samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
To sum up, we can conclude that the low inflation outcome in 2004 cannot be attributed to a monetary policy that was contrary to the consensus view at the time. Instead, it was essentially a result of developments that practically nobody managed to foresee. Another possible conclusion is that we would have had to conduct a dramatically different monetary policy if inflation was to have turned out much closer to the target in 2004. For example, the Riksbank would probably have had to cut the repo rate rapidly and sharply at the beginning of 2002. Such a stance would most likely have caused something of a stir. Inflation was high at that time and nobody predicted the kind of dramatic decline that would have justified a substantial rate cut. To give you an idea of the sentiment at the time, one of the country’s leading trade union representatives warned us not to take the inflation target lightly. 2  BIS Review 18/2005  Has policy been asymmetrical? One recurrent feature of the recent discussion is claims that the Riksbank is more concerned about high inflation than low inflation. It has been said that inflation since the introduction of the Bank’s target – from 1995 onwards – has turned out somewhat below target on average. Personally, I can understand fears that central banks could be ”overly zealous” in their fight against inflation, especially if a country has experience of a high-inflation regime, as is the case in Sweden.

The forecast for domestic cost pressures this year has been revised down somewhat all the same compared with the assessment in December on the basis of new data for 2004. Resource utilisation in the Swedish economy was low last year. In particular, the demand for labour is still limited even though some indicators of labour shortages show an upward tendency. Indicators from manufacturing also suggest that capacity utilisation has picked up recently. The Riksbank’s overall assessment is that resource utilisation has risen – albeit from a low level – and will continue to increase as more and more spare resources are put to use. The inflation outlook As I mentioned, both domestic and imported inflation were low in the past year. Domestic inflation was expected to be low at this point in time and the rate of price increases for domestically produced goods in recent months has also been broadly in line with the Bank’s previous forecast. In spite of this, the forecasts for domestic inflation this year and next year have been revised down. One reason is that the downward pressure on prices in the retail food trade is anticipated to be greater than previously assumed. How big the effects will be is difficult to say, though, as is their significance for the general inflation rate in the longer term. Over a longer horizon, domestic inflation is expected as before to rise gradually as the cyclical upswing continues and resource utilisation picks up.
"The Changing World" - Keynote Speech by Ms Jacqueline Loh, Deputy Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore, at The World Federation of Exchanges General Assembly and Annual Meeting on 9 October 2019 Mr. Loh Boon Chye, Chief Executive Owicer, Singapore Exchange (SGX), Dr. Urs Ruegsegger, Chairman, The World Federation of Exchanges, Ms. Nandini Sukumar, Chief Executive Owicer, The World Federation of Exchanges, Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Introduction 1 Đ Đ Let me begin by welcoming you to Singapore for the World Federation of Exchanges 59th General Assembly and Annual Meeting. 2 Đ Đ Exchanges have a long and illustrious history, dating back to the establishment of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange from as early as 1602. Four centuries on, exchanges continue to play a crucial role in facilitating trade and disseminating information, enabling companies to raise capital, and providing investors with a fair, orderly, and transparent marketplace to trade financial assets and carry out risk management activities.Đ 3 Đ Đ The World Federation of Exchanges (“WFE”) has played a critical role in promoting the development of organised and regulated markets to meet the world’s capital raising needs. As the leading global industry group for exchanges and clearing houses, the WFE has actively pushed for greater industry collaboration and international regulatory coherence to make public markets more vibrant and robust.

