samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Inflationary pressures have been held down by greater competition in several segments of the economy, particularly in the supermarkets and telecommunications industry. Strong productivity growth has also helped neutralise the inflationary effects of increases in nominal earnings and the partial restoration of the employers’ CPF contribution rate. 1  BIS Review 62/2000  Looking ahead, we expect the growth momentum to be sustained for the rest of 2000 and to moderate only slightly next year. This is underpinned by the favourable outlook for the external economic environment. Economic activity will be led by steady growth in the manufacturing sector and a strong pick-up in the services sectors. Domestic spending is also expected to remain strong. We expect the remaining slack in the economy to be taken up within the next 12 months. As the labour market tightens further, wage pressures will begin to emerge. Imported CPI will also rise, as higher commodity prices filter through to higher import prices of consumption goods. We expect CPI inflation to edge up slightly, to about 1-2% in 2000 and 2001. MAS is, therefore, prepared to allow a gradual and modest appreciation of the Sing dollar on a trade weighted basis in the coming year, in line with the strengthening of economic fundamentals. This would contain any incipient inflationary tendencies without exerting undue pressure on our competitiveness, bearing in mind the tightening labour market and the progressive restoration of employer CPF contributions.

By March 18, 2008, the FOMC had reduced the federal funds rate by three percentage points to 2.25 percent – including two unusual 75 basis point reductions one on January 22, 2008, and the other on March 18. The FOMC was well aware of the impact that the financial crisis could have on the real economy and was actively trying to offset these adverse effects. The FOMC made an additional 25 basis point reduction in the federal funds rate on April 30, and then held the policy rate constant over the summer at 2 percent. The Panic of 2007 turned into the Great Recession of 2008 following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15 and the Fed’s emergency assistance to American International Group, Inc. In response, the Fed reduced the federal funds rate to essentially zero by mid-December, instituted swap lines to provide dollar liquidity to foreign central banks, added new liquidity facilities to target specific sectors of the shadow banking system and began to expand its balance sheet through asset purchases. To deal with problems in commercial paper market, the Fed introduced on October 27 the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) to backstop issues of commercial paper. In an effort to restart the securitization market, on November 25, the Fed announced the Term Asset Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF).
Hence, in the second half of the year, when the buildup of government reserves ground to a halt, a considerable part of export revenue, if unspent to reduce external debt, ultimately settled in bank accounts as extra foreign currency liquidity. Incidentally, this is why the response of the foreign exchange rate to the purchase suspension decision was fairly muted. The market essentially continued to expect their resumption and accumulated assets. Next year, our baseline scenario provides for a return to the 2017–2018 situation, with a significant amount of oil revenues being used to rebuild international reserves and the private sector’s capital outflow declining. Importantly, in this logic we do not foresee a strong response of either the current balance or the foreign currency exchange to resumed purchases. To conclude, let me reiterate that the Bank of Russia will explore the need for further upgrades to the key rate, taking into account inflation and economic developments against the forecast, as well as the risks of external conditions and the response of financial markets. In the current context it is crucial that our approach remains conservative as we assess risks and conduct monetary policy. Inflation stays close to 4%. More so, it has never climbed above this figure since the second half of 2017. Although the rise in inflation early next year is set to be driven by transient factors, considering the need to limit their negative effects and ensure a speedy return of inflation to 4%, it is critical that the response of monetary policy is well-timed.

