samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Following quarter-on-quarter growth in GDP of 0.9% in the first quarter, the latest information indicates that activity is expected to maintain a strong rate of expansion, whereby a further slight quickening in output is estimated in the second quarter, to 1% in quarterly terms. Average growth in the first half of the year, in annualised terms, is thus expected to be around 4%. The projections for the rest of 2015 and for next year point to continuing dynamism, with Spain clearly outpacing most of its euro area partners. However, this momentum might be slightly contained by the weakening of some of the expansionary impulses, such as the fall in oil prices and the depreciation of the euro. For 2016, the projections estimate average growth of 2.7%, with greater uncertainty naturally accompanying the longer time ahead involved. In terms of the composition of spending, the most recent phase of the recovery has been marked by the growing weight of national demand, which has replaced external demand as the main net contributor to growth. Foreseeably, in the near future, this pattern will continue, with a contribution by the external sector to the increase in GDP that is practically neutral in net terms. Exports, particularly to the euro area, are expected to post higher growth, while the tempo of imports will slacken somewhat.

If you want to know what behaviors are valued or esteemed in reality, look to see who is promoted and well-compensated and the behaviors that they embody. Do the results match what is said? Do they match your expectation of fairness? Do you aspire to be one of these individuals, not because of their status and compensation alone, but because of the esteem you hold for them and their values? Over the long haul, the economy needs a vibrant and trustworthy financial sector in order to thrive, just as the financial sector needs a vibrant economy to thrive as well. You are the rising leaders of your firms. You can help accomplish these aims. A strong and ethical culture in the banking industry will make it more trustworthy, and therefore more effective in performing its mission. It will also help the industry be held in higher esteem and this will help attract the talent needed to sustain the industry. I am encouraged by today’s gathering, and hope you will take heart that an improved culture in the financial services industry is both necessary and possible. Thank you for your continued efforts and your kind attention. 1 Stephanie Chaly, James Hennessy, Thomas Noone, Joseph Sommer and Joseph Tracy assisted in preparing  these remarks. 2 See Criminal Accountability and Culture, Remarks by Preet Bharara, Reforming Culture and Behavior in the  Financial Services Industry: Expanding the Dialogue, October 20, 2016. 3 See John C. Bogle, Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life, 45 (2009).
We do need to keep the pressure on the banks individually and collectively to make sure that they continue to pass through lower funding costs and are lending where they can. The Bank has made the funds available to support lending to UK households and businesses, it is up to the banks to deliver. That is one reason why we are publishing bank-by-bank outcomes under the Scheme. We wait to see what the impact is of the FLS on the stock of lending. The next data release on 4 March will be for end-December data. Even though lending rates have fallen, that is still quite early for much extra money to have flowed from the application stage into actual loans, compared with previous plans which showed that lending was most likely to fall in aggregate without the FLS. I would not expect to see a return to rising aggregate quantities until we start getting data for 2013 at the earliest. Indeed the aggregate data which have been published already – for all banks, not just those in the FLS – showed a small fall for the last quarter of 2012. Nevertheless, it does seem that we have the beginnings of a revival in mortgage activity which is visible in the approvals data and that trend is widely supported by business contacts throughout the country. The underlying message from the FLS is much the same as for monetary policy.

The recovery in financial markets that we have seen in the past 6 months or so, is in part driven by the statement that the ECB will do “whatever it takes” to keep the euro area together and the perceived commitment that the Fed will do whatever it takes to restore growth in the US. The belief in these policy approaches has been immensely powerful. But it must be backed not only by perceived intent but also by capability and delivery if needed – and economies always generate some surprises. If the actions don’t follow the words when necessary, then similar policy statements in future will be less effective. In the UK, market expectations are already consistent with monetary policy remaining very supportive for some time to come, indicating no change in Bank Rate until well into 2015. Yet there is still a debate about whether the MPC should give more “forward guidance”. In practice we have being doing this through the Inflation Report. The most recent edition makes it clear that we do not see much pressure arising from domestically generated inflation. Rather, we continue to see inflation being driven by factors such as tax changes, higher commodity and energy prices, and other external influences. These and similar adverse relative price changes have made us all financially worse off and contributed to keeping inflation higher than target over the past few years. In response, the Bank could have chosen to tighten monetary policy to keep measured inflation rates down.
To improve our understanding of the Puerto Rican economy, the New York Fed has joined a group of local businesses – including some represented here – to sponsor and fund a household survey, undertaken by the Center for the New Economy, our hosts today, to benchmark Puerto Rican consumer finances. As of today, the data have been collected and Fed economists are collaborating with the CNE to provide technical assistance, to make the results of this study public and to make these data available for further research. To help businesses and government in Puerto Rico, we have also been providing technical assistance to Puerto Rico’s new Institute for Statistics. We recognize the importance of this work and applaud its efforts to improve Puerto Rico’s inflation measures, national income accounting and business activity measures, just to name a few. All of these activities, from monetary policy and financial regulation to fostering community development and economic literacy and measurement, complement and reinforce each other. Our policy actions are most effective when people understand how financial markets work. Our decisions are always better when we are well informed about the concerns of families and businesses. Thus, outreach to the region and communities we serve is an important part of my job. Thank you for your kind attention. I would be happy to take a few questions. 6  BIS Review 18/2010

