samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
One of the factors resulting in more difficult financing conditions for emerging economies with structural problems was the announcement by the US Federal Reserve that it intended to reduce its securities purchases. Overall, growth in the global economy in 2013 was weak and uneven, and remained marked by uncertainty. Will this situation change in the current year? Probably only to a limited extent. According to our assessment, although the cycle has probably bottomed out, the challenges remain formidable. I will now outline the international economic position in more detail. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Global economic outlook for 2014 In 2014, growth in the global economy is likely to be stronger than in 2013. Nevertheless, regional differences will remain substantial. While relatively robust growth can be expected in the US, the signs are pointing to a modest and uneven recovery in the euro area. A slightly stronger economic momentum than in 2013 can be expected in the major emerging economies, but they will not attain former growth rates. We therefore anticipate that expansion in the global economy will be no more than moderate. However, the recovery remains subject to significant downside risks. This is still largely due to the European debt crisis. You may be wondering whether the debt crisis is not already over. The extreme risks have indeed been eliminated. Reform programmes introduced in some euro area countries, progress achieved in creating a banking union and measures taken by the European Central Bank (ECB) have clearly brought about an alleviation of the crisis.

With interest rates close to zero and a high Swiss franc, the minimum exchange rate is still the key monetary policy instrument for the SNB. Our monetary policy decisions have caused the SNB balance sheet to increase considerably. Due to the size of the balance sheet and the uncertainty on the capital markets, annual results are expected to be volatile in the foreseeable future. That is why we cannot provide you with any forecasts of the SNB’s future annual results. We are certainly very aware that the lack of a dividend is painful for many shareholders. However, as you know, the SNB is obliged by constitution and statute to act in accordance with the interests of the country as a whole. Its primary goal is to ensure price stability, while taking due account of the development of the economy. The SNB is required to gear its  1  Overall, illiquid assets totalling USD 38.7 billion were taken over. The funding was as follows: The SNB granted a loan of USD 25.8 billion and UBS provided 10% or USD 3.9 billion in the form of the purchase price for the option to repurchase the stabilisation fund at a later date. The difference between the funds paid into the stabilisation fund and the total sum of transferred assets was made up of contingent liabilities which, at that point, did not require any financing. 2  In 2009, the Confederation sold the equities arising out of the conversion of these notes to institutional investors, thereby ceasing its involvement.
Consequently, a monetary policy that aims to address potential disinflation risks and maintain medium-term price stability must be implemented in a manner that also ensures the preservation of price stability over the longer term. Financial system reform And this brings me to two final points concerning two other essential conditions for sustainable growth: financial system reform and sound fiscal policy. It is by now generally agreed that there is both a great and urgent need to introduce reforms that prevent the recurrence of episodes of financial market excesses and corrections and that will make the global financial system more resilient to shocks. An extensive and impressive amount of work has been undertaken by national authorities and international bodies, under the auspices of the Financial Stability Forum and, more recently, the G20 process. Concrete proposals have been formulated – and others are currently being elaborated – on how to reduce the cyclicality of the financial system through various measures and reforms, including the enhancement of the scope and effectiveness of financial regulation and supervision. In the EU, the report of the de Larosière Group is a valuable contribution to this end. The forthcoming summit meeting of the Group of 20 in London can mark a further important step in the effective pursuit of this reform agenda globally.

