samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
• Firstly, in the payment services area this year’s focus is the transposition into the Bulgarian law of Directive 2014/92/EU on the comparability of fees related to payment accounts, payment account switching and access to payment accounts with basic features. Amendments to the LPSPS have been prepared and will be given second reading by the National Assembly, together with changes in the regulations. At the same time, the BNB is building a website for comparing fees charged by payment service providers on the most representative services linked to a payment account, and that website will be accessible to all users free of charge. The legal changes will come into effect, in compliance with the Directive, as of 18 September 2016. • Secondly, Regulation 260/2012 establishing technical and business requirements for credit transfers and direct debits in euro is going to become applicable to us. The deadline for this Regulation to become binding in its entirety and directly applicable to euro-payments in the non-euro area Member States is 31 October 2016. As from that date at the latest all credit transfers and direct debits in euro must be made in SEPA format, using the XML standard. Payment service users will be relieved of the requirement to specify BIC for these payments. Small-value payment systems in euro must ensure that they are operationally compatible with other similar systems in the EU.

Improved competitiveness indicators, in particular declining unit labour costs and the relatively robust export performance, point to a more lasting effect of the structural reforms undertaken so far. The framework of the European Semester and the macroeconomic imbalance procedure have provided additional tools to secure further progress in terms of structural adjustments in the euro area that will put the euro area in a position to make a positive contribution to global growth and employment creation. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Needless to say that the decision to undertake an in-depth assessment of our experience does not necessarily imply that substantial changes are contemplated. Successful technical framework The launch of the euro on the financial markets, on 1 January 1999, has been an indisputable success from a technical point of view. This is a great achievement since many observers doubted of the immediate success of a technical challenge of such a magnitude. Three orientations still shape this success: •  the monetary policy framework includes a set of instruments chosen with a view to observing the principles of market orientation, equal treatment, simplicity, and transparency. The decentralisation of operations has undoubtedly contributed to the smooth functioning of the framework. Maintaining a close contact between commercial banks and their national central banks has helped financial markets to quickly adopt the harmonised practices  2  BIS Review 11/2003  relating to open market operations, eligible collateral for credit operations and minimum reserve systems. •  operational efficiency is highlighted by the precise adjustment of banking liquidity and effective steering of short-term interest rates; the Eurosystem has demonstrated this th efficiency, in the days after the tragic events of 11 September 2001, by acting quickly and by ensuring a smooth and orderly functioning of the European financial markets. Here again, doubts had been previously raised on the ability of the Governing Council to make decisions swiftly. •  security is provided by the procedures and systems implemented, both for the execution of inter-bank transactions, and vis-à-vis large-value payments.

Jean-Claude Trichet: The European Monetary Union and the euro Speech by Mr Jean-Claude Trichet, Governor of the Bank of France, at the Financial Forum 2003, organised by The Wall Street Journal Europe and The New Economy Forum, Madrid, 25 February 2003. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure and an honour to be with you today, on the occasion of the “Financial Forum 2003”, organised by the New Economy Forum and the Wall Street Journal Europe. I would like to present my views on the successful set-up of the euro, on the economic and financial integration of Europe and on the challenges that the euro-zone will confront going forward. The Euro: built on a successful set up Set-up of the Eurosystem The single monetary policy is formulated and implemented within a sound institutional framework, the Eurosystem, comprising the European Central Bank and the twelve national central banks of the euro area. Three principles underpin the Eurosystem: independence, transparency and decentralisation. The independence of both the European Central Bank and national central banks is enshrined in the Treaty. When exercising their powers and carrying out their tasks and duties, neither the central banks of the Eurosystem nor any member of its decision making bodies shall seek or take instructions from Community institutions, from any government of a Member State or from any other body. Independence refers to institutional, operational and financial independence.
The typical constraint that I had in mind was that monetary policy would have to be temporarily modified in a more expansionary direction, for instance, in order to improve the situation for a fragile financial sector, perhaps winning some time for a financial sector clean-  1  2  The idea that inflation targeting implies that the inflation forecast can be seen as an intermediate target was introduced in King (1994). The term “inflation-forecast targeting” was introduced in Svensson (1997), and the term “forecast targeting” in Svensson (2005). See Woodford (2007a, b) for more discussion and analysis of forecast targeting. 3  Several central banks who do not call themselves inflation targeters effectively do conduct flexible inflation targeting, although they may not be quite as transparent about their inflation target, the role of stability of the real economy, etc. 4  See Goodfriend (2007) for a presentation of the conventional wisdom about pre-crisis monetary policy. See Bean (2003) for a more detailed pre-crisis discussion of inflation targeting, financial imbalances and asset prices. 2  BIS Review 112/2009  up and reform. Interestingly and paradoxically, the constraints financial stability has imposed on monetary policy recently have rather been in the opposite direction to the one I anticipated and have prevented the central banks from lowering the policy rate all the way to zero, or even below, because of concerns about the financial sector. The financial crisis and the deep recession that has followed it have motivated large cuts in the policy rate.