With the renewal of RTGS, the wider implementation of ISO 20022 messaging standards for payments and the inclusion of LEIs in credit messages, the Bank is committed to changes which will have a positive impact for users of payment services. But we, together with Pay.UK, and all of you here today need to keep up the momentum and energy to deliver this critical change – a foundational change which will help future proof UK payment systems; deliver the new products and services which your customers are asking for; and support and contribute to the wider economic transformation being brought about by the data revolution. 13  Such as HM Treasury, and GLEIF - the global body charged with supporting the implementation and use of LEIs. 6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  6
Most  fundamentally, the more seamless are global and domestic payments, the more UK households and businesses will benefit from the new global economy. Third, as we overhaul RTGS, the Bank is making it easier for the UK financial system to realise the promise of big data. The new RTGS will capture much richer data on every payment made in a format that defines international best practice. The Bank is currently consulting on how to do this, including on the desirability of embedding the best corporate identifier, the Legal Entity Identifier (or LEI), in RTGS and all the UK’s main payment 11  systems. This will improve access to the domestic and global financial system, support greater choice and  competition for corporate end-users, and advance anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism efforts. The Bank is also ensuring our rules and regulations – or soft infrastructure – are fit for the new finance. We have streamlined our approach to authorising banks to make it easier for banks with innovative business models to be approved. Since 2013, 37 banks have been authorised, of which 16 are new UK bank startups and four are internet-only. With the FCA we’re are exploring how artificial intelligence and machine learning could be used to make the reading of our rulebooks easier, the reporting of regulatory data quicker and the analysis of that data more efficient.

Once the current crisis is over, strengthening banking regulations will be absolutely necessary as a means of compelling banks to adopt a more circumspect approach. BIS Review 65/1008  1
6  See Sveriges Riksbank, (2011): “Appropriate capital ratios in major Swedish banks – an economic analysis”  7  These demands relate to the core Tier 1 capital ratio that is the ratio between equity and risk-weighted assets. See http://www.riksbank.se/en/Press & published/Press/Press releases /2011/New capital requirements for Swedish banks. 8  See http://www.esrb.europa.eu/recommendations/html/index.en.html. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Concluding thoughts I have worked in the financial sector for the last 35 years, and for most of that time with financial regulation, supervision and crisis management. I have experienced the development of the world of finance and banking from different perspectives – the supervisory perspective, the international perspective and the sector perspective. Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned from my previous experience is that Sweden has become increasingly dependent on the rest of the world, from both the real economic and the financial points of view. In the field of monetary policy, the development of the European debt crisis is the most important – and most uncertain – factor to take into account. To attain the inflation target and stabilise resource utilisation, a low policy rate will be needed for some time to come. Monetary policy and financial stability must also be seen in a joint context. Low interest rate levels may eventually create imbalances that we must be wary of. It may therefore be necessary to take some aspects of financial stability into account when making monetary policy decisions.

An issue of the highest priority for the Basel Committee has been to ensure that the financial markets never again suffer such a severe case of liquidity fever as the one we saw in the initial phases of the financial crisis. The Committee has therefore required the banks to hold sufficient liquidity to cope with a highly-strained market situation for a period of at least 30 days and to better match the maturities of their assets and liabilities. Another cornerstone of the Basel III regulations is increased capital requirements for the banks. The idea behind this is simple: more and better capital will increase the resilience of the banks. This in turn will increase confidence in the banks and in the system as a whole. It has proved to be increasingly important to have a large capital base, not least in order to get access to the capital markets. However, the exact capital ratios for an individual bank should be subject to national decisions. As long as the responsibility for dealing with systemically-important banks lies at the national level then the right to set the size of “risk premiums” should also lie there. An interesting instrument that has been put forward within the framework of Basel III is countercyclical capital buffers, which entail the banks holding extra capital in good times that they can then use when times are not so good.
Growth in the first quarter has been subdued as domestic spending, both private consumption and investment is weaker-than-expected. Part of this pullback may have been a natural reversion to a more normal pace of growth after an unusually strong expansion last  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  year. At the same time, on the external side, a drag on the overall Thailand’s trading partners’ growth continues to weigh on Thai exports. Going forward, however, many of the supporting factors remain in place. High level of employment and strong private sector confidence should provide an enabling environment for growth. Fiscal stimulus related to large-scale infrastructure investment should also begin to phase in from the latter part of this year. This would potentially generate a positive crowding-in effects on private spending. For this, I would expect the economy to return to its normal path in the third and fourth quarter of this year. Apart from slower growth, a potential threat to financial stability has increased, stemming from development in household indebtedness. Currently, household debt is rising to over 70 percent of GDP. International evidence suggests that a prolonged period of rapid credit growth could lead to a build-up of financial imbalances, worsen households’ debt servicing ability and loan quality, as well as sow a seed for asset price bubbles. The need for long-term focus Ladies and gentlemen, Having said all of the above, I may seem to paint the picture that the Thai economy is slowing down recently, largely as a result of weaker global growth.

