samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In particular, they act out of self-interest or greed often at the expense of others. It is time to put this to rest. One can just take Islamic ethics as they are, and act as one say and as one mean. However, we should build on this, infuse it with a creed of professionalism that will provide its practitioners with not only a clear set of principles, but a sense of vocation to do what is right and to strive for the greater good and the betterment of the society to truly achieve the aspirations of maqasid al-Shariah. Let me share some further thoughts on this. In building such an ethos, we should always have in mind the basic or fundamental Islamic ethics that are also shared across many religions and societies. Such prescriptions lay out the fundamental basis of decency and behaviour. We cannot steal, cheat, lie, and act dishonourably. Principles that essentially guide us to be decent and in fact socially acceptable and responsible members of society. A natural component of this is ‘amanah’ or trust. As professionals, we should act as it is entrusted upon us, protecting the interests that we serve; our customers, shareholders, institutions, and sometimes this comes at personal expense. Trust is often called a valuable commodity. Indeed, it is even larger than that. Trust is a foundation or pillar of many relationships, including that of business and finance.

Adnan Zaylani Mohamad Zahid: Ethics & professionalism - leaders as role models for the next generation of Islamic finance professionals Speech by Mr Adnan Zaylani Mohamad Zahid, Assistant Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Chartered Institute of Islamic Finance Professionals (CIIF) 4th Anniversary Dinner and Conferment Ceremony, Kuala Lumpur, 6 November 2019. * * * I wish to extend my sincerest thanks to the Chartered Institute of Islamic Finance Professionals (CIIF) for inviting me here this evening to join the celebrations for the 4th anniversary of the Institute as well as the conferment ceremony of the Chartered Professional in Islamic Finance (CPIF) professional designation. I understand that this evening will also see the conferment of the first ever Fellows from amongst the existing Chartered members of the Institute, all of whom have served the Islamic finance industry with distinction over the years. The Institute’s efforts to support the professionalisation of the Islamic financial services industry is part of a long journey that we embarked on some time ago, forming a key step towards achieving a vision of an industry that is rich with talent. Developing talent development together as an industry Recognising that talent development is a long-term endeavour, Bank Negara Malaysia had set out the initial plan in the Financial Sector Blueprint 2011–2020 in which several affiliate institutions had been identified as having crucial roles to play in the development of talent for financial services industry as a whole.
The SNB’s latest analysis has led us to adjust our conditional inflation forecast downwards once again. As my first slide highlights, the most recent forecasts for 2012 show an inflation rate of –0.6%, as compared to a rate of 0.3% in 2013 and 0.6% in 2014. Price stability is therefore assured. That said, if developments in the international economy prove to be worse than foreseen, or if the Swiss franc does not weaken further, as it is expected to, downside risks for price stability could re-emerge. Whatever the case may be, the SNB stands ready to take further measures at any time, if the economic outlook and the risk of deflation so require. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Explanations for low interest rates Today’s low interest rates are a defining feature of the current economic environment far beyond the Swiss borders and this has been the case for some time. I will hence paint a picture of the global situation with broad brushstrokes, before outlining the specifics of the Swiss case. The current low interest rate levels can be viewed as the endpoint of a downward trend that has marked the last twenty years and which has been accentuated by the necessary policy responses to the current economic crisis. As my second slide shows, one can observe a significant and continued decrease in long-term nominal rates of various maturities since the early 1980’s. Several factors are responsible for this evolution.