They make that expectation by considering the past trends and what is happening right now. If they expect that the prices on average would rise, then, they can be said to be harboring high inflation expectations. A central bank can gauge this situation by conducting periodical inflation expectation surveys. Second, a consumer price index, compiled to measure the changes in the cost of living of a given group of people, may show a continuous increase over a substantial period of time. It indicates an unstable situation in the macro economy leading to an upward movement in the general price level. The presence of either situation requires a central bank to go into action against fighting inflation. This means that, even if the consumer price index shows stability or a relatively low growth, the central bank cannot stop taking inflation fighting measures. What a central bank should do is to eradicate the cause rather than pampering with the symptoms. It is similar to a physician who does not take delight when he observes that the high fever of a patient has subsided. The physician would not stop his curative treatment, until the cause of that high fever is totally eliminated. There appears to be a general tendency for equating increases in the cost of living with inflation. An increase in the cost of living occurs when the basket of commodities consumed by a given group of people entails a higher cost. As mentioned earlier, this is measured by compiling a consumer price index.
The idea is that because some dealers are likely to be long some trades to one dealer and short some trades to other dealers, passing both sets of trades through a single CCP can reduce the aggregate amount of risk in the system. This would occur as the long trades are netted out against the short trades, leaving only the remaining smaller net exposure of the dealer to the CCP. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Inserting a CCP in between two counterparties to a trade can also help reduce the “run risk” faced by a potentially troubled dealer. As we saw during the crisis, market participants often abruptly pull their trades away from a dealer that they perceive to be weak, which in turn can have the self-fulfilling effect of magnifying market or liquidity pressures on the dealer. If, however, trades with the dealer are cleared through a CCP, direct exposures to the dealer are eliminated and replaced by exposures to the CCP itself. This risk shifting can reduce the incentives to suddenly halt trading with a dealer, for example, due to uncertainty about the dealer’s financial condition or future prospects. Mandatory reporting of trades to trade repositories is designed to ensure that the details of each contract are preserved and available to the regulatory authorities. Finally, the fact that CCPs will be central to the system dramatically increases their importance. In essence, global CCPs will be systemically important.

Maybe the major dealers will not standardize as many trades as is desirable or, perhaps, CCPs will develop in too fragmented a manner so that the netting of risk doesn’t occur to the extent potentially feasible. Or the development of global CCPs could have unanticipated negative consequences for market structure, competition and/or efficiency. We must be open-minded about the potential need for mid-course corrections. We will need to ensure that the incentives are right to get the greatest amount of risk reduced in the most efficient manner. Currently, for example, we are evaluating how the changes in terms of the Basel capital and liquidity standards for banks will interact with the changes in the OTC derivatives regime in terms of influencing the incentives for standardizing OTC trades and mandatory clearing through CCPs. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves – we’ll be off in our forecast. Thus, we must be ready to make adjustments as this process unfolds and we learn more. As long as regulators, FMIs, and market participants make the effort, we should be able to make the financial system much safer, resilient, and transparent. The changes in train, if properly executed, should, over time, significantly reduce the shortcomings in the OTC derivatives market that exacerbated the financial crisis. Properly enacted and implemented, net exposures should be smaller because of the netting that occurs through the CCP process.
First, including 44 variables may generate good results more because the additional variables add greater flexibility to soak up variability in real GDP, rather than providing a more solid theoretical underpinning. As the authors note, the variables were selected, in part, on the basis of what we know today about which variables are likely to be important. But this type of selection process – even if conducted on a pseudo real-time basis – introduces selection bias, which the authors do admit could be important. Second, despite the inclusion of a large number of variables, some important ones may still be missing. In particular, leverage variables – such as the leverage ratio of the major securities dealers – may be an important component of financial conditions. The work of Tobias Adrian and Hyun Shin suggests that the increase in leverage of the major securities was a major factor that fueled the asset bubble preceding the recent crisis. If this was indeed the case as seems likely, this type of variable should also be included in a financial conditions framework. 4 Third, as the authors note, the resulting FCI is complex; it is difficult to estimate, update and to communicate what the results mean. I think FCIs have value as heuristic devices in highlighting what is important. One loses that benefit when the number of variables becomes large and the indexes become complex. Fourth, it would be interesting to know how financial conditions indexes for other countries and regions would differ.

