samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
2/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  Any new form of digital money in order to succeed will need to be trusted as a store of value and as an accepted means of payment. Stablecoins must therefore promise, credibly and consistently, to be fully interchangeable with existing forms of money. In other words, they must be anchored in and thus maintain confidence in the monetary system. It is with this objective firmly in mind that the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee has set out its expectations to inform the design and regulation of stablecoins, and thus lay a clear foundation for sustainable innovation by setting out the public interest. The FPC’s first stablecoin expectation relates to the principles and expectations that payment regulation should aim to achieve. In this regard, UK authorities are already considering the regulatory approach for payments, including in response to both systemic and non-systemic stablecoins. The FPC’s second expectation relates to the use of stablecoins as money. This recognises that the Bank’s existing payments regulatory regime alone would not be sufficient to ensure the safety of a new form of digital money. Certain key features of the banking regime would also need to be reflected in any regulatory model meeting the FPC’s second stablecoin expectation. The Bank’s view is that these include: legal claim, capital requirements, liquidity requirements and eligibility for support from a central bank during a stress, and a separate backstop to compensate depositors in the event of failure.

Monetary policy was embarking on a path which targeted inflation and which, unlike monetarism before it, downplayed money and credit. And the regulation of banks, long the preserve of central banks, was in many countries being hived off to separate regulatory agencies. What happened next was truly extra-ordinary. Whether by coincidence or causality, the world experienced the largest banking bubble in history. Between 1990 and 2007, global bank balance sheets rose by a factor four. On the eve of the crisis they had reached around $ trillion, or almost 1.5 times the annual output of the entire planet. At the Bank for International Settlements, Andrew Crockett saw trouble brewing. In 2000, he gave a speech calling for a “macro-prudential” approach to regulation.12 Crockett argued that central banks needed to look at, and act on, developments across the whole financial system if systemic risk was to be headed-off. Credit booms, the like of which was occurring for real at the time, sowed the seeds of that systemic risk. The rest is of course history, as pre-crisis credit boom turned to shuddering bust. Or rather it would be history were it not for the fact that this crisis, whose seeds were sown in the credit boom, is still with us. Output in the UK is still well below its 2007 level. The so-called Great Recession in the UK is already as severe as the Great Depression of the 1930s. In response, the policy framework has, once more, been radically augmented. Macroprudential policy is the next big thing.
BIS Review 100/2010  7  1.  the possibility that if a bank has more equity capital the return on equity is less variable lowering the required rate of return. (This is a partial allowance for the mechanism underlying the Modigliani-Miller result.) 2.  the likelihood that the extra tax revenue that accrues to the government as banks are forced to switch to equity that is less favourably treated is used to offset any resultant rise in the cost of finance for companies using bank debt. (For example the government could use the extra revenue to increase capital allowances so that the negative impact on investment from a higher cost of bank debt is neutralised.) 3.  the likelihood that the relative importance of bank funding for investment is lower than the baseline conservative estimate that banks account for 1/3 of private, nonfinancial companies (PNFCs) external finance. 4.  the likelihood that the sensitivity of investment and the capital stock to a rise in the cost of funds to non-financial firms is lower than the value assumed in the baseline (where an assumption of a unit elasticity of substitution between capital and labour is used). Suppose we first allow the cost of equity to fall as more capital reduces its volatility.

