samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
It is difficult to conceive today that this could change. There is therefore hardly a pressing need to remove it. It could still be argued that in international comparisons Norges Bank is less independent than it actually is. On the other hand, it can be argued that Norway could be faced with a perilous situation, such as military conflict, for example, where the central bank itself finds that the government should use its power of instruction with regard to foreign exchange reserves and the central bank’s management of monetary and liquidity policy. In many ways the current Norges Bank Act is a product of 1960s and 1970s economic thinking, but certain adjustments have been made to the Act since 1985. Particularly important is the prohibition against the central bank granting credit to the central government. The practice for appointing members of the Executive Board has also changed. Where the political parties in the Storting once nominated relevant candidates, members are now evaluated independently of party background and appointed by the Council of State upon the recommendation of the Ministry of Finance. One typical feature of recent central bank legislation in other countries is an objects provision that stipulates the central bank’s primary objective as ensuring stability in monetary value. In Norway, this is set out in a statutory regulation and as an operational and more intermediate target. This is an essential difference.

Muhammad bin Ibrahim: Developments in Malaysia’s banking sector Keynote address by Mr Muhammad bin Ibrahim, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Official Launch of the Asian Banking School, Kuala Lumpur, 17 August 2015. *  *  *  Thank you for inviting me to deliver my remarks at this official launch of the Asian Banking School (ABS). It is my great pleasure to be a part of this momentous occasion. Today is the culmination of the vision to take professional development and continuous learning in the Malaysian banking sector to new heights. It also marks the beginning of another important and exciting journey in our overall effort to enhance the standards, quality, productivity and competitiveness of the workforce of the financial services industry. It’s an important first step in professionalising the industry. The banking sector in Malaysia has come a long way to grow both in strength and stature, steadily advancing and maturing as it seeks to become more effective and efficient in performing its intermediation function. In the last decade alone, the industry has undergone some fundamental changes following a period of transformation facilitated by the Financial Sector Masterplan (FSMP). Today, our banking system is placed on a solid footing on the back of strong capitalisation, strengthened by improved risk management and governance practices. We are also seeing increased sophistication and a wide spectrum of products and services being offered by diverse players in the marketplace.
And as we can see, the shocks are pretty asymmetric among countries in the EU and the Eurozone. I believe in the stabilisation role of monetary policy and its ability to make cycles smoother and shallower. But you have to be prepared to use monetary policy. For instance, the population in my country is not happy with zero interest rates and the weaker crown, but we nonetheless believe it is one of the key reasons why we now have the lowest 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  unemployment rate in the EU and increasing real wages. C. The third reason is that some expectations regarding euro adoption were, to say the least, not fulfilled. The euro was supposed to help the Eurozone countries become richer and outperform those outside the Eurozone. As the data show, this has not been the case so far. My article for the forthcoming issue of the New Direction magazine calculates that on average the Eurozone countries grew by 1 percentage point less every year after the euro was established, compared to the countries staying outside. This is significant. Add to that the fact that many people realised during the crises that the euro project was probably not well prepared for bad times and that the Eurozone is now looking for new creditors rather than anything else, and you will understand the low attractiveness of the euro in the Czech Republic. However, it was not ever thus.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Beyond the global crisis – implications for Asia’s future Welcoming remarks by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the ADB-BNM-EC Joint Conference: "Beyond the Global Crisis: A New Asian Growth Model? ", Kuala Lumpur, 19 October 2009. *  *  *  Bank Negara Malaysia is pleased to co-organise this conference together with the European Commission and the Asian Development Bank to discuss “beyond the global crisis and its implications for the future of Asia”. It is my honour and great pleasure to welcome you to this conference. This current global economic and financial crisis presents us with a time to reflect on strategies that will promote sustainable long-term solutions in a future where the economic and financial environment is going to be fundamentally different. Although the global economy has since begun to stabilize with signs of recovery, and indeed while an apocalypse has been averted, the road to a full global economic recovery will likely be long and arduous. The re-thinking by the global community on the wide ranging issues that are now confronting the world is taking place on several fronts.
As always, what I have to say here reflects my own views and not necessarily those of the Federal Open Market Committee or the Federal Reserve System. Also, I speak for myself rather than for CPSS and IOSCO. Turning to my first topic, the financial crisis exposed many shortcomings with respect to the OTC derivatives market. For example, the use of OTC derivatives referencing private-label mortgage-backed securities that held poor quality subprime and alt-A mortgages multiplied the amount of gains and losses in the financial system. There were not only the losses on the actual mortgages, but also on the CDS that were linked to these mortgages through the OTC derivatives market. This increased the stress on the system when the referenced subprime and alt-A mortgages began to perform poorly. Moreover, the structural characteristics of the over-the-counter derivatives market itself amplified the shocks created by the housing bust in several ways. First, the collateral calls generated by sharp movements in the mark-to-market value of the OTC derivative trades drained liquidity buffers and provoked the fire sales of assets. These fire sales increased volatility and provoked still greater margin calls. This dynamic was one reason why the market prices of these assets overshot to the downside – that is they fell more than needed simply to reflect the increase in expected credit losses. In other words, the illiquidity risk premiums embedded into the prices of these assets became very large.