Figure 6 Imacec (*)  Mining activity  (change from previous moving quarter, percent) (annual change, percent)  3  3  40  2  20  20  1  0  0  Total 2 Nonmining  1  0  0  -20  -1  -1  -40  15  16  17  18  19  Mining output index-20  -40 15  16  (*) Seasonally-adjusted series. Sources: Central Bank of Chile and National Statistics Institute (INE). 11  40  Mining Imacec  17  18  19  Figure 7 Manufacturing exports (*) (contribution to annual change, percentage points)  15  15  10  10  5  5  0  0  -5  -5  -10  -10  -15  -15  -20  -20 2014  2015  2016 Price  Volume  2017 Total  2018  (*) Component of price obtained using differential between nominal and real exports. Source: Central Bank of Chile.
4  The existing evidence for the case of Chile shows no significant effects on inflows or the real exchange rate, and limited effects on composition of inflows (Cowan and De Gregorio, 2007). See Ostry et al. (2010) for further discussion on capital controls and conditions for them to be used. 4  BIS Review 124/2010  An important aspect of this regulation is whether it should be adjusted according to the availability of capital inflows, or whether it should be time invariant. Let me share some thoughts with you on this issue. First of all, macro-prudential regulation should aim at reducing a risk build-up that could lead to episodes of systemic financial instability. It is not a counter-cyclical macroeconomic tool. Interest rate policy should be the main counter-cyclical tool for central banks. This being said, regulation should not introduce additional procyclicality into the financial system. In Chile, for example, provisions are done on the basis of expected losses during the life of the credit. This stops short of the Spanish dynamic provisioning rule, but reduces the procyclical impact of regulation, in particular compared to the method of constituting provisions according to actual losses. Second, although desirable in several aspects, it seems to me that financial stability (and the build-up of risks) is such a multidimensional concept that either hinders the possibility of rules based macro-prudential policy or limits it to certain aspects (for example, dynamic provisions), which must be supplemented with additional discretionary measures.

Although, in general, I think that monetary policy should not target asset prices, nor should it be used as an instrument to deal with asset prices, the problem is more acute regarding capital inflows. If capital inflows fuel a bubble in the exchange rate, tightening monetary policy will actually induce more capital inflows. Paradoxically, monetary policy loosening may help to stabilize the economy and lead to a slowdown in the rise in asset prices. 2 Misalignments of the exchange rate, in particular in the context of massive inflows, may be the prelude of problems, in the extreme a currency or financial meltdown. For this reason other tools cannot be ruled out, in particular exchange rate intervention. To avoid the perils of introducing rigidities in the exchange rate regime, interventions should be truly exceptional and should not target a particular exchange rate value. Hence, the volatility of the exchange rate is not artificially lowered, and appreciation expectations are not introduced. If the currency is misaligned from fundamentals, the intervention may be successful in realigning the currency. If not, sterilized intervention will most likely be ineffective, and for this reason is important to have a strong presumption that the currency has moved away from fundamentals before intervening. 3 In addition, foreign exchange intervention allows authorities to increase the international liquidity position of the economy so as to insure against a future curtailment of capital inflows.
Joseph Yam: The Asian crisis - lessons for the future Opening remarks by Mr Joseph Yam, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, at the HKMA Fifth Distinguished Lecture: “The Asian Crisis: Lessons for the Future”, Hong Kong, 21 May 2002. *  *  *  I am delighted to welcome all of you to this fifth HKMA Distinguished Lecture, and to introduce our speaker, Dr Stanley Fischer, and our discussant, Dr Stephen Grenville. The title of Stanley Fischer’s lecture is “The Asian Crisis: Lessons for the Future.” In a few weeks’ time we shall be marking the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis - a day or so, incidentally, after we celebrate an entirely unconnected event, the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong SAR. Asia and the world have gone through many other ordeals since 1997, so that the crisis perhaps seems much further in the past than it really is. But its effects both physical and psychological - are still with us. It is important that we continue to study the causes and effects and to see what lessons there are for the present. I have spoken at length on many previous occasions on the Asian financial crisis, and I intend today to sit back and listen. Let me, however, make three very brief observations.

