samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
But our assessment is that the recovery will be a slow one (see Figure 4). The view that a recovery in the world economy has begun is also confirmed by the IMF’s most recent forecasts for global developments. However, the IMF report also depicts the recovery as being sluggish. 2 Inflation abroad has continued to fall and has been negative in recent months, but underlying inflation has been more stable. I shall return to this point. Nevertheless, commodity prices have begun to rise. The oil price fell substantially last year, but has now risen again to around USD 75 per barrel, and according to forward rates it is expected to rise slightly during the forecast period (see Figure 5). The price rise may be a consequence of the expectation that demand will increase, but oil stocks are large and the OPEC countries have good capacity to increase their production, which should have a restraining effect on the oil price. Other commodity prices – metals, foods and other agricultural products – have also risen in recent months (see Figure 6). USA The United States is currently suffering its most prolonged recession since the 1940s. It started back in December 2007. According to our most recent forecast, the US economy will shrink by an average of around 3 per cent in 2009. Growth is expected to be positive again with effect from next year. Since the monetary policy meeting in July the national accounts figures for the second quarter of this year have been published.

Unemployment Percentage of workforce, EU definition, 15-74 years of age, seasonally-adjusted data 14  14  12  12  10  10  8  8  6  6  4  4  2  2 0  0 80  82  84  86  88  90  92  94  96  98  00  02  04  06  08  10  12  Note: The dotted line indicates the Riksbank’s forecast. Data prior to 2001 has been chained by the Riksbank  Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  BIS Review 98/2009  15  17. Inflation close to target Annual percentage change 5  5 CPI  4  CPIF  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0  -1  -1  -2  -2 00  01  02  03  04  05  06  Note. Broken lines represent the Riksbank’ s forecasts. 07  08  09  10  11  12  Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  18.
Andrew G Haldane: The debt hangover Speech by Mr Andrew G Haldane, Executive Director, Financial Stability, Bank of England, at a Professional Dinner, Liverpool, 27 January 2010. *  *  *  I am grateful to Marnoch Aston, Simon Brennan, John Carmichael, Geoff Coppins, Sebastiano Daros, Richard Davies, John Elliott, Simon Hall, Salina Ladha, Jack McKeown, Laura Piscitelli and Nick Vause for comments and contributions. Economists have not covered themselves in glory recently when it comes to forecasting. Tonight I want to put that right by making a prediction that is big, bold and frighteningly precise. Liverpool Football Club will finish this season third in the league. Manchester United will top the table followed by Arsenal. Having been top for most of last year, Chelsea will finish the season near the foot of the table. Newcastle United, meanwhile, will finish fourth. I know what you are thinking. Even by economists’ standards, some of those predictions sound implausible. Liverpool third? So let me explain. The season I have in mind is not the English football season; it is the financial reporting season. And the table to which I refer is not the Premiership points table; it is the league table of English football club debt 1. Rarely has securing a slot in the top four held less allure. Debt is the subject of my talk tonight. We are living through an extraordinary period for the economic and financial system.

This fragmentation limits the potential of the economy of scale, reduces the productivity of this sector, and turns it less attractive to the banking industry. In figures, referring to the data of the European Commission, a typical Albanian farm owns averagely 1.2 ha land, compared to the average of around 14 ha in Europe. At the same time, according to INSTAT data, around 99.6% of agricultural businesses hire one to four employees. This ratio is notably higher than the average of other economy sectors. In this context, detaching from the negative emotions that may stem from the memory of the inefficient cooperatives during the communism period, I think that there is a need for higher awareness of the Albanian farmer about building on partnerships and collective-risk sharing scheme, based on the free initiative and common interests. These partnerships improve access of farmers to funds and loans, and in turn their possibilities to succeed. The third reason for the low lending rate to agriculture is related to the lack of sound collateral. In many cases, the title of ownership is absent, or its value is low against the needs for funding. The sovereign guarantee schemes provide an adequate solution – in both short and medium term – to mitigating this problem. Nevertheless, local authorities should increase their attention on this issue in the long run. Dear banking system executives, The Bank of Albania deems that it is time for banking sector to pay a higher attention to agriculture sector.
While a given physical manifestation of climate change – a flood or storm – may not directly affect a corporate bond’s value, policy action to promote the transition towards a low-carbon economy could spark a fundamental reassessment. Take, for example, the IPCC’s estimate of a carbon budget that would likely limit global temperature rises to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. That budget amounts to between 1/5th and 1/3rd world’s proven reserves of oil, gas and coal. 24  20  See AM Best – Special Report: Asbestos Losses Fueled by Rising Number of Lung Cancer Cases (2013) www.ambest.com/ambv/bestnews/presscontent.aspx?altsrc=0&refnum=20451. 21  See Roe v Arch Coal Inc et al, Case: 4:15-cv-00910-NAB, United States District Court, Eastern District of Missouri, 9 June 2015 and Lynn v Peabody Energy Corporation et al, Case: 4:15-cv-00916-AGF, United States District Court, Eastern District of Missouri, 11 June 2015. Note that as at 1 September 2015 the defences to these claims were yet to be filed. 22  Loss and damage refers to impact of climate change not mitigated by reductions in emissions. The UNFCCC Warsaw agreement in 2013 discussed support for measures to address loss and damage. See http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2013/cop19/eng/10a01.pdf. 23  The largest UK insurers hold or manage in excess of £ of CRE and infrastructure assets, and have committed to further such investments in future. For instance, six major insurers pledged to invest £ into UK domestic infrastructure in 2013 as part of the Government’s national infrastructure plan (see http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1f74e176-5c41-11e3-b4f3-00144feabdc0.html).