In addition, FMIs will need to address how potential uncovered liquidity shortfalls or credit losses would be allocated, and how the FMI would replenish any financial resources it uses in a stress event so that it can continue to operate in a safe and sound manner. The Principles also introduce a number of new requirements. Some of these address shortcomings that were observed during the crisis. For example, the Principles require CCPs to have segregation and portability arrangements that protect customer positions and collateral. An FMI will also be required to manage the risks it bears from and poses to, not only its participants and their customers, but also to other entities with which it does business such as linked FMIs, settlement banks, custody banks, and liquidity providers. Furthermore, the Principles will require FMIs to establish a dedicated financial cushion that could absorb unanticipated general business losses. This is to ensure that an FMI can continue to provide its critical services. The Principles also require that FMIs have plans for their recapitalization or orderly wind down, if that were to prove to be necessary. Finally, the coverage of the international standards has been expanded to trade repositories as a new category of FMI, to further complement the G-20 OTC derivatives initiative for mandatory trade reporting. The Principles that address trade repositories focus on their transparency and the disclosure of market data. This reflects the important and unique role they will play in disseminating information both to regulators and to the market more broadly.
17 There is another feature to this collaboration here, which is to bring start-ups together with venture capital and other investors. tryb is an investor in promising technology start-ups that are building the financial infrastructure platforms of the future for ASEAN. tryb is currently in the process of raising $ million in long-term funding. The Marvelstone Group too, has been investing in FinTech start-ups and linking them up with their network of business and specialist expertise. Further MAS initiatives to grow VC activity 18 MAS is working with the VC industry to grow the funding landscape for start-ups in Singapore and the region. The role VCs play in stimulating economic dynamism has been a recurring theme in discussions of the Committee on the Future Economy (CFE). 19 There are two key prongs in MAS’ approach. 20 First, MAS is reviewing its regulatory regime for VC managers. Specifically, MAS is looking to significantly simplify and shorten the authorisation process for new VC managers. Further, to the extent that there are contractual safeguards to provide sufficient protection to a VC’s sophisticated investor base, MAS is also looking to exempt VC managers from business conduct requirements that are currently applied to asset managers in general. MAS will be doing a public consultation on its proposals in January next year, and targets to introduce changes by July 2017.

14 It offers a conducive physical space dedicated to the infrastructural needs of FinTech startups, here in the heart of Singapore’s financial district. It reduces costs for start-ups, gives them convenient access to data centre and other services, and even has a nursing room. 15 Let me cite two FinTechs starting up residence here in LATTICE80: Percipient, a local start-up, has successfully developed a customised digital solution for the State Bank of India. Percipient’s big data technology allows for efficient management of the bank’s database of over 500 million accounts, and translating into large potential cost savings. Sparks Systems builds new generation trading platforms for hedge funds, banks, financial institutions and other high volume institutional participants in the foreign exchange market. It aims is to develop an efficient market place for emerging market FX. 16 This innovation village also promotes collaboration and co-creation. Even in an age of Tweets and Snapchats, face-to-face interaction remains a source of new ideas, and a way to suss out potential partners. 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  R3 LRC, a specialist in distributed ledger research supported by a consortium of more than 70 financial institutions, will set up its first physical presence here. R3 Asia Lab will promote the cross-pollination of ideas between Singapore FinTechs and leading technologists around the world. The Fintech Association Singapore, another resident here, is a cross-industry initiative to facilitate collaboration among all stakeholders in the FinTech ecosystem.
However, current inflation expectations for 12 and 24-months ahead hover slightly above year-end targets of 5.5 and 5 percent for 2011 and 2012, respectively. 2. Monetary policy response  After commenting briefly on inflation developments, I would now like to cover the policies pursued by the Central Bank during the last quarter. Anticipating that inflation would decrease sharply following the last quarter of 2008, the Central Bank of Turkey (CBT) focused on alleviating the potentially harsh impact of the global financial crisis on the domestic economy. In this respect, the CBT has delivered sizeable cuts in policy rates, while providing liquidity support to facilitate the smooth operation of credit markets. Accordingly, policy rates have been cut by 1025 basis points since November 2008 (Table 1). Considering the favorable developments in credit markets and the moderate recovery in economic activity, the Monetary Policy Committee (the Committee) ceased policy rate cuts in December 2009. Notwithstanding the rapid increase in inflation during the last quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010, I would like to remind you that the Committee, highlighting the persisting downside risks regarding the global economy and the consistency of core inflation indicators with the medium-term inflation targets, expressed that policy rates would stay at low levels for a long period.

