samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Jean-Claude Trichet: The ECB’s use of statistics and other information for monetary policy Keynote address delivered by Mr Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the ECB, on the occasion of the OECD’s World Forum on Key Indicators “Statistics, Knowledge and Policy”, Palermo, 11 November 2004. *  *  *  Introduction Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great honour and a pleasure to be invited to speak at the OECD World Forum on Key Indicators. The links between statistics, knowledge and policy are of crucial importance for policy-makers and for society as a whole. I can only congratulate the organisers for the impressive programme they have drawn up and I am sure that we shall all leave Palermo full of ideas on how statistical knowledge can be better used to face current and future economic and social challenges. Central bankers, like all other policy-makers, operate in an environment of high uncertainty regarding the functioning of the economy as well as its prevailing state and future development. In addition, the second half of the 1990s and the first years of this century have been characterised by structural changes, some of them on a global scale, others confined to Europe, all of which have added to the “normal” sources of uncertainty.

International Federation of Robotics. World Robotics 2018. 8/9   Promoting adoption of interoperable e-payment infrastructures within Thailand as well as among regional partners In summary, the ability to adapt to new environment along with having macroeconomic stability and diversified growth engines have enabled the Thai economy to have the resilience to endure adverse incidents and will safeguard us from impacts from future uncertainties and disruptions. Ladies and gentlemen, I have now come to the end of my talk. Let me give you a brief summary of what I have said today. The Thai economy is expected to continue to expand, though at a slightly slower pace, with domestic demand being the main drivers of growth. The risks and concerns going forward include prolonged trade disputes, slowdown of the Chinese economy, geopolitical risks, and transition of the Thai political landscape. Nevertheless, with the economy possessing three important qualities of resilience, namely macroeconomic stability, diversified growth engines, and ability to adapt, I am confident that the Thai economy can withstand various challenges in the years to come. Again, it is my great honor to be here this evening with our longtime friends who have supported Thailand’s economic and financial development. Let me assure you that the Bank of Thailand will continue to strengthen our economic resilience and stay firmly committed to our principal mandate to support sustainable economic growth while maintaining price and financial stability. Thank you. 9/9
On the other hand, there is the outstanding debt under the debt purchase programme established in 2010 (SMP), which amounts to close to € billion. Are we looking at a scenario entailing a potential loss of close to € billion if Greece leaves the euro? I do not want to speculate on that. Greece can remain in the euro area. What would be the consequences for the euro area of a “no” vote in the referendum, which would undoubtedly lead to “Grexit”? A distinction must be made between the short and long-term impact. The reaction of global financial markets on Monday demonstrated that they were surprised. Up until Friday evening, it was not envisaged that the negotiations would break down and a referendum would be  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  called. The markets have become risk-averse. But their reaction remains relatively calm. This shows the extent to which Greece’s current situation is a unique one – it is a special case. Other countries in the euro area have experienced great difficulties. They have been through adjustment programmes, and come out of them. For these countries, this has been a chapter with a successful conclusion. This is the case in Ireland and Portugal. The Cypriot programme is still ongoing and proceeding well, which should allow the ECB soon to begin purchasing Cypriot securities. I do not underestimate the efforts these programmes have required, or their social costs. The citizens of these countries have paid dearly.

