samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The culture of reading does not exist. In the past, a bookshelf was one of the most cherished assets in a typical Zambian home. Today, the picture is very different. Either books are not readily available or they are too expensive to buy relative to people’s incomes; or they have lost their place of pride in the home – to home entertainment units packed with latest movies, music and Play Stations, to mention but a few. This situation has been compounded by the non-availability of sustainable library services in our schools, colleges, universities and public libraries. At the moment the better library services are being provided mainly in the urban areas, for instance, by development partners such as the British Council in Lusaka. This clearly needs augmentation by all interested stakeholders to set up libraries both in the urban and rural areas. The other aspect that, therefore, needs to be addressed, in relation to the theme of the Book Fair, is the availability of appropriate reading materials. Achieving a sustainable economic future requires the active participation of a dynamic private sector. Such dynamism requires the availability of relevant and specialised reading materials. The agricultural sector, for example, is an important part of the Zambian economy whose success holds the key to the rapid reduction in poverty that must be achieved if Zambia is to take its place amongst the community of progressive nations. Higher literacy levels in the rural areas will help to propagate better farming methods and conservation techniques.

As always, my comments represent my own views and opinions, not necessarily those of the Federal Open Market Committee or the Federal Reserve System. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the Fed and other regulators, both here and abroad, did not sufficiently understand some of the critical vulnerabilities in the financial system, including the consequences of inappropriate incentives, and the opacity and the large number of self-amplifying mechanisms that were embedded within the system. Likewise, we did not appreciate all the ramifications of the growth of the shadow banking system and its linkage back to regulated financial institutions until after the crisis began. Of course, understanding now what we did not understand then is only half the battle. We need to respond to ensure that ongoing changes in our financial system do not threaten the stability of the financial system in the future. For one, the crisis is provoking a reevaluation of our views on how to respond to asset bubbles. For years, central bank orthodoxy has been that you cannot identify asset bubbles very well. Thus, the strategy has been to move aggressively to clean up such bubbles after they have burst. BIS Review 161/2009  1  I think our level of confidence in that approach has been considerably reduced in the wake of the crisis that we have just experienced. The costs of cleaning up after the fact have been immense. But make no mistake – developing an effective, more proactive approach is not easy.
Although it links us more to external shocks, it also permits us to diversify risks, makes us more flexible and facilitates our search for new markets and opportunities. In the distant past we were a pretty closed economy, undiversified and much more vulnerable to the ups and downs of the world economy. A third pillar is our strong, well regulated financial system that proved its resilience during the crisis of 2008–2009. Existing regulation has allowed the development of prudent banking not engaged in highly risky or toxic instruments. Of course there are areas that lag behind, and it is obvious that protection to financial customers needs enhancement. Every effort in that direction, which is consistent with keeping a sound financial system, is welcome. Let us recall that the U.S. crisis originated in – among other factors – a very noble and pro-customer objective: to increase access to home ownership to the less privileged population. The  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  problem was that they lent to the wrong people, based on an expected ever-increasing housing price trend that proved unsustainable. In Chile, the recent creation of a Financial Stability Committee is a step towards helping to prevent this kind of episode from occurring. Finally, there is monetary policy based on an inflation-targeting scheme with a floating exchange rate. This allows conducting monetary policy with transparency and with a goal that is clear and known by everybody. The Bank makes decisions aiming at expected inflation standing at 3% over a two-year policy horizon.