In the case of Thailand, BOT takes an active role in meeting regularly with financial institutions and IT companies to exchange views and experiences on the development of the businesses and IT environment. -  In the process of drafting policies, we often seek out the view from our fellow regulators to ensure that our policy are in line with market and international practices, as well as to help us anticipate problems that may arise in implementation. -  The final drafts of policies are sent out for comments from key stakeholders in and outside the Bank of Thailand, especially the industry, to ensure that the policies are practical and not posing any undue burden on financial institutions. -  We also make sure that revision of regulations and guidelines is conducted regularly to ensure that e-banking policies are keeping with demand from the financial community as well as with market innovation and international best practices. -  To maintain proactive supervision, the IT risk-based supervision is conducted continuously, updating each of bank's IT risk profile on a regular basis and performed overall assessment in certain areas. In case of getting a report of any incidents, we have to thoroughly analyze the impact on the financial institution system and consumer. And, to prevent recurrence of such incidents, we may urgently issue notification to financial institutions to provide preventive, detective and corrective control measures in self and customer protections.
Nothing is lasting without institutions.” The ECB is, in my opinion, a remarkable illustration of the lucidity of the conceptual founder of the Community: the institutional construction is solid and has proved to be remarkably effective in attaining its goals. This ten-year period has been short compared with the duration of the deepening of the European Union, which is an historic endeavour. But this relatively short period of time has been rich in successes. These accomplishments call for celebration, for reflection and also for continuous efforts as regards the future. In the first place, celebration. My predecessor, our dear Wim Duisenberg, in his speech to celebrate the establishment of the ESCB ten years ago, referred to “the road we have to travel in the future to make the euro a success, which means to make it a stable currency”. What can we say now, after ten years? I can sum it up in five sentences. Since day one, the single currency has fully inherited the degree of credibility and confidence that was the privilege of the most credible national currencies before the euro. The credibility was such that the medium and long-term market rates of the euro were at the same low level as those experienced by the most reliable national currencies before. In spite of a series of global shocks resulting from the prices of oil and commodities, yearly inflation since 1 January 1999 has been 2.1% on average.

And on the subject of history, I would like to make some observations. Europe's single currency has ancient roots: apart from the single currency of the Roman Empire, two thousand years ago, I could mention George of Podebrady, a king of Bohemia in the 15th century, who called for a common currency for Europe, or Victor Hugo's call for a single market with a single currency in Europe in the 19th century. By implementing the Economic and Monetary Union enshrined in the Werner report 38 years ago, we have also achieved a much older plan, an ancient vision of a unified continent, including monetary union. This historic vision has always been closely associated with the search for prosperity and the preservation of peace. Voltaire's remark: “En effet l’histoire n’est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs” – “Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes” – from the perspective of the mid-twentieth century could not have been more apt . It is no surprise that it was at that point in time that Europeans decided to accelerate the march towards European unity. The single currency is the most advanced feature of European unity and in many respects its emblem. We owe it to the lucidity of the founding fathers and to the determination of a series of visionary leaders. We saw these founding fathers a moment ago on the screen. To them we owe an immense debt of gratitude.
The only policy rule in common use in developed countries with floating exchange rates is inflation targeting: so far this appears to have been quite successful, although the experience is still limited. The technical requirements are demanding, however, and especially so for developing economies. Policy makers must be able to accurately forecast not only inflation but also the response of inflation to changes in the policy levers. This is a challenging enough task for the highly trained staff in central banks of developed economies, who generally benefit from dealing with a relatively stable economic structure and from considerable experience in  BIS Review 53/1999  6  monetary management under floating exchange rates. Needless to say, the success of developing economies in operating such a system is far from assured. An alternative approach would be to proceed along the same path that Europe is pursuing, in the form of a monetary union. There are clear advantages to this approach. One of these is the creation of markets in a single currency that are sufficiently large to make it difficult for individual speculators or groups of speculators to manipulate markets. Another advantage is that trade within the monetary union is fostered by the certainty and ease of transaction in a single currency. Of course, as the EMU experience shows, there are important political issues that must be resolved before monetary union can become a reality.

So any decision on an exchange rate framework is not narrowly confined to external considerations, but must reflect broader policy choices, as well as the structure of the economy in question. The practical and theoretical considerations involved in deciding on an appropriate exchange rate system can be reduced to four broad factors: the external versus domestic orientation of the economy; the flexibility of its cost-price structure; the exposure to financial shocks; and the reputation and credibility of policy makers. These factors, naturally, differ from one economy to another. In theory, the choice is straightforward enough: the best system is the system that best accommodates a country’s “natural endowment” of these factors. Success in practice, however, is not simply — or even primarily — a question of choosing the preferred exchange rate framework from a textbook perspective. Policymakers on the ground need to address the much more demanding challenge of ensuring consistency between the overall policy framework and the exchange rate regime. Experience shows us that governments can choose exchange rate systems that do not appear optimal according to standard economic criteria yet still make them work if other policies are up to the task. At the same time, a regime that is appropriate on theoretical grounds will yield unsatisfactory results if it is not supported by other policies. Consider, for instance, an economy with relatively inflexible wages and prices that adopts a fixed exchange rate regime.
I would need to go to Fortum to pay for electricity network charges and gas, and to travel to Kiruna to pay the TV and radio licence just to give two examples. Moreover, if it was not possible to use cash, I would need to work somewhere that provided my salary in a form that my suppliers would accept as payment. These  2  BIS Review 98/2006  ideas may seem alien to us, but in many countries the majority of all payments are made in cash. It can also be the case that confidence in money in the economy collapses to such an extent that bartering is almost the only thing that works. This happened, for example, in Argentina a couple of years ago. The economy is thus dependant on the payment system functioning efficiently to maintain welfare and growth. Without an efficient payment system the economy would collapse. Of course, it is not possible to quantify the total contribution of the current payment system to the economy in a meaningful way. However, Nils Lundgren presents an intellectual experiment in his article “The financial sector’s economic significance”. In this, the Swedish payment system of the 1990s is replaced by the way things worked in Sweden in the 1950s. The experiment shows that the extra work this would require from the Swedish people corresponds to a labour cost of 7 per cent of GDP a year, which is around SEK 190 billion a year.

