samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
This interval is then taken into account in the total assessment. Acts of terrorism, wars and natural disasters lead to greater uncertainty. This makes it even more difficult to make assessments. Good target-fulfilment in historical terms, but last year raises some questions During the period 1970-1992 inflation in Sweden amounted to an average of 8 per cent a year, while real wages scarcely increased at all. Since the inflation target was first applied in 1995, inflation measured as UND1X (the underlying inflation rate) has been an average of 1.8 per cent a year and real wages have increased by an average of 2.8 per cent. On the whole, this must be regarded as a good level of target fulfilment. Last year, however, inflation was 2.8 per cent, when measured in the same way. And if we look at recent years, underlying inflation has risen for the past two years. Let me therefore give you a brief outline of our forecasts and considerations in recent years. During the period 1998-2000, the average growth rate was 4 per cent a year. At the beginning of 1999 inflation began to rise, which was initially explained by rising oil prices. It then became increasingly clear that shortages had arisen on the labour market and that these risked leading to high wage increases and thereby high inflation. We estimated that the Swedish economy was in a broad upturn phase, with rising resource utilisation and the risk of an inflation rate higher than the target level.

Villy Bergström: Forecasts and business cycles Speech by Mr Villy Bergström; Deputy Governor of Sveriges Riksbank, to the Elmateriel Leverantörernas förening (Association of Swedish Electrical Installation Material), Stockholm, 15 May 2002. *  *  *  Monetary policy no exact science During the 1990s many central banks formulated explicit targets for their monetary policy. Sveriges Riksbank formulated its target in 1993 as an annual inflation rate, measured according to the consumer price index (CPI) of two per cent with a tolerated deviation interval of +/- 1 percentage points. Deviations from the target level are the rule rather than the exception. Monetary policy is not an exact science and society is not a machine; it would be neither possible nor desirable to keep inflation at a precise level, particularly not in the short term. In recent years the Swedish economy has been subjected to relatively large disturbances. On the international front, both the Asia crisis and the Russia crisis, as well as severe fluctuations on the stock markets and in oil prices, have had an effect on us. In Sweden, the rise and fall of the IT sector, as well as deregulation of the electricity and telecommunications markets with ensuing price falls, have affected both prices and production. Such crises and changes of policy can rarely be predicted. This means that the Riksbank will always make “mistakes”, with the benefit of hindsight. However, this is self-evident and not particularly valid when assessing monetary policy.
The recent experience of the credit derivatives market shows that ambiguities can arise even in standardised documentation, and the sponsors and users of the documentation need to be alert to this and make changes where necessary. The link with operational risk But the bottom line is that standardisation will reduce the risk that something goes wrong with the documentation. This feeds in turn into reduced legal risk, which is included within the definition of operational risk adopted by the Basel Committee. This defines operational risk as “the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people or systems or from external events”. This definition focuses on the causes of operational risk - internal processes, people, systems or external events. Operational risk losses can be further classified into various “event types” and assigned to each of a bank’s major business lines. By classifying losses in this way, banks are better placed to identify appropriate risk controls and to assess the impact of these. In its draft paper on Sound Practices for the Management and Supervision of Operational Risk, the Basel Committee has identified seven main loss event types for operational risk. These include losses related to “execution, delivery and process management” within which resides documentation risk. Why has the Basel Committee decided to focus on operational risk? The answer lies in the growing diversity and complexity of banking operations arising from well-known phenomena such as globalisation, the growing sophistication of financial technology and outsourcing.

