samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
This is something that I and my colleagues will continue to work on explaining over the coming year. At the same time, it should be emphasised that this is a complex task and that it is therefore quite natural that there is a debate on monetary policy. Nor are we Executive Board members always unanimous on which interest rate decision will be the best one in a given situation, despite the fact that we are agreed on the objective of our monetary policy. Credibility demands openness and clarity In order to combine confidence in price stability in the longer term with flexible inflation targeting, it is important that we are open and clear when conducting our monetary policy. This is also a necessary condition for the legitimacy of the Riksbank’s objective, independence and actions. Important elements of this endeavour include publishing the analyses on which interest rate decisions are based in the form of Inflation Reports. In addition, after every monetary policy meeting a press release is published, which gives an account of the reasons behind the decision made. Moreover, when an Inflation Report is published or the repo rate is adjusted, the Riksbank holds a press conference. The Executive Board’s monetary policy discussions are reported in separate minutes of the monetary policy meetings, which are published around two weeks after each meeting. In this way, all those who wish can closely follow our reasoning and a basis for evaluating our assessments and decisions is created.

William C Dudley: US and regional economic conditions Remarks by Mr William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the Economic Press Briefing on Private For-Profit Institutions in Higher Education, New York City, 20 November 2013. *  *  *  Good morning and welcome once again to the New York Fed’s Regional Economic Press Briefing. I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak with you – and, through you, to the people in our District. I am going to discuss conditions in the national economy and then on conditions in our region, with a focus on private, for-profit institutions, which have become more visible in the U.S. higher education market. As always, what I have to say reflects my own views and not necessarily those of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) or the Federal Reserve System. National economic conditions Let me begin by taking stock of where we are at the moment. Then I will address my expectations for the performance of the economy in 2014 and 2015. Since the end of what is now called the Great Recession in mid-2009, the U.S. economy has experienced 17 consecutive calendar quarters of positive growth of real GDP (gross domestic product). However, the compound annual rate of growth over that period has only been around 2¼ percent, close to prevailing estimates of the economy’s potential growth rate.
In the 1990s, housing starts in Norway were fairly low in relation to growth in the number of households. Moreover, population growth has been higher in recent years, largely reflecting  10  BIS Review 28/2007  a high level of immigration. In 2006, the population increased by more than 40 000 and the number of households by roughly 30 000. Furthermore, migration patterns in Norway follow the business cycle. Migration to densely populated areas is now rising. Demands for high standards and new building regulations have also pushed up housing construction costs and thereby house prices. The main determinants of house price inflation have long been income, unemployment, interest rates and residential construction. Over the past few years, inward migration and domestic migration patterns may also have contributed. In the past year, however, house price inflation has been higher than implied by these factors. A large share of the increase in 2006 cannot be explained by previous patterns. Developments since the beginning of the 1990s may have engendered expectations that house prices will only continue to rise. This may have increased house purchases for pure investment purposes and induced younger buyers to enter the housing market earlier than otherwise. The housing market may now be in a state of euphoria. The rise in house prices has been accompanied by a sharp increase in household debt. In Norway, household debt is now almost twice the level of disposable income, and the debt to income ratio is the highest ever.