Since the mid-1990s, a main purpose of the economic policy framework has been to shelter the economy from fluctuations in oil prices. The set-up of the Government Pension Fund Global and the fiscal rule for petroleum revenue spending is one important defence mechanism in this context. The government’s net cash flow from the petroleum industry is transferred in its entirety to the Government Pension Fund Global. A transfer from the Fund to cover a non-oil budget deficit requires a decision by the Norwegian parliament. In addition to preserving the real value of the Fund for the benefit of future generations, this set-up insulates the budget from short-term fluctuations in petroleum revenues. It also leaves space for fiscal policy to counteract economic downturns. In effect, since 2013, the increase in oil revenue spending has roughly matched the fall in oil investment. Monetary policy has also played a role. Our monetary policy is oriented towards low and stable inflation. The operational target of monetary policy is annual consumer price inflation of close to 2.5% over time. Norges Bank operates a flexible inflation targeting regime, so that weight is given to both variability in inflation and variability in output and employment. With confidence in the inflation target among economic agents, monetary policy in Norway has been able to contribute to stabilising the business cycle. Lower income from oil exports following the fall in the oil price meant cost-competitiveness needed to improve. A floating exchange rate greatly facilitated this process.
Among major economies worldwide, the euro area has the lowest interest rates, be they nominal or real, short or long-term. And the ECB has developed a wide range of tools. Quantitative Easing was not created in Europe, but corporate bond purchases, the wide range of eligible collateral, TLTRO or negative rates were developed here. In calibrating our decisions, we look of course at both the stance (based on our desired effect on future inflation) and the effective transmission of monetary policy (is the stance having the intended effect for economic agents, including SMEs and households?). These two considerations are evident in our recent decisions about the PEPP. The purpose of the PEPP is to preserve favourable financing conditions for all borrowers during the crisis phase of the pandemic and thereby prevent inflation from falling even further below our objective. From  Page 4 sur 9 the start in March 2020 and still more since December, we have included the possibility to buy flexibly across time, jurisdictions and asset classes, to ensure that all borrowers benefit from favourable financing conditions. The recent evolution of long-term sovereign rates illustrates our consistency. In January and February, long-term sovereign bond yields in the euro area began to increase, largely reflecting transatlantic spillovers from US monetary and fiscal policies. So we decided in our Governing council on March 11th to conduct our purchases “at a significantly higher pace”, which was implemented promptly and efficiently and limited the rates increase. From mid-April nevertheless, our action has been hampered by unwarranted tapering fears.

But this does not mean that there are no important tasks for the Banco de España – or other participating countries’ national supervisors – to perform in the SSM, in addition to the functions that remain intact as they are not assumed – or are assumed only partially or in exceptional circumstances – by the SSM. In recent months there has been talk of the Banco de España becoming devoid of its powers. This reflects a lack of knowledge or misunderstanding of how the SSM is organised and how it will operate and is reminiscent, in a sense, of the talk afoot when Monetary Union came into being and the ECB assumed responsibility for the main monetary policy decisions. The model then adopted entailed full decentralisation of monetary policy implementation. This meant that it relied on the national central banks for its implementation (in fact, credit and deposit institutions have no direct operational relationship with the ECB) and that in practice, although the ECB assumed decision-making powers, there was no decrease in either the workload or the staffing needs of the national central banks. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Albeit for different reasons, the start-up of the SSM is expected to have a similar impact on workload and staffing needs at the Banco de España and at the other national supervisory authorities. *** In any event, the creation of the SSM poses an organisational challenge for the national authorities.
Gent Sejko: Comments on cooperation extension between Albania and Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs Speech by Mr Gent Sejko, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the ceremony of signing the Memorandum of Understanding between the Swiss Government's SECO and the Bank of Albania, Tirana, 1 March 2019. * * * Dear ladies and gentlemen, Today we start the second phase of the cooperation with the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), which provides, on behalf of the Swiss Government, technical assistance to support, among others, central banks. I take this opportunity to extend our profound appreciation and gratitude to the Swiss Government, which has continuously provided assistance to the Bank of Albania – either directly or through other financial institutions – in the areas of payments, financial inclusion and monetary policy. Today, we are signing a new cooperation agreement with regard to perfecting our analyses and decision-making processes. The development and the continuous enrichment of scientific capacities of our talented staff, and the implementation of research and analysis methodologies to support the decision-making and policymaking processes are a priority for the Bank of Albania. In this context, it is a pleasure and honour for me, as the Governor of the Bank of Albania, to sign, together with H.E. Ambassador Maître, this agreement between our two institutions. At the Bank of Albania, we are very enthusiastic about this cooperation.

