of a single European financial institution can transform into real shocks for the economies of the region. It became evident during the crisis and afterwards that an increase in risk and uncertainty, led to increased incentives for banks to withdraw from the Emerging Europe economies. Though this was mostly prevented due to increased cooperation through institutions such as the Vienna Initiative, the concerns from our perspective have not completely dissipated. In this respect the business plan of EU based groups can play a potentially important role in the nature and outcomes of this cooperation.

The crisis showed few weakness in the model of growth adopted by the emerging economies of South East Europe, but is also true that, to some extent this behaviour was also encouraged by the development strategies of financial groups in the region, as it is also true that there was also some weakness in the coordination and collaboration between different European Union institutions, such as monetary policies (ECB), fiscal policies (of member countries) and the inexistence of specific mechanisms (such as bailout funds) to safeguard the European Union during difficult economic times. This conference pays homage to these lessons, while acknowledging the importance of coordination, by mutually collaborating in multidimensional institutional levels, within the region and with our common partner countries. We in the region hope that our foreign partners share this same view. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  The Albanian economy and its financial market share similar characteristics with the other economies of the region. Our main trade and financial partners come from the EU economy. Therefore, developments in the EU are directly and indirectly transmitted and play an important role in economic developments in Albania. Our reliance on EU affected not only our economic development but also constrained the effect of policy measures. Several European banking groups operate in the Albanian financial sector. These entities brought into the Albanian market a lot of valuable know-how and experience, playing, thus, a crucial role in the financial integration of the Albanian economy to the European Union.
At the HKMA, we have just introduced an initiative called “Balanced and Responsive Supervision”. It involves a mechanism to regularly review with banks possible execution issues arising from the supervisory processes, as well as to collect ideas for streamlining supervisory practices and requirements. Through better and ongoing communication with the industry, we should be able to achieve a more optimal and sustainable supervisory outcome in the longer run. 14. I would also argue that banking supervision is not the only, and should not become the most important, means in protecting the interests of bank customers. It is my strong belief that regulation and supervision are most effective in prescribing what constitutes unacceptable behaviours or outcomes, e.g. minimum standards for capital and liquidity ratios, prohibition of unacceptable market behaviours such as insider dealing and rigging of interest rate or FX benchmarks, no mis-selling of financial products, etc. However, supervision is much less effective or appropriate in setting good corporate culture, values and ethical standards of a financial firm. No amount of external supervision or policing can instill and sustain the right culture and ethics of a bank. Culture and ethical standards must be from top-down, owned by the Board and filter down to the senior management and then to all levels of the firm. A bank and its staff must internalise good culture and values in such a way that they behave properly not because they are afraid of being caught and punished by the supervisors but because they think it is unethical to do otherwise. 15.

The GFC has also undermined the belief that banks can look after themselves in efficient markets and that “de-regulation” and “light touch supervision” must be good as they promote financial innovation and diversity. As a result of these bitter lessons, a series of profound reforms championed by the G20 and the Financial Stability Board, of which the HKMA is a member, have been introduced to make the banking and financial system much more resilient to shocks. An informed banker will tell you that banks nowadays have to comply with a very long list of stringent standards in capital, liquidity, leverage, margining, risk management, derivative trading and reporting, etc. At the same time, there are new and strong measures designed to address misconduct risks, ranging from anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing, front-running, insider trading, mis-selling of financial products, etc. 13. For those bankers who feel disappointed tonight because they cherish the hope that they would learn some clever tricks to get rid of bank supervisors, I owe them an apology. However, the consolation is that, in my view, banking supervision is not an “all or nothing” game. While it is true that the kind of “cozy” or “light touch” supervision that was prevalent before the GFC is now out of the question, there is still a great deal of space in how we calibrate the “intensity” or “intrusiveness” of banking supervision in order for the process to be effective while not creating an undue burden on banks.