4 Đ Đ The agenda of this year’s WFE General Assembly and Annual Meeting will further the WFE’s objectives and work as it covers a wide spectrum of issues that are forward-looking and relevant to how WFE members can navigate the changing world.Đ These include the future of capital raising and the adoption of distributed ledger technology.Đ In the same vein, I will speak about three trends that continue to shape the financial markets of tomorrow - sustainable finance, technology and innovation, and the evolving dynamics of our public and private markets. 5 Đ Đ Before I outline these trends, let me first start by setting out the macroeconomic picture, as this is the backdrop against which we must view these developments. Global Economy – Heightened Uncertainty 6 Đ Đ There is no doubt that these are challenging times. Global growth is expected to slow going forward.Đ IMF’s World Economic Outlook forecast for April 2019 sees global growth moderating to 3.3% this year, from 3.6% in 2018 [1] .Đ Indications are that the October World Economic Outlook to be released next week will likely paint a cautious assessment of global growth prospects and include downward revisions to growth forecasts.Đ Slowing global growth is chiefly due to an elevated level of policy and geopolitical uncertainty, with ongoing trade tensions that continue to dent business sentiment and investment. These ongoing developments have important implications for the financial industry and we need to be vigilant and flexible to adapt and respond.
BIS Review 38/1997  -5-  The level of unemployment to which an economy returns when inflation expectations have been adjusted to actual inflation is usually referred to as equilibrium unemployment. It is immune to monetary policy and determined primarily by structural factors such as demographic changes, technology and the institutional conditions in the labour market. What I have just described is the textbook model for the long-term Phillips curve. The message is that an economy has a path for long-term growth that is determined by underlying, structural factors. Under certain circumstances, fiscal and monetary policy are capable of influencing fluctuations in activity around this trend, though one should not expect to be able to fine-tune demand. A basic idea behind a monetary policy focused on price stability is that the economy is capable of sustained growth along this long-term path. If this path accommodates a rapid increase in production, growth will be high; but if potential output rises slowly, actual growth will be weak even if monetary policy were to be very expansionary and possibly affect the situation temporarily. A very important conclusion from this is that permanently low unemployment cannot be achieved by accepting permanently high inflation. In other words, sustained employment cannot be generated by implementing an expansionary monetary policy and disregarding unemployment’s equilibrium level or the potential level of output.

To this end, the Bank promotes consumer awareness and financial literacy by disseminating information through quarterly media briefs, road shows, and attendance at annual agricultural shows and trade fairs. The Bank of Zambia also consolidates tariff guides of all deposit taking financial institutions and publishes this information in a form suitable to make immediate and easy comparisons. The purpose of this quarterly publication is to enable customers shop around in order to get value for money from services provided by banks and to cause banks to be competitive in the manner they set fees and charges. Further, through the activities of the Financial Sector Development Plan, the BoZ intends to spearhead the development of a national financial education strategy in order to galvanise the efforts of various stakeholders in the delivery of financial services. The Bank also publishes a lot of information on the banking sector and the economy in general on its website www.boz.zm. I wish to urge all consumers who may have access to the internet, to make it a habit to visit the Bank of Zambia website on a regular basis. Further, the Bank will provide excerpts from the Banking and Financial Services Act to provide some highlights on some of the consumer protection provisions in the Law. I thank you. 2  BIS Review 30/2010
The value stored in money does not disappear when inflation is high; it is transferred from savers to  1/8  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  debtors. So a 20% negative real rate meant that a fifth of Icelanders' savings shifted from depositors to debtors each year, eating quickly into principal. The 1970s saw one of the biggest transfers of wealth in the history of Iceland - from depositors and pension funds to borrowers and debtors, and from the older generation to the younger. This runaway inflation laid the foundations for the 1968 generation's asset formation while eroding elderly Icelanders' assets, even pushing them into poverty, while simultaneously subsidising the operations of many large companies in the country. It was precisely in 1979[, during the tenure of Prime Minister Ólafur Jóhannesson,] that broad-based price indexation of savings and loans was adopted in Iceland with what came to be known as Ólafur's Law, passed by Parliament five months before the publication of the above-cited Reykjavík Letter. In some respects, indexation was a gesture of defeat - it was perhaps more an adaptation to circumstances, in that it enabled the economy to function during an episode of high inflation. It was based on the same fundamental premise as my lambs and my deposits to the co op: the value of money was pegged to actual value. Inflation certainly had yet to rise still further, though. On an annualised basis, it hit an all-time record of 130% in February through May 1983.

