samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The consequences of our inability to cope with these capital flows did not show up in the usual macroeconomic indicators such as growth, unemployment and inflation. Overall balance in each of the major economies was maintained. Rather, the massive flows of capital from the new entrants into western financial markets pushed down interest rates and encouraged risk-taking on an extraordinary scale. Banks expanded their balance sheets and new instruments were created to satisfy the search for yield. In the five years up to 2007, the balance sheets of the largest UK banks nearly trebled. The build up of risk came to threaten the stability of the entire financial system. Capital flows provided the fuel which the developed world’s inadequately designed and regulated financial system then ignited to produce a firestorm that engulfed us all. To prevent another crisis will require reform to both the regulation and structure of banking and the international monetary system. I have spoken about the former on earlier occasions. Tonight I want to focus on the question of how we can reduce the imbalances in the world economy. Although overall growth in both high and low saving countries was sustainable, the composition of that growth was not. And the composition of growth reflects the interaction between countries’ economic policy choices. No individual country faced strong incentives to alter its own choices, but the collective outcome was costly to everyone.

i) TeSA aims to identify specific ICT skills in demand and work with training providers to meet these demands. ii) For example, the US-based Byte Academy has recently set up in Singapore, and has come on board IMDA’s Tech Immersion and Placement Programme (TIPP). Byte will offer a series of intensive courses on FinTech and data science to ‘convert’ nonICT professionals to meet the software and programming needs of the industry. 18 I encourage all companies, both start-ups and incumbents, and individuals, to tap on these initiatives and invest in the skills of the future. 19 We cannot talk about expertise without talking about learning. And learning, unlearning and re-learning is what the game is about in the economy that we are creating together. 20 We need to learn more about the things we do not know, and to constantly update our knowledge in familiar areas. In every job, from the CEOs to the fresh entrant from school. 21 We never know where our learning journey will take us, but it usually takes us somewhere better. Take for example Vernon Heng, 32. After university, he worked overseas in a variety of fields, including construction, sales and marketing and supply chain. 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  When he decided to return home to Singapore and explore new career options, his brother, a user experience (UX) designer, encouraged him to consider the field. He enrolled in a UX course at General Assembly under IMDA’s TIP Programme, and found himself enjoying every step of the process.
Jarle Bergo: The economic situation, global uncertainty and monetary policy Speech by Mr Jarle Bergo, Deputy Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the Annual General Meeting of ACI Norge – The Financial Markets Association, Oslo, 6 September 2007. The text below may differ slightly from the actual presentation. The address is based on the assessments presented at Norges Bank’s press conference following the Executive Board’s monetary policy meeting on 15 August and in Monetary Policy Report 2/07. *  *  *  Introduction First of all, I would like to thank you for inviting me to your Annual General Meeting. In modern central banks, increasing emphasis is placed on transparency and communication, and we feel that coming here to talk about monetary policy is an important part of our work to increase understanding of our activities. This has not always been the case in all central banks. For example, it was not until 1994 that the Federal Reserve began to publish its interest rate decisions. Until that time, market participants had to follow changes in market interest rates in order to guess what decision the central bank had taken. I assume that most of you present here today are glad that time is past. In this address, I will first discuss economic developments in Norway, and the orientation of monetary policy. I will then comment on the turbulence in international financial markets in recent weeks.

