samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Most countries would no longer benefit from local currency invoicing, which would exacerbate the effects on inflation if they undertook large exchange rate devaluations. And they would be more exposed to monetary policy spillovers from abroad – not least from the ECB itself – which could constrain their domestic policy autonomy. In recent years, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and central and eastern European economies have been affected by spillovers from our policy measures. [13] In fact, spillovers from larger economies were one reason why the euro was created in the first place. Under the European Monetary System that preceded the euro, most central banks had to follow the policy of the Bundesbank. After more than a decade of disappointing, if not devastating, experiences, it was deemed preferable to regain monetary policy sovereignty by launching the single currency together. [14]  Cooperation and economic policy The second way in which globalisation constrains sovereignty is by limiting countries’ capacity to set laws and standards that reflect their social goals. Global trade integration tends to reduce that capacity, because as production fragments through value chains, there is a greater need for countries to agree on common standards. Those standards are mostly set not within the World Trade Organization, but by large economies with dominant positions in the value chain. Smaller economies tend to end up as rule-takers in the international system. [15] Global financial integration can likewise reduce individual countries’ power to regulate, tax and uphold labour standards.

This would involve the replacement of regional currencies with a single one, implying a single monetary policy for participant states. A key concern, therefore, is whether it would work. Or whether the pressures would be so intense as to make an Asian monetary union unworkable from the outset. At the heart of this question is the degree of real economic convergence between potential members. Using the Maastricht criteria as a reference point for the degree of nominal convergence among Asian economies suggests that Asia is far from ready to cope with a single monetary policy. In 2003 only six Asian economies were able to keep their budget deficits below 3% of GDP, and only five had government debt levels of less than 60% of GDP. Only five economies had inflation rates within 1.5% of the three economies with the lowest rates. As for long-term interest rates, only six had bond yields within 2% of the three economies with the lowest interest rates. Perhaps more fundamentally, the degree of real economic convergence among Asian economies is a lot lower than it was between European economies prior to the formation of monetary union.
The infrastructure that an e-krona would require could also be open to private agents willing to offer payment services linked to the e-krona. The Riksbank would cooperate with the market, both payment suppliers and fintech companies, when offering an e-krona to the general public. In this way, an e-krona system could also provide a platform that promotes competition and innovation. E-krona is a possibility Almost three months ago, the Riksbank published a first interim report which contains much of what I have talked about today. There is also a general description of how an e-krona might look. It should be available to all, banks, public authorities, companies and households. It should be possible to use it in real time, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. It should be possible to use off-line, which means it could be used even where there is no access to a mobile network, for instance. Perhaps it could contain some element of anonymity, and perhaps it could be designed so that even groups who currently find digitalisation difficult to handle can easily use the e-krona. These are our initial thoughts and the reason why we published the report before we have thought it all through is that we want to have a dialogue with the market and other interested parties, as it is such a complex issue. The dialogues have now been initiated. We have already identified a number of questions that require further analysis.

21  See page 7 of the Remit and Recommendations for the Financial Policy Committee. 12  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  12  That’s what we’ve been tasked with. It’s what we’ve done. And it’s what we’ll continue to do. Thank you. 13  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  13
Rachel Lomax: Why monetary stability matters to Merseyside Speech by Ms Rachel Lomax, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, at the launch of the Merseyside Economic Review 2005, the Mersey Partnership, Liverpool, 24 February 2005. *  *  *  It is a great pleasure to be back in Merseyside, as the guest of the Mersey Partnership. It’s always inspiring to be in a city that has a great future as well as a glorious past – and I’m not referring to Will Alsop’s SuperCity of the North. When I was last in Liverpool everyone was on tenterhooks waiting to hear the outcome of the European Capital of Culture. Congratulations on a spectacular result. By all accounts you’re set to be European Capital of shopping too when the new Grosvenor development opens in the Paradise area of the city. This is my first visit as a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). Of course, the Bank and Liverpool go back a very long way. Liverpool was a village when the Bank was founded. By the time we opened our first branches around the country, that village had grown into a major port, the gateway to the workshop of the world. So it was natural that the branch the Bank built in Castle Street in around 1850 was one of its grandest, the work of Charles Cockerell. We still have agents in the City – Neil Ashbridge and John Young.