The broader economy should see a recovery in the second half of this year alongside strengthening global demand and further progress in our vaccination programme. Trade-related activities such as manufacturing and wholesale trade will be supported by resilient global trade flows and robust upswing in the global tech cycle. Modern services, particularly the financial and ICT sectors, are set to expand at a firm pace this year, amid a pickup in credit intermediation activities and the ongoing digitalisation of business processes which has been accelerated by the pandemic. Moreover, compared to a year ago, Singapore is much better equipped to handle the pandemic, with more effective testing and tracing, swift isolation of infected cases, and vaccination. Singapore’s GDP growth could exceed the upper end of the 4 to 6% forecast range, barring a setback to the global economy. Last month, the official forecast range was maintained at 4 to 6% in light of the deterioration of the domestic COVID-19 situation and consequent Phase Two (Heightened Alert). MTI, together with MAS, will review the forecast range in August when preliminary estimates for Q2 GDP are available. The resident unemployment rate should continue to gradually decline. Total employment expanded by 14,000 in Q1 this year, the first expansion after four consecutive quarters of contraction. The Phase Two (Heightened Alert) measures and continued restrictions under Phase Three (Heightened Alert) however will have a transitory impact on employment in the domesticoriented services sector.
And we are discussing incremental enhancements to Wealth Management Connect with Mainland authorities, such as improving sales arrangements, expanding product scope, and allowing more financial institutions to participate. We will also focus on developing the offshore RMB derivatives market by introducing risk-management products to meet global investors’ hedging needs and develop Hong Kong as a risk-management centre. Swap Connect and the introduction of Mainland government bond futures in Hong Kong are important steps to allow global investors to conduct hedging for their bond investments in the Mainland. We will continue to explore the provision of more diversified riskmanagement tools to drive further allocation into Mainland bonds and openingup of the Mainland bond market. ETF Connect will give global investors direct access to the rapidly developing ETF markets on both sides, and enrich the product range under Stock Connect. The inclusion of foreign companies in Southbound Trading will make our stock exchange even more attractive as a leading fund-raising destination for international companies. Another vital step is to expand the use of RMB in equity market trading in Hong Kong. The Working Group formed by the SFC, the HKEx and the HKMA have studied the feasibility of allowing stocks eligible for Southbound Trading of Stock Connect to be denominated in RMB, and are moving ahead with the necessary preparations and discussions with Mainland authorities and agencies. We also need to promote our markets to attract more Mainland and international institutions to issue RMB bonds in Hong Kong.

At the end of last year, foreign holdings of onshore equities had more than tripled and foreign holdings of onshore bonds had more than doubled in just three years. Following a strong 2021, foreign equity and bond inflows into onshore markets have softened a bit this year on the back of COVID lockdowns in the Mainland and the divergence in monetary policy between China and the US that led to a reversal of the onshore bond yield premium. But these short-term fluctuations will not reverse the long-term trend of foreign investment in Mainland capital markets. 10. In fact, several key drivers continue to strengthen global investors’ interest in diversifying into RMB assets over the medium to long term. These include continued inclusion of onshore equities and bonds into major global indices; China’s long-term economic growth prospects; increasing recognition of the RMB as a stable reserve currency; and a lower correlation between RMB assets and other global financial market assets. 11. These factors will pave the way for a structural and long-term shift, which will motivate global investors to think more strategically about their exposure to China. This, in turn, will spur demand for RMB assets and facilitate the further opening up of the Mainland capital markets in a self-reinforcing cycle. 12. Against this background, Hong Kong must seize the opportunity to contribute to the two-way liberalisation of the financial markets by developing a deep and liquid offshore RMB market in the city.
The Paris Club primarily negotiates debt relief with countries – often poor countries – that do not have access to traditional international funding markets. There is no supranational body for debt negotiations for countries that have borrowed in international capital markets. Some years ago, the IMF attempted to draw up a regulatory framework for governments and creditors, but did not receive the necessary support from member countries. The IMF’s work has, however, led to more frequent inclusion of clauses in international loan agreements that facilitate constructive debt negotiations. 8 In our economic system, the bankruptcy system is a useful instrument. It enables businesses to put earlier mistakes behind them and reemploy real capital and labour. Debt arrangements for governments can play a similar role and counteract downward spirals. (See Chart: Inflation.) There are two forms of debt default. Breach of contract is one form where the borrower fails to honour the contractual obligations, as illustrated in the example here. For debt denominated in domestic currency, the state can also default by pursuing an inflationary economic policy, reducing the real value of the loan. Over the past 100 years inflation in Norway surged during the two world wars and during the Korean War. The last period of soaring inflation was in the 1970s and 1980s, which resulted in a sharp fall in the real value of the bonds issued in the 1950s and 1960s.

