samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
But in some countries, notably the US and the UK, low inflation has been coupled with an unusually low degree of output volatility; and this may have encouraged an exaggerated notion of the role that central banks can play in achieving exceptionally benign outcomes, in different circumstances. Unrealistic expectations invite disappointment. And disappointment – if it dawns suddenly – is liable to have a disruptive effect on financial markets and potentially on real economies. That is the dark side. But for now, low real interest rates are supporting activity, and the main puzzle is why companies are not taking more advantage of favourable financing conditions to increase their investment – though once they do, past experience suggests that spending could rise could rise quite quickly. Let me sum up. The immediate prospects for the world economy are still robust, despite the sharp rise in oil prices. The outlook for UK weighted activity is less rosy, with relatively subdued growth in the euro area – though even here the latest business surveys are brighter than they have been for some time. The UK is fully exposed to the impact of more adverse world pricing trends, notably higher oil prices. And there are some significant risks, with considerable uncertainty about oil prices. This outlook could provide some support for a rebalancing of the UK economy. But there is no guarantee of that. The MPC may face some hard choices in the coming months.

The forecasts should serve as anchors for the intermediate term, representing the inflation path that is likely to be followed on the way to 4 percent medium term target. 4. Risks and monetary policy  Distinguished Guests, In the last part of my speech, I would like to mention the upside and downside risks regarding inflation and monetary policy in the upcoming period. Our revised forecasts are based on rather conservative assumptions, especially for food and energy prices, implying that downside risks are as significant as upside risks. In the April Inflation Report, we provide projections under alternative scenarios for food and energy prices. The pessimistic scenario assumes food inflation to materialize at 17, 11 and 10 percent in the next three years, and oil prices to soar to 150 USD per barrel at the end of 2009. Under this scenario, assuming that policy rates increase gradually throughout the year 2008 and then stay constant for a while, it would four years for inflation to go back to 4 percent (Figure 15). The other scenario, which is the optimistic one, assumes that food inflation materializes at 9, 5 and 4 percent in the next three years, and oil prices eases to 85 USD per barrel at the end of 2009. Under this scenario, assuming a limited rate hike in short term and gradual cuts starting from the last quarter, inflation would reach 4 percent at the end of 2010.
These weaknesses as well as related policy recommendations from a wide range of fora and organisations have attracted considerable attention over the past months. In my final remarks today, I would like to focus on an area with major repercussions for the smooth functioning of markets, namely: transparency . There is common agreement on the view that a sound transparency framework based on improved disclosure, high-quality accounting standards and solid valuation practices is pivotal for ensuring market confidence and enhancing market discipline. In this respect, the financial market turmoil brought to the forefront a number of shortcomings: disclosure of information on risk exposures to and valuations of structured products and off-balance sheet vehicles proved to be opaque and very diverse in terms of scope and detail, complicating comparison across financial institutions. Furthermore, at the instrument level, the information provided to the market by institutions involved in the securitisation process has been limited, especially in relation to the quality of underlying asset pools. This lack of transparency both on exposures to instruments and at the level of the instrument itself contributed to the loss of market confidence and, as I mentioned earlier, led to disruption in various segments of the financial markets. The complexity and opacity in instruments supported also to an overreliance on ratings and rating agencies.

As a result, in less than ten years since the launch of the euro, the number of large value payment systems in euro operating in the EU will have been dramatically reduced: this number is to drop from 21 ( i.e the 16 components of TARGET1 plus 5 privately-owned systems) down to 2 (TARGET2 and EURO 1). To sum up, we should shortly be on the same footing as the United States in terms of the integration of large-value payment infrastructures. On the retail side, the situation is quite different. Indeed, there are today in the EU, 15 multilateral clearing and settlement systems in euro, almost the same number than 10 years ago, and there is no clear sign for the time being that this number is going to fall significantly in the short to medium run. The market is therefore characterized by this multiplicity of national multilateral retail payment systems, coexisting with various other payment arrangements such as bilateral schemes, international card schemes or banking “clubs”. It is fair to say that significant steps towards integration have nevertheless been made since the introduction of the euro banknotes and coins. In 2002, the European banking community launched the SEPA project, with the final objective that by 2010 “all payments are treated as domestic as far as speed, security, convenience and cost are concerned”.
I could also see signs of stabilisation in important forward-looking indicators, particularly orders in the purchasing managers’ index. However, the picture is not clear-cut and never is when economic activity is in the balance. But, as I mentioned at the meeting, if the signs of stabilisation become clearer they may affect the mood more permanently, not least on the stock market. This can in its turn have a positive effect on households’ undermined wealth and help increase consumption. Further ahead it may be possible to reinforce a positive cycle and for investment to pick up. I also mentioned that a large part of the economic policy stimulation, particularly investments in the US infrastructure, would have its greatest effect in 2010. Having said this, I would like to point out, as I did in the discussion at our most recent monetary policy meeting, that it might very well be the case that the signs of stabilisation I mentioned then were delusive. And it is definitely not the case that I fail to see the  4  BIS Review 73/2009  seriousness of the economic downturn we are in. Nevertheless, the recovery could as I have said be quicker or slower than expected. Inflation outlook may change quickly Falling resource utilisation and inflationary pressures have meant that we could conduct a strong, expansionary monetary policy to alleviate the effects of the economic downturn and at the same time ensure that inflation does not undershoot the target very far.

