samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Ardian Fullani: Post-crisis challenges for Southeast Europe Speech by Mr Ardian Fullani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the annual meeting of the European Fund for Southeast Europe, Tirana, 8 June 2011. *  *  *  Honourable Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great pleasure and privilege for me to be here today, in this distinguished panel, to greet the start of the 2011 annual meeting of the European Fund for Southeast Europe, or EFSE as we are used to call it. More than four years ago, I was invited to the launching ceremony of this wonderful incentive here in Tirana. Two years ago, at its annual meeting that took place in Novi Sad, the Albanian government became a shareholder to the Fund. Today, we are gathered here again, in the capital city of Albania, to make the balance of this institution’s work. I avail myself of the opportunity to thank the European Fund for Southeast Europe, for its contribution to our region, for its financial support and expertise provided for the financial market development, without leaving behind specifically the EFSE’s assistance to Albania through funding business projects at competitive terms, at a time when bank lending has posted slow paces of recovery. The grave financial crisis of modern times has induced much volatility in the global economy. Today, the situation is assessed as more improved.

Their focus should be comprehensive, meaning further adaptation of legislation, improvement of infrastructure, full privatization of public assets, improvement of the business climate, deepening and broadening of the financial market, comprehensive reform in pensions, as well as a number of other actions which I can not mention here because of objective reasons. I think that the inflow of foreign direct investments remains our major target. Without them the region would remain small, fragmented, with a low development, social and economic potential, with sporadic exports, with premature markets and high costs, or in other words, with a low productivity. Personally, I am of the opinion that each foreign investment means faster convergence to Europe. Third, the financial market should develop to create other alternatives for savings, financing and risk management of economic entities, as well as for improving the conditions of these activities. Besides the banking sector, the share of non-bank financial institutions should also be rapidly developed, to enable a greater involvement and access to financial services for entities that can not benefit enough from banking services. Furthermore, I think that it is important to pay more attention to development of capital markets, particularly those issuing and trading debt securities and equities by private entities. Fourth, the regulatory framework and supervisory practices should be completed with some important elements in terms of prudential measures and emergency financial situation management. The prudential measures framework should cautiously treat capital and liquidity requests from banks, especially in the case of foreign currency.
Examples of such indicators include retail sales, the ISM manufacturing index, manufacturing production and orders, and single-family housing starts. Overall, I view these downside surprises as reflecting temporary factors to a significant degree. For example, some of the recent softness is likely due to yet another harsh winter in the Northeast and the Midwest. My staff’s analysis of a measure of both the amount of snow and the population affected indicates that January and February weather was 20 to 25 percent more severe than the five-year average. Such large deviations appear to have meaningful negative impacts on a number of economic indicators. Even so, there are some downside risks to the growth outlook. In particular, the steep decline in crude oil prices is likely to lead to a further sharp drop in U.S. oil and gas investment. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Additionally, the significant rise in the value of the dollar is likely to lead to weaker U.S. trade performance. Let me discuss each of these in more detail. Energy prices have declined sharply since mid2014. In recent weeks, the benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil price has been hovering in a range of $ to $ per barrel, less than half the price in June of last year. This creates both positives and negatives for the U.S. economy. Starting with the positives, since the U.S. is still a net importer of petroleum, this development has provided substantial benefits, with our oil import bill down by about a ½ percentage point of GDP.

It does not mean that monetary policy will be tight. We will simply be moving from an extremely accommodative monetary policy to one that is slightly less so. It also will be a positive signal about the progress we have made in restoring the economy to health. In my view, it would be a cause for celebration, because it would signal that the FOMC believes that slightly higher short-term interest rates are consistent with its objectives of maximum BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  employment and price stability. Near-zero short-term interest rates and a larger Federal Reserve balance sheet were designed to be a temporary extraordinary treatment to help the economy regain its vitality, and not a permanent palliative. I remain confident that when the FOMC does decide to begin to remove policy accommodation that we have the requisite tools to effectively support this decision. We have tested numerous tools including overnight reverse repurchase operations, term reverse repurchase operations, and term deposit facilities to ensure that, when the time comes, lift-off can be managed smoothly. The primary tool will be interest on excess reserves (IOER), with overnight reverse repurchases as a supplemental tool to be used as needed to ensure a firm floor under short-term interest rates. For financial markets, the likely path of short-term rates after lift-off is just as important as the timing of lift-off. Here, I anticipate that the path will be relatively shallow.
But given the daunting changes that have occurred recently in the world economy, and the fact that the IMF has achieved truly universal status with the accession of the transition countries, perhaps the time has come to consider it. Without greatly altering the operation of the institution and the pivotal role of its Executive Board, such a transformation would give the IMF renewed and very valuable legitimacy for the increasingly difficult tasks it is called upon to perform.4 The second avenue, in the same spirit, would consist of making provisions every two years for the G-7/G-8 - on the occasion of their meetings - to join the heads of state and government of the 16 countries holding seats on the IMF and World Bank Executive Boards to discuss with them and with the heads of those two institutions and the WTO the major economic and financial questions of the day. This new G-24 would have the significant merit of its basic legitimacy, as it would strictly reflect the system of international representation established for monetary and financial affairs in Bretton Woods. This would clearly represent a step forward not only in terms of dispelling the current malaise, but also in terms of hastening the adoption of integrated policy responses to the challenges of the globalized economy. The Secretary General of the United Nations should also be invited to participate to take into account the work of the entire family of UN agencies, which could become a fourth humanitarian and social pillar of the world system.