In the past, the major part of the chain of manufacturing and services used to be located in a given country, which meant that, from the monetary policy perspective, the domestic demand was of great importance, and in particular — the size of output in relation to its potential level i.e. the so-called output gap. The impact of the global economy, on the other hand, was observed mainly due to changes in the terms-of-trade i.e. the ratio of export to import prices, which in turn was affected by, among others, commodity prices and changes in external demand. Nowadays, inter alia as a result of globalisation of production and services, the role of the domestic output gap in explaining inflation has decreased significantly, as shown by the BIS research 6 . As in the case of the model applied by the NBP in forecasting inflation, the role of the output gap as a factor that determines inflation is much smaller than it used to be. In old books on macroeconomics inflation is treated largely as a local development, i.e. dependent in a great measure on domestic factors (such as the domestic output gap and inflation expectations). Today, inflation is becoming increasingly less local, and in turn, becomes more and more dependent on global factors, i.e. the relationship between global demand to global supply. Research that analysed the course of inflation in 22 OECD countries between 1960 and 2003 has shown that 70% of inflation volatility may be explained by a common factor 7 .
I strongly believe that Europe’s economic weight rests on a tripod with no equivalent elsewhere in the world: our single market, our single currency and our shared social and environmental model. These are three assets, constituting our common identity, that we should build on. First, we in Europe share, thanks to our founding fathers and to Jacques Delorsi, a large single market. It removes most internal borders and regulatory obstacles to the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people in the European Union. It was no coincidence that access to the single market lay at the heart of the Brexit debate. Second, thanks to Helmut Kohl, François Mitterrand and many others, we have built a new and solid currency: the euro is a unique success, which is recognised worldwide and supported by a clear majority of euro area citizens (75%ii). Third, our common social model combines a lower level of inequality with a higher level of public services – let’s call it soziale Marktwirtschaft in German, and pay tribute to social democracy as well as to Christian Democrats. This model is more and more environmental,  Page 2 sur 14 and in this respect, Europe is clearly ahead. The world in this 21 st century, starting with its youth across the different continents, needs our European values. But do we have the power to project these values? Power is, in physics, the multiplication of weight by speed: we collectively have the former, but we lack the latter.

The ECB’s balance sheet is now double the size of the Fed’s as a percentage of GDP:  Page 8 sur 14 Moreover, thanks to our social model and its higher automatic stabilizers, the overall 2020 fiscal stimulus in the euro area has been almost as strong as in the United States:  Yes, President Biden’s American Rescue Plan is significantly bigger for 20212022. But according to many American economists, it could create a risk of the economy running above potential, “making monetary policy more difficult to use in the futureiv”, as expressed by Olivier Blanchard – who is not really known as a supporter of austerity. The new infrastructure bill, to be announced today, could have more positive long-lasting effects in two regards: it strengthens supply, including possibly in education; it could reverse the race to ever more tax cuts in advanced economies. With that in mind, for us Europeans, our main issue now is not the scale of our fiscal response but the speed of its execution. Speed, once more, is our collective handicap. Governments now need to implement the recovery plan to which they have agreed and they need to do so urgently. In other words, we in Europe need to walk our talk. On a structural level, three major crises in the past ten years – 2008-2009, 2011, 2020 – have shown the need to complete the Economic Union in addition to the successful Monetary Union, starting with a permanent fiscal capacity.
Policy frames in the European Union Before discussing economic policy in Sweden in the event of a transition to the euro, something should be said about the European frames which this policy would have to comply with. These frames already affect the conditions for Sweden’s policy and will presumably do so even more in the future. Of the economic policy processes in the European Union, the most prominent are contingent on the Stability and Growth Pact from 1997. The primary purpose of the Pact is to ensure that budget policy in the member states is conducted so that no country encounters serious problems with debt because that could lead to costs for the Union as a whole and, in the worst case, to other countries being forced to bail out the ‘sinner’. The Pact contains binding rules and in well-defined extreme cases could even result in sanctions. In addition, there is a number of processes or rules whereby peer pressure and benchmarking are used to speed up the EU’s structural reforms. The central policy instrument is the general economic policy guidelines, which can be likened to a budget statement. Other instruments are, for example, the Luxembourg, Cardiff and Lisbon processes. All the above applies to Sweden, whether or not we adopt the euro, though the terms of the Growth and Stability Pact do differ in this respect; the rules for sanctions, for instance, do not apply as long as we are outside the euro area.