It will not be easy to achieve the necessary coordination and not least to deal with some potentially complicating conflicts of interests, and much more analysis is needed. However, I will at the end of my speech try to sketch some possible routes ahead. Coordination issues To make my points clear, I think a crisis scenario could be a useful starting point. Consider a large cross-border bank encountering some financial troubles, and suppose the bank is systemically important in at least one of the countries in which it operates. The number one concern for authorities would be to limit the social costs of a potential banking failure and to stop contagion to other parts of the financial system. For this, efficient crisis management is key. The successfulness of the crisis management, in turn, critically depends on a number of factors, such as coordination of information and decision-making, which in turn depend on how well conflicts of interests can be managed. Information First of all, you need access to relevant information on which to base your decisions. Ongoing supervision is instrumental in detecting weaknesses, vulnerabilities and risks that may trigger or enhance systemic crises in the first place. But it is also a key source of information in a crisis situation. Given the very complex nature of some cross-border banks, these institutions are also becoming increasingly opaque, and thus difficult to analyse.
All these policies, and others which, for brevity’s sake, I have not mentioned today, are essential to generate solvent credit demand and to ensure that a solid banking system can respond to such demand. Having tried to raise your spirits, I must tell you that, despite the huge effort made so far, we are unlikely to see a prompt recovery in the Spanish economy. Emerging from crises caused by over-borrowing and competitiveness losses in a monetary union is a very slow process,  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  and for that very reason we cannot afford to be complacent. The pace of the changes and reforms adopted by this country in recent years has to continue steadily. What remains to be done in relation to the current-account balance and bank restructuring (to continue with the examples chosen)? To improve the current-account balance Spain must continue to improve its competitiveness, in order to generate current-account surpluses for a number of years and so reduce its negative net international investment position. Moreover, this is urgent while the worst consequence of the euro crisis, i.e. financial market fragmentation, persists. As regards bank restructuring, much has been done, but there still remains much to do, not only to continue to repair the effects on the banking system of an economic crisis that regrettably can still not be deemed to be over, but also to give us a framework for action to enable us to combat future crises.

More important still, however, is the need for the Banco de España’s autonomy in the area of supervision to continue to be respected and for governments to continue to resist the temptation to interfere in its supervisory decisions, while continuing to design legal instruments and to defend the proper use of public resources. The Banco de España must continue to maintain a dialogue with governments, not only advising them but also listening to them (since nobody has a monopoly on good ideas), although supervisory decisions must continue to be based, as up until now, solely on a professional basis. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  I have been emphasising today what has been done during these years of crisis by Spain (that is to say, everyone), because until our country has regained the trust of the rest of the world, the attention of investors will continue to be focused on what all relevant parties have done and are doing to correct the imbalances of the Spanish economy. In particular, they will be monitoring and assessing the extent of cooperative behaviour to overcome the crisis. I’m going to conclude with a few words on Europe, as I believe our membership of the European Union and of the Monetary Union is another good reason for viewing optimistically our possibilities of overcoming the crisis. Some measures need no further explanation, as they clearly show how Europe has helped us and continues to help us during this crisis.
While the basic legal, regulatory and supervisory framework that takes into account the distinctive features of Islamic finance are already in place, there is a need to have a more comprehensive infrastructure to meet the present challenges. Looking beyond the current crisis, there needs to be an integrated crisis management framework as part of this  BIS Review 123/2009  3  infrastructure to ensure that any emerging crisis in the Islamic financial system will be promptly and efficiently managed. More facilitative and modernised legal framework is also required to make business more conducive for Islamic finance. In addition, the boundaries of the regulatory framework for Islamic finance would also have to be regularly adapted to keep pace with the evolution and transformation of the financial system. In the case of Malaysia, the comprehensive legal, regulatory and supervisory framework for Islamic finance is further supported by a financial safety net framework that encompasses the lender of last resort facility and a deposit insurance system. Moving forward, in the aftermath of this global financial crisis there is also a need to have in place the institutional arrangements for resolution of troubled international Islamic financial institutions. In Malaysia, we have also in place a mandated resolution mechanism to provide for expedient, effective and cost efficient resolution of Islamic financial institutions. The current crisis, however, has highlighted the need to have in place a mechanism for cooperation between regulators across jurisdictions for resolution and for containing potential systemic risks beyond the national boundaries.