For example, work done here at Lloyd’s of London estimated that the 20cm rise in sea-level at the tip of Manhattan since the 1950s, when all other factors are held constant, increased insured losses from Superstorm Sandy by 30% in New York alone. 15 Beyond these direct costs, there is an upward trend in losses that arise indirectly through second-order events like the disruption of global supply chains. Insurers are therefore amongst those with the greatest incentives to understand and tackle climate change in the short term. Your motives are sharpened by commercial concern as capitalists and by moral considerations as global citizens. And your response is at the cutting edge of the understanding and management of risks arising from climate change. Lloyd’s underwriters were the first to use storm records to mesh natural science with finance in order to analyse changing weather patterns. Events like Hurricanes Andrew, Katrina and Ike have helped advance catastrophe risk modelling and provisioning. 16 Today Lloyd’s underwriters are required to consider climate change explicitly in their business plans and underwriting models. Your genius has been to recognise that past is not prologue and that the catastrophic norms of the future can be seen in the tail risks of today. For example, by holding capital at a one in 200 year risk appetite, UK insurers withstood the events of 2011, one of the worst years on record for insurance losses. Your models were validated, claims were paid, and solvency was maintained.
Ranee Jayamaha: Governance, risk management and compliance Keynote address by Dr Ranee Jayamaha, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, at the Seminar on “Governance, Risk Management and Compliance and the Roadmap for Financial Services Industry”, Colombo, 7 February 2008. *  *  *  The Chairman and the Organizing Committee; I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude for being given the opportunity to address a gathering that includes impressive groups of representatives from the financial services industry, risk management professionals, regulators and businesses. As you are aware, the year 2008 has started off with the continuation of some of the challenges that resulted in significant disturbances in world financial markets: the impact of the sub prime market turmoil which originated in the US is still spreading across Europe and other financial markets; the Northern Rock crisis in the U.K. has raised serious regulatory issues; and the large frauds in global banks have highlighted the repercussions of the lack of internal controls and accountability in financial institutions. As in the past, many of these have been due to lapses in governance and risk management practices. Although Sri Lanka’s financial markets have been insulated from these disturbances, they underscore the need for good corporate governance, better risk management and compliance in our financial industry.

5.1.2 If one financial institution experiences problems today, given the interrelated transactions, it could lead to a systemic issue which will result in the entire system suffering. Therefore, it is equally important to use peer pressure to get weak or prodigal institutions to comply with regulatory instructions and directives. So, it is everybody’s responsibility to ensure that outliers are brought on to the desired path. 5.1.3 Clearly, training and consulting remain very important, especially to change the mindset to a more committed one. All stakeholders need to understand why GRC should be  BIS Review 15/2008  5  implemented as a package and the benefits attached to it, from the point of view of the institution as well as its clients. 5.2  Leveraging on technology  5.2.1 Technology is a critical factor, which facilitates efficiency and effectiveness in the GRC processes. A real time risk, compliance and monitoring environment enables financial institutions to ensure that risks are being managed and disruptive events are being acted upon. Therefore, technology integration across the financial institution would enable institutions to gain more timely and reliable regulatory compliance, more efficient use of IT systems, and lower cost on development and maintenance of software applications. Many organizations that apply GRC best practices have understood that service-oriented architecture (SOA) is more appropriate, as it would promote GRC integration while securing the highest value that IT can offer.
FSAP was jointly developed by the IMF and World Bank in 1999 in response to the financial crisis of the late 1990s, when it became clear that financial sector weakness played a critical role in triggering and contributing to the severity and contagion of the economic crisis that ensued, and that both the standard macroeconomic surveillance by the IMF and the financial sector development work of World Bank were inadequate. Thus, FSAP was conceived with the twin objectives of helping countries to identify and resolve financial sector vulnerabilities and thereby helping to prevent future crises. It also aims to foster financial sector development and efficiency. I think these are indeed admirable objectives to which we can all agree. As for the implementation, there are essentially three aspects to the FSAP: The first involves an assessment of the health of the country’s financial system, its short-term vulnerabilities, medium-term risks, and resilience to economic und financial shocks. A range of analytical tools can be used tot this purpose, including stress testing, macro-prudential analysis, and financial soundness indicators. It is here that private sector involvement becomes crucial. Stress testing, as a means to gauge institutional capacity in responding to crises, requires real-world data. And such can only come from financial institutions. The second aspect of the FSAP is an assessment of the country’s compliance with international standards and codes that are considered best practice. Some would be tempted to say that nowadays there are really too many international standards and codes.