This insight has tremendous significance for Switzerland where, as I have attempted to show, much of the non-tradable sector of our economy remains tied up in a structural straight jacket. Eliminating this straight jacket or at least unbuttoning it would have wide-ranging positive effects on the Swiss economy. If our legislative authorities rise to that challenge, they are likely to replicate the competitionboosting effect that the forces of globalization have exerted on the external sector in the domestically oriented sectors of our economy. Higher productivity growth rates would ultimately lead to higher growth rates and thus reverse a worrying trend of declining relative growth dynamics in Switzerland in comparison with other OECD countries.11 Such productivity driven growth dynamics should lead to lower prices across a sizeable part of our economy. Obviously, this statement needs to be qualified. he Swiss economy will always remain vulnerable to developments abroad. A significant demand or supply shock to the global economy could reverse the beneficial impact on domestic prices of further domestic liberalization. For example, widespread protectionist measures rolling back the achievements of globalization or widespread geopolitical conflict and uncertainty would certainly threaten the broad achievements with regard to price stability. Nonetheless, breaking up the rigidities impeding competition in the domestically oriented sectors of our economy has every chance of rendering monetary policy not only more  10  Alan Blinder (1998): “Central Banking in Theory and Practice”. Cambridge: MIT Press.
the Basel III finalisation package and the reforms contained in CRD V and CRR Il;    Making adjustments to the framework in response to new risks;    Making adjustments to the framework in response to unintended consequences. 13  For instance, a leverage ratio buffer for global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) that is based on the level of the risk-weighted GSIB buffer. There are some differences between the Basel leverage ratio regime and the UK regime but the amounts of Tier 1 capital major UK banks need under each are broadly similar – see Box 3 in the June 2018 Financial Stability Report, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/financial-stability-report/2018/june2018.pdf?la=en&hash=9D057C7302B80EF57D634020F50C6F46D782904C. 14 See https://www.bis.org/press/p171207.htm. 15 See the letter from the Financial Stability Board chair to G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, 18 March 2018, http://www.fsb.org/wp-content/uploads/P180318.pdf. 6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  Remaining policy development  As mentioned, you should not expect a lot more reform. But there will be some further policy development to finish the job we started 10 years ago. For example, having implemented the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) back in 2015, we are polishing our Pillar 2 liquidity framework. This has not been adapted since the FSA introduced a new liquidity regime in 2010. Pillar 2 liquidity is intended to capture liquidity risks faced by banks that are not captured by the Pillar 1 LCR. Earlier this year we published a Statement of Policy on Pillar 2 liquidity.

Decisions about whether or not to make an adjustment will be made on the basis of a careful weighing up of evidence of benefits and costs. In doing this we need to bear in mind that regulatory costs will often be easier to quantify than the financial stability and safety and soundness benefits. And depending on the case we may need to look beyond the banking system to capture all of the costs and benefits. For instance, unintended consequences of bank regulation might be felt not in the banking sector but in financial markets, financial infrastructures, and other parts of the financial system. Principle 3: we should aim to match a dynamic adjustment to the problem that has been identified. If we identify an unintended consequence of a particular regulation we should first seek to adjust that regulation to deal with the consequence. Similarly with any new risks that emerge. For instance, if a new risk that is identified is threatening the stability of the system as a whole it would seem appropriate to look to use a macroprudential tool to reduce that risk. Adjustments we have made already  The Bank has already made several changes to the regulatory framework that can be thought of as dynamic adjustments. Two such changes have been made to the leverage ratio requirement. In response to a recommendation by the FPC, central bank reserves have been removed from the calculation of the denominator of the leverage ratio since summer 2016.
Our task now is to ensure that liberalization and globalization remain productive processes, that our energies are devoted not just to short-term cures, but also to long-term preventive health. There are a number of initiatives that we might pursue, and I mention only a few of them with the aim of stimulating discussion. The first, and most urgent, is the reform of the international financial architecture to better regulate the volatile capital flows that contribute to market instability. This must include improved information and disclosure. The recent experience in this region has shown that problems were allowed to build up because of a lack of information about the full financial picture, both in terms of the destination and the source of the funds. Important steps are being taken in many Asian countries towards greater transparency in the public sector, and I am pleased to report that Hong Kong is playing a leading role in these efforts. But greater transparency among the regulators means that a serious asymmetry of information is emerging between the public and private sectors. We must now consider the need for greater disclosure on the investor side, since the virtual complete lack of information about the activities of huge global institutional investors poses risks to all participants in the markets - to other investors, to lenders, and to borrowers. A second part of this architectural reform must be improved prudential oversight of capital flows, since mere disclosure is no guarantee that behaviour will be prudent.