Among other things, the increased focus in the New Accord on internal ratings and risk-adjusted pricing might encourage a more sensible approach to the setting of margins on syndicated loans. I know that many banks in Hong Kong think that margins are now too low to fully compensate for expected loss, the cost of capital and operational costs. However, more rational pricing policies are currently hindered by the lack of consistency among banks on how they price risk and allocate capital. The New Accord should go some way to correct this. Under the internal ratings based (IRB) approach, banks will be required to use internal ratings as a factor in the pricing of credit risk. Progress on the New Accord As part of the process of creating incentives for better risk management, the Basel Committee is now engaged in a more general effort to recalibrate the New Accord to adjust the amount of capital charge under each of the main approaches. The aim of the revised set of proposals is that, on average, the total amount of capital required under the standardised approach to cover both credit and operational risk should be the same as that required under the current Accord to cover credit risk only. Modest capital relief would be available to those banks that move to the foundation IRB approach, with still more relief for those which opt for the advanced IRB approach. These, and other revised proposals of the Basel Committee, seem to have got the New Accord back on track.
The neutral interest rate normally refers to the real rate of interest that has neither an expansionary nor a contractionary effect on the economy. 1 Central banks cannot influence the neutral interest rate but they must consider it when they adjust their policy rates. It is the relationship to the neutral interest rate that determines how expansionary or contractionary a particular monetary policy is. By causing the short-term real interest rate to temporarily deviate from the neutral interest rate, the central bank can affect resource utilisation and inflation via different channels. I would like to thank Mikael Apel for his assistance with the text for this speech, Emelie Theobald for help with the diagrams, Elizabeth Nilsson for translation to English and Kerstin af Jochnick, Björn Andersson, Meredith Beechey Österholm, Charlotta Edler, Rebecka Hallerby, Stefan Laséen, Åsa Olli Segendorf, Marianne Sterner and Ulf Söderström for helpful comments. 1 For a more detailed description, see for instance Kaplan (2018). ∗  1 [24]  One important problem with the neutral interest rate currently being so low is that monetary policy has less scope to stimulate the economy when necessary, as it is difficult to cut the policy rate as much as would be required. Moreover, estimates of the neutral interest rate and its driving forces usually indicate that it will remain low for a fairly long time to come. 2 This raises difficult questions both in the shorter and slightly longer perspective.

Peter Pang: Economic and financial outlook for the Asia/Pacific region Welcome remarks by Mr Peter Pang, Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, at the Launch of the International Monetary Fund’s Regional Economic Outlook, Hong Kong, 28 April 2014. *  *  *  1. Good afternoon. It is my pleasure to welcome all of you to the launch of the latest issue of the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Regional Economic Outlook. We are honoured to have Mr. Changyong Rhee, Director of the Asia and Pacific Department of the IMF, and his colleagues to share with us today their views on the region’s economic and financial developments, the outlook and the challenges, and what can be done to manage the risks and promote further growth that is sustainable over the years ahead. 2. I totally agree with the theme of this issue of the REO – sustaining Asia’s high growth momentum would require continuing vigilance and reforms. There is little doubt that Asia will continue to grow faster than most other regions in the world. Since the Asian financial crisis, policymakers have implemented many structural reforms making the region more resilient. Asia has also been leading the world recovery after the global financial crisis. Having said that, Asia cannot afford to feel complacent as the road ahead is bumpy. And we will be in unchartered waters when the high tide of global liquidity starts to ebb as the developed economies embark on the normalization of their monetary policies.
Christian Noyer: “Towards Retail Payments 2.0: The New Security Challenges” Opening speech by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, at the conference “Towards Retail Payments 2.0: The New Security Challenges”, Paris, 22 October 2014. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to open this conference today, dedicated to the work of the Secure Pay forum and to the new security challenges that lie ahead for retail payments. On behalf of the European Central Bank and of the Banque de France, I would like to welcome you all in Paris, and thank you for accepting our invitation to participate to this event. All the authorities that have an interest in the area of security at national and European level are represented today together with the major stakeholders of the private sector. I have no doubt that this will favor fruitful debates and a comprehensive overview of major challenges and issues regarding the security of retail payments. This conference organized here in Paris illustrates the continuous support that the Banque de France has been providing to the Secure Pay forum from the very beginning, in order to promote the best practices in the field of security for retail payments in Europe. This support has its roots in the Banque de France’s mandate which, since 2001, explicitly requires that we ensure the safety of cashless payments.

As the proposal for the revised Payment Services Directive is currently discussed in the Council of the European Union, a unique opportunity is given today to all stakeholders to tackle the different issues raised by the new regulation in the presence of representatives from all European competent authorities that are involved. Once again, thank you all for being here, and I wish you fruitful and vivid discussions on all of these aspects, hoping this conference will provide you with a comprehensive overview of the new security challenges for retail payments. Before leaving the floor to our first set of panelists I now invite you to listen to Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, who cannot be physically with us today but who has recorded his comments for us. Thank you for your attention. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Whatever the approach chosen, the main challenge would be to take account of climate risks, either through economic estimates that we master – such as GDP observed under stress – or directly through climate variables – such as the rise in temperature – which would require  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  developing new methods and gathering new information. This, of course, would mean relying on expert judgment on these issues, in a context where financial institutions do not have enough experience to understand future risks. We will work on this with the ACPR and the public authorities concerned. *** Understanding and analysing climate risk is essential. The regulations currently being drawn up – the Act on energy transition and the work of the Financial Stability Board – on information disclosure are useful tools to ensure that the transition to a greener economy is active and therefore under control. These initiatives could also contribute to making market participants more aware of the need to use a discount rate that is more compatible with the transition to a greener economy. The Canfin-Grandjean report of June 2015 also includes many interesting avenues. However, we must at the same time remain modest. We, the public authorities, do not know everything. And we cannot substitute ourselves for private players, whether financial or nonfinancial.