With this stature, the Shariah Advisory Council will therefore serve as the reference point for the court or arbitrator in dispute resolution that involves Shariah issues in Islamic banking and finance cases. To further strengthen the Shariah infrastructure, guidelines will be issued to define the new structure, roles and functions of the Shariah Committees of the Islamic banks, the Islamic Banking Scheme banks and the takaful operators. The guidelines would specify among others, the requirements for the appointment of the Shariah Committee members and the duties and responsibilities of Islamic financial institutions to facilitate the effective functioning of the Shariah Committee. In the Islamic capital market, the establishment of a strong Shariah infrastructure is equally pertinent to ensure that the structuring of Islamic capital market instruments, the construction of Islamic investment funds and the execution of Islamic investment fund strategies are Shariah-compliant. This is important to preserve the integrity of the Islamic financial system and promote confidence that Islamic banking and financial operations do not deviate from the dictates of the Shariah. The hallmark of a well-developed financial infrastructure is an effective regulatory and supervisory framework which underpins the stability of the financial system. The regulatory and supervisory function is an indispensable and vital component of the financial infrastructure.
Their products are not highly price sensitive, as they reflect the innovative capabilities, technical know-how and high level of skills which are needed to operate a successful manufacturing business in the UK or any other advanced economy where labour costs are high by global standards. In the short-term therefore there is limited scope for an expansion of UK manufacturing output without major investment in skills and capacity – which is consistent with the picture shown by business surveys of capacity utilisation in manufacturing such as the CBI’s Industrial Trends Survey released today.6 This suggests that an expansion of the UK manufacturing base – along with other tradable activities – can only be achieved over a period of time with investment in skills and capacity. A relatively competitive exchange rate can help support that process, but the value of the pound also has other important macroeconomic effects which need to be taken into account by the MPC. Sterling’s depreciation since 2007 has added significantly to imported inflationary pressures in the UK economy and this is particularly unhelpful at present when we are seeing a renewed surge of energy and commodity price inflation. And the resulting squeeze on disposable incomes is clearly a factor holding back the growth of consumer spending in the short-term, offsetting the boost to growth we might be seeing from improved trade performance.

Mr Bergström reports on why Sweden has changed its stabilisation policy regime Speech by Mr Villy Bergström, a Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, at the 140th anniversary of the establishment of Norrbärke Sparbank in Smedjebacken, Darlana on 21 May 1999. It is obvious to everyone that we live in a different economic world than we did ten years ago. Ten years ago, registered unemployment was 1.3 per cent and inflation 7 per cent. Now inflation is nonexistent while total registered unemployment is over nine per cent. Why has such a drastic change in the economy taken place? What is characteristic for the new economic conditions? Are there alternatives to the policies now being carried out? Background Since the second war, Sweden, in principle, had a fixed exchange rate. However, in practice, it was not particularly fixed after the mid-1970s. From autumn 1976 to autumn 1982, Sweden devalued five times. I will come back to the sorry history of 1982-92. In autumn 1992, the fixed exchange rate was abandoned and the krona immediately fell by 11.5 per cent. Thereafter the krona declined further so that the total fall in the exchange rate to the lowest position of 13 December 1993, was 31.5 per cent. Note that the starting point for the fall in the value of the krona in November 1992 was a cost level that was 25 per cent lower, measured in common currency, than it had been in 1976. This was a failure for stabilisation policy.
Solvency II sets out how to estimate the premium needed to compensate for the risk that the borrower defaults or is downgraded, known as the Fundamental Spread. As an approximation, in equation form:  Matching Adjustment = Yield minus risk-free rate minus Fundamental Spread  The most important determinant of the Fundamental Spread is the credit rating of the asset. Broadly speaking, the higher the yield on an asset for a given credit rating, the bigger the Matching Adjustment. Earlier I showed that insurers were diversifying into illiquid assets because they offered wider spreads than bonds. Chart 7 is the same picture but with the split between the Matching Adjustment and Fundamental Spread added. Not only are the yields on illiquid assets wider but the majority of the additional spread is  being captured in the Matching Adjustment. UK insurers estimate the underlying credit quality of these  assets, reflected in the Fundamental Spread, to be similar or better than their corporate bond portfolios. So the shift into illiquid assets is giving insurers a double benefit: first wider spreads and second a bigger Matching Adjustment. This helps to explain their eagerness to increase their asset allocation towards illiquid assets. But why is the Matching Adjustment on illiquid assets larger than on corporate bonds? One possibility is that that the wider spreads are compensating other investors for the risk that they might need to sell into secondary markets that are less liquid than the corporate bond market.