The first is that, five years on, very limited progress has been made in resolving one of the fundamental problems that helped make the crisis so devastating for so many economies: a deficient global financial architecture, which has been outgrown by the markets that use it. There have indeed been some reforms both internationally and in individual economies, and there is a much greater alertness to the threats to stability posed by volatile, high-velocity international capital flows. But much still remains to be done, and as capital flows get bigger, the risk of further crisis remains. Paradoxically, the risks are increased by a false sense of security brought on by two or three years’ absence of the kind of contagion that shook so many parts of the world in the nineties. The second observation is that, in the absence of international solutions, a number of economies in the region have adopted local approaches to the problem. Some have chosen to go slow or even step back from financial liberalisation through introducing or tightening restrictions and controls. While understandable - and in some cases effective as short-term measures - such an approach is regrettable because it shuts off many of the benefits, as well as the dangers, of globalisation. In Hong Kong, where controls of this kind are not practical because of the realisation that global links supply our lifeblood, we have taken a different approach. We have chosen to enhance policy credibility through greater transparency and through strengthening and tightening up our rule-based monetary system.
Under framework conditions of this nature, it will not be very fruitful to provide detailed estimates of the various demand components in the economy. In some cases, the inflation projection itself may lose some of its informational value. In the UK, there is at times greater interest for the uncertainty surrounding the projection, illustrated by the fan charts, and in the minutes of the monetary policy meetings, than in the inflation report and the actual inflation projection. Detailed projections may increase the possibility of checking the consistency of projections over time. They also provide a basis for evaluating whether short-term indicators are in line with the developments expected by the central bank. On the other hand, very detailed projections may suggest that the central bank is more certain about developments than there is actually reason to be. Norway  BIS Review51/2001  9  has a long tradition of making detailed forecasts. Economic agents know from experience that point forecasts are very uncertain and presumably regard them with a healthy scepticism. The analysis and projections in the Inflation Report are conditional on a number of economic variables such as fiscal policy, exchange rates and the interest rate. A different trend in these variables could also result in a different course for both the real economy and nominal developments. The assumptions on which the inflation forecast is based must be reasonable and fairly realistic if the forecasts are to function as a basis for decision-making.

Business confidence has fallen across the G7 to its lowest level in five years (Chart 6a) with sentiment among manufacturers particularly weak. Households have also become gloomier about the general economic outlook, though they remain relatively upbeat about their own financial situation (Chart 6b), likely reflecting robust labour markets. This is a similar pattern to that which emerged in the UK following the referendum. In mid-May, the US placed Chinese company Huawei on its ‘entity list’, in effect banning US companies from selling to it without US government. China retaliated, publishing its own list of unreliable entities at the end of that month. 3 Trade in intermediate goods and services doubled between 1989 and 2014 and the value added of imports as a share of exports rose from 10% in 1990 to around 20% in 2015. See Auer, R, Borio, C and Filardo, A (2017), ‘The globalisation of inflation: the growing importance of global value chains’, BIS Working Paper No. 602. 2  4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  4  Chart 3: Investors now see a trade war as the top tail risk June 2019 March 2019  Trade war  Monetary policy impotence US politics China slowdown A credit event Market structure Equity market bubble European elections Brexit 0  10  20 30 40 Percentage of respondents  50  60  Sources: Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Fund Manager Survey.