samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Mr. Heikensten looks at the consequences for Sweden of joining EMU Speech by the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Sweden, Mr. Lars Heikensten, at the Baker & McKenzie’s EMU seminar held in Stockholm on 5/2/97. First a word of thanks for the invitation to talk with you about Sweden and the European Economic and Monetary Union. Today I have chosen to consider this matter from three angles: general aspects of the issue of Sweden and EMU; the work we did last year in the Union to prepare for EMU; and some consequences of EMU for Sweden’s financial sector. The EU’s preparations for the economic and monetary union are continuing. The member states are doing all they can to fulfil the economic criteria for participation in the euro area. Along with this, intensive political work is being done to remove any remaining obstacles. After the latest meeting of Heads of State or of Government, in Dublin last December, political agreements are in place on, for example, the stability and growth pact and the relationship between the euro and outside currencies. Solutions are still required on a number of important issues. One is how the path into EMU is to be arranged for countries that do not belong to the first group. Then there are many technical details to adjust in the course of the year. But the puzzle’s main pieces are now in place.

The composition of the Governing Board may be a problem; the appointment of members of Parliament to the Governing Board runs counter to traditions in Central Europe. 4. Debt conversion and issues The countries that join the euro area may - and it is also envisaged that they will issue treasury paper denominated in euro. A member state wishing to convert its stock of debt into euro will be allowed to initiate the appropriate measures. A member state may also take steps whereby private issuers and marketplaces (e.g. the Stockholm Stock Exchange, OM and the Securities Register Centre) can switch to euro in the changeover period. Many institutions and agents are in fact planning to do this. All private economic agents are to be free to choose between using euro from the start of Stage Three and waiting until the changeover has been completed. However, the agents in the Swedish securities market, banks, financial institutions, the Securities Register Centre, the Stockholm Stock Exchange, OM and others are unanimously in favour of a “big-bang” solution, that is, a quick, concerted changeover from kronor to euro right from the turn of 1998. 5. Banknotes and coins Euro banknotes and coins will not be introduced until the beginning of 2002. For a time, commerce will have to cope with two sets of prices, one in krona and the other in euro. A timetable for the substitution of banknotes and coins is to be fixed by each country.
Differences among cohorts may lead to variations over time in the optimal shape of institutions, rather as Jefferson advocated. For example, Robert Shiller (1996) reports that 90% of those born before 1940 in Germany agreed with the statement that ‘The control of inflation is one of the most important missions of German economic policy’, compared with 51% of those born from 1950 onwards. Memories of hyperinflation can be vivid: Niall Ferguson cites the diary of one Frankfurt resident in 1923: “it was more than disorder that smashed over people, it was something like daily explosions… the smallest, the most private, the most personal events always had one and the same cause; the raging plunge of money” (p154). So it is not surprising that the generation of Germans which created the Bundesbank saw it as a crucial component of their new constitution. Countries, or indeed cohorts, which have not experienced hyper-inflation may be more willing to adopt monetary arrangements that are less entrenched in constitutional form than the postwar generation in Germany. The second aspect of the technology of collective decisions that creates a role for institutions is our ignorance of all possible future states of the world. That means that even if we were able to commit to a policy rule, we would choose not to do so. The exercise of some discretion is desirable in order that we may learn. The most cogent argument against the adoption of a fixed monetary policy rule is that no rule is likely to remain optimal for long.

