samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
It therefore benefits households in their capacity as workers, entrepreneurs, investors, borrowers and taxpayers. Similarly, there are several channels through which our policies affect pension systems. Yes, lower rates increase the present value of future liabilities of pension schemes. However, the liability side of pension schemes is only one part of the equation. What happens on the asset side is also important. And our monetary policy has had a beneficial impact on this side of the equation as the value of the investment portfolio has increased. Also, let’s not forget that our monetary policy supports pension systems indirectly by supporting employment growth and thus pension contributions. In any case, it is ultimately up to sound governance structures and longterm strategies to ensure the financial health of pension systems. Equally, monetary policy can have an impact on bank profitability through various channels. Our assessment is that so far these effects tend to largely offset each other in aggregate terms. Low rates might reduce bank profits through the narrowing of net interest margins. Yet, at the same time, by supporting the recovery, accommodative monetary policy reduces delinquencies and defaults, including on mortgages. Improved credit quality coupled with higher lending volumes and an improved market value of assets supports bank profitability. Of course, depending on the strength of their balance sheet, some banks may be more affected than others. Also banks facing structurally high cost-to-income ratios or limited diversification of income sources might have to revamp their business models regardless of the low interest rate environment.

In my remarks today, I would like to expand on three points. First, I want to show how a very severe double dip crisis required the ECB to deploy unconventional instruments to ensure price stability. And our measures are proving effective: incoming data confirm that the cyclical recovery of the euro area economy is becoming increasingly solid and that downside risks have further diminished. Second, I will discuss the possible side effects of these measures. I will consider the different dimensions in which our monetary policy affects people’s finances and welfare, which are sometimes overlooked in the current debate. Finally, I will outline why the ECB cannot be the only actor contributing to the recovery. Other economic, financial and fiscal policies are essential to ensure a sustained recovery. Recovering from the crisis: the role of monetary policy Let me start by recalling where we came from. The Great Recession, as it is called, resulted in a protracted period of low inflation and low growth. Specifically, the euro area faced two interlinked and successive crises – a financial crisis in 2008 and a sovereign debt crisis that started to emerge in 2011 and derailed the rebound. The recovery that began in mid-2013 lost steam in the summer of 2014 as the external environment became more uncertain. At the beginning of 2014, credit growth was contracting at an annual pace of more than 3%, while overall economic growth was stalling.
Figure 16  Inflation forecasts  (annual change, percent)  14  Headline  Core (w/o volatiles)  Forecast (from 2023.QII to 2025.QII)  12 10 8 6 4 2 0  19 II III IV 20 II III IV 21 II III IV 22 II III IV 23 II III IV 24 II III IV 25 II Sources: Central Bank of Chile and National Statistics Institute. 16  Figure 17  GDP (2)  GDP growth forecasts (1)  (index, 2018=100)  (annual change, percent)  MP Report Mar.23 MP Report Jun.23  120 115 110 105 100 95  25(f)  24(f)  23(f)  22  21  20  19  18  90  (1) Forecasts contained in each MP Report. Arrows indicate change with respect to March 2023 forecast. (2) For 2023, 2024, and 2025, GDP forecasts consider midpoint of projected ranges in this MP Report. (f) Forecast. Source: Central Bank of Chile. Table 1  Domestic scenario 2024 (f)  2023 (f) MP Report Mar. 23  MP Report Jun. 23  MP Report Mar. 23  -0.5/0.5 -4.0 -3.0 -2.9  -0.5/0.25 -4.2 -3.3 -3.0  1.0-2.0 1.1 0.7 -0.7  -3.0 -3.8 4.5 -6.5 -4.0 18.7 23.3  -3.4 -4.9 2.4 -8.3 -3.7 19.1 23.0  1.1 0.9 3.7 2.5 -4.1 18.9 23.2  2025 (f)  MP Report Jun. 23  MP Report Mar. 23  MP Report Jun.