Once the latter regain their strength, their currencies will hopefully  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  follow suit. However, the transition may take long and therefore exceptional policies have been necessary to help mitigate these tensions. Like other emerging economies, early this year we decided to intervene the forex market, by launching a reserve hoarding program that would permit productive sectors to make orderly adjustments to what we foresaw as a protracted exchange rate stress situation. We announced that we would purchase 12 billion dollars over the course of this year, and so far we have purchased 10 billion. We have done this intervention in a non-discretional and sterilized way in order to preserve our policy-making capacities intact and avoid becoming ourselves a source of volatility. Importantly, this purchase of international reserves has been intended not only to reduce exchange rate tensions, but also to strengthen our international liquidity position. Evidence shows that a strong international reserves position helps shield the economy from the adverse effects of external financial shocks. The level of reserves we pursue with this program will put us on a good standing to deal with a more pronounced global decline. As I said, at the beginning of the year the macroeconomic scenario suffered major changes. The increase in commodity prices and the closing of output gaps stoked fears of a resurgence of inflation comparable to that of 2007–2008. Our communiqué of the future course of monetary policy changed significantly in just a few months.
The outcome of these developments is that a new focus is being placed on deposit insurance in the post crisis period. Deposit insurance is now considered as an essential crisis management tool and an important instrument for orderly liquidation of an unsound financial institution. A well-designed deposit guarantee scheme largely supports financial stability and financial crisis resolution by mitigating risks of and maintaining trust in the 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  financial system. However, recalling one of the most important lessons we learned from the global financial crisis, despite the mandate given to any institution, no player can alone deal with a systemic crisis and the consequences of strong spillover effects and contagion risks. It is essential that each element of the safety net develops robust mechanisms that aim to resolve financial institutions and stabilize the financial system as smoothly as possible, minimizing the cost to the economy. Moreover, financial stability can only be preserved by a well-coordinated financial safety net, which is supported by a resilient legal framework, proper tools and instruments and careful contingency planning for each of its elements. The Bank of Albania has dedicated much of the past 10 years to integrating the lessons learned from the recent financial crises into a new regulatory framework. Our financial safety net is further aligned with international best practices, as we coordinate our roles as supervisory authority, lender of last resort and, recently, resolution authority as well.

This percentage is expected to decline over the next few years, as banks tend to move towards vendor provided common solutions. Many Sri Lankan banks take pride in operating their own propriety systems, which may not be sustainable in the future. There appears to be reluctance on the part of the banks to move to common switches, common platforms or shared systems. This is partly because of the inordinate fear of one bank peeping into another’s operations, huge sums already spent on propriety systems or due to pressure from the staff or management to retain existing and workable systems. As long as these reservations exist and there is reluctance to use common or pooled infrastructure or shared technology, customers will continue to have limited or no benefits with no reduction in transaction costs. This is not to suggest that  6  BIS Review 13/2008  propriety systems and bespoke solutions should be discarded altogether. But, it is important to realize that many more benefits can be achieved and the same can be passed on to customers with integrated core banking solutions. 9.3  Design a customer-centric business vision  9.3.1 To begin with, banks should have a clear vision for future business directions and operating models and they should align IT processes accordingly. With respect to core banking solutions, they should use flexible, robust and future-oriented IT architecture based on a customer-centric approach.
The Banco de España publishes its regular projection exercises, the next update of which is due to be released in the middle of this month, drawing on the definition of different scenarios.1 These scenarios are based on different assumptions about, among other factors, the course of the pandemic, which continues to be subject to a very high level of uncertainty. In any event, the contraction in Spanish GDP for this year as a whole will be most substantial and unprecedented in recent history. The recovery initiated in recent months should lead to relatively high growth in activity, after the hibernation brought about See Macroeconomic projections for the Spanish economy (2020-2022): the Banco de España’s contribution to the Eurosystem’s June 2020 joint forecasting exercise. 1  1  by the lockdown; however some quarters of robust growth are still needed to regain the pre-pandemic level of GDP. It is clear that the sharp macroeconomic downturn triggered by the pandemic has substantially increased the risks to global financial stability. The forceful economic policy response — from monetary, fiscal and supervisory authorities — and the effect of the farreaching international financial reform implemented in the last decade are helping to mitigate and manage these risks. Indeed, so far the financial system has acted as a mitigating, rather than an amplifying, factor of the impact of this crisis. However, we should not be lulled into complacency, as the scale of the shock is very large and its duration is uncertain.

