samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The winter weather was quite severe in the eastern two-thirds of the United States and bottlenecks at the West Coast ports disrupted both sales and production. More important in assessing the growth potential of the U.S. are the improved underlying fundamentals. The firming of growth in 2013 and 2014 reflected several important developments that, in my view, are likely to continue to support growth over the remainder of this year and into 2016. Those developments include the fact that the household deleveraging process has largely run its course and the imbalances in the housing market have been largely worked off. In addition, federal fiscal consolidation appears to be over for BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  now, and employment and spending are again increasing at the state and local government level. My outlook for 2015 as a whole is that economic growth will be close to the pace of the past two years, supported by continued solid fundamentals and accommodative financial conditions. If I am correct, then this would lead to a further reduction of labor market slack, with the unemployment rate approaching 5 percent by the end of the year. An important underpinning of this outlook is that, after a lull in the first quarter, household spending will move back toward the kind of growth path it was on over the second half of 2014, when real PCE grew at about a 3¾ percent annual rate.

The real exchange rate of the króna is somewhat below its likely long-term average, although it has risen in the past year. 6  BIS Review 138/2010  As economic recovery gains pace, the outlook for capital account liberalisation improves. Recovery tends to be accompanied by increased inflow of foreign capital in the form of credit or direct investment. Significant inward foreign direct investment could set the stage for removal of the controls. Although suggestions that recovery began late in 2009 or in the first half of 2010 have proven to be a mirage, a number of indicators imply that Iceland has hit bottom or is close to it, and that growth will resume in the latter half of this year. But the pace of the recovery will depend greatly on our success in attracting foreign capital for exportgenerating investment. The main objective of the IMF programme is to build confidence in Iceland’s economy and economic policy. If that confidence existed now, it would be possible to lift the controls today. Considerable discussion has been devoted to the instability of foreign capital that could flee as soon as the controls that hold it in place are reduced or eliminated. Although the magnitude of foreigners’ frozen ISK assets is broadly known, information on non-resident retail owners of ISK assets is largely hidden.
Year 2004 was characterized by the achievement of fiscal objectives in terms of budget expenditures and budget deficit, and also by a more uniform allocation of fiscal expenditures. Government demand for loans has been distinguished by a rising level during the second semester, however remaining within the projected levels. Also, the annual rate of the change of current budget expenditures was stable. The implementation of a prudential fiscal policy has provided the appropriate conditions to better control inflation rate. During the second half of 2004, the Bank of Albania monetary policy has kept an easing tendency, aiming above all at reducing the borrowing cost in the economy. Bank of Albania has twice cut the core interest rate, in July and November, by 0.25 percentage points. These cuts have brought the core interest rate to the lowest historical rate, by 5.25 percent. The banking system was characterized by an accelerated lending activity to the economy during 2004. The credit balance increased by LEK 9.2 billion during June-November 2004, being 51 percent higher than the balance growth in the first semester of the year. Lending to the economy is given an everincreasing importance in the assets structure of the banking system, constituting a considerable source of the demand for monetary assets. The credit/deposit ratio increases on a continuous basis, an indication that positively introduces the function of the intermediation role of the banking system in supporting the economic development.

This rate is in compliance with the provided demand of the economy for money, coming from its real growth by 6 percent. The Bank of Albania monetary program is designed in line with other policies of the economy, where its harmonisation with the government fiscal policy is highlighted. The Bank of Albania estimates that like in the past years, even in 2005, the country's economic development will be in conformity with the overall development program objectives. The last developments of the banking system consolidate the optimism that it will fulfil to the best of its knowledge the role of financial intermediation in the economy. We deem that its consolidation will continue with accelerated rhythms throughout this year, providing to the large public more credits, more services and more security in the savings conduct. 2/2
Svein Gjedrem: Inflation targeting Address by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the seminar on foreign exchange policy issues arranged by the Association of Economists, Gausdal, 31 January 2003. The address is based on the assessments presented at Norges Bank’s press conference following the Executive Board’s monetary policy meeting on 22 January and on previous speeches. Please note that the text below may differ slightly from the actual presentation. *  *  *  The Norwegian economy exhibited strong growth from 1993 until 1998. This recovery brought the economy out of recession into a period of high economic activity. Mainland GPD and consumer prices Percentage change on previous year 6  6  5  5 Mainland GDP  4  4  Consumer prices  3  3  2  2  1  1 0  0 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002  Source: Statistics Norway  SG Gausdal 31.01.03  Growth in the mainland economy in the 1990s averaged over 3 per cent. Inflation was low and stable at around 2½ per cent annually, while it was higher than 8 per cent in the 1980s.