Sirisena, and Honourable Prime Minister  Last but not least, let me commend and  Ranil Wickremesinghe for their  congratulate the Assistant Governors,  leadership and guidance, and  Heads of Departments, particularly the  Honourable Finance Minister Ravi  Director of Economic Research and the  Karunanayake for his support, as close  Staff of the Economic Research  coordination between the Ministry of  Department for today’s effort in  Finance and the Central Bank is essential  formulating the policy document, as well  for sound economic management. as all Staff of the Central Bank who are  I am privileged to have unstinted support and prudent inputs from the Members of the Monetary Board. Therefore, my deep gratitude is due to Secretary to the Treasury, Dr. R H S Samaratunga, Mrs. Manohari Ramanathan, Mr. Chrisantha Perera and Mr. Nihal Fonseka. They have been giving up an enormous amount of their time to address the challenging issues of the day. I am also thankful to Deputy  committed to fulfilling the key objectives of the Central Bank with utmost diligence, proficiency and professionalism. On my first day in office, I said that professionalism, technical excellence and integrity are crucial guiding principles for any institution and its staff. I am very pleased to say I have seen plenty of these characteristics among the staff of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.
Although we are still in the infant stages of development, we have accumulated some experience, which I would like to share with you today. First, since it is now such a hot topic to talk about change, I trust that you will agree with me that Islamic finance, at least for jurisdictions like Hong Kong, means change – a change in perception, a change in skills, a change in structures and techniques, in contracts, standards, and so on. Change, in all its many forms, is happening within the global Islamic finance arena, even as we speak. In the past year or so, we have seen the inception of several standardisation initiatives for Islamic financial documentation, spearheaded by international institutions like the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) and the International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM). This form of change is significant towards facilitating harmonious practices, providing greater clarity for the Islamic financial services industry and thus acting as a boost to the development of global Islamic financial markets. There have also been many exciting developments in the new markets for Islamic finance in Asia, where there is a growing tendency for sukuk issuance, such as the sovereign issues from Indonesia and Singapore to support the development of Islamic finance. At the same time, we have also seen enhanced co-operation and increased linkages, both internally within the region and externally with other Islamic financial centres in the Middle East.

Yet, not only has there been no depreciation pressure on the Hong Kong dollar: it has in fact strengthened following capital inflows into Hong Kong since the outbreak of the crisis in midSeptember last year. Consistent with the principles of the Currency Board, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has bought a total of $ billion, injecting $ billion into the local money market. The inflow of funds to the Hong Kong dollar was a welcome development, paving the way for monetary easing, which was fortuitously the appropriate monetary policy stance to support the economy. The reasons put forward for the inflow have not been a cause for concern for they did not seem to relate to exchange-rate speculation. Market consensus about the  BIS Review 19/2009  1  causes pointed to the unwinding of carry trades and the repatriation of funds by corporates to finance operations in Hong Kong. It is also likely that there have been some inflows to position for investment in Hong Kong, in light of the better economic prospects of the region, and in particular, China. The second factor in the resilience of Hong Kong’s financial markets is our robust banking system. One of the lessons from this experience is that the stability and effectiveness of the banking system becomes even more essential when financial crisis shuts down the two other financial intermediation channels: the bond market and the stock market.
By comparison, the Bank estimates that raising interest rates to achieve the same reduction in GDP-at-risk would have reduced the central forecast for GDP by 0.9% per year, a far greater cost for the same benefit, because raising interest rates impacts the whole economy. 22,23  time estimate – it does not take potential persistence or probability of realising benefits into account. The costs in both charts are an upper bound, as they assume no offset to lower demand from monetary policy. 22 The MPC’s remit states that the FPC’s macroprudential tools are the first line of defence against financial stability risks. If the FPC judges that the MPC’s attempts to keep inflation at target is exacerbating imbalances and creating a potential risk to financial stability that its macroprudential tools cannot keep in check, then the MPC may allow inflation to deviate from the target temporarily. 23 The FPC’s mortgage market Recommendations were implemented pre-emptively, ahead of risks building to elevated levels. Their calibration reflected lenders’ own practices at the time, and so acted as insurance against the risk of any future deterioration in underwriting standards. This also means that the costs to the wider economy from introducing these tools was less than it would be if more aggressive action later in the financial cycle was required.