This applies both to companies competing on international markets and those supplying goods and services to the domestic market. In comparison with other countries, it is particularly productivity gains in service sectors that stand out. Examples are automated processes and swifter payments in the financial industry and improved inventory and management systems in commerce and transport. This results in lower production costs. 2  BIS Review 97/2007  Monetary policy is oriented towards low and stable inflation. The operational target is annual consumer price inflation of close to 2½ per cent over time. The objective of low and stable inflation provides the economy with a nominal anchor. Monetary policy shall also contribute to stabilising output and employment. In a small, open and decentralised market economy like Norway, and with our particular industry structure, there will be cyclical fluctuations. When economic agents have confidence that inflation is low and stable over time, the interest rate can also be set with a view to dampening the fluctuations somewhat. Monetary policy in Norway is in line with the monetary policy conducted by most central banks in the OECD area. The challenge of monetary policy is how the interest rate should be set ahead in order to bring inflation close to target while avoiding an overheating of the real economy. As a general rule, central banks influence the shortest money market rates via the key policy rate. However, economic agents’ consumption and investment decisions depend more on their interest rate expectations.
At a deeper level there are also some signs of a rotation away from goods demand and back towards services. Non-auto durables spending in the US has fallen back a little in the second half of this year. And although trends in the UK are less important in this respect (our share of global goods demand is small), you 6  See “Asian countries are at last abandoning zero-covid strategies”, The Economist Oct 9th 2021 edition. 9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  9  can see from Chart 11 that retail spending here has also declined since the spring. I mentioned a moment ago that some of the shifts in spending caused by the pandemic had persisted, even as pandemic itself receded. You can also see in Chart 11 that spending on transport is still a long way short of pre-pandemic levels, not least because many of us are still working from home (to some extent, at least). But total spending on services has nonetheless outgrown that on goods in the second half of this year. Finally, and more generally, we know that, in many instances, tradable goods prices exhibit a significant degree of mean reversion. More often than not, big  Chart 12. Shipping costs have fallen in recent months and forward contracts suggest further material declines Jan 2017 = 100 400  rises are followed not just by slower growth but  Latest  outright declines.

Paul Fisher: The Financial Regulation Reform agenda – what has been achieved and how much is left to do? Speech by Mr Paul Fisher, Executive Director for Supervisory Risk Specialists and Regulatory Operations of the Bank of England and Deputy Head of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), at Richmond, the American International University, London, 30 September 2015. *  *  *  It is now 8 years since the start of the great financial crisis, and 7 years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG in the United States, followed by the bailing out of HBoS and RBS in the UK. The consequences were not limited to the financial sector – the economic recession that followed in much of the developed world was both deep and prolonged. This naturally created an imperative for changes to the regulation of the financial system to prevent the same thing happening again in future. Since I became Deputy Head of the Prudential Regulation Authority (the PRA) in June 2014, I have been asked a number of times to comment on how far the regulatory reform agenda has advanced. How close are we to ending “too big to fail”? How much more regulatory change can one expect?
Mervyn King: Monetary policy developments Speech by Mr Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, to the CBI Dinner, Manchester, 20 January 2005. *  *  *  Now that the Christmas celebrations are over, and the decorations have been taken down, it is time for a much-loved New Year tradition - speculating on how much we all spent over the Christmas period. With over 200 coaches bringing shoppers from all round the country to the Trafford Centre over the weekend before Christmas, New Trafford seems to be as popular and entertaining as Old Trafford. Tonight, though, I want to look beyond the immediate prospect for consumer spending and ask whether the level of saving in this country is adequate to provide for our future needs. But, first, a few words on the immediate outlook. Tomorrow the ONS will publish its first estimate of retail sales in December. Among the more lurid headlines reporting sales over the holiday period was “Retail Festive Slump”, followed shortly by reports of “Record Levels of Sales”. To interpret the experience of a few retailers - whether positive or negative - as a national trend is highly misleading. Of course, exactly the same happens each year. Last year newspapers reported “Confirmation of a Disastrous Christmas” and “Shoppers Played Scrooge in December”. A week later the ONS said that the volume of retail sales in December rose at a rate more than double the increase expected by City economists, and the headlines became “Spending Spree Signals Rate Rise”.