Ravi Menon: The future of money, finance and the internet Speech by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Singapore FinTech Festival, 9 November 2021. * * * Good morning everyone. If you’ve just joined us, welcome to Day Two of the Singapore FinTech Festival. I want to talk about the future of Money, Finance, and the Internet. But first, a little history. JUNO, PLUTUS, MERCURY Money as a medium of exchange and store of value has been around for millennia. It is named after the Roman goddess of money, Juno, who carried the title Moneta. Rome’s currency was first minted at her temple in the third century B.C. Money has come a long way since: from bullion coins, to paper notes backed by the gold standard, to fiat currency backed by central banks, and now digital money. Finance or the intermediation of savings and investments existed in many ancient civilisations. The Roman god of wealth, Plutus, comes closest to being the presiding deity for finance. Finance too has come a long way: foreign exchange markets and bills of exchange emerged in the Middle Ages, before modern finance took shape with fractional reserve banking, stock markets, mutual funds, and insurance. The Internet is more recent. Its official birthday is 1 January 1983, though the concept itself – namely a computer network which enables information sharing among users – goes back to the US defence industry in the 1960s.
Consequently the vulnerability of the financial system and its resilience are currently being reevaluated. •  Three major sources of vulnerability have been identified: economic concentration, geographic clustering and connectivity and interdependency. Networks by their very nature can act as channels as well as origins of systemic crisis. •  The awareness of vulnerability leads to new and substantial demands for investment in resilience. For instance, crisis management is a demanding activity. It involves private firms, financial market infrastructures, public supervisors and oversight institutions. Without the cooperation of all of them crisis management cannot succeed. •  Investment in resilience, however, is costly. The benefits of the financial sector’s value growth cannot be enjoyed without paying this price. Should the price not be paid value growth would turn out to be unsustainable. There are no stable financial systems that are not at the same time highly resilient under crisis conditions. Allow me to expand on this last point: as a representative of a central bank I assure you that central banks are not likely to close an eye on this issue. Resilience of financial service providers in general and of the financial market infrastructure in particular has been placed at the top of regulatory authorities’ agendas. Indeed, it will stay there. As much as public bodies are contributing to the  4  BIS Review 55/2002  resilience of the financial system as a whole, they will make demands of the private sector.

The report examines the business conditions and credit environment for Latino-owned businesses, and compares Latino firms to non-Latino firms, as well as how their experiences vary across major metro areas. While I don’t want to get ahead of my colleague, Claire Kramer, and our partners from SLEI and Interise who will present the results of the report shortly, there are a couple of themes that caught my attention. First, Latino small business owners face significant financial barriers even after accounting for performance factors, including a disproportionate reliance on high-interest credit products. Those impediments manifest themselves at all stages of the business growth, from start-up to scale-up and beyond. Second, Latino small businesses are more concentrated in a few industries and significantly underrepresented in the professional, scientific and technical services sectors, which also tend to be the most lucrative. Third, the size of the Latino population in a given metro area does not mean that there is a larger share of Latino-owned businesses in the same—which is, to me, somewhat counterintuitive. Digging into and understanding the causes of these issues and identifying possible paths forward is not only an imperative but an opportunity, and of course the focus of much of today’s agenda. It is clear that there is a pressing need for expanding technical support, diversifying sources of financing, especially at the micro level, and, in the case of the geographic conundrum, further collaborating on policy and community advocacy. I very much look forward to today’s discussion and thank you again for your participation.
John Gieve: Financial system risks in the UK – issues and challenges Speech by Sir John Gieve, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, at a Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation Roundtable, London, 25 July 2006. *  *  *  The Bank and financial stability The Bank of England’s central position in the economy owes a great deal to the development of its role in managing financial crises. The need for a central bank to provide liquidity to the market was identified as early as 1802, when Henry Thornton said: “…if the Bank of England, in future seasons of alarm, should be disposed to extend its discounts in a greater degree than heretofore, then the threatened calamity may be averted through the generosity of that institution.” 1 It took until the 1870s for that role to be institutionalised. The arrangement to request a letter from the Chancellor permitting the Bank to issue notes not backed by gold at a time of crisis was important to the remarkable financial stability that ensued. Indeed, some academics suggest that a true financial panic has not taken place in the UK since Overend Gurney & Company collapsed in 1866. 2 Of course a lot has changed since then but maintaining financial stability remains one of the Bank’s two core purposes. The current institutional arrangements are spelt out in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Bank, the Treasury, and the FSA.