Early work has estimated that, for example, an initial shock of 60bps to corporate bond spreads could be amplified by a further 30% and increase GDPat-risk (proxied by the 5th percentile of the forecast distribution of GDP) by 0.2pp. Estimating the costs and benefits will also require simulating into the future to take account of the larger size of funds. The impact of the FPC’s principles on the central forecast for GDP is harder to quantify as it depends on (unpredictable) investor behaviour. Under current fund structures, funds with longer notice periods or discounted redemption pricing are not as attractive to investors as the apparently “costless” funds with daily liquidity. Those structures that may look unattractive today are the very structures needed to finance investment in productive finance, such as infrastructure, the transition to a net zero economy and the financing of SMEs. Such investments simply are poorly suited to structures offering short-notice redemption. It follows that investors could respond to reform of fund structures by increasing investments in productive finance. The prospect of productive finance increasing after applying the FPC’s principles would be the macroprudential equivalent of ‘Divine Coincidence’ that promotes financial stability while increasing the rate of trend growth. Global co-ordination of potential reforms will be vital. That is why the Bank and FCA are engaging with the FSB, IOSCO and other competent authorities on the financial stability risks of asset management activity. Breaking the Tragedy of the Horizon to address the Climate Crisis The climate crisis is a Tragedy of the Horizon.
Urban Bäckström: The Swedish economy Speech by Mr Urban Bäckström, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank and Chairman of the Board of Directors and President of the Bank for International Settlements, to the Swedish Shareholders’ Association, Örebro, 30 October 2001 *  *  *  First a word of thanks for the invitation to come to Örebro and discuss matters to do with the Swedish economy with you. It is now a fortnight since the Riksbank presented this year’s third Inflation Report. Some more statistics have been published in the meanwhile but the information they contain does not point to anything particularly new. So today one can hardly arrive at an assessment of economic developments in Sweden one to two years ahead that differs all that much from the picture outlined in the Report. Those of you who want to know more about our assessment should consult the Riksbank’s website, www.riksbank.se. The whole Report can be downloaded, as can all the figures on which the tables and charts are based. Diagram 1:  The ”new economy” concept in Swedish media. (Number of hits) 250  217  200 150  87  100 50  26  8  0 1998  1999  2000  2001 Jan.Oct. Sources: Mediearkivet and Presstext. There are, however, a couple of questions concerning the Swedish economy and the outlook in the somewhat longer term that I should like to dwell on here today.

On the other hand, the market capitalization of the GAFA – Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple – is 25 times higher than that of the whole FinTech universe. The BigTechs already have a material footprint in financial services1 and competitive advantages to expand their activities further in this area. On top of massive financial resources able to support investment at scale and an undeniable digital agility, they benefit from strong brand recognition, worldwide customer base on which they have accumulated proprietary database and privileged access to forefront technologies. In that context, BigTechs more than FinTechs have the potential to fundamentally  redefine financial intermediation beyond the universal banking model toward integrating financial services within a universal ecosystem. Such a move is already gaining considerable traction in China. And it is raising very fundamental questions to which I will come back. To conclude my first point, digital finance may not lead to a more decentralized system as the centripetal forces of network effects may profit most to large conglomerates. Rather than  eliminating intermediation, if left on its own, digital finance will more likely lead to reshuffling the cards with the most digitally agile incumbents and the most financially able challengers becoming the new dominant (and potentially systemic) intermediaries. II. A common challenge: Rethinking old issues, investigating new ones This leads me to my second point. The digitalization of finance forces us to revisit old regulatory and supervisory questions and to face new ones. Among old issues to revisit, I would like to highlight two of them.
16 John C. Williams, Lessons from the Financial Crisis for Unconventional Monetary Policy, Presentation at  National Bureau of Economic Research Conference, Cambridge, Mass., October 18, 2013; John C. Williams, Monetary Policy at the Zero Lower Bound: Putting Theory into Practice, The Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, The Brookings Institution, January 16, 2014. 17 Thomas Laubach and John C. Williams, Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest Redux, Business Economics,  Volume 51, No. 2, pp. 57-67, April 2016. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches

To achieve this, we must develop synergies between the existing initiatives: Capital Markets Union, the Juncker Plan and Banking Union. But we must also go still further, with two clear goals. Firstly, diversification of financing to meet businesses’ needs. Equity financing, rather than debt financing, is better adapted to risk taking and therefore to innovation. But Europe currently lags very far behind in this area: equity financing of businesses is less than half that in the United States (67% of GDP in the euro area compared with 125% in the United States). Secondly: increased resilience of the euro area thanks to integrated capital markets. As Jens Weidmann and I wrote last year, this manner of sharing private risks is the best way to counter asymmetric shocks within a monetary union. In the United States for example, private equity is capable of absorbing around 40% of an economic shock specific to a State. 3. The new international environment makes action more urgent. Some of those around us seem to no longer believe in the benefits of the European Union. The new US president has stated this very clearly, and the British chose to leave the union. These changes bring us face to face with our responsibilities: we can no longer afford to wait and see. But how should we respond? Not by less Europe. That would be a mistake if we wish to have collective control over our destiny in this new world.
Accordingly, over the next few years, we will continue to strengthen the institutional framework for macroprudential surveillance through analysing liquidity and interest rate gaps and multicurrency foreign exchange risks, monitoring leverage of financial institutions, and enhancing credit risk assessments of the financial sector. As part of our macro prudential surveillance, a systemic risk survey is being conducted on a biannual basis to identify systemic risks to the domestic financial system. As part of a more complex monitoring system, a framework is to be developed to facilitate the identification and 21  analysis of financial cycles and business cycles. Multivariate stress tests are to be developed for LFCs. In addition, a country-wide assessment of household indebtedness is to be carried out. Over the year, the Central Bank has been actively involved in the adoption and implementation of measures that will not only strengthen the payment and settlement infrastructure but also facilitate the transition to a less-cash dependent society. During 2018, we will monitor the implementation of the National Card Scheme to facilitate introduction of low cost payment card products such as those pertaining to public transport and social benefit schemes. With the increased permeation of FinTech products, a regulatory framework is to be established detailing compliance requirements for such products and their usage. Further, as has been seen in recent times, cyber security is a threat to the stability and credibility of our financial sector.