But I would like to point out that the Thai economy has not just slowed down recently. In fact, it has been growing slower for more than a decade, both in terms of quantity and quality of growth. Without enough quantity and quality of growth, we will not be able to grow sustainably and it will be a long way until Thailand can get out of the middle-income trap. The problem is that we are now caught in the middle- unable to compete with either low- or high-income countries. If this trend continues, it will prevent us from reaping the full benefits of future economic integration. Part of this may stem from structural changes in Thailand’s endowment. Labor is now scarce, increasingly mismatched and becoming more expensive. So, labor-intensive driven growth strategy is no longer applicable to Thailand. It is important that we create new sources of growth. To achieve this goal, an improvement in technology, education and labor productivity via higher investment in physical and human capital are needed. Another thing I would like to note is that, as in most developing economies, economic development is often associated with rising income inequality and social exclusion. Thailand is no exemption. In fact, the economy has been growing unevenly. But growth without inclusiveness is not sustainable, because it can lead to deterioration of social solidarity, political uncertainty and finally affect economic growth. Thailand’s economic development should, therefore, properly address the issue of equitable growth going forward.
31.07.2017  The European economy and monetary policy Inauguration of La Granda courses Luis M. Linde Governor  Mr Chairman of the La Granda courses, Mr Rector of the University of Oviedo, Mr Mayor of Gozón, Mr Secretary of the La Granda Courses, Authorities, dear colleagues: Let me begin by thanking Professor Velarde for his invitation to me to participate in the inauguration of the thirty-ninth edition of the now-classic La Granda courses. But first I should like to congratulate Professor Velarde on the Menéndez Pelayo International Prize he has recently received and which is just one in a long list of accolades. Juan Velarde is much more than an eminent academic. He is a true humanist whose work, anchored in different areas of the economy, has always included historical and social concerns where his deep-seated and – I would say – benign liberalism prevails. Professor, my warmest congratulations on your Menéndez Pelayo prize. The European economic recovery Moving on to the subject of my address today, I should like to share with you some thoughts on the euro area economy and monetary policy. I shall begin by reviewing the key features of the current expansionary phase in the European economies and the fundamental role that monetary policy has played in providing for its take-off. I shall then refer to the main challenges over the course of these difficult years for the European economy and to the need to complete the institutional architecture of the monetary union.

If, overall, the result were a greater dispersion of risk around the banking system and fewer large exposures relative to capital, the system as a whole would probably be safer even if, net, no credit risk had left the banking industry in aggregate. According to various surveys, some credit risk has been shed to non-banks, including insurance companies, pension funds and hedge funds. That too should, on balance, promote the resilience of the system, not least because non-banks are not part of the core payment systems that underpin our financial markets – provided, of course, that banks prudently manage their counterparty exposures to non-bank sellers of credit protection. As others have argued, this is a change of degree rather than kind: with the growth of corporate bond markets, and especially securitisation, non-banks have been  1  My thanks to Mike Cross, Colin Miles and David Rule for long-running debates on the issues discussed here. For comments, to Peter Andrews, Andrew Bailey, Alex Bowen, Alastair Clark, Paul Fisher, Damien Lynch, Peter Westaway and Simon Wells. And to Sandra Bannister for secretarial support. 2  For an early review, see Rule, D, (2001) ‘The Credit Derivatives Market: its Development and Possible Implications for Financial Stability’, Financial Stability Review, Issue 10, June 2001, pages 117-140 and Rule, D, (2001), ‘Risk transfer between banks, insurance companies and capital markets: an overview’, Financial Stability Review, Issue 11, December 2001, pages 137-159. BIS Review 50/2005  1  running credit portfolios for years.
Chart 6 plots the Felstein-Horioka correlation coefficient alongside an index of financial liberalisation from Obstfeld and Taylor (2004). Between 1930 and 1980, the Feldstein-Horioka coefficient was close to one – a puzzlingly high co-movement between saving and investment. But that pattern has shifted significantly over the past 30 years. Saving and investment correlations are no longer puzzlingly strong. Indeed, just ahead of crisis, saving/investment correlations had fallen to around zero. They are presently at their lowest levels in almost a century. On the face of it, this might point toward a rather benign interpretation of rising global imbalances: they may simply be the mirror image of rising capital liberalisation. This would be a good cholesterol story. Even then, however, there may be risks associated with intermediating large global flows of funds. Gross flows can matter. As experience during 2008 illustrated (Chart 4), sharp reversals of these gross flows can disrupt the functioning of financial systems, in particular banking systems reliant on overseas funding. Large inflows may also cause indigestion problems for small domestic capital markets. The strong upward pressures on asset prices in a number of emerging market economies over the past few months are testament to that. As Chart 5 also shows, most of the rise in global flows over the past decade is accounted for by changes in the saving rates of deficit and surplus countries, rather than in their investment rates. In other words, differential savings behaviour has been the prime mover behind rising global imbalances.