The central issue, however, is how more pronounced problems or crises for stabilisation policy are to be handled. One approach to this is to relate once again to our own experiences. As I see it, we have had to face problems of two types. One concerns a lack of knowledge about the direction in which the economy is moving. A dramatic example of this is the crisis in 1990, when neither the problem that was looming with the real interest rate nor the crisis in the financial system was identified in time by virtually any Swedish observer. The other problem is political and has to do with the difficulties in keeping policy sufficiently tight over the business cycle, particularly when demand exceeds long-term supply. A good illustration of this problem is the late 1980s. Perhaps one should mention a third problem, namely that automatic stabilisers affect demand regardless of the nature of the preceding shock. If demand in general has weakened on account of, say, a share price fall that has affected household wealth, all will be well; a part of the loss of demand will be compensated automatically. Things will be different if the shock comes from the supply side, for instance as an oil price rise or a change in productivity. There could then be grounds for a discretionary policy move to adjust demand to the change in production capacity; this could be more difficult in the absence of an independent monetary policy.
The authorities are to devise a strategy in advance for managing the bank if it is danger of failing. If the bank is large and important, there is to be a plan to ensure continued operation. If the bank is so large and complex that it probably cannot be resolved without the use of public funds, it can be restructured. The resolution authority can demand that complex parts of the institution be transferred to separate subsidiaries. As a last resort, the authorities can demand that large banks be broken up into several smaller ones. There should also be a plan for how continued operations can be funded. All systemically important banks in Europe shall hold a minimum amount of liabilities that can quickly be bailed-in. This entails a limit on the share of short-term and secured debt banks may issue. The authorities must also ensure that large banks and systemically important investors do not invest too much in other banks’ risky debt. This is a new perspective on banks’ funding structure. In the future, banks will have to ensure that portions of their liabilities can quickly be written down and converted to equity. Bail-in as an instrument will be implemented in the EU on 1 January 2016, a year after the rest of the Directive. The Directive must be followed up in Norway under the EEA Agreement. Norway’s own bank resolution legislation must be updated. As regards the Norwegian framework, the new elements are in particular the requirements for resolution plans and bailin.

The bank’s critical functions were kept running. Shareholders and unsecured creditors were not bailed out. Over time, the creditors who were not covered by the deposit guarantee were paid back around 85 percent of the value of their original claims. The value of the bank’s assets was preserved to a larger extent than if the bank had been wound up. Danish banks’ funding costs rose following the resolution of Amagerbanken. However, it did not trigger a systemic crisis in the Danish banking sector, despite its occurrence in the middle of the European debt crisis. What the Danes got was a pricing of the true risk in their banks. Over time, this provides a basis for a less risky financial system. Bail-in may nevertheless be difficult to implement. Bail-in of a large bank, that is a bank with substantial liabilities, will inflict losses on a large number of creditors. That is the intention. But if these liabilities are owned by institutions that are critical to the functioning of the financial system, the problems in one bank can spread quickly. If the losses are substantial, the authorities run the risk of triggering a systemic crisis. Moreover, bail-in of creditors may make funding more expensive for other banks, particularly in turbulent times. For large, systemically important banks, the time-inconsistency problem remains. This weakens the credibility of the bail-in regime. Therefore, the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive also provides for measures intended to bolster credibility. An important measure is that national authorities are to prepare resolution plans for individual banks.
Mr. McDonough assesses the role of the central bank in ensuring a stable price and financial environment and fostering sustainable growth Remarks by the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Mr. William J. McDonough, at the Society of Investment Analysts in Dublin on 11/2/97. I am delighted to have the opportunity to address the Society of Investment Analysts here in Ireland, home of my forebears. In my remarks this evening, I want to say a few words on a topic of great importance to both our professions: the role of central banks in ensuring a stable price and financial environment, and fostering sustainable growth. I would also like to offer some thoughts on the importance of a safe and sound banking system for the wellbeing of the economy. As members of the financial community, we all recognize the importance of price stability to the successful long-run performance of the economy. Indeed, there now seems to be a worldwide convergence of views among central bankers and investors alike on the importance of price stability as the primary goal of monetary policy. For me personally, stable prices have always been the prism for making monetary policy decisions. As I see it, price stability must be viewed in a long-run context as an ongoing goal, not a one-time objective. That goal requires monetary policy to be oriented beyond the horizon of its immediate or near-term impact on inflation and the economy.