Unemployment is expected to remain well above pre-crisis levels for a long while, and therefore to exert no significant pressure on unit labor costs in the upcoming period. 12  BIS Review 133/2010  Against this background, we now envisage weaker external demand conditions compared to the previous Report, while domestic demand continues to recover as anticipated. Therefore, the revised forecasts envisage that the resource utilization would stay at low levels and the contribution of aggregate demand conditions to disinflation would increase slightly. Regarding fiscal policy, in line with the MTP projections, we envisioned that the fiscal stance would remain supportive throughout 2010, albeit less strongly than in 2009, and that fiscal consolidation would gradually ensue starting from 2011 as guided by the fiscal rule set out in the MTP. In this respect, we assumed that the fiscal space created by the stronger-thanexpected economic activity leading to better-than-expected performance in budget revenues, would be used mostly to reduce the government debt stock and hence, fiscal adjustment in 2011 and onwards would be implemented through institutional and structural improvements. In other words, we assumed that tax adjustments would be consistent with inflation targets and automatic pricing mechanisms throughout the forecast horizon. Consequently, we envisaged that the rising debt-to-GDP ratios would reverse course gradually starting in 2011, while the risk premium would not display any significant changes throughout the forecast horizon. There have been some important developments since the April Inflation Report that necessitated a downward revision of the 2010 inflation forecast.
At the end of 2000, it probably will be in at least four euro area member countries and in a total of at least seven European Union Member States. Turning to the third condition, it is important to remember that the considerable improvement in the cost competitiveness of the French economy in the 1980s and 1990s played a very large part in the recent success of our economy, a fact that we perhaps tend to neglect a little today. If the French economy has grown more quickly than the other main European economies between 1997 and 2000, whilst recording the largest external surplus in Europe and the second largest in the world over the last three years, it is to a large extent because, thanks to our low inflation, average unit wage costs in the manufacturing sector have, since the start of 1987, increased significantly less in France than in the euro area as a whole (some 16% less), as can be seen from the following graph: Competitiveness of the French economy Unit production costs in the manufacturing sector (unit wage costs) Relative to Monetary Union Member States 120 115 110 105 100 95 90 85 80 75 Jan. 1986  Jan. 1988  Jan. 1990  Jan. 1992  Jan. 1994  120 115 110 105 100 95 Gains in competitiveness 90 85 80 75 Jan. 1996 Jan. 1998 Jan. 2000  Nominal exchange rate: from the franc to the euro (base 100 in 1987).