Jean-Pierre Roth: Inflation and economic activity – are we at a crossroads? Summary of a lunchtime discussion by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, at the “Geneva Financial Center” organisation, Geneva, 28 August 2006. The complete speech can be found in French on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  While the world economy is experiencing exceptionally vigorous expansion and inflationary pressure is contained, there is still a certain amount of uncertainty. Will the economy turn down again and inflation accelerate? The Swiss National Bank is not working with a scenario of imminent weakness in the global economy, even if the rate of growth slows somewhat. Certainly, the US economy appears to be heading for a soft landing, and economic activity in Europe is also likely to increase less rapidly in the second half of the year. On the price front, the recent surge in inflation in the consumer price index was largely attributable to the cost of goods and services directly linked to energy prices, while core inflation remained at a relatively low level. Given the slowdown in global spending and the normalisation of monetary conditions, inflationary pressures are likely to remain restrained. This assessment also applies to Switzerland.
Accordingly, the only policy tool left after euro area accession is fiscal policy. For this reason it is of crucial importance to run a balanced budget in the medium run, so that in case of negative shocks, there is room for increasing the deficit, and thus buffer the shock. Additionally, there are also economic forces which can bring the economy back to equilibrium. The most prominent is wage adjustment – after a negative shock, falling wages can help reduce the cost of production and – as a consequence – prices. This will increase demand and help the economy return to equilibrium. A crucial prerequisite for this channel to operate smoothly is a flexible labor market – only if wages adjust immediately, can an increasing unemployment and an economic slowdown be avoided. We know, however, that this downward wage flexibility is rarely seen in real life. Regarding asymmetric shocks, one thing seems certain. We are not able to foresee if serious asymmetric shocks are going to affect the Polish economy after joining the euro or not. We can only speak in terms of probabilities and, given the data, it seems that the probability of huge shocks occurrence seems limited. The Polish economy is strongly integrated with the eurozone, with a majority of exports going to the common currency area. Moreover, most studies (e.g. Fidrmuc, Korhonen 2003, Eickmeier, Breitung 2005) show a relatively high correlation of business cycles between Poland and the eurozone. This substantially reduces, though does not eliminate, the risk of asymmetric shocks.

This process of rationalization, which occurred only a few years before the start of the crisis in 2008, made the overall economy resilient and in a better position to weather adverse events in external markets. Post-2008 growth was enabled by the smooth entry into the Euro area, which coincided with the start of the crisis in 2008. The transition was facilitated by the fact that in the preceding decades, there was no recourse to monetary financing of government debt, generally no recourse to currency depreciation to offset internal competitiveness issues, while fiscal policies were in large part prudent. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Another consideration relates to the growth of new sectors which improved the capacity of the economy to offset downturns in external demand. Diversification is often more difficult to achieve in relatively small economies. However, the degree of diversification in the private sector in Malta is remarkable, and has resulted primarily from the growth of financial services, internet related services and aviation servicing, along with the reorientation of both the tourist sector and manufacturing. Although we have experienced higher GDP growth, we must be aware that some of our competitors are starting to benefit from the structural reforms and internal devaluation that they went through in response to the impact of the financial crisis on their economies. Chart 2 displays unit labour costs in the Euro area since 2002, distinguishing between the stressed economies and the relatively unstressed ones. The path of Malta’s ULC is displayed separately.