The latter normally describe the consequences for monetary policy of developments being better or worse than the situation described in the main scenario, but where the alternatives are not normally too far from the main forecasts. In the Financial Stability the scenario is rather more exaggerated. So where do we stand now and where are we heading? Let me briefly summarise where we stand now in terms of risk focus; the liquidity problems have been dampened, while credit risks and feared loan losses are increasingly in the limelight as economic prospects have deteriorated. Credit risks and the size of loan losses are of course closely interlinked with economic activity. So I shall now, not least for this reason, move on to talk about economic activity – the assessments made by the Riksbank at the most recent monetary policy meeting in April and the nuances in the views of future economic developments that I put forward at the meeting. BIS Review 73/2009  3  Things could be better or worse It is natural in times like these to paint a gloomy picture and focus on downside risks. And I am probably the last person to deny that such risks exist. It is also natural that the focus of the monetary policy discussion should be on what a central bank can do when the policy rate approaches zero and further stimulation may be necessary as this is to some extent “uncharted territory” for us. But let me now change perspective and adopt a slightly more positive tone.
Although there is uncertainty over the timing and speed of the labor market recovery, I do expect that payroll employment growth will increase considerably more rapidly in the coming months. We should welcome this. A substantial pickup is needed. Even if we were to generate growth of 300,000 jobs per month, we would still likely have considerable slack in the labor market at the end of 2012. In monitoring employment trends, we also need to recognize that the data are likely to be quite noisy on a month-to-month basis. This is particularly the case during the winter months, when weather can play an important role. Recall, for example, the aftermath of the blizzard of 1996 in the Northeast when the February payroll employment count was originally reported as rising by 705,000 workers. It will be important not to overreact to monthly data but to focus on the underlying trend. So why is the economy finally showing more signs of life? In my view, the improvement reflects three developments. First, household and financial institution balance sheets continue to improve. On the household side, the saving rate, which moved up sharply in 2008 and 2009, appears to have stabilized in the 5 percent to 6 percent range. Meanwhile, debt service burdens have fallen sharply to levels that prevailed during the mid-1990s. Debt service has been pushed lower by a combination of debt repayment, refinancing at lower interest rates and debt write-offs (Chart 8). Financial institutions have strengthened their balance sheets by retaining earnings and by issuing equity.