3 And these levels are comparable to the corresponding Libor rates in the US dollar and Pound sterling money markets. 4 Thus, over the past six months, conditions in the euro area money markets have significantly improved and effectively are similar to – or even better than – those in other major money markets. In addition, the provision of liquidity by the ECB to the euro area banking system has been extraordinary in size and scope. The size of Eurosystem’s balance sheet in mid-February had reached 1.53 trillion euro (or 1.96 trillion US dollars), compared with 0.91 trillion euro before the eruption of the crisis. The expansion of the Eurosystem’s balance sheet by about 70% over this period reflects the various non-standard measures implemented by the ECB, including the provision of unlimited funding in euro at fixed interest rates over periods up to six months as well as the supply of liquidity in other currencies, notably US dollars, on the basis of a swap agreement with the Federal Reserve. The reduction in the policy rates and the increased supply of reserves were fully in line with the ECB’s primary objective of preserving price stability over the medium term, as inflation pressures eased and inflation risks diminished, and helped to alleviate pressures in the credit market and mitigate financial stability risks. 3  Euribor rates for longer maturities (on 25 January 2009) are following: 6 months: 1.71%; 9 months: 1.78%; 1 year: 1.86%.
Before rounding off this discussion about monetary policy, let me also touch on the question of publication of minutes, which was brought up in the discussions earlier today. I think this is an issue that has been given too much prominence in recent discussions about clarity and transparency in monetary policy. Clearly, there are positive and negative aspects of publishing minutes. It can influence the internal discussions in both a positive and negative way. It can also have positive and negative effects on the way in which a central bank is perceived. I believe that the publication of minutes has been less important for the acceptance and credibility of monetary policy in Sweden during recent years than the policy framework with published forecasts and a policy rule. Nevertheless, I do think it was right of us to start to publish ours. Concluding remarks Let me conclude by underscoring that there are clearly major differences between the problems we were confronted with in Sweden after our crisis and those confronting European decision-makers today. We started from scratch without any credibility, while the euro was launched in a relatively good setting drawing on the credibility of the Bundesbank. But on the other hand, we had the advantage of having to manage only one country. After five years in European policy circles, I think I understand what Ottmar Issing means when he says that every single language reflects the unique circumstances in the country where it is spoken.

François Villeroy de Galhau: Europe at a crossroads – how to achieve efficient economic governance in the euro area? Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, recorded for the event at Bruegel, Brussels, 22 March 2016. *  *  *  Summary There is a growing perception of the need to rethink the economic governance of the euro area. Compelling ideas have been put forward to that effect; yet their implementation is tricky, especially in the present climate of Euroscepticism. Shifting from ideas to action has become urgent if monetary policy is not to remain the only game in town. Clearly, the single monetary policy cannot be a substitute for the coordination of national economic policies or the lack of reforms. To be sure, the debate over EMU reform is politically loaded; but for euro area citizens the poor coordination of national policies involves a high cost in terms of growth, of several points of GDP. The economic case therefore needs to be made: this discussion is not about “more Brussels”, it is about more growth and jobs in Europe. In addition, it is not a choice between domestic reforms or European coordination; we need both. Between complete integration – of the monetary-policy type – and monitored national policies, as currently conducted, the missing link is “full coordination” of fiscal and structural policies. This is clearly shown in a matrix crossing these three degrees of integration and the four policy dimensions (monetary, financial, fiscal and structural).
UK inflation expectations ratcheted down by a further 50 basis points on announcement, as credibility stepped-up.5 The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) was soon formed and met for the first time in June 1997. Internally, a new machine and procedures were developed to service and support the MPC. The centrepiece of this support was a meeting called “Pre-MPC”. This was a full day of briefing presentations by Bank staff to the MPC. It is, and remains, the closest you will ever get to economic theatre at the Bank of England. Bank Staff sit on one side of the amphitheatre armed with Powerpoint presentations, the MPC sit on the other armed with tricky questions. As luck would have it, I gave the first-ever pre-MPC presentation at the first-ever pre-MPC. The room was rammed with banks of screens, crowds of people and clouds of cigarette smoke – three of the MPC were smokers, including the Chair Eddie George. I was a bag of nerves. Eddie gave me the nod, I pressed the button on my PC to start the presentation – and all the screens went blank and an ear-piecing noise let out around the room, the type of which instantly causes teeth to grind. 3  Haldane (1995). Briault, Haldane and King (1997). 5 King (2002). 4  5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  5  With my bag of nerves now full to overflowing, I peered through the fug of Rothmans to see Eddie staring back at me.