This double play strategy, backed by massive prefunding offshore (which protected the speculators against the interest rate volatility in Hong Kong) occurred with increasing intensity and formed the BIS Review 2/1999  –5–  background to our controversial operations in the equity markets in late August. We used official reserves to purchase stocks to ensure that the speculators did not profit: in other words, we did the unexpected in order to prevent our predictable and transparent system from falling prey to manipulation. We had absolutely no intention of defending a given level of equity prices. Nor do we have any intention of playing a role in corporate decision making in Hong Kong. The substantial stock portfolio that we acquired during the operation has since been turned over to an independent body with wide representation, to be managed in a neutral and transparent manner. We further followed the market operation with a package of technical measures designed to strengthen the currency board system and make it less susceptible to manipulation. At the same time, stock exchange trading rules have been tightened. We were roundly condemned at the time for what many saw as a criminal breach of free market principles. Milton Friedman, for example, called our operation in the markets “insane”, and suggested that it was part of a plan to socialize Hong Kong. Less dramatic critics feared that it marked the beginning of the end of Hong Kong’s fabled philosophy of positive noninterventionism.
Fragmentation in various segments of the financial market has been a major obstacle to the smooth conduct and transmission of monetary policy, and ultimately to our ability to deliver BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  on our mandate. Also owing to determined actions the ECB has taken, fragmentation has receded significantly since the height of the financial crisis. Unsecured money market rates are trading again at reasonable spreads over their secured counterparts. Sovereign bond spreads in the euro area decreased significantly from their peaks in 2012. Together, these developments reflect the gradual return of confidence among investors in the euro area. Yet, we still face a situation where our very accommodative monetary policy stance does not sufficiently reach some final borrowers in the euro area. This is because credit markets in some parts of the euro area are still impaired and show only timid signs of recovery. As a result, credit growth continues to contract and credit conditions – while having eased recently – remain overall tight from a historical perspective. Importantly, costs of bank funding have improved, but are still relatively high in some Member States. Where they are lower, they are not passed on in full to the real economy. The monetary policy measures decided in June and September this year, the Targeted Longer-term Refinancing Operations and the purchase programmes for asset-backed securities and covered bonds, are designed to overcome these obstacles.

They will enhance the transmission of monetary policy, support the provision of credit to the euro area economy and, as a result, provide further monetary policy accommodation. We see early indications that our credit easing package is delivering tangible benefits. Since the beginning of June, forward money market rates have shown steep declines across the maturity spectrum. Now, the forward curve consistently lies below zero over a two-year horizon. EONIA is not expected to exceed 25bps before well into 2018. The 3-month EURIBOR rate, which is an important conduit of monetary policy impulses to lending rates, dropped to all-time lows and now stands close to zero. And the policy decisions, in particular those announced in September, triggered a compression of spreads across other asset classes, including ABS, covered bonds and sovereign bonds. But more time is needed for the full materialisation of the positive effects of the most recent set of measures. In this context, let me emphasise that we are committed to scale the total magnitude of our measures – lending operations as well as outright purchases – up to a size that can deliver the intended support to inflation and the recovery of the euro area economy. All these measures will have a sizeable impact on our balance sheet, which we expect to move towards its early 2012 dimension.
In Spain, as in the euro area, the deterioration in these qualitative indicators has been comparatively more pronounced in the case of manufacturing than in that of services. The quantitative indicators, which in principle tend to be more closely related to activity, have also tended to show less favourable behaviour in manufacturing than in services. This mixed behaviour across sectors, and developments coinciding with the timing of the global trade tensions between the United States and China are consistent with the shocks observed since the beginning of 2018, which appear to have had a more pronounced impact on manufacturing, being external in origin; from the viewpoint of demand, manufactures are typically more closely linked to exports than are services. In addition, the regulatory changes in the car industry sector, which came into force after the summer of 2018, have also contributed to explaining the weakness of exports and of manufacturing as a whole, while services, a much smaller proportion of whose value-added is exported, have shown greater resilience. One area in which the slowdown in activity has made itself plain is the labour market. This is a reason for concern, given that the rate of unemployment in the Spanish economy is still high, something that I shall refer to later in greater detail. In particular, Social Security registrations have lost significant momentum since the beginning of the year, growing in September at a year-on-year rate of 2.4%, as against 3.1% at the end of 2018.