Dear ladies and gentlemen, The new agreement, similarly to the previous one, enables the Bank of Albania to be part of a rich, deep and diverse programme of bilateral assistance and capacity building for central banks. Through qualifications and capacity building, the goal of the cooperation agreement is to perfect the analysis, the decision-making and, consequently, the policy-making processes at the Bank of Albania. I think that we have already established firm foundations that guarantee an even stronger partnership for the second phase. Expected outcomes from the implementation of the second phase include: monetary policy decision making sustained by improved forecasting capacities, macro-prudential policy formulated based on a larger body of knowledge about various risks; and research further enriched with the best research methodologies and practices. These goals form the core of our medium-term strategy. The Bank of Albania aims to increase the impact of research results on decision-making, extend research to other departments, and adopt highest standards on ethics and rigorous research, which renders it one of the priorities of the cooperation. Many of the current developments and challenges in certain countries or regions may appear as distant and alien to us, but globalisation and economic integration disregards borders and their effect and impact may spill over into our economy. The problems that persist from the financial crisis, the continuation of quantitative easing programmes and the new normal for the monetary policy affect the functioning of the central bank.
Based on our experience with the PEPP, we could move towards some additional flexibilities, in terms of allocation and/or volume. The way negative rates are implemented continues to be effective. If needed, the present level of the DFR is not a floor. In particular, the tiering system limits the negative side effects on bank intermediation of low-for-long interest rates. The tiering multiplier could be adapted flexibly to support the “low-for-longer” policy. I would favor a more rule-based approach to adjust the level of the multiplier. For instance, this multiplier could depend on the change in excess liquidity (net of TLTROs). As the third instrument of the quartet, our forward-guidance gives visibility to the future path of interest rates and could be enhanced by stronger commitment  Page 8 sur 9 and communication. A particular focal point is the present puzzle between the date of anticipated lift-off and the expected inflation then, which at present remains under our target. To strengthen the impact of our forward-guidance on rates, we should clarify our state-dependent reaction function. Consistent with the symmetry of our objective, our willingness to tolerate upside risks on inflation has to be more widely understood. I would not go as far as embracing flexible average inflation targeting as the Fed did in its new strategy framework: it raises several complex questions and can create excessive constraint. But the forward guidance is a more tactical and adequate tool, stating clearly that we are ready to overshoot temporarily 2% before any rise in interest rates.

We are quite far from the creation of a global private currency. But stable coin projects reveal gaps in existing cross-border payment systems. Hence, at the European level, we should aim at promoting a genuine European strategy for retail payments. Payments are no longer a mere boring back-office technicality. They are innovative, and they provide two strategic assets: data, and daily customer relations. The raw truth however is that the European payments market is already dominated by non-European stakeholders. Furthermore, the growing role of non-European digital firms – be they American or Chinese – offering payments solutions should be taken seriously. Despite the creativity of the European ecosystem of payments, our  Page 4 sur 5 market remains too fragmented. Against this background, I call for the creation of pan-European payment solutions, building on a common brand and on the technical success of the Target Instant Payment Settlement infrastructure (TIPS) managed by the Eurosystem. We don’t have much time left, but regulators – starting with the Banque de France – and market players should work hand in hand to create a momentum. III. Green finance, “a new frontier for the 21st Century” Let me now conclude with some words on green finance. As I once said, it is “a new frontier for the 21st Century”. Much has already been undertaken over the past few months. We are currently witnessing a growing awareness from central banks, supervisors and financial institutions about climate-related risks.