I therefore, urge the donors to the Foundation to increase their allocation in the coming year and in future. I also call on other well wishers in this room and outside to support this noble cause. Remember, an educated population is a pre-requisite to a country’s economic development. This year, the Masomo Scholarship is conferred on three exceptional and deserving young individuals in Ms Lenganji Nalwamba who is studying Electrical Engineering, Mr. Wapatwa Silungwe, studying Civil Engineering and Mr. Emmanuel Mwila who is pursuing Agricultural Economics. In congratulating you on this deserved achievement, let me remind you that as you accept this scholarship, you have an obligation and duty to the Masomo Foundation and to the nation at large. It is this strong sense of obligation, duty, and commitments to serve the nation that enabled our fathers and fore fathers serve the Nation wholeheartedly and brought us where we are today. As students with a Masomo Scholarship, each of you will be given a unique opportunity to prove yourself. I urge you to work hard and learn from others around you including those different from you and less endowed than you. Let me also mention that as a Masomo Scholar, your progress and performance will be closely monitored and you will be looked upon as role models. I urge you to set the standards for others to emulate. I am confident that all three of you will live up to the highest standards and will not disappoint us.
Not only may they get it wrong but their risk systems, like their marketing, are  4  BIS Review 21/2009  directed at their competitive advantage and they are not motivated or in a position to look after the system as a whole. Lesson 2: Establish more effective crisis management As Adair Turner set out very clearly in his recent speech, the events of the last year and a half have revealed a number of particular gaps in the international regulatory regime. For example, it gave too little weight to off-balance sheet exposures – the SIVs and conduits in the shadow banking system which were holding huge portfolios of what turned out to be toxic assets. The risks of losses on trading books were underestimated as were the risks in the growing dependence of many banks on brittle wholesale funding markets. I am confident that the G20 summit will endorse a practical set of measures agreed in the Financial Stability Forum and the Basel Committee to tackle these points. But we need also to beware of the dangers of over regulation. Some commentators seem attracted to turning our banks into nationalised utilities. Certainly international capital markets have complicated policy making but that is not a sufficient reason for dismantling one of our most successful sectors. Moreover nationalisation has been tried in many countries and its record is poor. It may reduce the risk of shocks but generally only at a heavy cost in misallocation of resources (and usually a continuing drain on the public purse).

The Fed first undertook very limited foreign exchange (sterling) purchases in the market during the late 1920s and early 1930s in an effort to defend the gold standard.12 The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 established the U.S. Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) to undertake such operations, but the ESF did not exercise its authority very often until the Bretton Woods fixed-exchange-rate regime came under pressure in the 1960s. In 1962, the Fed began to undertake foreign exchange operations in cooperation with the ESF, and the Desk acted as agent for both accounts. In those early years, the Fed and the Treasury focused on conducting swap operations with foreign central banks, although some direct intervention with the private-market participants did take place. In 1973, after the collapse of Bretton Woods, the dollar began to float, and foreign exchange operations entered a new phase. Over the next two decades, interventions in the private foreign exchange market became much more frequent and on some occasions quite large. Since the 1990s, foreign exchange intervention has become less frequent. The history of foreign reserves investment operations in the market is even shorter; the Desk began to transact directly with market participants to invest foreign reserves held in the System Open Market Account and ESF foreign reserves only in the mid-1990s. Before that, the U.S. monetary authorities held all foreign currency reserves in the form of deposits at other central banks. International context Comparing the Federal Reserve’s counterparty framework with those of our foreign central banking peers highlights a number of differences.
The labour market figures for the past two quarters offer positive signs. They indicate that the pace of job destruction has been curbed along with a fall of 1 pp in the unemployment rate,  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  which still stands at slightly over 26% of the labour force. The greater momentum of hiring habitually seen in the summer months and the decline in the labour force have influenced these developments; but they no doubt also reflect a favourable reaction by employment to the adjustment under way in labour costs. As the Banco de España has previously indicated and reiterated just a few days ago, evaluating the results of the labour reform approved last year requires prudence for two key reasons: it is a structural reform, whose effects, in any event, can only be felt in the medium and long term; and it was implemented amid a full-blown recession. That said, the analysis that can now be conducted shows better results – a lower fall in employment and greater wage restraint – than those indicated by forecasting models. As previously stated in other parliamentary appearances, I believe the reform was vital, that it has been correctly oriented and, most essentially, that practically all experts and international organisations had been stressing its necessity for several years. I believe its effects will be positive and that this will be clearly perceived once activity begins to pick up.