Rather than go over all that ground today, I’d like to pick out two themes that span many of these six vulnerabilities: first the increased competitive pressure on financial firms, and second the way in which changes to the structure of our financial system that have made it more efficient at sharing risk may also have made it more efficient at transmitting shocks. A changing financial landscape Over the past decade technological change, financial innovation, cross border financial consolidation and the increasing demands of investors for better performance have had a profound effect on financial markets and institutions (Charts 1 and 2), and have increased the flow of savings across markets and national boundaries. These changes have brought with them a shift away from bank-dominated finance, with its emphasis on a “special relationship” between lender and borrower, towards “anonymous” markets and armslength asset management. Traditional worries about bank runs – where vulnerabilities lay on the liability-side of the balance sheet – have not disappeared but these days there is equal concern about the reliability of apparent liquidity on the asset side of the balance sheet. The changing nature of financial activity is illustrated by developments in credit derivatives markets. The availability of these instruments is enabling a change in the nature of banking itself towards business models based on origination and distribution rather than the retention of credit risk. The notional amount outstanding on CDS contracts globally reached $ trillion in 2005, up from $ billion in 1996.
To reap the benefits of financial innovation and reduce its risks, we need robust and resilient financial systems and infrastructures. In this respect, concentrating systemic risks in central clearing counterparties for the most important markets (such as interbank and derivatives markets) may bring us a long way towards reducing them, provided these CCPs are properly regulated. In this respect, I think that locating these infrastructures in the same area as that of the currency they deal in and allowing them access to central bank money are key factors. A last option which is currently gaining some international momentum concerns the possible taxation of financial institutions and activities. In principle, this idea seems quite appealing. However, the diversity of objectives that may be given to such a tax shows that the policy  BIS Review 57/2010  3  debate must be clarified. In a financial crisis prevention perspective, it is aimed at changing incentives and at forcing financial intermediaries to internalize the risks that their activities generate for the whole system. In a crisis management perspective, it should enable governments to recoup the costs of financial bailouts in a systemic crisis. My main concerns regarding this issue are twofold. My first point concerns the articulation with regulation. The added value of a tax over prudential regulation still remains to be demonstrated for countries, such as France, that have taken advantage of an effective regulatory and supervisory framework and in which public interventions in the financial sector have entailed no net costs to the government.

6  The five-pronged strategy was outlined in the speech that I delivered at the Financial Services Forum for delegations from Pan-Pearl River Delta Region in Hong Kong on 23 March 2006, and in the discussion paper prepared for the Economic Summit on "China's 11th Five-year Plan and the Development of Hong Kong" on 11 September 2006. 4  BIS Review 98/2006  Fourthly, enhancing the capability of the financial system of Hong Kong to handle financial transactions denominated in the RMB, with a view to facilitating in Hong Kong financial intermediation of the Mainland, the conduct of experiments in financial liberalisation and the management of the associated risks; and Fifthly, connecting the financial infrastructures (the payment, clearing, settlement and custodial systems) of the Mainland and Hong Kong, to facilitate the orderly flow of money and financial instruments across the two financial systems. We are now working hard on the specific proposals under each of these five strategic headings. These, together with other proposals from a market-specific perspective, will form quite a rich menu on what we, the financial system of Hong Kong, can do for the country and on the benefits the country can derive from the arrangement of “one country, two financial systems”. BIS Review 98/2006  5
10  Figure 1 Inflation (1) (2)  Core inflation (1) (2)  (annual change, percent)  (annual change, percent)  18  Headline CPI  14  Core CPI  Volatiles CPI  15  Goods  Services  12 10  12  8 9 6 6  4  3  2  0  0 15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  -2  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  (1) Dotted vertical lines show statistical close of March 2022 Report. (2) For details on the different groupings and their share in headline CPI basket, see box IV.1 in December 2019 MP Report, Carlomagno and Sansone (2019), and Economic glossary. Sources: Central Bank of Chile and National Statistics Institute (INE). Figure 2 Cumulative inflationary surprises in MPR reports (percentage points) 2  Core goods excl. foods Other volatiles  Total foods (*) Core services  Volatile energy Total surprise  1,6 1,2 0,8 0,4 0 -0,4 Jun.21  Sep.21  Dec.21  Mar.22  (*) Sum of volatile and non-volatile foods. Sources: Central Bank of Chile and National Statistics Institute.