This is complemented by the establishment of the Association of Shariah Advisors in Islamic Finance to enhance the qualification and professionalism of the Shariah fraternity. Two specialised certifications will be launched by the Association early next month which aim to strengthen technical and ethical rigour of Shariah advisors and practitioners. With an increasing range of options for professional qualifications for Islamic finance, the Finance Accreditation Agency’s Islamic Finance Professional Qualification Structure – to be launched today – is a timely and much welcome milestone. As a learning reference structure, it streamlines and classifies the levels for Islamic finance professional learning programmes. For Islamic finance professionals and the organisations they represent, this will help them make better informed decisions when evaluating the suitability of the wide array of professional learning programmes on offer globally. I hope that today’s event would help bring you a step closer to realising your respective organisation’s goals in Islamic finance. With that, I wish you a productive afternoon. 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
But it has also brought risks and instabilities that can only be tackled through co-operation between governments. Over the last two months an international consensus has emerged about the dangers of unmonitored, highly leveraged cross-border capital flows. In August we talked about the dangers to small or medium markets, such as Hong Kong. Since the LTCM debacle in September, the focus has been on the damage that huge international hedge funds, which are subject to virtually no regulation, are capable of inflicting even on the larger markets. We now have a situation in which the global financial market is outgrowing its infrastructure, or, to quote Charles Goodhart of the London School of Economics, ‘Finance is rapidly becoming global; but laws and BIS Review 98/1998  -7-  regulations are national.’ The world financial community has now awoken to the dangers, and seems to be unanimous on the point that action is needed. The G7 communique in late October calling for strong global action to promote greater transparency in highly leveraged fund flows is a step in the right direction. This has been reiterated at the APEC Summit last week in Kuala Lumpur. The challenge will be in translating these calls into an effective system to ensure that the kind of turmoil that has ravaged economies throughout our region does not repeat itself.

With these measures, the bank will be in a better position to detect systemic threats and put in place remedial measures to ensure continued soundness of the financial system. Conclusion Your Excellency, distinguished guests, the Bank of Sierra Leone has indeed made much progress since its establishment. While many challenges remain, there can be little doubt that the Bank has over the last years built up its financial, technical and institutional capacity to continue to provide major support to the developmental efforts of Sierra Leone. Today, all stakeholders would find in the Bank of Sierra Leone a unique symbol of their partnership and an institution in which they can take immense pride. In the years ahead, the Bank can be expected to play a critical role including the maintenance of a stable financial system in helping Sierra Leone tackle its many developmental challenges. It is therefore incumbent on all stakeholders to strengthen this unique institution by helping it to grow further and to assume its role as an apex institution. Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, in concluding, I wish to thank our numerous partners with whom we enjoy good relations, especially our international, regional and sub regional partners, for their support and assistance to the Bank.
All markets should therefore stand open to Icelandic banks for the foreseeable future. However. it is not necessarily certain that these important preconditions will be the only factors at work at any given time. They do so while market conditions are normal but markets can be volatile, especially in a climate of global economic imbalances. The US economy is very buoyant and dynamic at present. This is to be welcomed. However, other signs are less encouraging: a low level of saving, a wide fiscal deficit and a current account deficit that repeatedly hits record levels. Europe has still not recovered and the recent rise in the ECB minimum lending rate has been harshly criticised by those concerned about stagnation and growing unemployment. All these aspects of our environment call for normal caution to be exercised, not least against the background of such rapidly growing and increasingly prominent forays by Icelandic financial institutions in the international capital markets. Under such conditions we can endorse the comment by my colleague, the Governor of the Central Bank of Denmark, who said a few days ago that it was just as important to observe the speed limit in economic policy as on the roads. Now I would like to allow myself a few words about housing issues.

For the smooth financing of our economy and for financial institutions Overall, 2016 was a good year for the financing of our economy, thanks also to the professionals that you are:  the growth of credit to the economy in France is the strongest of all the major countries of the euro area. For companies, the latest figures at end-November are +4.9%, compared with + 2.2% in the euro area. Credit to households increased too in 2016, by +4.2%, compared with +1.9% in the euro area. And this credit expansion has been accompanied by some of the lowest interest rates in Europe. 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  the strength of French banks and insurance companies has been confirmed. On the insurance side, the solvency of the French market is largely met, with a Solvency Capital Requirement ratio (SCR) of 209% for groups and 222% for individual institutions on 1 January 2016, compared to the regulatory minimum of 100%. As regards banks, the major groups show prudential ratios well above the minimum requirements, with in particular an average CET1 solvency ratio (“full CRD4”) of 12.7% at end-June 2016, which is more than twice that of 2008 (5.8%). Elsewhere in Europe, in particular in Italy, certain banks still show difficulties: these problems are manageable but urgent action is required. Fortunately, this feeling of urgency seems at last to prevail. For the smooth financing of our economy, 2017 requires that action be taken in five priority areas:  Basel 3.
Greece is hot and has plenty of sunshine. Yet the Dutch can produce 70kg of tomatoes per year in a square metre of his temperature controlled greenhouse whilst Greek and other Mediterranean grower get approximately 7kg through traditional open-air  1  In purchasing power parity terms. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  plantations. Ironically, in the summer Greece imports tomatoes from Holland because local farmers are unable to grow enough during the hottest time of the year. Natural and geographical constraints can be overcome. Japan and Singapore also spring to mind as countries that have made much of their limited resources. Critical to longrun growth is how you make use of and develop your resources. Doing so requires constant reshuffling of factors of production. Workers, capital, and land has to be devoted to activities that generate the most value added for the economy. In other words, growth requires structural change. Advanced economies are simply not blown-up versions of developing economies. They are structurally different. Development entails more than just aggregate growth. It requires significant transformation in the productive structure of the economy. In Thailand the average worker in the manufacturing sector is roughly 10 times more productive than those in agriculture. Yet, the latter employ about 40 percent of our workforce compared to 15 percent in manufacturing. It is easy to see that simply moving workers from agriculture to industry can lift our income tremendously.

