samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
CPI inflation is judged in turn to be 1.1% after twelve months and 2.0% in twenty-four months’ time. Thus, CPI inflation will be moving closer to underlying inflation. One reason for this is that the downward effect on inflation from house mortgage interest expenditure is diminishing. In other words, just as the previous marked fall in interest rates held back CPI inflation so that it was well below the underlying trend, so house mortgage interest expenditure is now tending to bring them closer together. As I have pointed out before to this Committee, monetary policy ought to disregard these direct effects of interest rates because repo rate adjustments mean that they are accentuated. It is also for this reason that the Riksbank is currently focusing monetary policy on inflation’s underlying rate, measured as UNDIX. Transitory factors – changes in indirect taxes, subsidies and house mortgage interest expenditure – are judged to have a downward CPI effect of 0.5 percentage points in one year’s time. The contribution from interest expenditure is still negative because the process whereby house mortgage loans at high rates are renewed at the present lower level is still in progress. As the earlier house mortgage loans had a long duration, this process takes time. In two years’ time, however, the CPI contribution from transitory factors is judged to be an upward effect of 0.1 percentage point.

In the absence of negative shocks, that normally tends to  3  BIS Review 108/1999  generate GDP growth above the rate that is sustainable in the longer run. If such a situation is left to continue for too long, various bottleneck problems arise that may push inflation up. Such a course of events has to be prevented by the Riksbank, which the Riksdag (Sweden’s parliament) has made accountable for maintaining price stability. So in order to counter an acceleration of inflation in an upward cyclical phase, sooner or later the level of the repo rate has to be normalised. It is generally true to say that a repo rate increase should not be postponed unduly. If a central bank waits too long, the increase has to be larger in order to arrest the overheating and inflationary tendencies. That would run the risk of the next slowdown being deeper and more severe than otherwise. A higher repo rate does not necessarily impede the continuation of a favourable economic trend; it may even be required for a good and sustained development of employment and growth, as is illustrated by how the Federal Reserve has acted in the United States. This shows what a forward-looking monetary policy can do for sustained growth. The formulation of monetary policy in the United States, with timely restrictive measures, has contributed to the American economy now being in its longest post-war period of growth.
Situated centrally in the Asian time zone, Malaysia offers to serve as an investment gateway to the region, specialising in Islamic fund and wealth management, and providing  BIS Review 48/2007  1  a platform for the issuance of sukuk. Malaysia launched the MIFC initiative last year in order to provide a more conducive business environment. We have liberalised the foreign equity to a maximum of 49 percent in existing Islamic banks and takaful companies. New licences for International Islamic Bank and International Takaful Operator for the conduct of full range Islamic banking business or takaful and retakaful business in international currencies are being offered. Operational flexibility is given to new licensees to be set up as a branch or subsidiary who will enjoy tax holiday for 10 years under the Income Tax Act. Stamp duty exemption for ten years beginning this year has been granted on foreign currency instruments executed by these participants, and on instruments relating to ringgit and foreign currency Islamic securities. Approval has been granted to fully exempt from withholding tax any profits or income on non-residents' investments in non-ringgit Islamic securities including sukuks issued in Malaysia. Malaysia maintains a liberal foreign exchange administration regime where investors are freely able to obtain ringgit and foreign currencies to fund their investments in Malaysia. We have relaxed the rules further to allow resident and foreign issuers to raise foreign currency-denominated bonds, including Islamic bonds.