In terms of monetary policy, it is understandable and will continue to be the case that the Federal Reserve will focus on its own mandate in setting policy. But as the US dollar is used heavily abroad, the effective US dollar currency area extends well beyond US  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  borders. The Federal Reserve sets policy for this wider currency area, not just the 50 US states. There have been a lot of discussions about how policy cooperation and coordination may offer scope for improvement. But a practical solution still seems elusive. Ladies and Gentlemen, In closing, let me offer my special thanks to the distinguished speakers for taking part in this important endeavor and for sharing with us your expertise. All of us here very much look forward to your contributions throughout today and tomorrow. I would also like to thank the IMF – in particular, the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific – for kindly co-hosting this event. To all conference participants, I welcome your spirited discussions as I have already noticed there are many experts present among us. Thank you for being here. I wish you a fruitful conference and a pleasant stay in Thailand. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
In 2016, there were over 500 confirmed cases of measles, five times higher than at the turn of the century. If we turn from public health to economic and financial health, the costs of a lack of public trust and understanding are in many respects quite similar: expert advice and services may not be taken-up, worse alternatives may be sought out and contagious scare stories may be allowed to proliferate. Each of these has societal costs which may be significant. Financial exclusion (people excluded from access to core financial services and advice) remains pervasive in the UK. There are almost 2 million people in the UK without a bank account. 26  In the most deprived parts  (including parts of London, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Liverpool, Bradford, Birmingham and Glasgow), over a third of people do not have access to a bank account. 27  While not all of these problems can be  blamed on a misunderstanding and mistrust of finance, these are still depressing statistics. Many more people suffer the consequences, not of financial exclusion, but financial illiteracy. Studies have identified a range of ways in which this can adversely affect people’s financial health. Financial illiteracy is a key contributor to excessive indebtedness. in the run-up to the sub-prime crisis. 29  28  It is associated with an increased incidence of default, including  And illiteracy causes people to seek out high-cost, non-standard  sources of credit, the financial equivalent of alternative medicine.

4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  4  Table 2: Statements of Commitment to the FX Global Code by the 30 largest asset managers  Firm  Assets Under Management $  SoC on public register, or have otherwise informed the Bank of England  1  Blackrock  6,060    2  Vanguard Asset Management  4,663  3  State Street Global Advisors  2,641  4  Fidelity Investments  2,284  5  BNY Mellon Investment Management  1,808  6  Capital Group  1,715  7  J.P. Morgan Asset Management  1,677  8  PIMCO  1,667  9  Amundi  1,626  10  Prudential Financial  1,323  11  Legal & General Investment Management  1,263  12  Goldman Sachs Asset Management  1,224  13  Wellington Management International  1,026  14  Natixis Investment Managers  947  15  T. Rowe Price  941  16  Nuveen  923  17  Nothern Trust Asset Management  913  18  Invesco  890  19  AXA Investment Managers  850  20  DWS (Deutsche Asset Management)  800  21  Affiliated Managers Group  794  22  UBS Asset Management  756    23  Insight Investment  751    24  Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank  748    25  Aberdeen Standard Investments  739  26  Legg Mason  733  27  Franklin Templeton Investments  716  28  BNP Paribas Asset Management France  649  29  Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking  611  30  Allianz Global Investors  568               Source: Firm AUM rankings from IPE’s ‘Top 400 Asset Managers 2018’, https://www.ipe.com/Uploads/k/x/x/Top-400-Ranking.pdf.
It is thus not enough for the legal structure to be in place; there must also be a practical solution that quite simply does not provide any incentives to “push one’s way to the front of the queue”. I welcome these efforts to strengthen the frameworks and look forward to seeing the results. But I believe that one should have realistic expectations of the possibility to write down claims in a shaky market situation. The experiences from the Swedish banking crisis and also the Northern Rock case show us that in such situations it may be necessary to have an extensive guarantee of the banks’ obligations to stop a bank run or secure continued access to the international capital markets. …and a simpler way which has proven its worth in real crisis situations I would therefore recommend also introducing regulations that give the government the right to take over the ownership of a bank in a certain situation. If this is done in the right way, it will not only deal with the requirement that the shareholders should be held responsible, it will also minimise the risk that the government will need to bear costs that the creditors should bear. For this to work, the government should have the right to take over the shares before the capital is completely wiped out. There are at least two reasons for this. First, there is a risk that the owners will “gamble for resurrection” when the capital is low.