Green technology is a fledgling industry in this country and the banks require the knowledge and expertise to conduct thorough evaluation of the projects. Training institutions such as IBFIM can play a role in developing talents beyond the needs of traditional business and create experts in the assessment and evaluation of green projects. This would assist the development of new skills for the credit officers and risk management personnel to effectively undertake competitive analysis of the prospects presented by green projects. Islamic banks could, in phases, consider to adopt the Equator Principles, a pledge given by 78 of its international conventional peers to enhance their capability to provide financing to ventures which are both economically viable and environmentally friendly. Conclusion The growth potential of green technology in Malaysia is boundless with the strong prospects to contribute significantly to the country’s transformation into a high value-added economy. There are large untapped opportunities in this sector and Islamic financial institutions can allocate its resources into this segment to carve a niche market for Islamic finance. On that note, I hope for this conference to become an impetus to spark greater interest from Islamic financial institutions to further explore financing for green ventures and to generate new innovative Islamic financial solutions for this viable and promising new growth area. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5
Inflation, as measured by the change in the Consumer Price Index, should be 2% at all times. But because interest rates take time to affect inflation, forecasts of inflation are integral to setting monetary policy. And because the MPC’s forecast is a probability distribution, rather than a single number, it is communicated in a fan chart. That depicts the MPC’s view of the probability of a range of different outcomes. Each forecast covers a three year forecast period, because that is the horizon over which we expect the current stance of monetary policy to have the majority of its effect. Here is an example fan chart (see http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/speeches/2010/speech432.pps). It shows the inflation projection published in the February 2010 Inflation Report. Each fan chart is conditioned on a particular path for the Bank’s policy instruments. This one assumes that Bank Rate will follow the path expected by financial markets. The MPC also publishes another fan chart conditional on a different policy assumption, namely that Bank Rate remains at its current level throughout the forecast. We believe these charts have been helpful in communicating the big picture that the MPC needs to get across. The fan chart works by showing what the Committee believes would happen to inflation if today’s economic circumstances were repeated on 100 occasions. In any given quarter in the future, CPI should lie somewhere in the red shaded area on 90 out of 100 occasions: 10 times in the darkest red band, and 10 times in each pair of lighter red bands.

Kydland, F and Prescott, E (1977), “Rules rather than discretion: the inconsistency of optimal plans”, Journal of Political Economy, vol 85, pp473–490. Malmendier, U and Nagel, S, (2007), “Do macroeconomic experiences affect risk taking”, mimeo. Met Office (2010), “Changes to Met Office forecasts”, Press Release, 5 March. Morris, S. and Shin, H.S. (2002), “The Social Value of Public Information,” American Economic Review 92, 1521–1534). May, R. and Arinaminpathy, N. (2010), “Systemic risk: the dynamics of model banking systems.” Journal of the Royal Society Interface. (In Press). Palm, R (1995) “Earthquake insurance: A longitudinal study of California Homeowners”. Plous, S (1993), “The psychology of judgment and decision making”. Philadelphia Temple University Press. Scheinkman and Woodford (1994), “Self-Organized Criticality and Economic Fluctuations.” American Economic Review, Vol. 84, No. 2. Sims, C (2003) “Implications of rational inattention”, Journal of Monetary Economics, vol 50, no 3, pp 665–690. Sugihara, G and May, R (1990) “Nonlinear forecasting as a way of distinguishing chaos from measurement error in time series”, Nature, 344, 6268, 734–741. Surowiecki, J (2004), “The Wisdom of Crowds”. Tucker, P (2009) “The Debate on Financial System Resilience: Macroprudential Instruments” available at http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/speeches/2009/speech407.pdf. BIS Review 36/2010  13