Using effective tools in turn helps focus our limited resources on the highest risks, and coordinate the public and private sectors to work together to achieve the best outcomes. 9. So all those three elements I spoke about three years ago have seen impressive progress, particularly with how the AML eco-system has responded to the challenges that COVID-19 has brought, across all sectors and all regions. Perhaps it will also be helpful for me to refer to a few practical examples here. 10. First, on COVID-19 scams, those cases have had economic and social effects that are farreaching and often very nasty. Much-needed funds have been diverted away from Government efforts to contain the pandemic due to fraud against hospitals and health care facilities around the world, as well as those targeting vulnerable individuals. 11. The good news is that our global system has responded swiftly – the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has taken an early lead in tackling such cases, and I think the leadership and guidance provided has been extremely helpful. 12. Another example is that regulators, including the HKMA, have been encouraging banks to make the fullest possible use of the risk-based approach to Customer Due Diligence (CDD) already built into the international standards in order to address practical issues arising from business continuity planning and social distancing measures. Technology came to the fore very quickly: remote on-boarding and relationship management went almost overnight from being a “nice to have” to an essential aspect of business continuity.
Table 1: Google searches related to social consumption  Country  Peak YoY change, %  Italy  -67  Spain  -75  France  -73  Germany  -70  US  -58  Japan  -82  China  -73  UK  -69  Sources: Google and Bank calculations. Table 2: UK “fast indicators” of consumption categories  Category  Peak change, %  Social  -80  Work-related  -65  Delayable  -50  Staple  -5  Total  -30  Source: Bank of England and Bank calculations. GDP data so far broadly corroborates the message from these fast indicators. Compared with the fourth quarter of 2019, UK GDP fell by around 25% during the first four months of this year. The fall in UK-weighted world GDP is likely to have been similarly unprecedented. Unsurprisingly, these would be the sharpest four-month falls in GDP on record, in both the UK and globally. This contraction has affected almost every sector, if to differing degrees (Chart 2). The largest falls have been in the accommodation and dining sectors (over 90%). But sectors such as arts and recreation, construction and education have fallen by more than 40%. Utilities, food production and real estate have been among the least affected. Generally speaking, the greater a sector’s reliance on personal contact, the larger its fall. 4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  4  Chart 2: Falls in output by sector Industry output, hit to level, % Accomm.

The Migration Board, the Swedish Prison and Probation Service and the Social Insurance Office are a few of the authorities expressing an interest in the new card, although there will certainly be other users. It will be interesting to follow the development of this new means of payment. Summary Let me round off. •  We use our cards more and more; we use them more often and for smaller and smaller transactions. The importance of cards to the safe and efficient functioning of the payment system has increased significantly. As one of the tasks of the Riksbank is to promote a safe and efficient payment system, there has been a corresponding increase in our interest in card payments. •  It is hardly likely that the costs of using cash have fallen; it is more likely that they have increased. On the other hand, most of the indications are that a card payment costs somewhat less today. From an economic point of view the use of cards should have become increasingly favourable. •  Few people know what payments actually cost. There are increasingly strong reasons for the banks and the retail sector to consider how payments should be priced for customers. Experiences from Sweden and other countries indicate that consumers are price-sensitive when it comes to the use of means of payment. Consumers would use less cash if they had to bear a larger portion of cash-handling costs.
W A Wijewardena: Sustainable socio-economic security – some lessons from the experiences of Sri Lanka Speech by Mr W A Wijewardena, Deputy Governor, Central Bank of Sri Lanka, at the International Conference on “Universalizing Socio-economic Security in South Asia”, organized by The Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, and the Institute for Human Development (IHD), New Delhi, 17-20 February 2008. This paper is based on the personal experiences of the writer as Director of Small Farmers and the Landless Credit Project, dubbed in Sinhala as “Isuru Project”, when he was the Director of Rural Credit of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka from 1993 to 2000 and Deputy Governor in charge of this portfolio since then. The credit for the achievements of Isuru Project is shared equally by all the stakeholders involved in the Project. The views expressed in the paper are those of the writer and should not be construed as those of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. *  *  *  Introduction History is abundant with numerous initiatives taken by mankind, both through state action and personal enterprise, to ensure socio-economic security, or in layman’s language, opportunity for all the people to enjoy the benefits of economic prosperity without discrimination or reservation. In ancient times in Sri Lanka, the kings took it upon themselves the responsibility for creating such a society which was considered as a just society 1 .