Second, the “riskiness” of a bank’s activities and the liquidity of its funding can change suddenly and radically as market expectations shift. This means that what appeared to be an adequate capital or liquidity cushion one day appears wholly inadequate the next. Indeed, the Achilles heel of the Basel regime is the assumption that there is a constant capital ratio which delivers the desired degree of stability of the banking system. After the experience of the past two years, and a decade or more in which capital ratios fell and leverage ratios rose to historically unprecedented levels, banks need more capital to persuade investors to fund them. A larger buffer gives new creditors greater comfort that their claims will be met in future, without resort to the public purse. And rather than pay out dividends or generous remuneration, banks should use earnings to build larger capital buffers. But how much larger? We simply don’t know. A higher ratio is safer than a lower one, but any fixed ratio is bound to be arbitrary. One way of dealing with this problem is to require banks to take out insurance in the form of “contingent capital”, that is capital in a form that automatically converts to common equity upon the trigger of a threshold that kicks in before a bank becomes insolvent. If a bank’s regulatory core tier 1 capital – common equity – remained above the threshold, nothing would happen.
These show how Marvin’s insights shaped some of the most prominent discussions in monetary policy. Before I do so, it’s helpful to look back about 20 years. As the clock ticked down on the 20th century, many people’s attention was not on the ZLB. Most were more concerned about the millennium bug that had the world on high alert. Truth be told, the ZLB wasn’t perceived to be a looming problem in the United States back in 1999. The economy was doing very well and the target federal funds rate was 5-1/2 percent at the end of the year. Up until then, the only historical reference points for the ZLB were from the Great Depression of the 1930s and, more recently, Japan in the 1990s. It was simply not part of the experience of postwar Europe or the Americas. However, a small group of economists, with Marvin at the forefront, was asking whether the ZLB could pose a challenge here in the U.S. and, if so, what would be the consequences and potential remedies. Researchers and policymakers began to turn the dial up on the discussion around the ZLB.

Thankfully, Marvin, along with others, helped lay the intellectual groundwork and created the vocabulary for us to work through some of the most significant issues facing central banks. His work is a true emblem of how researchers play a vital role in informing and shaping the policy discussion. I look forward to the upcoming conversation. Thank you. 1 Jeffrey C. Fuhrer and Mark S. Sniderman, Conference Summary, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Volume  32, Number 4, Part 2, pp. 845–69, November 2000. 2 Marvin Goodfriend, Overcoming the Zero Bound on Interest Rate Policy, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking,  Volume 32, Number 4, Part 2, pp. 1007–35, November 2000. 3 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Transcript of the Federal Open Market Committee Meeting  and presentation materials, January 29–30, 2002. 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
Prestigious and well respected economists have been pointing to the fact that the Euro is not an optimum currency area. They also underlined that, absent sufficient labor mobility, there was a need for some form of fiscal federalism that current arrangements failed to fulfill by a large measure. Those arguments have been made and discussed for some time and deserve careful consideration. Obviously, recent turbulences and disruptions in the articulation of national fiscal policies have given them a new relevance. I will come back to this debate in a moment. At this stage, I will simply remind you of some responses that have been consistently formulated over the last decade. The benefits of the euro cannot be assessed exclusively through the lenses of the optimum currency theory. The Euro has brought to more than 400 million European citizens unprecedented stability. Price stability, obviously, with inflation averaging 1.97% over the last decade. And also, yes, financial stability. It is always useful to think of counterfactual when assessing a situation. Looking beyond current fiscal turbulences, let us think, for instance, how Europe would have absorbed the crisis with fifteen different currencies, fluctuating internal exchange rates, and, as a consequence, much higher volatility, uncertainty, risk premia and interest rates. This experiment speaks for itself. In addition, numerous studies have shown that economic cycles are becoming more and more synchronized across the euro countries. After a spike in 2009, the standard deviation between national growth rates inside the Euro area has gone down to its lowest historical level ever.

From that vantage point, I will make four remarks: 1. Revenues for the twelve biggest European banks have grown, in aggregate, by 8.6% in 2010 (as compared, to 2.5% for the main US banks). As a result, European banks’ Core Tier 1 ratios stood at between 8.5% and 15.3% at the end of 2010 (corresponding numbers for US banks are between 8.4% and 13.3%). Our “universal banking model”, based on a diversity of activities and sources of income is proving its resilience. 2. Obviously there is a circular causality between government debt and the banking sector. Spreads on public debt naturally act as floors for the funding costs of banks. And, conversely, doubts about banks solvency create expectations of public support and deterioration in public finances. This gives rise to multiple equilibria where sudden shifts in confidence can be self fulfilling and create difficulties which, previously, did not exist. This process has been at work in a number of cases in the Euro area during the last year. 3. The main purpose of the stress tests is to break that circularity. Our first european tests encompassed 81 banks vs only 19 for the US. The basic exercise was sound and taken as such by analysts when it was published. Somehow clumsily, however, a few banks were added at the last moment, with only limited investigation, and these are precisely the banks which proved problematic afterwards, which undermined the credibility of the whole exercise. That mistake won’t be repeated. 4.