A positive output gap indicates a level of activity that fuels pressures on economic resources and rising price and cost inflation. (See for example Frøyland and Nymoen (2000) and Olsen, Qvigstad and Røisland (2003) for more on the output gap.) The optimism spread to Norway, where equity prices also rose. The level of activity was very high in the securities market, among corporate lawyers, consultancies and in the ICT industry. High oil prices through most of the 1990s resulted in buoyant investment activity and growth in operating expenses in the petroleum sector. With substantial government tax revenues, expectations concerning the use of petroleum revenues also rose. It became increasingly challenging to keep pressures in the economy at bay by means of fiscal policy. The response to this challenge was the revision of economic policy in spring 2001. The most important policy change was the strategy for the phasing in of petroleum revenues – the so-called fiscal rule. An inflation target for monetary policy was introduced at the same time. The revision came after four years of strong economic expansion and high growth in labour costs, pressures to spend petroleum revenues and high household credit growth. Implementation of monetary policy • The interest rate is set so as to keep inflation at a low and stable level • Higher interest rates will reduce inflation by curbing demand and strengthening the krone. An interest rate reduction has the opposite effect. • The effects of interest rates on inflation may vary over time.
Of course, it is not desirable that the only possibility is to withdraw the license of an institution whose capital adequacy falls below the eight per cent level. In Sweden, there is every reason to look more closely into the obligations and powers of authority of Finansinspektionen. Another motive for the authorities to act quickly is to be able to quickly pay the deposit guarantee. To be able to make the necessary preparations for this, the authorities therefore need to have access to and control over relevant data files at an early stage when an institution gets into difficulties. This has been a problem in earlier cases of compensation from the Swedish deposit guarantee. If the financial system is threatened, the authorities must also be able to temporarily take control over the bank to maintain vital functions. The banks’ central role in the payment system means that payment defaults by one bank can have substantial domino effects. The consequences for the rest of the financial system may then be difficult to survey. With regard to institutions lacking a long-term survival capacity, it is of course important that they are wound up as quickly and smoothly as possible. There must be several different alternative methods for winding up banks to make it possible to choose the model that is best suited and entails the least cost to society. Of course, it would be best if one could get another bank to take over this institution’s activities.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the development of the local bond market is central to Government’s strategy for diversification of the economy for one key reason. All businesses, including state owned enterprises, require finance, covering both equity and debt, and ranging from short-term to long-term. In the absence of a properly functioning local bond market, those in need of capital and qualified enough have had to turn to international financial markets to finance their local projects with the attendant exchange rate risk. Similarly, those seeking a competitive return on their investments that also meet their maturity preferences but are unable to find these features locally, have always sought out alternative avenues offshore in foreign currency, thereby creating pressures in the foreign exchange market. Therefore, Government’s involvement in improving the local bond market has been deliberate. Ladies and Gentlemen, Government’s participation in improving the functioning of the local bond markets has seen the establishment of appropriate market infrastructure that facilitates cost-effective and secure trading, and a transparent price discovery process. Further, Government’s decision to bring to market longer term bonds in 2005 have proved to be positive and catalytic for the local bond market as this has resulted in an extended yield curve that has provided a benchmark for pricing longer dated security issues by the private sector and banking industry.
Anita Angelovska Bezhoska: New statistical requirements in the post-crises era Speech by Ms Anita Angelovska Bezhoska, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, at the event on the occasion of the European Statistics Day, Skopje, 17 October 2018. * * * Dear Prime Minister of the Republic of Macedonia, Zoran Zaev Dear Eurostat Director General, Mariana Koceva Dear Ambassador of the European Union, Samuel Zbogar, Dear Finance Minister, Dragan Tevdovski Dear President of MANU, Taki Fiti Dear Rector, Nikola Jankulovski Dear Dean of the Faculty of Economics in Skopje, Ljubomir Drakulevski Dear Director of the SSO, Apostol Simovski Distinguished guests, This year we are marking the European Statistics Day, exactly ten years after the outbreak of the global crisis. Its intensity and duration were so pronounced that in the last ten years it has become usual to make almost all reviews and insights through the prism of the “pre-and postcrisis period", and this is probably not surprising given that the great shocks inevitably lead to reassessment of the conventional paradigms. The statistics as well is no exception in this respect. As the great depression highlighted the need for development of the national accounts statistics, while the Asian crisis the need to better perceive the links between the domestic financial system and capital inflows, leading to the development of several new statistical standards, the global crisis of 2008 once again brought the financial system into focus.