A bank failure affects not only shareholders and professional investors, but also all the ordinary people who have put their money in the bank in the belief that it will be safe there. It is not without reason that you often hear the reference to widows and orphans running the risk of losing their money in connection with bank problems. And even if the depositors may in the end recover much of their money in a subsequent insolvency procedure, they may lose access to the money in their bank account, and the possibility to make payments from it, for quite some time. As most of us have most of our money in a bank account, we may find it difficult to quickly find the means needed to pay our rent and food if this happens. And you may also be affected by the failure of other peoples’ banks. For instance, if your employer’s bank gets into problems, the pay-roll account might be frozen and you might not get your salary. And if your employer cannot quickly get credit from another bank, he may not be able to pay his subcontractors and his utility bills. He may also find it difficult to manage the risks in his business, for instance in relation to trades in a foreign currency. At worst, he may need to shut down entirely. A bank failure can thus have negative effects on the real economy.
Two of them focus on improving cross-border payments by working on interoperability between CBDCs with innovative solutions, such as a liquidity management tool based on decentralised finance technology (AMM, automated market maker), which we upgraded in the first half of 2022. The third experiment aims at deepening previous ones on the use of central bank money as a safe settlement asset for tokenised securities, together with other European partners. It involves issuing and distributing tokenised bonds on a blockchain. ***  Let me conclude by recalling that in the 1980s it was decided to design and build a large glass pyramid in its courtyard of the Louvre. This disruptive architecture by I.M. Peï was first met with outrage, as critics considered it incompatible with classical style. It was nonetheless built, and has since then become a cherished symbol of the Louvre. I hope that we central bankers will find our way to make tokenisation fit in the existing architecture, while regulating it to the extent necessary. Thank you for your attention. And I would now like to hand the floor over to Ms Mairead McGuinness. Page 6 sur 5 Villeroy de Galhau, F., Central banks and finance in the face of a triple revolution, speech, 25 November 2021 Villeroy de Galhau, F., Ethics of currency: a possible guide for central bankers?, Michel Camdessus Central Banking Lecture, 14 September 2022 iii See for instance Waller, C.J., CBDC - A Solution in Search of a Problem?

In more rigid economies interest-rate changes are transmitted to prices after a longer delay and structural impediments can prevent the economic efficiency gains sought through the stability-oriented objective of monetary policy from being fully realised. To conclude, the European Union is undergoing an important process of reforms of its socioeconomic model so as to adapt it to future challenges. The economic strategy is on the right track, there is a consensus on the appropriate objectives and agreement on the right institutional setting to be set in place. The next decisive step is now to accelerate the putting into practice of these plans. The earlier this happens, the earlier economic activity, employment and innovation in Europe can be lifted to a higher level and standard. I trust that this acceleration of reforms will not only be in the  17  OECD (2005) “Education at a glance”. 18  See A. Annenkov and C. Madaschi (2005), “Labour productivity in the Nordic EU countries. A comparative overview and explanatory factors 1980-2004”, ECB Occasional Paper No. 39, October. 19  See the article entitled “The Lisbon strategy – Five years on” in the July 2005 issue of the ECB Monthly Bulletin. 20  See the Box entitled “The 2005-2008 Lisbon National Reform Programmes of the euro area countries “in the January 2006 issue of the ECB Monthly Bulletin.
18  Figure 12  Output gap (1) (2)  (level, percentage points)  Dec.22  8 6 4 2 0 -2 -4 -6 -8 -10 -12 -14 -16  19  20  Mar.23  21  Counterfactual (3)  22  23  24  25  (1) Constructed using seasonally-adjusted data. Dotted lines show forecasts. (2) Forecasts use structural parameters updated in the December 2022 MP Report (trend) with methodological revision of potential GDP. (3) Counterfactual estimate for 2022.Q4 is based on the assumption that the value added measure of the Transportation sector remains at its 2022.Q3 level, which is equivalent to zero velocity. All other non-mining sectors use published velocities. For the fourth quarter, both the effective and counterfactual gaps are calculated using the same potential GDP. Source: Central Bank of Chile.

As we recognize in the sensitivity and risk scenarios of this MP Report, this is one possible outcome and its implications for the economy should be carefully monitored. While this is a matter in progress that we must follow closely, inflation has remained high for a long period of time and continues to be a complex and high-impact problem. The costs of this situation are evident. We have all felt the effects of rising prices in our daily lives, and a part of the population has suffered the hardest. Inflation introduces risks and distorts the information contained in prices, thus affecting investment, growth and employment. It is not possible to contemplate sustained growth in employment and activity if inflation is not kept under control. Therefore, bringing inflation back to the 3 percent target is an unavoidable task. I want to insist that, even if total inflation is on a downward path and will soon return to single-digit figures, the problem has not been solved. The convergence of inflation to 3% has not yet been consolidated and as long as it remains above that figure, the task of the Central Bank will not be complete. The causes of inflation have been discussed at length. The main one was the excessive increase in spending that led to the liquidation of social security savings and across-the-board fiscal transfers. In addition, there was the pandemic and its consequences on the local economy and in global production chains, plus the effects of the war in Ukraine.