I guess that given the comprehensiveness of the FSAP process that I have just briefly outlined, you can readily imagine that undergoing the FSAP would require a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of information from people involved with the financial sector - be they regulators, government agencies, bankers, market participants, and industry associations. Because of the enormity of the tasks ahead and the fact that a country’s participation in the FSAP is entirely voluntary, it is natural to ask: Why is Thailand contemplating participation in the FSAP? Is it really worth it? The short answer is probably yes. First of all, it is simply good discipline to have a competent external party conduct a thorough assessment of our financial system in a holistic and objective manner. Second, the FSAP would present a good opportunity for regulators and relevant government agencies to enhance or confirm our understanding of where potential vulnerabilities in the financial sector lie, and whether existing policy frameworks are adequate in preventing or responding to any financial instability. Third, the FSAP process would benchmark our existing regulatory arrangements against international standards and codes and, hopefully, provide impetus to the responsible authorities in their efforts to plug any gaps in the regulatory framework. Having said that, I must hasten to emphasize that we do NOT seek to blindly follow every international standard and code without due regard to our own characteristics and needs.
The value of a ‘deeply-out-of-the-money’ option has relatively low correlation with movements in the price of the underlying instrument or the market generally. So a simple measure of riskiness based on historical correlations will mistakenly show a leveraged out-of-the-money option trade as providing a good risk/return trade-off. In the jargon, selling volatility protection can be one way to generate ‘beta disguised as alpha’. One would usually expect that any mispricing of risk here would be counteracted by market forces. Countervailing strategies – buying volatility - should be profitable in the long run. The problem is that it requires patience, persistence and deep pockets. Going ‘long’ volatility means being prepared to make regular small payments and hoping to be compensated by a large irregular payoff. In a world of short run return targets, it is not surprising to find this is unpopular. If mispricing of this sort is underway it would show up in higher asset prices and lower implied volatilities across a range of markets. And implied volatilities are at or around historic lows in equity markets, bond markets, credit markets and foreign exchange markets [Chart 6-8] despite the market turbulence during May and June and recent rumblings on the dollar. BIS Review 124/2006  5  6  BIS Review 124/2006  Implications of low risk premia These low levels of implied volatility – and associated low level of risk premia – can have real implications for the economy and the stability of the financial system.

4  BIS Review 124/2006  So while there are some good reasons for the reduction in financial risk premia significant risks do remain. The question is how well are they priced? Are there any reasons for thinking that markets may be underpricing risk? I think there may be. Low risk premia and low volatility Sustained low economic and financial market volatility is bound to have implications for the level of compensation for risk that investors require in asset prices. In theory if assets become fundamentally less risky, then investors should receive a capital gain but should accept a lower future rate of return. If there have been signs of the capital gains, it is less clear that investors have revised down their expectations of rates of return on their portfolios. Indeed the pressure is to go beyond performing relatively well against your peers and to produce absolute returns. This has been fuelling a fierce search for yield and for ‘excess returns’ by asset managers who have to respond to this demand. Delivering on such a commitment in a world of low volatility takes impressive stock picking skills; buying or selling mis-priced assets and spotting emerging trends before the rest of the market. Clearly not everyone can beat the market. Some asset managers will be able to do so for a while either through luck or good judgement and their challenge is to keep ahead – often with the extra funds that their performance has attracted. Their competitors face added pressure to catch up.
***  This action programme is ambitious: in the fight against global warming, the Eurosystem would thus target the direct effects - better conducting its monetary policy and reducing its own risks - as well as the indirect effects - steering the behaviour of companies and financial institutions, through its disclosure policy, as well as its asset purchase and collateral policies. And this programme is demanding: it requires in-depth work on our macroeconomic models as well as on the climate assessment of assets. But we can make this decision quickly by the end of this year - and then implement it in three to five years. Then the Eurosystem, together with the European Central Bank, under the impetus created by Christine Lagarde, and the Banque de France, will be the pioneers in this global fight. We must do so, in the very name of our mandate. Page 8 sur 8 However, the central banks alone will not be able to do enough. Let us transform this fight into an opportunity, that of a combination of fiscal, monetary and structural policies within the framework of a genuine green policy-mix combining carbon prices, public investment, sector-specific rules and monetary action. “The future is not what will happen to us, but what we are going to do. It calls us, or rather it pulls us to it," said Bergson. There is still time to prove him right.