However, the decisions of the ECB and the reiteration by its Governing Council of the commitment to do everything necessary to support all citizens of the euro area through this extremely challenging time, ensuring that its monetary policy is transmitted to all parts of the economy and to every country, have alleviated these tensions. Likewise, the response of the European Union, which has resolved to make significant public funds available to Member States with which to mitigate the impact of the crisis and reactivate their economies, has also been crucial. In the case of Spain, the pandemic has struck the economy at a time when the general government accounts still displayed certain elements of vulnerability. In particular, despite uninterrupted robust growth in recent years, at the end of 2019 the public sector structural deficit stood above 3% of GDP and the public debt ratio above 95% of GDP. Moreover, according to Banco de España projections, in the next few years the budget deficit may exceed 10%, while the public debt-to-GDP ratio may stand at around 120%. Following its initial increase, ECB and European monetary policy decisions have kept the risk premium well contained in recent months. However, looking ahead, persistently high levels of public debt would reduce the scope for countercyclical fiscal measures in response to adverse macroeconomic shocks and might even limit the economy’s growth capacity; in any case, they would expose the Spanish economy to a situation of chronic vulnerability to changes in investor sentiment on the financial markets.
It is essential for this supply of government debt to be organised in such a way as to enable demands of different natures to be met. This requires a well structured, transparent and predictable programme, with a wide maturity spectrum. Thus, my eighth point concerns the interaction of demand and supply to discover price reliably and efficiently. This is relevant to both the primary and the secondary markets, and is best achieved respectively through well-structured tender and market making arrangements. These may involve last resort support from the regulators. There are many successful models of such arrangements and there is ample literature on them. The common objective is to ensure a high level of liquidity to facilitate reliable and efficient price discovery, thereby providing a benchmark yield curve upon which other issuers can confidently and accurately price their own, hopefully much bigger volume of, private sector debt. That is what we should aim for in the development of the bond market if it is to play a meaningful role in financial intermediation. 2  BIS Review 94/2001  My ninth point concerns the market infrastructure, and by that I mean the payment, clearing and settlement systems. This is regrettably the most neglected aspect in the development of financial markets, not just the bond market. Imagine how general investor confidence would be damaged if the financial instrument that an investor had bought got lost in delivery.

Museums and various activities organised in light of promoting national values and raising the public awareness help to better transmit the message embedded in banknotes, and educate the public through the art in banknotes, featuring elements of our national identity. For this particular reason, numismatists take delight in the subtleties of colours and images of the banknotes. In the apparently just pieces of paper, they are able to distinguish and recognise different ages, and the degree of social freedom. 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  In addition, banknotes may also depict concerns of a society, of course, when the artist was able to properly read this concern. Hence, the green of US dollar was chosen as a symbol to express the need of the stability in the period of civil war. The 2017 series of Norwegian currency reflects the concern on the return to the human basic needs, which are taken away by digitalisation. In reflection to this concern, the portraits of distinguished people of art and science are replaced with the symbols of natural resources, strongly related with the identity of the Norwegian people, such as the Viking ship, fish or the lighthouse. All these facts show that nothing has threatened the educational and national mission of the banknote. Owing to this reason also, it continues to carry it out by resisting even the virtual forms of the currency. In addition, as a Harvard researcher states, the paper may disappear earlier than the banknote.
The third flaw in our financial system was the inappropriate corporate regime governing the savings banks, which came to account for almost half the Spanish banking sector. If the crisis has shown us anything it is that, despite the good management performance at numerous savings banks, the former ownership regime of those institutions and, in some cases, their reliance on political power, created risks that hindered their proper management. The successive reform measures taken, and in particular the legislation on savings banks and bank foundations enacted last year, are a key qualitative change, requiring that former savings banks over a certain size be transformed into (ordinary or bank) foundations and that those which maintained  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  a significant shareholding in a bank have sufficient incentive to waive control of the bank and meet, in any event, certain conditions to ensure they are professionally and independently managed. I take this opportunity to confirm that in the next few days the Banco de España will be issuing, for public consultation, a draft circular which implements the abovementioned legislation and sets out in detail some of the requirements that the bank foundations will have to satisfy. 4. The fourth and last main flaw in the Spanish banking system was its surplus capacity, as a result of the tremendous growth in loan demand during Spain’s long period of economic expansion.

In particular, banks will have to learn to live with the considerable increase in regulatory demands. These will arise especially from the imminent entry into force of the liquidity and provisioning requirements included in the Basel III Accord, and from the foreseeable introduction of additional measures, such as those that will demand separation in some cases between the investment banking business (proprietary trading, market-making, etc.) and the traditional banking business, or that will require banks to have liabilities available that may be converted into equity in the event of resolution. At the same time, greater restrictions can be expected on the admittance of internal asset risk assessment models when they represent savings in regulatory capital. In turn, within the framework of the SSM, work can be expected to begin to try to harmonise the regulatory differences that persist (for example, in the calendars for application of the capital deductions established in Basel III) as well as supervisory practices (for example, relating to the approval of internal risk assessment models). Insofar as greater harmonisation can be expected to be conducive to stricter supervisory practices, in each area the new supervisory framework will generally tend to raise the bar for all European banks. Hence, in order to adapt to the new regulatory and supervisory environment, many banks will need to make further efforts to strengthen their own funds.
The UK’s sterling Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system is being developed to accommodate the euro, so that from the beginning of 1999 euro wholesale payments may be made in a safe, efficient and cost-effective way as sterling payments can now, even though the UK will not be a participant in the monetary union at the outset. That development remains on schedule, and it is encouraging that the UK system (CHAPS) has had expressions of interest recently from a number of overseas banks wishing to join. 23. The UK euro system -- CHAPS euro -- will allow payments to be made both between parties within the UK and cross-border from and to the UK through its link to TARGET. Using the knowledge and expertise we have acquired through developing and operating by far the largest RTGS system in Europe -- with average daily volumes of some 70,000 payments, worth some £ bn -- we are contributing a great deal to the technical development of TARGET. Because it extends the benefits of RTGS systems, in reducing the risk in payments, for the first time cross-border, it is a project we wholeheartedly support. 24. But we also want to see TARGET as efficient and effective as possible, so that it becomes the payment system of first choice for banks, in order to maximise its benefits in reducing systemic risk. We have to recognise that TARGET will be competing with alternative euro payments mechanisms, including correspondent banking and the European Banking Association’s net end-of-day settlement systems.