The Fund is also asked to examine ways to strengthen the monitoring of capital flows, a major and difficult undertaking indeed! •  Drawing on the lessons from the Asian crisis, and the frustration that confidential warnings from the Fund were not always heeded, the Fund has been asked to develop a “tiered response”, whereby countries that are believed to be seriously off course in their policies are given increasingly strong warnings. Addressing an audience in this country, where football is a way of life, or in my own country in advance of the World Cup, I do not need to emphasize how important it is to know exactly when the referee has shown a yellow card and how many yellow cards are permitted! We also have the red card in our Articles of Agreement, but using this card could precipitate the crisis we seek to avoid. So we prefer to use the yellow card. •  The Interim Committee also called upon the IMF to help members strengthen their domestic financial systems by encouraging them to develop supervisory and regulatory frameworks that are consistent with internationally accepted best practices, as well as strengthened standards for bank and non-bank institutions. Here you will recognize, of course, the “standards and good practices” building block. Work in this area is already in progress in various fora. A notable example is the Basle Committee’s Core Principles for strengthening banking regulation and supervision, which the IMF is now helping to disseminate to member countries.
Beyond ensuring that the financial system is resilient to climate risk, we need to make the financial sector a force for good – namely, to facilitate the transition towards a lower carbon economy. If the world is to reach net zero, the financial sector needs to be at the vanguard. Many financial institutions pledged net zero goals in the lead-up to COP26 last year. This is remarkable against the backdrop of a world that was still struggling to emerge from a global pandemic that had disrupted millions of lives and livelihoods. It shows seriousness of commitment. The GFANZ is a powerful expression of that collective will to do the right thing for the planet. While net zero is a 2050 goal, the critical decade for climate action is this – 2020 to 2030. To achieve net zero by 2050, the world must decisively bend the emissions curve and achieve substantial reductions by 2030. This is not a far away problem. The time for action is now. The setting up of the GFANZ Asia-Pacific Network is timely. Asia is where the battle against climate change will be won or lost. Energy demand in Asia is expected to double by 2030 on the back of economic growth, urbanisation, and rising affluence. Some 45 million people in Southeast Asia still do not have access to electricity. Fossil fuels will continue to play an important role in meeting the energy demands of Asia, at least for the next few years.

Anne Le Lorier: Regulating non-banks – ways forward and challenges ahead Speech by Ms Anne Le Lorier, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, at the ACPRBank of France Conference “Financial regulation-stability versus uniformity, a focus on nonbanks actors”, Paris, 28 September 2015. *  *  *  Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Colleagues and Friends, On behalf of the Banque de France and of the ACPR, I would first like to thank very much the speakers and the participants in today’s conference for the quality of their presentations. Indeed, they helped us to have insightful debates on the ongoing efforts made to prevent systemic crisis as much as possible, strengthen the global financial system and its resilience i.e. its capacity to withstand systemic shocks. As illustrated today, this is not an easy task and the global regulators are facing many challenges in shooting at a moving target: the financial system not only adapts, but also transforms itself and anticipates regulatory changes, sometimes constructively, sometimes less, thereby continuously modifying the sources, the channels and the shape of systemic risks. Regulation itself can be ill-designed, too narrowly focused or can generate unintended consequences.
Their trading has a range of positive effects but also poses a  4  BIS Review 60/2007  risk of heightened volatility and fluctuations in exchange rates and interest rates. Icelandic financial companies have expanded rapidly overseas, and too rapidly in some people’s view. Meteoric growth tends to raise questions anyway, and when small institutions are involved from a country that has not had a high profile in the banking world, these questions may be more aggressive and critical than otherwise. Icelandic banks discovered this last year. They have learnt a valuable lesson and clearly realise the importance of transparency and open communication, and the need for leeway in their funding and good credit ratings. This experience must not be forgotten. General market discipline and scrutiny will help to prevent that from happening. For government authorities, it is important to pursue balanced and credible economic policies and ensure that the administrative and financial infrastructure remain solid, including strong and efficient financial supervision. The Central Bank tightened its monetary stance sharply last year, one result of which was a lower rate of inflation than otherwise. The Treasury has shown a surplus for many years and privatisation proceeds were deployed to retire debt. Today, the Treasury’s foreign debt is not higher than the Central Bank’s foreign reserves, i.e. roughly 15% of GDP, and its domestic debt only 10% of GDP. Financial supervision has been boosted and will be strengthened further. It is in line with best European practice.