The Petroleum Fund 1996-2000, estimates 2001-2005. In billions of NOK 1200  1200  800  800  400  400  0  0 96  97 98  99  00 01  02  03  04  05  In the years ahead, the capital in the Petroleum Fund will increase as the surplus on the central government budget is transferred to the Fund. The chart shows the estimates for growth in the Petroleum Fund. The projections, as they should be, are based on prudent assumptions concerning oil and gas prices, the return on the Fund and the domestic use of oil revenues. The state’s direct financial interest in petroleum activities (SDFI) may be regarded as part of the tax system. The government would have had little possibility of ensuring that a sizeable share of the  8  BIS Review14?/2001  economic rent benefit society without such a field-specific instrument. It is doubtful whether the government can fully realise the value of the SDFI through its disposal. Buyers may have more knowledge about the holdings than the seller. Companies that buy SDFI stakes will also face some uncertainty as to the future tax system, which will have a negative effect on their willingness to pay. It is therefore understandable that only a smaller share of the SDFI is offered for sale. At the same time, the sale of the SDFI increases the need to remedy the substantial loopholes that have been found in the petroleum tax system.
Of course, the automation of activities through a smart contract raises many questions about how firms and regulators ensure appropriate risk management and resilience. In the UK, the authorities are to establish a regulatory ‘sandbox’ to allow firms to investigate technical feasibility in this area and the regulators to assess related risks and risk management. It is of course impossible to say how successful and how disruptive these technologies will ultimately prove to be in finance. History has many examples of technologies that promised much but failed to deliver. Given the pace of change and the disruption we have seen in other sectors of the economy it would, as I said be very unwise for financial regulators to ignore these developments. But it would also be unwise for innovators and the authorities alike to forget that to be successful and sustainable, technologically driven innovation needs regulation. A succession of cryptowinters will not, in the end, help the deployment and adoption of these technologies and the reaping of the benefits that they may offer. History also has examples of technologies that have been put aside/ shunned because of dramatic early failures. While the causes of the Hindenberg Zeppelin disaster are still debated, it is very probable that the general development of the use of hydrogen in transport was put aside for decades as a result. Innovators, alongside regulators and other public authorities, have an interest in the development of appropriate regulation and the management of risk.

And this brings me to my final lesson – that innovation and regulation are, in the end, friends not enemies. As I said earlier, the initial use cases for the technologies developed in the crypto world, such as speculative crypto assets, may have a limited future. But we can see that a range of other use cases are being proposed and developed in both the crypto and the non-crypto world. On the retail side, while Libra/Diem, the most high profile proposal for stablecoins for retail payments, including cross border, has withdrawn, a number fintechs and established firms are exploring the potential for technology in this area. Similar exploration around tokenisation and DLT is happening in the area of wholesale payments. A separate but rapidly developing field is the deployment of crypto technologies and smart contracts in the exchange, clearing and settlement of financial securities. Today, in mainstream finance these activities are carried out in sequence by separate entities at significant cost. However, some of the protocols that have begun to be developed in the crypto world have pointed to the possibility of collapsing these activities into a single entity and automating through the use of smart contracts. If successfully developed, such technologies could simplify the network of relationships that need  Page 8  to be maintained for trading in shares and bonds and lead to lower costs, greater speed and greater transparency for end investors.
The chart shows the net investment result since the first quarter of 2010 for the foreign exchange reserves, as well as for the individual components. The dominant role of exchange rate movements is clearly evident. In the past, too, exchange rate movements have posed by far the greatest risk to our portfolio. Taking a long-term view, exchange rates have been responsible for about 80% of the total risk on the foreign currency reserves. Reform of interest rate benchmarks Following last year’s revelations that Libor interest rates had been manipulated, various activities to reform the Libor and other interest rate benchmarks are under way. The SNB is involved in these reform activities at both international and national level. The objective is to improve the credibility and acceptance of the existing interest rate benchmarks or, where appropriate, to take steps to ensure the provision of robust alternative interest rate benchmarks. International efforts are being coordinated by the Financial Stability Board on behalf of the G20 countries. They involve not only central banks and supervisory authorities but also an international group of private sector financial market participants. They are examining, first, the extent to which the existing Libor interest rates fulfil the requirements laid down by securities supervisors last July (the IOSCO standards). Second, they are investigating whether there are alternative interest rate benchmarks which would better meet the needs of the market and the requirements of supervisory authorities in the longer term.