Once a group has completed about six months of mandatory savings and gone through the essential elements of social mobilisation, its members would be provided with an opportunity to acquire vocational skills as a prelude to preparing them to be future micro entrepreneurs. With this training, members are also encouraged to select their own micro enterprise and the change agents do not advise them what they should select. The only advice given to these up and coming micro entrepreneurs is that they should select any business line where the output could be sold within a radius of 15 km. from their homes. This way they were guided  18  This is in line with the traditional local culture which has always upheld savings as a core value of life. Even according to Buddhist scriptures, a wise household should save at least a quarter of his income as a safeguard against unforeseen events use a half of his income for further wealth creation. See, Singalowada Sutra. Dheega Nikaya. 19  In fact, as to be expected, the members initially resisted that they could not save that much when they did not even earn that amount of money. But, when it was shown to them that there was a vast amount of resources lying idle around them which could be tapped and they could cut certain inessential expenditures, they willingly participated in the savings programme. BIS Review 22/2008  5  to produce for the market and keep their selling costs at an affordable level.
Lars E O Svensson: Inflation targeting after the financial crisis Speech by Prof Lars E O Svensson, Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at the International Research Conference “Challenges to Central Banking in the Context of Financial Crisis”, Mumbai, 12 February 2010. *  *  *  I thank Charles Bean, Claes Berg, Alan Blinder, Stephen Cecchetti, Chuck Freedman, Charles Goodhart, Lars Nyberg, Irma Rosenberg, Hyun Shin, Frank Smets and Staffan Viotti for discussions of these issues. The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of other members of the Riksbank’s executive board or of the Riksbank’s staff. Hanna Armelius and Hans Dellmo of the Riksbank’s staff contributed to this speech. As the world economy begins to recover from the financial crisis and the resulting deep recession of the global economy, there is a lively debate about what caused the crisis and how the risks of future crises can be reduced. Some blame loose monetary policy for laying the foundation for the crisis and there is a lively debate about the future of monetary policy and its relation to financial stability. Here I will discuss the lessons for inflation targeting after the crisis. My view is that the crisis was not caused by monetary policy but mainly by regulatory and supervisory failures in combination with some special circumstances.

This motivates more research on how to incorporate financial factors into the standard models of the transmission mechanism used by central banks. A rapidly-increasing volume of such research is now being produced by academic and central-bank researchers and presented at an increasing number of conferences on financial factors and monetary policy. Important and challenging questions include how potential output and neutral real interest rates are affected by financial factors and financial distortions (Curdia and Woodford 2009, Walsh 2009), and  15  However, conceptually distinguishing the two policy areas does not rule out that there might be advantages of to keeping a large part of the responsibility for financial-stability policy within the central bank, as argued by, for instance, Blinder (2010) and Nyberg (2010). BIS Review 16/2010  5  what impact financial factors have on the general equilibrium effects of alternative policy-rate paths on inflation and resource utilization forecasts. 16 Even with much better analytical foundations concerning the role of financial factors in the transmission mechanism, there will of course, as always, be considerable scope for the application of good judgment in monetary policy. Another conclusion, which is not new, is that consideration of the impact of financial factors on the forecast of inflation and resource utilization may require longer forecast horizons. Several inflation-targeting central banks (including the Bank of England, Norges Bank and the Riksbank) have for other reasons already extended their forecast horizon from the previously common two years to three years.
If the world’s banks had had larger and better buffers, both of capital and of liquidity, the crisis would hardly have been as serious as it was. But the question is whether the new regulations are sufficient. Even if Basel III is a major step forward, we must not forget that it represents global minimum regulations that are the result of compromises by representatives of 27 countries in which the structures of the financial markets differ considerably. In addition, these regulations will not reach their full effect until 2019. In my speech today, I have shed light on a number of risks that are specific to the Swedish economy, not least the Swedish banks’ dependence on funding from the international capital markets and the households’ increased borrowing. Against this background, I believe that there may be good reasons to consider whether we, the Swedish authorities, ought to adopt extra measures or proceed more quickly than planned in Basel III. There are a number of measures that I believe are worthy of further discussion. One is to bring forward the introduction of the new liquidity standards, a second would be to add  9  The Macroeconomic Assessment Group (MAG) has been assigned to estimate the effects on the interest rate margins, lending volume and GDP during the implementation of the new regulations both as regards capital and liquidity. The MAG report is called “Assessing the macroeconomic impact of the transition to stronger capital and liquidity requirements”, and is available at www.bis.org.