Because of the importance and the difficulties inherent in the balancing act, banking systems are generally subject to a higher degree of official oversight and regulation than are most other forms of private enterprise, and supported by some form of a broad safety net. While the specifics can differ appreciably across countries, these safety nets are usually constructed along similar lines. They generally include oversight of the affairs of banking institutions in the form of inspection and examination of the institutions for compliance with a broad set of safety and soundness standards; some type of protection against losses for BIS Review 17/1997  -5-  small depositors and investors; and some form of emergency liquidity facility for banking institutions and, occasionally, for other financial institutions as well. Finally, the payments system, a crucial link in any financial system, generally includes some form of official regulation of or participation in its operations. These important aspects of the safety net often feed into one or more of the functions performed by central banks. For this reason, the central bank usually plays a major role in the operation of one or more of these facets of the safety net. For example, the emergency liquidity facility is almost always the discount window of the central bank. In many countries -including Ireland and the United States -- the central bank also plays an important role in the supervision of banking institutions and in the oversight of payments system operations.
But by now most have realised how unlikely these problems are to disappear so quickly. There is every reason to believe that the coming months could prove difficult as a result, and there is correspondingly little reason to believe that the crisis is past. Uncertainty abounds. A huge investment bank like Merrill Lynch could not foresee that, in only two weeks’ time, it would have to write down billions of dollars’ worth of outstanding debt. The CEO of the company has had to pack his bags and leave, albeit with a generous going-away present. The largest bank in the world is also beset by the restlessness, and it isn’t yet fully clear what the effects will be, but that CEO has received his marching orders as well. And according to the latest reports, while there are reported write-downs of a mere 20 billion dollars on subprime mortgages, the actual amount could in the end be between 250 and 300 billion. BIS Review 131/2007  3  One cannot help but wonder whether market participants in Iceland and elsewhere preferred to suffer through a shaky third quarter in the hope of some redemption in the fourth quarter, and in the process, avoided recording some items that should have appeared in third-quarter accounts.

The clinic offered an opportunity for attendees to receive one-on-one advice from several non-profit organizations on a wide range of topics, including which types of financing are most appropriate for their needs, what lenders look for in potential borrowers, alternatives to traditional bank loans and tips on improving their chances for success. These are just a few examples of the activities that reflect the Bank’s commitment to the region. Let me turn now to the subject matter of today’s briefing: the economic outlook for the regional economy. There is a lot of good news to share. Many parts of the region have bounced back quite well from the Great Recession, and now have more jobs than before the downturn. New York City really stands out in this regard. While the Great Recession was the deepest and longest recession in modern history for the nation as a whole, New York City bucked that trend to a surprising degree, and did it with little help from Wall Street. As we will discuss later in the briefing, one of New York City’s strongest sectors has been technology. In this recovery, employment in the city’s tech sector has added nearly 50,000 jobs, many of which pay well. The growth of the so-called Silicon Alley has not only helped the city bounce back from the recession, but, I believe, is a key for the city moving forward. When I visited Brooklyn late last year, I saw firsthand how technology is spurring economic activity, directly and indirectly.
However, the technology did not go away but rather re-emerged in a different form, focussed on the development of platforms which have now come to dominate internet commerce. So the interesting question for regulators is not what will happen next to the value of crypto assets, but what do we need to do to ensure that these developments, this prospective innovation about which I shall say a little more later, can happen without giving rise to increasing and potentially systemic risks. This brings me to my third lesson: the extension of the regulatory framework to encompass the use of crypto technologies must be grounded in the iron principle of ‘same risk, same regulatory outcome’. The starting point for regulators should be to apply the same regulation to the risks inherent in the provision of a financial service no matter how it is provided. But differences in technology may mean that existing regulation may not work in this new context or, indeed, may not effectively manage the risk. Implicit in our regulatory standards and frameworks are the levels of risk mitigation we have judged necessary. Where we cannot apply regulation in exactly the same way, we must ensure we achieve the same level of risk mitigation – in other words, the “same regulatory outcome”.

Christian Noyer: Evolution of the regulation in Europe and in the United States – convergence or divergence? Keynote address by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, to the Paris-Europlace Financial Forum, New York, 18 April 2011. *  *  *  Strengthening financial regulation has been high on the agenda of the G20 since Pittsburgh in October 2008. Much has already been achieved both at the international level especially through the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision but also on national level with the Dodd-Frank Act in the US and the pending regulation for market infrastructures in the European Union. It is fair to say that the evolution of the regulation in Europe and in the United States has not always followed the same path in the past. At a time when our regulations are completely revisited and when many restructurations are taking place in the finance industry, rigorous consistency on both sides of the Atlantic is clearly needed if we want to avoid regulatory arbitrages and uneven level playing field which would be the seeds for inefficiencies and future disappointments. In my remarks today, I will briefly discuss the achievements on reforms of financial regulation. Then I will highlight some existing discrepancies between European and US regulatory frameworks that should be addressed. I. Regarding achievements in financial regulation: What has been completed so far?