Then I made the remark that a separated responsibility for monetary and macroprudential policy, without any coordination, could result in a game between authorities, which could lead to an outcome not desired by any of the authorities. In the United Kingdom, sole responsibility has been given to the central bank. A Financial Policy Committee is to be set up alongside the existing Monetary Policy Committee. Such a solution of course means that the coordination between these two almost parallel committees, although each with a different focus, becomes an important issue. In the EU, the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) has been set up at the ECB in Frankfurt. Central banks and supervisory authorities are represented on the ESRB, but the central banks have the majority of the votes when decisions are made. In Sweden, Finansinspektionen and we at the Riksbank set up the Council for Cooperation on Macroprudential Policy in January this year. This council will discuss the assessment of risks in the financial system as a whole and discuss appropriate risk-prevention measures. The Council will also discuss analyses and the development of tools and methods in the area of macroprudential policy. The Council is a temporary solution while awaiting a more permanent distribution of the responsibility for macroprudential policy. At present, the Financial Crisis Commission is working with this issue. The recently appointed inquiry on capital adequacy regulations will focus specifically on responsibility for the future counter-cyclical capital buffer.
International Women’s Day is an occasion to look back on past struggles and accomplishments but even more importantly a time to look ahead to untapped potential and opportunities that await future generations of women. In Zambia today we recognize the strides that have been made by women in national development and we look ahead at the challenges that are before us as we strive to achieve our goal of gender equality. In this regard, Zambia is a signatory to many international instruments and Conventions seeking to empower women. These include the United nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the SADC Declaration on Gender and Development. This declaration calls for the equal representation of women and men in the decision making structures of member states at all levels, and also for the achievement of at least 30 per cent target of women in political and decision-making structures. I must concede here, Ladies and Gentlemen, that although we have made significant strides as a country in women representation; we are yet to meet the target of 30 per cent. I still believe that this target is not impossible to attain. With concerted effort we can achieve and even exceed it because this country has scores of women with untapped potential. This exhibition gives us an opportunity to identify this potential and encourage our women to stand up, and be counted and contribute to the development of this country.

See the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s report and accompanying data file, “Projections for the SOMA Portfolio and Net Income (July 2017).” 15 These liabilities include Federal Reserve notes (U.S. dollar paper currency), the U.S. Treasury’s General  Account, deposits held by designated financial market utilities and government-sponsored enterprises, and reverse repos conducted with foreign and international account holders. On average, these line items summed to over $ billion in 2017, on top of more than $ trillion in Federal Reserve notes. Fed liabilities are discussed more thoroughly in Lorie Logan, “Implementing Monetary Policy: Perspective from the Open Market Trading Desk,” remarks before the Money Marketeers of New York University, New York City, May 18, 2017. 16 It is worth noting that the size and structure of Fed’s securities portfolio and the role the portfolio played have  undergone substantial shifts at various times over the course of the Fed’s history, reflecting changes in policy implementation imperatives. See Meryam Bukhari et al, “The SOMA Portfolio through Time,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics (blog), August 12, 2013. 17 Throughout this discussion, I focus on forward guidance and use of the central bank’s balance sheet (through  large-scale purchases of additional assets and reinvestment policies, but not funding for lending programs) as possible tools. U.S. policymakers have shown little appetite to pursue negative nominal interest rates, although that is another unconventional tool used by several central banks in recent years.
In essence, the adopted solution saved the domestic operations of the banking system by creating new banks, which was done by carving a big part of the domestic assets and liabilities out of the old, failing banks. The new banking system amounted to 1.7 times GDP. The rest – and much bigger part – went into a resolution process, where it largely remains, pending a solution that would make it possible for Iceland to lift its comprehensive controls on capital outflows, but that is another story. In order to reverse the ongoing run on domestic deposits, a declaration was made that all deposits in Iceland were safe and all deposits in Icelandic-headquartered banks were given priority over other unsecured claims. This distinction made between domestic deposits and foreign currency deposits in the banks’ foreign branches added fuel to the fire of the socalled Icesave dispute about the settlement of deposit guarantees in the Dutch and British branches of one of the banks. But guaranteeing those deposits would never have been credible and might have bankrupted the Government had it been attempted. The deposits in question were in foreign currencies and amounted to 11½ billion euros – far in excess of Iceland’s FX reserves, which amounted to 2½ billion euros. And the sovereign was completely closed off from foreign capital markets at that point.

This is something that I and my colleagues will continue to work on explaining over the coming year. At the same time, it should be emphasised that this is a complex task and that it is therefore quite natural that there is a debate on monetary policy. Nor are we Executive Board members always unanimous on which interest rate decision will be the best one in a given situation, despite the fact that we are agreed on the objective of our monetary policy. Credibility demands openness and clarity In order to combine confidence in price stability in the longer term with flexible inflation targeting, it is important that we are open and clear when conducting our monetary policy. This is also a necessary condition for the legitimacy of the Riksbank’s objective, independence and actions. Important elements of this endeavour include publishing the analyses on which interest rate decisions are based in the form of Inflation Reports. In addition, after every monetary policy meeting a press release is published, which gives an account of the reasons behind the decision made. Moreover, when an Inflation Report is published or the repo rate is adjusted, the Riksbank holds a press conference. The Executive Board’s monetary policy discussions are reported in separate minutes of the monetary policy meetings, which are published around two weeks after each meeting. In this way, all those who wish can closely follow our reasoning and a basis for evaluating our assessments and decisions is created.