Public occupational pension schemes seem to enjoy slightly stronger constitutional protection than national insurance pensions, but the Supreme Court has  14  ROBEK – register of all municipal and county authorities subject to approval pursuant to Section 60 of the Local Government Act. 15  See discussion in Appendix 5 to the Report of the Pension Commission (NOU 2004:1). 8  BIS Review 123/2010  repeatedly stressed the authorities’ need for freedom of action when it comes to making changes to pension schemes. The Norwegian national insurance scheme is a pay-as-you-go system. This means that a given year’s pension payments from the scheme are covered by government budget revenues that year. When the national insurance scheme was introduced in 1967, a fund was established to provide for an expected reduction in private saving. However, pensions were still included in the central government budget at an early stage and financed by current tax revenues. Transfers to the National Insurance Fund were soon discontinued. Nevertheless, confidence in the pension system has actually remained intact, reflected in a low level of household saving, primarily through home investment. Perhaps there is some element of miscalculation here. A fall in value may occur if many homeowners free up housing capital to cushion old age. (See Chart: Government Pension Fund Global.) It was only when transfers to the Petroleum Fund were introduced in 1996 that funds were accumulated that could also be used to cover future pension payments.
Among the emerging market countries, those in Asia in particular have long been considered engines of vitality and technological adaptation in the world economy, and this recognition had been reflected in very high rates of GDP growth until the financial crises of 1997 and 1998. One problem those crises revealed is that in many countries, economic resources, notably capital inflows, had been misallocated. In the Asian countries, financial market and corporate sector reforms are widely viewed as necessary. It is encouraging to see that some progress has been made on financial restructuring, although the extent to which markets - as opposed to governments - have been the main shaper of change differs across countries. Other reforms appear to be less far along, and the greatest risk is that the sharp recovery so many of these countries have enjoyed will reduce the impetus to undertake and follow through on needed reforms. When we turn to Latin America, we observe an example of how important internal labor market and corporate sector reforms are. In the 1980s and early 1990s, many countries in this region made enormous strides in achieving sounder fiscal and monetary policies, especially in bringing down inflation and strengthening reliance on market mechanisms. However, in several countries, internal reforms were incomplete, with banking systems left in need of further strengthening, labor markets still remaining too rigid, and fiscal policies requiring more attention, starting with the need to ensure that all public sector spending be brought under control.

Although unemployment has been stubborn, the key challenge expressed by many Europeans is to make labor markets more flexible, and indeed, some change is evident. This past year, unemployment in the euro area finally seems to have started to trend down, falling to 9.6% in January, a seven-year low and almost 1 percentage point below its level a year earlier. Further, output growth has begun to revive from the falloff in 1998, and the outlook is for solid growth in the 11 euro countries to continue into 2000. Core inflation throughout the euro area has also been subdued, although with rising energy prices, it may edge up a bit. Producer prices for finished goods show no signs of inflation pressure. Growth elsewhere in the industrial world - the United Kingdom and Canada - also appears to be strong, with no signs of accelerating inflation. In both countries, strong private consumption - and in Canada an unemployment rate that is the lowest since 1981 - continues to keep GDP growth on a reasonably steady path. More broadly, there is active debate within Europe today about what kinds of labor and financial market changes will accelerate technological change. Countries have taken different approaches in addressing these issues. The diversity of experiences among the European countries allows each to assess the impact of the various approaches others have taken and to draw lessons from which it may benefit.
Profits rose sharply and bad debts were lower. This means that the clouds that have hung over the banking system for the last two years have now lifted. But it would be wrong to conclude that life for the banks will go on much the same way as it did before in the golden years before the crisis. The competitive environment for the banks is becoming increasingly intense. Of course, you can argue that there is nothing new in this. The banking system in Hong Kong has always been competitive, which is one of the reasons it was able to cope with the Asian crisis. But competition in past years was taking place in highly buoyant conditions and within defined limits, reflecting in part the influence of the interest rate rules of the Hong Kong Association of Banks. 1  BIS Review 69/2000  The competitive environment Now things are somewhat different. A number of major players in the market, including some foreign banks, are competing even more intensely than they did before. Some of them have recently increased their presence in Hong Kong or are planning to do so. In some cases, this presence may be in virtual form as banks increasingly offer their services in whole or in part over the internet. This is part of a worldwide trend towards greater competition. But it is happening in Hong Kong at a time when lending growth has still not recovered along with the economy.