There is also much uncertainty about the intensity of the recovery in the final months of the year, in view of the recent course of the pandemic in Europe. The short-term indicators available, such as the PMI for October, among others, point to a slowdown in the growth of activity in the euro area in the fourth quarter. Most worrying is that the widespread implementation of new measures to contain the health crisis could lead to a significant additional slowdown or even a contraction, at least in certain countries or sectors. Therefore, the outlook for the euro area economy continues to be highly uncertain and the risks are tilted to the downside. Specifically, the ECB’s latest projections, dating from end-September, envisage a baseline scenario where the prolongation over the coming quarters of the improvement seen since May would not prevent the area’s GDP from declining by 8%, followed by a recovery of 5% in 2021. Achieving these figures appears to be called into question, since one of the assumptions of this baseline scenario is that the epidemiological situation will not worsen in  3  the short term, something which developments since the projection cut-off date seem to be disproving. As regards the inflation outlook for the euro area, the ECB expects a very modest rise this year of only 0.3%, increasing to 1% in 2021 and 1.3% in 2022, far from the medium-term price stability target.
You can see in the two right-hand side charts that the trade balances of the euro zone in general and of France in  Page 3 of 14 particular have fallen sharply since the end of 2021, with a cumulative deficit over 12 months for the euro area reaching almost 300 billion euros in September. While the bulk of this staggering fall is in energy, the situation is also deteriorating for non-energy goods. International trade, in purely accounting terms, is a zero-sum exercise and the deficits of some feed the surpluses of others. This transfer of wealth comes essentially from a change in the prices of traded goods as you can see in the bottom left chart for France that experienced a more rapid growth of its import deflator compared to its export deflator over the last 4 quarters. This “external tax” is a negative shock on the real income of both households and firms. Overall, this shock, along with the associated spike in inflation, is likely to have a sizeable negative impact on growth for several quarters at least. Let me now put forward quantitative measures of this external tax. It’s not that simple, and several ways of measuring it can be considered. We can look at a “gross” external tax, i.e. the amount of extra energy bill, for energy importing countries.

Philipp M Hildebrand: Economic outlook and monetary policy Speech by Mr Philipp M Hildebrand, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, Apéritif Marché monétaire, Geneva, 17 November 2005. The complete speech can be found in French on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  The Swiss economy has benefited from a favourable international environment. Activity has remained strong in the US, whereas it has improved in Japan and, more recently, in Europe. In Switzerland also, the latest indicators point towards stronger growth. Exports remain the engine of the recovery but private consumption has also picked up. However, consumer confidence remains fragile in the context of only modestly improving labour market conditions. The SNB expects the economic recovery to continue. A sudden adjustment of the US current account imbalance or a further increase of energy prices are predominant risks. From a monetary point of view, the current situation is characterised by different counteracting forces. On the one hand, the economic outlook is positive. On the other hand, some risks put this favourable picture into perspective. Furthermore, the increase of energy prices might endanger medium term price stability at a time when monetary conditions remain expansive. Last but not least, globalisation continues to hold down the prices of many goods. In this complex environment, it is important that central banks succeed in preserving their most important monetary asset, namely well anchored inflation expectations.
In fact, private consumption is the fastest growing component of spending, with some of its categories, such as durable consumption, increasing at rates of 50 percent annually in the first quarter. The measures recently approved by Congress will intensify the boost to consumption, while fiscal expansion will be significantly higher than we expected in the March Report. In the projections I will be sharing with you in a few moments, we see a significant upward correction in growth for this year, to between 8.5 and 9.5 percent. This responds to the better performance recently combined with increased boost to expenditure, in the context of more favorable external conditions. In addition, this brings forward the expected closing of the wide activity gap caused by the Covid-19 crisis. Despite these advances and more positive prospects for recovery, the overall perception remains marked by the evolution of infections and quarantines, the significant lags in some sectors, labor market fragilities and persistently high uncertainty. In the financial market, long rates have risen more than their external counterparts, the stock market has fallen, and sovereign risk has shown moderate increases. Looking ahead, greater fiscal expansion and highly dynamic consumption will take pressure off the monetary impulse to support the recovery of the economy, so it should begin to moderate earlier than expected in the last Report. This will prevent an increase in inflation—currently at around 3.5 percent—from raising the cost of living and eroding the purchasing power of the households most affected by the crisis.