This is primarily due to the lack of comprehensive and standardised information that is needed for all economic agents to factor in climate risk. I will come back to this need for standardisation later. But more fundamentally, the difficulties in pricing climate risk are due to the very characteristics of these risks, and in particular to what we call "green swans", which generate radical uncertainty and whose consequences can be systemic. vii In this respect, market neutrality – which guides the execution of our market operations – should not put a brake on carbon neutrality. viii Market operations are conducted in a neutral manner as long as they comply with the central banks’ risk control rules. And yet, climate risk is precisely a financial risk that is currently insufficiently measured by markets. ix Another difficulty is often put forward, but it can be overcome: the fact that climate risk is long-term, while many of our risk measures are short- to medium-term. Page 4 sur 8 This is a real technical challenge: the "probability of default" is usually one year; our economic forecasts cover a two to three-year horizon. We must therefore work to "lengthen" our measures, but the fact that a "tragedy of the horizon x" exists is not a call for a status quo. On the contrary! Climate change calls for early and resolute action as the benefits of corrective measures will essentially only be felt in the longer term. II. How should the central bank intervene? How can this be concretely achieved?
Chart: The 50-krone banknote (The Lighthouse) As Norwegians, we carry with us a long and rich history of living from and with the sea – from the seafarers of the medieval Saga Age to today’s international shipping companies. For centuries, the shipping route along our coast was our lifeline. Goods from all over the country were ferried via inland waterways out to the coast and from there to other parts of Norway and to other countries. From near and far, other goods came in return. But the coastline of Norway is also dangerous. Without seamarks and lighthouses, safe travel along the coast or through narrow coastal channels would be impossible. A total of 21 000 lighthouses and seamarks safeguard navigation along our coast. Chart: The 100-krone banknote (The Gokstad Ship) Seamarks have a long history in Norway. As early as the year 869, Vikings on their way home were able to steer their ships towards the mouth of the Hardangerfjord guided by a bonfire built on a clifftop cairn. The Vikings were not only plunderers and pillagers, but boatbuilders and, not least, skilled seamen. They built Norway’s reputation as Europe’s leading sea power, while the sea took them out into the world and into contact with other cultures. The Vikings were also traders, and they knew that the sea was a versatile resource. Ever since the end of the Ice Age, when the glaciers retreated and the very first Norwegians made their homes near the seashore, we have harvested food from the sea.

But we also learned early on that fish was valuable as a form of currency. As early as in the medieval era, dried cod from Norway was a sought-after product further south in Europe. With their ships laden with dried cod, the Vikings were able to trade the fish for beautiful cloth, exotic spices and precious metals. Chart: The 200-krone banknote (The Cod) Fishing has been a key source of income and an integral part of the coastal culture in Norway for 1/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  centuries. For many people, fish has been a crucial part of their diet. Some crops do not thrive in Norway’s climate of long winters and cool summers. Cod and herring, trout and salmon, on the other hand, have flourished. Sturdy boats designed to cope with the rough waves and unpredictable winds of the open sea enabled us to bring the catch to shore. And before more modern transportation routes became available, cargo ships were needed to transport the catch to customers at home and abroad. Chart: Distribution of exports 1835 The possibility of storing and transporting fish over long distances generated jobs and foreign exchange income. In 1835, 39 percent of Norway’s export revenues came from the sale of fish. Shipping provided 25 percent of Norway’s export revenues. Consequently, it has always been important for the country’s economy to ensure market access for Norwegian seafood exports, as was the case during Norway’s prohibition period in the 1920s.