It is likely that continued strong growth in output and employment will result in a higher rise in prices and costs, but it may take time. According to Statistics Norway’s Labour Force Survey (LFS), employment growth picked up markedly towards the end of 2005 and into 2006. LFS unemployment fell further in January, while the number of registered unemployed was approximately unchanged in March. Measured in per cent of the labour force, seasonally adjusted LFS unemployment was 3.9 per cent. The labour supply is also being influenced by an increase in inward labour migration from the new EU accession countries. These changes are difficult to measure in official labour market statistics. The Central Office – Foreign Tax Affairs recorded an increase of about 7400 employees from the new EU accession countries from 2004 to 2005. This figure covers employees in both Norwegian and foreign enterprises. The size of the actual supply of labour behind these figures is uncertain, because there is  BIS Review 35/2006  1  no information about the duration of such employment relationships. On balance, however, there are signs that the use of foreign labour has contributed to dampening pressures on real economic resources through the upturn. The effect has probably been largest in the construction industry, as evidenced in particular by continued moderate wage growth last year, despite very high activity. The figures for the first quarter of this year indicate that inward labour migration is still rising. There is competition for the best labour in the EU countries.
The purpose of such a monetary adjustment is not to break the expansionary trend but to achieve growth that is more sustainable. In BIS Review 101/1997  -3-  other words, a shift from an expansionary stance to one that is more neutral is designed to bring the economy onto the growth path that matches its structure -- not to bring growth to a halt. Neither should this be described as a contractive turn; it is rather a move that yields a less expansionary stance. In the public debate the Riksbank’s monetary policy is sometimes described as though repo rate adjustments were a form of “punishment” or “reward”, aimed at measures that have been taken either by the political system or by labour market organisations in connection with wage negotiations. My point here has been that interest rate adjustments are a natural feature of monetary policy’s path over the economic cycle. Of course this does not mean that the construction of monetary policy is not affected by fiscal expansion or contraction, or by low or high wage settlements. What I want to make clear is that adjustments to the instrumental rate in the course of the economic cycle are a natural phenomenon and their purpose is to create conditions for sustained growth and low inflation. If a central bank waits too long before shifting from an expansive to a more neutral monetary stance, problems with bottlenecks are liable to become more widespread and the economy may become overheated.

To the one side, falling energy prices are weakening a key driver of underlying inflation pressures. Imported energy prices have played a central role in pushing up inflation for all economic sectors, given the huge energy shock we have faced. This is why measures of underlying inflation that capture the more persistent effects of energy costs are already showing a decline. [2] To the other side, increasing domestic price pressures could offset some of this disinflationary impulse. Measures of underlying inflation that capture items sensitive to the business cycle – such as Supercore[3] – or items with low import content are still strengthening. If this continues and aggregate demand picks up from its current compressed levels, we could see a handover from imported to domestic price pressures that keeps overall price pressures high. The key issue in determining which of these forces wins out will be developments in wages. The euro area has suffered a large terms-of-trade loss owing to rising energy prices, the cost of which must ultimately be shared between firms and workers. And it is important that there is fair burden sharing between them, with both accepting that they cannot fully recover the income that the euro area has paid to the rest of the world and the ensuing loss of output. So far, real wages have decreased substantially, while firms’ profit margins have expanded in many sectors. But the labour market is quite tight, labour shortages are increasing, and the terms-of-trade shock has largely reversed.
If those projections were below the 2% mark, that could be a strong signal that an increase in key interest rates was not to be expected in the foreseeable future. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  We have just published our updated inflation projections for 2013 and 2014. Both are less than our target of “below, but close to, 2%”. We will publish projections for 2015 in December. But that’s not for another three months, and the Federal Reserve’s policy could cause considerable volatility in that time. Thus far, all private sector forecasts see inflation in the euro area being significantly less than 2% in 2015, as do the forecasts of other public institutions, so there’s no big secret. Is it conceivable that the ECB will, in the future, link its forward guidance to a specific inflation target? We haven’t done that so far. There are a few things that you used not to do, but now do. That’s true, so that remains to be seen. But you still don’t see any deflationary risks for the euro area? Some economists say that it’s not enough to just look at stable inflation expectations. They fear a balance sheet recession and debt deflation, as in Japan. No, we don’t see such risks, and I don’t think we’re underestimating them, either. It is quite clear that the inflation target is symmetrical. But at the moment, we see neither inflationary nor deflationary risks. In the future, the ECB intends to publish accounts of its meetings.