Page 14 of 27  Figure 1 Population by phase of Step-by-Step Plan and IMACEC (1)  Quarantined population, mobility and activity  (seasonally-adjusted series; index Feb-20=100; phase)  (monthly averages, percent)  Imacec  Non-mining Imacec  Mar-20  Apr-20  May-20  Mar-21  Apr-21  May-21  Quarantined population (2)(3)  2.0  15.4  32.9  36.1  87.0  50.3  Google Mobility (3)(4)  -12.6  -50.6  -48.6  -25.4  -38.7  -25.1  -5.7  -14.1  -15.7  -1.0  -3.0  -  Average confinement (right axis)  100  5  95  4  Non-mining IMACEC (4)(5)  90  3  Surprises in activity data (annual variation) :  85  2  80 Jan.19 May.19 Sep.19  GDP 2021.I: 0.3% (EES March: -0.7%) IMACEC April 14.1% (EES May: 9.5%)  1 Jan.20 May.20 Sep.20  Jan.21  (1) The average confinement is calculated by weighting each phase of the Step-by-Step Plan by the amount of population subject to it. A lower number indicates greater restrictions on movement and assembly. (2) The quarantines began on March 26, 2020. From the beginning of the Step-by-Step Plan, the population is considered in Phase 1. (3) Data until May 23. Simple average of Workplaces, Commerce, and Supermarkets. (4) Difference compared to January 2020. (5) Seasonally adjusted series. Sources: Central Bank, Ministry of Health of Chile, National Institute of Statistics and Google Inc.
And the pre-emptive policy measures taken will help us to weather this storm. These are important facts on the economy and as Malaysians, it is important that we act in a manner that does not jeopardise the recovery and the confidence of investors, which in turn can create a negative self-fulfilling cycle. 8. It is instructive to compare what we are going through against past crises. For this, allow me to highlight some observations contrasting where we are today against the recent pandemic and the Asian Financial Crisis:  a. On growth: Compared to the strong, positive momentum we have now, our economy contracted by 7.4% in 1998 and 5.5% in 2020.  b. On unemployment: The labour market now is healthy. Unemployment jumped from 2.4% in 1997 to 3.2% in 1998, and from 3.3% in 2019 to as high as 5.3% in May 2020. Now it has dropped to 3.7%. In addition, strong job prospects are encouraging more people to seek employment, resulting in the labour participation rate already surpassing the pre-pandemic level. c. On the banking sector: Having well capitalised financial institutions has ensured financial intermediation continues uninterrupted. Financial institutions also continue to play a key role as an automatic stabiliser in financial markets. In particular, the banking system has low and well managed exposures to foreign liabilities. In contrast, the depreciation of the ringgit in 1998 by around 47%, amplified pre-existing balance sheet weaknesses in the banking sector given significant foreign currency liabilities, necessitating the restructuring and consolidation of banks.

In  1  The surplus target was originally 2 per cent of GDP, but this was later changed to 1 per cent, as a result of an EU decision to start recording premium pension fund saving as private saving rather than public saving. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  addition, it is also responsible for the official wage statistics. I usually view the National Mediation Office as the third party in wage negotiations. The Office ensures that there is a neutral arena in which the parties can meet outside formal negotiations. The outcome for wage earners has also been better in terms of higher real wage increases. Virtually no real wage increases took place during the 1970s and 1980s. The wage increases agreed upon in the wage bargaining rounds of 2007 were too high The two most recent wage bargaining rounds have taken place under widely-differing circumstances. The wage bargaining rounds in 2007 took place at the crest of an economic boom, when the economic prospects were also strong for the following years, while the wage bargaining rounds in 2010 took place during a financial crisis and a deep recession. The wage bargaining rounds for 2007 did not work well from an economic perspective. The agreed wages were too high. I myself was quite optimistic ahead of the negotiations. My assessment was that they could be carried out in good order and could result in wage increases in line with the Riksbank’s inflation target.