Monetary Policy Announcements in 2018 1  16 February, Friday  2  4 April, Wednesday  3  11 May, Friday  4  29 June, Friday  5  3 August, Friday  6  28 September, Friday  7  14 November, Wednesday  8  28 December, Friday  13  The Central Bank cannot implement a successful FIT framework alone. As we have emphasised in the past, the continued and strong commitment of the government will be of paramount importance. It is encouraging that the government has already recognised the Central Bank’s move towards FIT as the future framework for monetary policy, in its policy document “Vision 2025- A Country Enriched”. Continued strong commitment of the government towards greater fiscal discipline and stronger fiscal outcomes remain key to the successful adoption of FIT. In particular, the government is expected to maintain its commitment to medium-term fiscal consolidation, which is embedded in the IMF-EFF arrangement. The improved fiscal space through continued fiscal consolidation will create a better enabling environment for the effective and independent conduct of monetary policy. This whole effort requires the government’s commitment to remain on the trajectory of fiscal consolidation it has enunciated in its medium-term budgetary framework. The new Inland Revenue Act, enacted with the aim of simplifying and rationalising the existing income tax structure; the VAT reforms; and the improvements in tax administration are worthy achievements. Further, the government expects to strengthen fiscal consolidation by revising the Fiscal Management (Responsibility) Act to include binding fiscal targets.
During the crisis the banks experienced problems with funding in foreign currency, particularly dollars. The Riksbank therefore lent dollars to the Swedish banks, partly funded through the currency reserve. 10  BIS Review 160/2009  Thirdly, Sweden has international commitments through, for instance, the IMF to be able to support other countries in crisis with loans in foreign currency. These commitments have increased substantially during the crisis. The Riksbank has established swap agreements with the central banks in Iceland, Latvia and Estonia, to be able to provide loans in foreign currency to stabilise the financial situation in these countries. Moreover, the Riksbank has increased its commitments to the IMF. All in all, international commitments have increased by more than SEK 50 billion in connection with the crisis and they may increase further. Prior to the financial crisis the gold and foreign currency reserve amounted to around SEK 200 billion, and then accounted for more or less all of the Riksbank's assets. The foreign currency reserve has been strengthened this year. The Riksbank has borrowed a further amount in foreign currency through the Swedish National Debt Office, totalling the equivalent of around SEK 100 billion. Some of the foreign currency reserve has been lent out during the crisis and the value in Swedish kronor has been affected by the depreciation in the krona. The size of the foreign currency reserve has thus varied during the crisis (Figure 11).

Certainly there are a number of questions and challenges regarding future developments in the banking system and the regulatory framework for it, as has emerged in the recent White Paper on a Future Vision for the Financial System, but further discussion of that topic must await another opportunity. Early this month, Parliament passed legislation lifting restrictions on the remaining stock of offshore krónur, which amounted by that time to 84 b.kr., or just under 3% of GDP. This represented the final step in lifting capital controls on non-residents’ króna-denominated assets. The assets fell into two categories: so-called offshore krónur, on the one hand, and króna-denominated assets held by the failed banks’ estates, on the other. These assets combined amounted to 65% of GDP at the peak. We reduced that percentage to the current level through various measures taken in 2010-2017 — without disturbing the balance of payments or financial stability, without tapping the Bank’s reserves to an inordinate degree, and without significant legal repercussions. This success has been noticed, including internationally. Alongside the final liberalisation of offshore krónur, the special reserve requirement on capital inflows into the bond market and high-yielding deposits was lowered to 0%. This synchronised effort has delivered positive results. The 5  exchange rate of the króna has not been under pressure due to offshore króna outflows, and the Central Bank has not yet needed to use significant reserve assets in order to fulfil its pledge not to allow those outflows to weaken the currency.