We will then know what the capital shortfalls are and whether they can be covered. Moreover, the state of the banking sector is a serious problem for the country, but not the only one. Slovenia has inefficient state enterprises, attempts to introduce pension reform have failed twice and it is running a larger budget deficit than EU regulations allow. Many people are also concerned about the heavyweights France and Italy. Some observers fear that both countries are completely incapable of introducing reforms. How frustrated are you and your ECB colleagues that the large countries are not making better use of the time that the ECB, too, is “buying” for them to introduce reforms. Let me say one thing first: we all have a strong interest in an economically strong France. The entire construction of the euro area can only function with a strong France. The latest pension reforms are a step in the right direction but do not go far enough. I also see problems regarding the intended funding through higher taxes and contributions, rather than through specific spending cuts. Besides, the plans also contradict the EU Commission’s country-specific recommendations. The bottom line is that France will need to do more to enhance its competitiveness. The government will need to speed up the pace of reforms. And Italy? Much was achieved through fiscal policy efforts under the former prime minister Mario Monti. It is now important to ensure that these successful achievements are not eroded.
But the ongoing recovery of the global economy from the Covid-19 pandemic and associated restrictions will provide support to economic activity. The financial sector should grow at least as fast as the overall economy. More importantly, the Asian growth story remains intact, and Singapore’s financial centre is well positioned to support and grow with Asia. The Asian Development Bank estimates that strong exports and domestic demand will drive developing Asia’s growth at more than 5% per annum in the coming years. Demand for financial services typically grows faster than income as the middle class and mass affluent base expands. We are seeing the development of new capabilities which will add more engines of growth to our financial sector. In private markets, Singapore’s private equity and venture capital ecosystem is providing smart capital and business networks to the rapidly expanding pool of growth companies here and across the region. In wealth management, Singapore’s thriving family office ecosystem is helping wealthy Asian families to professionalise the management of their wealth and support their growing interest to invest for impact, as wealth is transferred to the next generation. In insurance, new capabilities are being developed to provide risk advisory services for complex and structural risks in Asia, like cyber-attacks, pandemic, and climate risks. The increasingly pervasive use of technology in our financial sector will be another key driver of growth. Financial institutions in Singapore are making significant investments in technology.

Bakarudin Ishak: Linking United Kingdom & Malaysia – opportunities and solutions in fundraising and investments Introductory address by Mr Bakarudin Ishak, Assistant Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Forum “Linking United Kingdom & Malaysia: Opportunities and Solutions in Fundraising and Investments”, organised by TheCityUK, London, 29 September 2015. *  *  *  On behalf of the Malaysian delegation, I am pleased to be here today at this forum with the theme “Linking United Kingdom & Malaysia: Opportunities and Solutions in Fundraising and Investments”. It is a great opportunity to jointly organise this event with TheCityUK which we hope will further enhance Malaysia-UK relationship in Islamic finance and strengthen the investment and financial ties between the two countries. Appreciation note Our utmost appreciation goes to TheCityUK for hosting this Forum and the warm hospitality extended to Malaysian delegates. We would also like to extend our appreciation to Trowers & Hamlins for holding this Forum at its venue. Trowers & Hamlins is Malaysia’s first foreign law firm to be granted a Qualified Foreign Law Firm (QFLF) licence. This allows them to operate independently in Malaysia and advise on international legal issues including on Islamic finance matters. The entry of foreign legal firms will create a symbiotic environment to accelerate the Malaysian legal firms’ capabilities at the international front.