William C Dudley: How goes the recovery? Challenges for the nation, the region and the Fed Remarks by Mr William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 25 October 2010. *  *  *  Good morning. I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to you as I travel through Upstate New York to meet with various communities in the region. This afternoon I will focus on national and regional economic conditions and what the Fed is doing about them – with particular attention to the housing sector and to conditions in Upstate New York. As always, what I have to say reflects my own views and not necessarily those of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) or the Federal Reserve System. Introduction to the New York Fed As many of you know, this is my first chance to speak at Cornell University since I became president of the New York Fed. So, by way of introduction, let me start with a synopsis of what the New York Fed is, what we do and what makes my job so interesting. The New York Fed is part of the Federal Reserve System, America’s central bank, and was created by Congress in 1913. With this act, Congress delegated to the Fed System its constitutional authority to manage the money supply – and designed it be decentralized, representative of all of America and independent of the political process.
The latest retreat in respect of property tax also conflicts with the EU’s country-specific recommendations. Italy has one major problem: its extremely slow potential growth, which by all estimates hovers around 0%. That is what needs to be addressed, everything revolves around that. But how likely do you think it is that something will change. Surely the examples point to the conclusion that reforms might be successfully pushed through were it not for the lack of a sustainable political willingness to reform. I am basically more optimistic. Reforms will be made under the pressure that something has to be done. If there is no compulsion – through pressure on interest rates, say, or a high level of unemployment – nothing will happen. That not only applies to the current problem countries but also to Germany. But many critics actually accuse the ECB of eliminating this market pressure by adopting OMTs. I don’t think that reproach is justified. OMTs are not aimed at harmonising interest rates on government bonds in the euro area. What we wanted was to eliminate the unwarranted redenomination risk from the interest rates. The pressure to reform is still high, but it comes mainly from the high level of unemployment, especially high youth unemployment. Besides the reforms in the individual countries, reforms are proceeding in the euro area itself. Banking union is a key issue. Before the ECB takes on banking supervision, it wants to conduct a rigorous asset quality review.

In any case, we as the ECB assume that the bonds we purchased under the Securities Markets Programme (SMP) will be fully repaid. One option would be for the ECB to transfer the bonds to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which would be more flexible, in respect of, say, maturity extensions. That idea crops up repeatedly, but I don’t think it would be at all feasible politically. We will hold the bonds until maturity under the SMP programme. And when will a decision be made on “Greece III”? Will there also be a haircut? BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  If the country does not succeed in gaining full access to the markets for 2015, the question of a supplementary programme will arise in the course of 2014. But the main concern now is the implementation of the ongoing programme – not what happens after that. Another urgent topic is Ireland. The rescue programme finishes at the end of this year. If there is to be more help, a decision would need to be taken soon. But it’s also possible that the Irish will find their own solution. The Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has, however, announced that Ireland is seeking a precautionary credit line from the ESM to the amount of EUR 10 billion in order to safeguard its return to the capital markets. Would that suffice as a prerequisite for the ECB to purchase Irish government bonds under its Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme in order to support prices if necessary.
The restrictions on mobility have affected small businesses more than large firms – which typically have recourse to digital platforms and are able to implement remote working. The pandemic has also sensitised us to how vulnerable we all are to the forces of Nature. If we do not act decisively to limit the increase in global temperatures, we are putting at risk the future of our children and grandchildren. It is perhaps this realisation that has helped to make 2020 a record year for climate pledges – despite being in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis. The number of commitments by governments and businesses to reach net zero emissions has almost doubled in less than a year. The crisis has also demonstrated the power of technology to help find solutions to difficult problems. From making vaccines to contact tracing, from online learning to telemedicine, technology has been at the forefront in the fight against Covid-19 and its effects. Likewise, technology can play a potent role in shaping the post-Covid world. FinTech in particular has great potential to be a force for good. 1 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches  We can bring together the power of finance and technology, to help create a more inclusive society and a more sustainable planet. FINTECH FOR AN INCLUSIVE SOCIETY – INDIVIDUALS Let me begin with what FinTech can do for an inclusive society, using Singapore as an example. This is the vision: every citizen and every enterprise digitally enabled and financially included.

To understand important economic concepts like full employment, financial security, productivity growth and the impact of education, it is vital to understand not just the average experience but rather how all cohorts of the population are faring. This understanding is important in and of itself, especially in evaluating the impact of critical trends affecting the economy, like technological innovation or demographics, as well as the policies intended to respond to the impacts of those trends. We cannot fully understand whether policies have improved social welfare unless we understand how the impact of those policies varies across individuals. But understanding heterogeneity is important even if we are just examining policy impact in the 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  aggregate. The most innovative macroeconomic models, those at the frontier of current economic work, recognize heterogeneity across consumers in assessing how monetary and fiscal policy changes are transmitted through the economy. These models incorporate individuals with different marginal propensities to consume, with different amounts of wealth or access to borrowing, or who face different risk exposures, such as the chance they become unemployed, over the business cycle. Incorporating these factors can yield quite distinct insights about how changes in monetary or fiscal policy can affect growth, employment, wages and inflation. For those who want to know more, we published a blog post on Monday of last week that describes the output of just such a model.