Going forward, these phenomena are expected to be reversed by a further adjustment of consumption and investment, under the assumption that the policies that spurred the sharp fall in national savings will not be repeated. As I will show you shortly, over the next two years today's current-account deficit will be substantially reduced. On the external front, global inflation continues to be high, although with some moderation in some countries. Inflationary pressures are mainly concentrated in the core part of inflation, which in several economies has been driven by the strength of the services sector (figure 9). As described in one of the boxes in the Report, the U.S. labor market remains tight and under high wage pressures. To varying degrees, this situation is also present in other developed economies and poses a risk to the decline in inflation in these countries. In fact, it is one of the factors behind the tighter global monetary policy outlook considered in the central scenario of this Report. Thus, the monetary policy implemented by central banks in the rest of the world has reinforced their contractionary stance. This has been particularly visible in developed economies, where monetary tightening processes began later. Both the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, along with significant hikes in their benchmark rates, have signaled a more protracted tightening than was expected some time ago. In Latin America, most central banks have continued to raise their interest rates, with the exceptions of Chile and Brazil.
These  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  estimations conditioned the retaining of the stimulating nature of monetary policy during the second quarter of 2012. The key rate stood at the lowest historical level, providing eased monetary conditions in order to meet our inflation target and support the Albania’s economic activity. Also, the Bank of Albania has continued to inject sufficient liquidity demanded by the banking system, against an expanded collateral base and at adequate maturity terms. According to recent data from INSTAT, the Albanian economy recorded an annual fall of 0.2% in the first quarter of 2012. Industry contracted 19.3% y-o-y, mainly due to the significant decrease in electrical energy output. Also, Construction decreased its activity in real terms, by 17.6%, thus providing a negative contribution to the performance of the gross domestic product. By contrast, Services contributed positively to the economic activity, pointing to an annual growth of 6.0%. Agricultural sector grew 4.5%, y-o-y during this period, providing a positive contribution to the growth of the gross domestic product. Estimations on the aggregate demand in the first quarter of 2012 suggest a continuing weak domestic demand. The consolidated fiscal policy determined the lack of fiscal stimulus in this period and a downturn in public sector’s demand for goods and services. Private consumption remains slow, thus reflecting the prudent consumer’s behaviour and the increasing tendency for saving. Private investments also remained low.

It is now my pleasure to introduce Nancy Lee of Interise, Marlene Orozco from SLEI, and Claire Kramer from the New York Fed. 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
They should gradually acquire the necessary knowledge, abilities, position and behaviour to take sound financial decisions and be able to deal with emergency situations, like the current one we are experiencing. Concluding, I would like to thank all participants and collaborators of the Bank of Albania in all its educational initiatives and programmes, and particularly for the Global Money Week. Absolutely, such themes as planning personal finance may not be quite attractive to new age groups, nevertheless being aware of their importance and impact on the life of everyone, it is crucial that our institutions never stop their efforts to bring them to the attention of the young people. This is what we have tried to achieve through the activities and competitions that will take place during GMW 2021, and which I kindly invite you to attend. I sincerely thank you for your contribution and I wish a successful performance to all participants! 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches

Likewise, many married couples want to have children – not for GDP but because children are a source of joy and fulfilment of love. Government policies on marriage and parenthood are guided by this higher purpose. And of course, a growing labour force is a happy, economic by-product. We must make balanced choices in addressing the trilemma. We must accept a slower rate of labour force growth. The underlying demographic slowdown is so severe that it is neither feasible nor desirable to try to completely offset it through immigration or foreign workers. But we must also allow a certain rate of net immigration to augment our resident population. This is not just about numbers but about rejuvenation and expanding our talent base. 8 / 17  BIS central bankers' speeches  And while we cannot keep increasing our share of foreign workforce indefinitely, we must be flexible in allowing fluctuations in the ratio according to economic cycles, changing circumstances, and opportunities. Finally, we must reframe our question on foreign workers. It is not about how many foreign workers industry wants or society can afford to have, but what number and kind of foreign workers we need to maximise the job and wage opportunities for Singaporeans. Foreign workers must be a complement to the local workforce. Let me move on to the second broad theme: that demographics is not destiny. We can sustain our economic dynamism in the face of demographic change.