Further, since the start of 2013 liquidity conditions at Spanish banks have improved, and there has been a re-balancing of their funding sources. This is the outcome of the diminished tensions on the sovereign debt markets and of improved confidence, along with the lesser fragmentation of euro area money and capital markets. In this respect, retail deposits, which fell, especially in the summer months of 2012, have since been faring better. Since early 2013, they have been posting positive rates of change. The pick-up in deposits has seen the retail funding gap – i.e. the percentage of credit that banks cannot cover with deposits – narrow. That allows them to reduce the need to resort to less stable funding sources, such as the wholesale markets. Against this backdrop, the resort to Eurosystem funding, though holding at still-high levels, has diminished most significantly from its peak last summer, registering a decline of 31% in the first eight months of 2013. In terms of profitability, the exceptional drive by banks in 2012 to comply with provisioning requirements exerted a significant impact on their profit and loss accounts. Indeed, for the year as a whole, losses of over € billion were recorded. The first half of 2013 has marked a change in this tendency. Banks' consolidated profit rose to somewhat more than € billion, despite the fact that provisions continue to adversely affect profit and loss accounts in a period in which the proportion of non-performing assets remained high.
Derivatives in connection with these issues have dampened the impact of Central Bank policy rate changes on other interest rates in domestic financial markets. Glacier bonds thereby delayed the transmission of monetary policy measures, diverting more of its impact into the exchange rate channel. Another effect of glacier bonds was to make the current account deficit easier to fund. It caused a surge in trading in the domestic interbank and bond markets, deepening them and producing more reliable price formation. Nevertheless the exchange rate of the króna is very sensitive to changes in the markets where carry trade investors seek funding as well as in other high-yield markets. Glacier bonds therefore expose the exchange rate to volatility in the event of sudden shifts in, for example, investor sentiment or incentives for carry trades. Turbulence in markets in the early part of last year and in February this year is proof of this. An offsetting factor may be that the bonds are probably distributed very widely across investors and portfolios. To an important extent, the investors appear to be European ones who are likely to hold their paper until maturity. Carry trades are highly sensitive to changes in global financial conditions. This makes them impossible to predict if conditions shift. In Iceland it has sometimes been claimed that carry trades prevent the Central Bank from lowering its policy rate. The Bank disagrees.

The globalisation of Iceland’s financial markets means that, in the short run at least, the exchange rate of the króna is determined less by economic aggregates than before. International conditions have much greater impact, such as changes in exchange rates and interest rates in other advanced industrial countries. One consequence of the unease in 2006 has been that many more people, including investors in the Icelandic market, now know about Iceland, the Icelandic economy and Icelandic banks, and watch them more often and more closely. One lesson of last year’s experience was that events in or connected with Iceland can cause contagion in other countries, so that it is important now to know what is going on there. And more people these days definitely do know more about Iceland than simply that it is the country that produced Björk and Eidur Gudjohnsen. BIS Review 60/2007  5
Speech  Embargo 6 September 2018, 6.30 pm  After the storm: ten years on, how weatherproof is the Swiss banking system today? University of Lucerne  Fritz Zurbrügg Vice Chairman of the Governing Board * Swiss National Bank Lucerne, 6 September 2018 © Swiss National Bank, Berne, 2018 (speech given in German)  *  The speaker would like to thank Till Ebner and Rita Fleer for their support in drafting this speech. He also extends his thanks to Nicole Allenspach, Jürg Blum and Jacqueline Thomet, as well as SNB Language Services. Page 1/14  Ladies and Gentlemen Almost exactly ten years ago, on 15 September 2008, Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest US investment bank at the time, filed for bankruptcy. The ensuing storm engulfed the global financial markets with a ferocity and magnitude that took all market observers by surprise. The collapse of Lehman Brothers made it clear that many financial institutions could not withstand such a buffeting without government support. The financial crisis spilled over rapidly into the real economy, resulting in the deepest global recession since the Great Depression. We all have our own personal memories of this difficult period. Many of you are probably thinking of 16 October 2008, the day on which the Swiss authorities stepped in to support UBS with a comprehensive package of measures. Back then, I was working at the Federal Finance Administration.

Total new lending to households in 2021 amounted to € which is higher than the € credit that was granted during the pre-pandemic year of 2019 and well above the € granted during 2020. The momentum has been maintained in the first two months of 2022 as well, since the new lines of credit amounted to € against € last year. Total new lending to businesses in 2021 accumulated to € which is higher than the € granted in 2020 but subdued when compared with the € granted in 2019. It is evident that the banks' financial position, the regulatory measures and initiatives taken by both the European Central Bank and Central Bank of Cyprus are the factors that contributed to this positive post-Covid development of the banking sector providing support to the economy. However, banks must, for their own good and profitability as well as for the good of the Cypriot economy, become better and more efficient at serving their clients. I have made this point to the CEO's and Chairmen of the banks a number of times and I also called a meeting between the CBC, economy stakeholders like KEBE, Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Cyprus, the Cyprus Bar Association and the Cyprus banks to promote and facilitate better and more efficient ways of doing business with the banking sector. Whereas as agreed, follow-on meetings have subsequently taken place  3/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  between the stakeholders, I'm forced to say that I have not seen practical progress.