In response to the wider environment, constant adaptation is needed both of the architecture itself and the institutions within it, such as the IMF. In terms of our quest for financial stability, this focuses specifically on sovereign debt, crisis prevention and resolution. Progress has been made since the Asian Crisis, but significantly more is needed to build on the emerging elements of the exceptional access framework, and the Fund’s lending-into-arrears policy, but also Collective Action Clauses, and the recently devised Principles for Stable Capital Flows and Fair Debt Restructuring in Emerging Markets. In using the matrix to categorise sources of threat there are of course a number of ways one could cut the cake. Credit exposure to emerging sovereign debtors for example can appear in the “credit” and “international architecture” boxes. iii)  Activities  Now we can move to the rows. To use the matrix as a location device to focus our efforts, decide on deliverables and enhance our resource allocation, we need to create the “boxes” by considering the types of activity we could undertake to address each main source of threat – the rows. a)  Assessment of Threats  Firstly we need to evaluate threats to the system. We need a process of data collection and assessment to analyse information and market intelligence from multiple sources. This “horizon scanning” enables us to get early warning of how and where threats could appear. We cannot do all this without knowing how markets work.
Mr. Bäckström reports on inflation and the interest rate in Sweden Speech by the Governor of the Bank of Sweden, Mr. Urban Bäckström, at a conference organised by the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce and Veckans Affärer in Stockholm on 27/1/98. Thank you for the invitation to talk at this conference about the outlook for inflation and the interest rate. It is now five years since the inflation target was instituted; so before considering the current situation for monetary policy, I should like to say something about the intervening period. Five years with an inflation target In January 1993 the Riksbank’s Governing Board decided to adopt an explicit target for inflation and specified that as of 1995 and measured in terms of the consumer price index, the rate of inflation was to be limited to 2 per cent, with a tolerance interval of ±1 percentage point. The commitment to an inflation target originated from the Riksbank but both the Government and the Riksdag (Sweden’s parliament) expressly support monetary policy’s focus on price stability as well as the inflation target. Last year five of the political parties in the Riksdag agreed that the Riksbank’s objective, to safeguard the value of money, should have the force of law; a Government bill with provisions to this effect was presented to the Riksdag in November. In recent years, monetary policy’s commitment to low inflation has thus been established increasingly firmly.

In response, banks managed to optimise their operational costs and improve their capital ratios. In this regard, the Bank of Albania has emphasised the accurate identification of the credit portfolio situation, asking the banks to take firm action and recover their non-performing loans value. This may be realised through support to qualitative borrowers in temporary difficult situations as well as through execution of collateral in the case of hopeless borrowers. Execution of collateral and the need to improve the relevant legal and operational framework are considered as a priority by the Bank of Albania. Following recommendations from an earlier  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  forum organised on this topic, the Bank of Albania is fully committed so that other public authorities address the issue with priority. Furthermore, in cooperation with the banking sector, the Bank of Albania has identified and undertaken a number of other supervisory and regulatory actions, aiming at improving operational capitalisation situation and minimum liquidity requirement both in the national and foreign currencies. Next, some amendments to the Law “On banks in the Republic of Albania” were drafted and approved, which, in essence, complete and improve banking activity supervisory framework. These actions were pivotal for addressing an added risk perception due to international and regional financial developments. I take this opportunity to thank you for your cooperation and concrete actions with regard to the implementation of these new requirements, confident that you will fully accomplish them within the required timeframe.
We’ll continue to be transparent about our thinking about the economy and monetary policy. But, changing circumstances call for some changes in how the FOMC communicates its policy views. Now that interest rates are well away from zero and the economy is humming along, the case for strong forward guidance about future policy actions is becoming less compelling. For one, the future direction of policy will no longer be as clear as it was during the past few years. When interest rates were extremely low, it was obvious that the direction for rates was upward, toward more normal levels, and our forward guidance reinforced that point. At some point in the future, it will no longer be clear whether interest rates need to go up or down, and explicit forward guidance about the future path of policy will no longer be appropriate. In addition, as we have moved far away from near-zero interest rates, it makes sense to shift away from a focus on normalizing the stance of monetary policy relative to some benchmark “neutral” interest rate, often referred to as “r-star.” Now, I have spent a good deal of my career studying r-star and I find it to be a useful concept for describing the economy’s longer-run behavior. Having said that, at times r-star has actually gotten too much attention in commentary about Fed policy. Back when interest rates were well below neutral, r-star appropriately acted as a pole star for navigation.