In parallel, we have been pressing ahead with reform in the structure of the UK sterling financial markets, and the pace of progress has notably quickened in 1997. Last year saw two notable events -- the start of the gilt repo market and the completion of the Stock Exchange’s Sequence project, to provide it with a new and modern integrated electronic platform for its trading and information services. This year we have already doubled up on last year, with four major initiatives -- reform of the structure of the Bank of England’s money market operations; the completion of migration to electronic settlement of equities on CREST; the successful launch of SETS, the Stock Exchange electronic order book for equity trading; and a major upgrade of the CGO electronic settlement system for gilts. We have a fifth advance to come next month, with the start of a strips facility for gilts. But for the fact that a central banker is not supposed to reveal that he knows how to play poker, I would call that a “full house”! 36. I believe these are major steps forward to improve trading market facilities, and the essential market infrastructure, in London. And the fact that the London markets have been able to bring so many major projects to a successful conclusion in so short a space of time speaks highly of the resources in depth available in the London markets and the ancillary services. But I would draw attention to one particular feature, which I think is of wider significance.
We have achieved a lot by creating the banking union and the SSM in less than two years – which is unprecedented in European history. Also, the process of balance sheet repair for banks is well underway in the euro area And we will make sure that the forthcoming asset quality review removes any doubt as to the sustainability of the euro banking sector. Furthermore, for the euro area, there is the exchange rate question. As you all know, from a monetary policy perspective, the exchange rate is not a policy variable, let alone a target. But  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  it is obviously a very important input when considering overall monetary and financial conditions. The recent appreciation of the euro has had a strong disinflationary impact. We could discuss further the different causes of low inflation in the debate, but let me make some remarks on this crucial matter for us central bankers. First, low inflation is not deflation. As many analysts and observers are today alarmed about deflation in the euro area, it is useful to understand the difference. Deflation is a permanent and cumulative process of decrease in the overall price index, fuelled by negative expectations. Deflation is a pernicious spiral. Because consumers expect prices to decrease continuously, they tend to defer purchases, thereby further fuelling the deflation process. Deflation increases the real burden of debt and creates an incentive to defer investment.

The NGFS is examining the role of supervisors in assessing financial institutions' transition plans as well as their transition planning processes. We have done a stock-take of current supervisory frameworks on transition plans. We will share the results of the stocktake with the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Financial Stability Board, to facilitate coordination in the development of transition planning standards. The next phase of work will examine the relevance of transition planning to supervisors' mandates, toolkits, and prudential frameworks. Recognising that there is a spectrum of supervisory mandates, such guidance will be flexible and based on a building block approach. Nature-related risks The world is facing a crisis of biodiversity loss, which is no less threatening than the climate crisis. The loss of biodiversity not only has serious ecological and social consequences, but also significant macroeconomic implications. Biodiversity and so-called ecosystem services underpin a significant portion of global GDP. The World Economic Forum has estimated that $ trillion of economic value generation, or more than half of global GDP, is moderately or highly dependent on nature. For example, over three-quarters of the world's food crops rely on insect and animal pollination. One can imagine the consequences for food supply if this process of pollination is disrupted. 4/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  Sectors like consumer goods, real estate, and transportation depend on ecosystem services such as water availability, minerals, natural fibres, and the protections that natural habitats provide. This dependence is sometimes direct but very often indirect through supply chain dependencies.