Mr Clementi comments on the systemic aspects of the Basel proposals  Speech given by Mr David Clementi, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, at a Financial Services Authority Conference, held in London on 2 December 1999. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to be given this opportunity to address you today. I must first express my admiration for the pro-active and thorough way that the FSA is seeking views from the industry on these important proposals. I know that as well as this conference, their efforts have encompassed briefing sessions, circulars to banks, advisory group meetings, and a dedicated website. There will no doubt be a few focus groups springing up in due course! The Bank of England is in turn holding regular meetings with the main trade bodies, while various of the Basel Committees involved in developing the proposals have conducted surveys and received presentations from banks and others. I hope that, at the end of the process, if differences of opinion remain between the authorities and the banking industry, this will be the result of rational divergence between our different perspectives, and certainly not through any failure of communication. I intend to direct my comments to the systemic aspects of the Basel proposals. The Bank has a close interest in this subject and I will start by outlining the relationship between the design of the regulatory system and the Bank’s core purposes.
2  BIS Review 134/2009  I would like to thank everyone, particularly Bahçesehir University and Koç University, who have contributed to the organization of this conference. I hope that it will be a productive conference and I would also like to extend my regards to the contributors of this event, to the participants and all the guests. BIS Review 134/2009  3

Gent Sejko: Supervisory policies after the start of the Banking Union – initial experiences and outlook for CESEE economies Intervention by Mr Gent Sejko, Governor of the Bank of Albania, in 6th ECB Conference on CESEE: “CESEE, old and new policy challenges”, session’s topic “Supervisory policies after the start of the Banking Union – initial experiences and outlook for CESEE economies”, Frankfurt am Main, 10 June 2015. *  *  *  Dear participants: I am honored and pleased to be in this important conference among distinguished professionals of banking and financial industry! I want to start by thanking the organizers for the invitation to be here, but also to congratulate the ECB on its new building: I wish it is as functional, as it is beautiful! Coming from the banking industry, I have been feeling the impact on the banking activity arising from the changing economic and financial environment due to recent global financial crisis. Since my appointment as the new Governor of the Bank of Albania at the beginning of this year, I have been seriously estimating the challenges we face in order to maintain the stability of our banking sector and ensure that it is fit to play its role in support of Albania’s economic growth. In my intervention today, I would like to share with you how we see the impact of changes in the financial landscape, including those in supervision superstructure, on the financial system of CESEE countries and more specifically on Albania’s one.
Market contacts suggest this reflects a combination of the lower cost of issuance and a surge of pent-up supply being brought to market, and we have heard several specific examples of issuance plans being increased in size, targeted at longer maturities, or switched to sterling directly in response to the announcement. This bears similarities 9  Gilts with greater than three years to maturity are eligible for purchase in the programme. The 3.75% September 2019 gilt was due to fall below this limit shortly after the announcement, so the impact on its yield was lower than for other bonds. 6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  with the experience for the ECB where a comparable increase in Euro issuance was observed following the announcement of its CPSS scheme in early 2016. Stepping back, the big picture is of a discernible impact on the cost of funding for firms and a strong second half of the year for issuance, despite a big uncertainty challenge. The introduction of the CBPS has helped ensure that downside risks following the referendum did not materialise and that the market remained robust in the face of wider market volatility. In addition to those early successes, one area where the scheme has certainly been effective is the pace of purchases. Last week, and just four months since we started purchases, we passed the half-way mark for these purchases.

Malaysia has adopted a hybrid approach towards governance reform that includes legal reform, self-regulation as well as measures to encourage market-based regulation. The approach balances between prudential regulation, market discipline and shareholders surveillance. Malaysia has proceeded on the basis that there are aspects of corporate governance where statutory regulation is effective and necessary and in others where self-regulation is more appropriate. Building the necessary legal and institutional framework to support the development of good corporate governance practices within the capital and financial markets is therefore an important part of the process. Among the various measures initiated includes the law that provides the statutory framework to protect the interest of the depositors, customers and shareholders as well as the prudential framework to promote financial stability. This includes the legal provisions prescribing the maximum permissible shareholding limit to avoid concentration of ownership. There is also a restriction on extension of credit to related parties to avoid conflict of interest, as well as a limit on the lending to single customer. Other measures include the issuance of specific guidelines on the role and responsibilities of directors and the creation of various board committees. Greater emphasis is also accorded to the role of independent directors, minimum qualifications of such directors and their compensation to ensure sufficient independence to act in the best interest of the institution. In the area of Shariah governance, guidelines have been issued on the governance structure of the Shariah Committee in the Islamic financial institutions.