While the existing arrangement has worked well, experience in other developed markets has also demonstrated that such a facility is particularly useful in times of unusual market volatility, as this enhances confidence that liquidity needs in the banking system will be met. 18. Hence, to enhance the robustness of the system, MAS will widen participation in the Standing Facility to MEPS+ participating banks, subject to necessary documentation. The PSA/ISMA Global Master Repurchase Agreement continues to be a requirement for banks to access the borrowing facility which will remain collateralised against Singapore Government Securities. We will provide more details on this to the banks over the next few weeks. Corporate governance, market conduct 19. Apart from dealing with issues relating to the safety and soundness of banks, and the stability of financial system, MAS has also been working on improving the responsiveness of our rules, as well as on improving corporate governance and market conduct. 20. MAS is proposing amendments to the Securities and Futures Act and the Financial Advisers Act. The amendments aim to facilitate new business activities and products in response to market needs, to enhance the market misconduct enforcement framework and to fine-tune the legislation to achieve greater clarity, consistency and operational efficiency. Policy and legislative consultation on the proposed amendments to the Acts have already been conducted. We will table the Amendment Bills within the next few months. 21.
Market participants and products The market for credit derivatives attracts a large number of market participants who have not been active in the credit market earlier. The most important buyers of credit risk are large institutional investors such as insurance companies and pension funds. Hedge funds are also large actors. The main sellers of credit risk are banks and other credit institutions who want to relieve themselves of parts of their credit risk, for instance to meet capital adequacy requirements from authorities or merely to use their capital more efficiently. In practice, the credit derivative market is centred on a few globally-active banks, which function as brokers in the trade. The ten largest counterparties on the market account for a good 85 per cent of the total volumes traded and are represented by large investment banks such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and UBS. At the same time as the volumes have increased, the products have developed. The largest growth is currently in the new products, including what is known as index products. Somewhat simplified, a typical index product reflects a portfolio of credit risks in different companies, instead of reflecting the credit risk in a single company 3 . The index products increase the investors’ opportunities to spread their investments in the credit market. In this context, I would also like to mention that there are alternative credit insurance methods that have likewise developed strongly. One of these is traditional syndicated loans.

Although the banks are specialists in assessing credit risk, they are also sensitive to shocks. Deposits are liquid, while loans are in practice often tied for long periods. If the depositors suddenly want to withdraw their money, it may be difficult as the bank cannot as quickly call in all its loans for payment. In addition, the banks are of vital importance for ensuring that payments in the economy function. The fact that credit risks are spread to other institutions with significant equity, such as insurance companies, may thus reduce the risks in the financial system. How has the credit derivatives market developed? Since its start in the mid-1990s, international trade in credit derivatives has expanded enormously. Developments have been particularly dramatic over the past five years. The outstanding volume in the credit derivative market has in round figures doubled every year since 2002 and amounted to almost USD 12,000 billion at the end of 2005. This incredibly large figure can be compared, for instance, to the total value of the world’s stock markets, which at the same time amounted to just over USD 40,000 billion. Market growth has remained high since 2005 and shows no sign of slowing down. Perhaps the most important explanation for the large expansion in recent years is that the market has become increasingly standardised. This has made trading at a larger scale easier. 2  2  If the bank does not own the bond in question it can buy one on the market.
The central projection in February’s Inflation Report was for inflation to return to close to the 2% target over the coming two to three years, conditional on the market’s expectation of further cuts in Bank Rate. But nor does the strategy determine a definite path for Bank Rate over the coming months. Each of us on the MPC must form a judgment month by month on which of the risks to the inflation outlook – from financial conditions or from rising costs – is proving more potent, and so a judgment on the degree to which we can set a course that underpins demand. Since the February Inflation Report, oil prices are around 10% higher, and sterling’s exchange rate around 4% lower, so the immediate cost pressures are worse. The good news is that, in the labour market, nominal earnings growth has so far remained subdued, notwithstanding the rise in near-term inflation expectations revealed by a range of surveys. BIS Review 38/2008  1  This is perhaps suggestive of the adjustment in real take-home pay made necessary by the sharp increase in firms’ costs due to the further rises in commodity prices. In manufacturing, firms’ input costs have risen sharply over the past twelve months; and output price inflation has reached nearly 6%. A big question is to what extent competition amongst retailers will dampen the pass through into retail prices. Anecdotally, retailers still sound as though they are competing fiercely on prices, and driving down other costs in order to maintain their margins.