For the international community, these policies provide a clear signal on the country's seriousness about 2050, despite contributing only 0.7% of global GHG emissions. Along the transition journey, there are risks to manage, and opportunities to be seized. Technology is key. So is finance. Your actions and responses are critical. The partnership between you and your clients is critical. Your clients would need the "How" in terms of new forms of financial instruments – transition finance, adaptation finance and blended finance to name a few. For the SMEs, this goes beyond financing. For instance, they need the "How" in terms of where and how to begin greening their operations, tools to help them understand, measure and track their own emissions profiles. I am delighted and encouraged to see the Malaysian ecosystem and accompanying tools continue to mature. The progress thus far is commendable. But, we must not forget the long road ahead and work still to be done to achieve 2050 in an orderly and just manner. The Bank's experience in engaging with multiple stakeholders offers some insights as to the additional elements needed to further propel our transition. Allow me to share these insights to CAP off our discourse today – that is C for Communication, A for Alignment, and P for Proactivity. 1/2  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  Communication. The economy's transition doesn't just happen in high powered boardrooms and government offices. It happens in the everyday decisions made by households and small business owners.
Remarks given at a panel to launch the third annual America’s Pledge report, at the 25th Annual Conference of the Parties Mark Carney Governor of the Bank of England  US Climate Action Centre, Madrid 10 December 2019  I am grateful to Jennifer Nemeth for her assistance in preparing these remarks. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  Introduction The Accelerating America’s Pledge report comprehensively documents the scale of change that is needed across our economies to put emissions on a trajectory consistent with building a net zero economy. That will require a more sustainable financial system. Changes in climate policies, new technologies and growing physical risks will prompt reassessments of the values of virtually every financial asset. Firms that align their business models with the transition to net zero will be rewarded handsomely. Those that fail to adapt will cease to exist. Now is the time to ensure that every financial decision takes climate change into account. For that change to happen, we need to focus on the three Rs – reporting, risk management and return. First, reporting In 2015, G20 leaders tasked representatives from the public and private sectors to review how the financial system takes into account climate risks. We established a Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), chaired by Mike Bloomberg. Four years on, the TCFD has generated a step change in both the demand for and supply of climate reporting. The demand for TCFD disclosure is now enormous.

Let me go over some of the reasons why we chose this path. The euro area crisis, and in particular the more acute episodes of banking turmoil, revealed a number of basic weaknesses at the heart of the monetary union. i)  First, the problems encountered by some of the big banks severely damaged the fiscal stance in certain countries, where the state had to step in to save these banks. This, in turn, undermined market confidence in the sustainability of the resulting fast growing public debts, which led to sharp rises in the rates at which those countries could borrow on the market, as, for example, in the case of Ireland. ii)  Second, there was a perception that countries with impaired public finances would have difficulty bailing out their respective financial systems in the event of a problem. This resulted in a widespread loss of confidence and pushed up borrowing costs for banks and sovereigns, as in the case of Italy. iii)  In response to these tensions, the European Central Bank took unprecedented steps to lower the cost of bank refinancing, cutting its key policy rates to historically low levels and providing unlimited 3-year liquidity. But even this proved insufficient to calm market tensions. In some countries at least, monetary policy measures were simply not being fully transmitted to the real economy. What was the reason behind these three phenomena, which were largely responsible for the escalation of the crisis in the euro area?
However, mismatches between the skills of the current workforce and those required by the new technologies or other substantial frictions to workers changing role could cause the equilibrium unemployment rate to rise alongside any increase in unemployment – particularly if the speed of adoption of new technologies is faster than in the past. That would shift the Phillips Curve up, reducing the disinflationary effects of automation. At present, there is little evidence to go on to judge the likely size and persistence of any increasing in structural unemployment. Monetary policy makers will need to remain alert to this possibility, updating their assessment as the transition occurs. The experience of the 1970s shows that mistakenly ascribing a structural pickup in unemployment to cyclical factors can lead to the wrong macroeconomic policy setting, with long-lasting adverse effects. A more automated world could also affect inflationary pressures through flattening the Phillips curve. The threat of robot substitutes could weaken workers’ bargaining power. And advances in artificial intelligence and similar technologies could increase companies’ ability to learn about their competitors’ marginal costs and leading to greater synchronisation of price changes across companies. Already, there is evidence that online retailers adjust prices more frequently than those on the high street, while being less likely to vary prices by location. 39  Conclusion While the Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to transform the economy, the challenges it presents for monetary policy makers are in many ways not new.

35 The economic policy choices made by the authorities and Norges Bank as manager of the Government Pension Fund Global must have legitimacy and credibility. Without long-term thinking, the management of our wealth will not be a success story. So far, it would seem that we have managed to mix and drink an adequate dose of Felix Felicis, but we must not let down our guard. Thank you for your attention. 33  See for example the obituary “Gunter Sachs”, in The Telegraph, 9 May 2011: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/obituaries/8503379/Gunter-Sachs.html  34  Sigurd Høst (1936): Norges historie: med viktigere avsnitt av Danmarks og Sveriges historie. For middelskoler og ungdomsskole [History of Norway], in Norwegian only, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, Oslo. 35  J. K. Rowling (2006): Harry Potter and the half-blood prince, London : Bloomsbury. 10  BIS central bankers’ speeches