In short, what is now needed is a new decision which will provide a comprehensive framework for surveillance; which will approach members’ obligations explicitly from the perspective of external stability; and which will do so in terms which can readily be made operational. And it must be written in clear and unambiguous language. This is a tall order I know – so here are some suggestions. One very simple way of keeping surveillance focused would be to include a ‘selectivity principle’ in a new Decision. This would say that the scope of all surveillance activities should be based on their relevance to external stability: and that what matters is how a member’s policies could affect the rest of the world. The most difficult challenge will be to state members’ commitments in terms that are both general enough to take account of their very different economic circumstances, and specific enough to provide a clear focus for IMF surveillance. Striking the right balance is essential if a new framework is to provide a useful basis for assessing industrialised countries, emerging markets, and developing countries alike in a way that will be accepted as even handed. A good way of meeting this challenge would be to ground surveillance in a more structured analysis of the policy frameworks which countries themselves choose to adopt. The Fund could then focus on identifying areas where a member’s policy frameworks might be unsustainable or inconsistent with external stability, and then offer policy recommendations tailored to the circumstances of the country or countries concerned.
Pillar 2: Supervisory Review Let me also briefly touch upon the two other pillars of the revised capital adequacy framework – supervisory review and market discipline. These topics are certainly familiar and important ones to all of you. 9  BIS Review 75/2000  As I mentioned in the context of the internal ratings-based approach, supervisory review of capital is a critical complement to minimum capital requirements. The task for supervisors in the revised framework is to evaluate how well banks are assessing their capital needs relative to their risks, including whether banks are appropriately addressing the relationship between different types of risk. I want to stress that this proposed approach is in no way intended to replace the judgement and expertise of bank management, or to shift responsibility for capital adequacy to supervisors. On the contrary, it is well understood that bank managers have the most complete understanding of the risks their institutions face, and it is they who have primary responsibility for managing those risks. Most importantly, in proposing this second pillar, the Committee intends to foster a more active dialogue between banks and their supervisors, such that when deficiencies develop, prompt and decisive action can be taken to restore capital. Pillar 3: Market Discipline The third pillar of the new capital adequacy framework, market discipline, will serve to reinforce capital regulation and other supervisory efforts to promote the safety and soundness of banks and financial systems.

Nina Stoyanova: Bank of Bulgaria’s latest projects in the area of financial services and payments Speech by Ms Nina Stoyanova, Deputy Governor (Banking Department) of the Bulgarian National Bank, at the opening of the “Innovations” Financial Forum, Sofia, 14 June 2016. *  *  *  Dear colleagues and guests, I would like to welcome you at the Financial Forum ‘Innovations’ organised for the third year in a row by the ‘Bank of the Year’ Association in partnership with the University of Finance, Business and Entrepreneurship (VUZF). The topic of this forum gives us the opportunity to present and discuss the innovations in the financial sector in the area of technologies, banking products and regulations. In this regard, I would like to briefly present the latest projects in the area of financial services and payments, on which the BNB is working. Later today our colleagues are going to give you more details on these projects, which will have an impact on the financial sector over the next couple of years. As you are well aware, the legal and regulatory framework of financial services and payments in Bulgaria is consistent with all European trends and requirements aiming to achieve an integrated European market, to harmonise the rules and conditions for providing payment services, to promote innovative payment methods, to ensure a high level of security for payments and better consumer protection.