Since the crisis, the FOMC’s accommodative monetary policy stance has helped support an economic recovery and expansion both in the United States and around the world. But, it has not done this alone: it has had the support of a wide variety of policy actions—most notably, but not limited to, financial regulatory reform aimed at bolstering economic resiliency and reducing the economy’s propensity toward boom-and-bust cycles. Going forward, maintaining the U.S. economy on a sustainable trajectory, including through transparent monetary policy implementation and effective and efficient regulation, is our best means of contributing to prosperity both at home and in the broader global community. Thank you for your attention. I look forward to the panel discussion. ###  13
The film “It’s a Wonderful Life” illustrates this point well. Rumours spread fast, depositors queue to get their money out while the bank still has funds available. In the film of course James Stewart came to the rescue, and he did that by convincing the queuing depositors that they should have faith in his bank. Loss of deposits is a symptom of a wider problem – in other words, typically a bank becomes illiquid because its depositors fear a problem which is more often than not to do with the expected future solvency of the bank. I want to put the emphasis here on the word “expected”. Very few banks fail because they are insolvent today. They don’t get that far. Typically, they fail because of a rising probability that they are expected to be insolvent at some point(s) in the future. This is important because regulating banks has to be forward looking, and in my view has not been adequately so in the past. It also means that a problem in a bank can spread to create a problem in the wider financial system, so called systemic risk. Maintaining the stability of the financial system – financial stability – is therefore at the heart of the efforts of the authorities to prevent problems in banks spreading out of control. The financial crisis of the last three and a half years has illustrated starkly what can happen when financial stability is not maintained.

Northern Rock represented the most extreme case of this, the bank run, starting with wholesale creditors and then on to a full-scale retail creditor run. And it follows from this assessment that banks depend upon maintaining the confidence of their depositors that they will over time be able to meet claims on them. A very important part of maintaining confidence in banks is that the value of their assets – the loans they make, to simplify – has not fallen below their sustainable value in the accounts of the bank. In order to prevent this happening, banks maintain buffers of their own funds – capital – which can be used to maintain the claims of depositors. 1  Liaquat Ahamed: “Lords of Finance” (Windmill Books, 2009), p14. 2  Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff: “This Time it is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly”. Princeton University Press, 2009. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Here then we have the two fundamental elements of the safety and soundness of banks, liquidity and capital. Banks are often said to fail either because they are insolvent (lack of capital) or because they are illiquid (lack of funds to meet the claims of depositors to be repaid). My own experience of dealing with banks that get into trouble suggests that the reality is somewhat different – it isn’t a case of either one or the other. On the whole, banks lose deposits for a reason – depositors worry that there is something going on that they do not like.
A recent study of ours suggests that differences in educational attainment level are relatively persistent, which may be understood as a system failure insofar as ensuring equality of opportunity is concerned.26 Thus, the average educational attainment level in 2001 among the residents of a specific locality born in 1974 predicts, with a correlation of more than 90%, the level achieved at the same age (27 years) by the residents of the same locality born 10 years later.27 This persistence is also seen across generations, with the correlation between the educational attainment levels of parents and their offspring standing close to 35%, similar to that observed in other countries.28 Thus, an increase in the population’s human capital is fundamental not only to increase productivity and convergence with the euro area, but also to ensure that opportunities are more equally distributed across the population. Mitigating the adverse effects of the various social vulnerabilities identified requires public action across a very broad range of areas, such as regulation (inter alia, of the labour and housing markets), taxation, public services (e.g. education and health care) and income and transfer policies. In fact, raising productivity and the employment rate are key elements of any strategy aiming to achieve a sustainable reduction in inequality. And these actions must be rigorously evaluated in terms of both equity and efficiency. Conclusion In short, ambitious, lasting economic policies will be needed if the challenges facing the Spanish economy in the years to come are to be addressed decisively.

13.06.2023  Productivity, sustainable growth and prosperity 45th anniversary of Cinco Días Madrid Pablo Hernández de Cos Governor *IEnglish translation from the original in Spanish  Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to begin by thanking Amanda Mars, the Managing Editor of Cinco Días, for inviting me to take part in this event to mark the newspaper's 45th anniversary. Since 1978, a year that also saw the approval of the Spanish constitution, this newspaper has daily reported on and appraised the most important issues for our economy. It has thus been able to testify to the changes that have swept through the country, which have yielded very marked improvements in its citizens' well-being. Over the past 45 years Spain has witnessed cumulative growth in gross domestic product (GDP) and in consumption, both expressed per capita and in real terms, of 83% and 60%, respectively. This should not come as a surprise. The economic literature highlights the positive impact democratic institutions can have on economic growth, thanks, among other factors, to improvements in the business climate, private investment and the opening up of trade, as well as to greater fiscal capacity and spending on essential public goods, such as education and health. In the case of Spain, these changes have been further enhanced by the European integration process. For instance, the economy’s degree of external openness, measured in terms of the weight of exports and imports in GDP, has increased by almost 50 percentage points (pp).