For example, in order to understand why the huge liquidity that the ECB brought into the banking system did not lead to stronger credit growth, granular data were needed, which will enable to better understand what drives the aggregates, and thus enabling the monetary policy to be more effective. All the statistical points indicated so far in one way or another are links within the G-20 statistical initiative, which, although not a formal framework for us, is a guideline we adhere to. In addition, this initiative is in synergy with other important international statistical standards, as well as European statistical requirements, which we, as a central bank, strive to follow. One such initiative is SDDS plus, as the third and highest pillar of the IMF’s statistical standards. I can proudly say that we, as a state, have shown a willingness to join this initiative, which is currently involving only 14 countries, actively working together with the SSO and the MoF to prepare all the requested data, thus preparing for accession to this highest standard are in the final stage. An additional aspect that brings new challenges to statisticians is the digitization process, which is also gaining momentum in the financial industry. Digitization and innovation of financial services imposes new challenges for their statistical monitoring and measurement.
At present we are using stress testing to help us judge how resilient the banking system is to different severely adverse, but plausible, scenarios. A development of this approach would be to use stress testing more countercyclically. Rather than testing every year against a scenario of constant severity, the severity of the test, and the resilience banks need to pass it, would be greater in boom times when credit and risk is building up in the financial system and it has further to fall and then reduced in weaker periods when there is less risk in the system and the economy needs the banking system to maintain lending. Third, macroprudential risk goes wider than the banking system. Risks can arise in other parts of the financial system and in the real economy. A year ago, the UK housing market was clearly developing significant momentum. Prices were growing much faster than incomes. Borrowers were increasingly driven to borrow a greater amount relative to their annual income. The amount of such new mortgages at high loan to income (LTI) ratios – borrowers borrowing over 4 times their annual income – had exceeded its pre-crisis peak. The risk the Committee saw was that if the number of high LTI mortgages continued to grow, there would be increasing numbers of highly indebted households very vulnerable to a change in economic circumstances. This would increase both macroeconomic volatility and systemic risk. The Committee came to the view that this was a macroprudential risk that needed to be insured against.

1/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  Indeed, the various measures that were implemented have been instrumental in accelerating the e-payment agenda forward, only because of the cooperation of the industry, sometimes with a bit of nudging. But truth be told, we have been able to achieve so much. Today, the payments industry is no longer the exclusive domain of banks. The advent of FinTech driven by the increasingly inexpensive and pervasive internet and mobile technology has encouraged the entry of more agile non-bank players as potential disruptors or collaborators of the incumbent players. This has set the stage for an exciting new era in payments, an era in which the industry is expected to take on a larger role in delivering a more robust and efficient payments system for Malaysia. The Bank will facilitate this in three key ways: i. First, through policy initiatives to encourage collaborative competition or ‘co-opetition’; ii. Second, by further strengthening industry alignment; and iii. Third, by supporting more inclusive governance arrangements for the development of the payment system. Policies to promote co-opetition as a key enabler for greater efficiency, competition and innovation Network effects are critical to an efficient payment system. The larger the network of a payment system, the more valuable it is to users of the payment system.
There is often a web of details to be ascertained in each case of possible misconduct. Any premature updates to the public can also compromise investigations. In such situations, regulators would avoid alerting suspects who are under investigation at the outset, so as not to prejudice the investigations, in the process of evidence gathering. As a matter of due process, the MAS does not reveal information during ongoing investigations until the investigations have been concluded. Some of these considerations equally apply to the SGX as the frontline market regulator. 2/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  Notwithstanding this, the MAS supports putting out more information on our investigation outcomes and of our enforcement approach. Some of our recent measures include: (a) Press updates on our enforcement actions as well as publishing these on our website. (b) Enhanced disclosure of the MAS’ enforcement statistics through the use of infographics and dashboards in our Annual Report. This is to provide the public with a better overview of enforcement actions that the MAS has taken over the past year. Where appropriate, we will provide more information on our investigations that could be of public interest, as long as these do not compromise the reviews. (c) In 2016, we also published a monograph that explains the role of enforcement in the supervision of Singapore’s capital markets. We are in the process of updating the monograph by later this year.

As ever, we remain in the price stability business. The open question is how we will act in order to achieve the 2% inflation target sustainably, given the substantial challenges of the moment. That is the question on which I hope to shed some light this evening. Before developing this theme, let me start by recognising what a privilege it is to gather with the ‘Money Marketeers’ here in New York tonight. I would particularly like to thank Kris Dawsey for extending the invitation to speak. I understand that the objective of this longstanding group is ‘to foster greater understanding of finance and economics among senior practitioners and developing professionals [so as] to establish greater dialogue between the public and private sector on those substantive issues that move markets’. [1] Meeting that objective is a tall order. Today, I hope to make a modest contribution in support of this collective effort by exploring some of the similarities and differences between the outlook for monetary policy back home in the UK and the outlooks in other jurisdictions.
As time goes on, we will sort out what we are learning and set priorities. In my comments today, I have chosen to focus on two observations that seem to me to offer important tentative lessons with regard to our own specific experience since early August. As I said at the outset, I am very much looking forward to reading thorough and rigorous academic analyses on these and other topics once we gain some perspective on the current market turbulence. BIS Review 141/2007  7  Figure 1: Banking problems worldwide, 1980-96. Source: Goodhart et al.

The devastating consequences of an unstable banking system have been demonstrated, for instance, by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in a series of seminal papers about the Great Depression. 6 A third and perhaps more subtle reason why we as central bankers care about financial stability relates to the role of central banks as lenders of last resort. Due to their monopoly as issuers of money, only central banks can provide a virtually unlimited amount of liquidity in times of distress. This fact inevitably confronts central banks with potentially large liabilities. In order to limit the risks to ourselves and ultimately to the economy as a whole, we have strong incentives to limit the size of these potential liabilities. Moreover, we want to limit the probability that these potential liabilities materialize in the first place. Simply put, through our lending of last resort function, we provide disaster insurance to banks. In return, we want to  2  The SFBC was founded in 1934. This was at least in part a response to the banking problems experienced during the Great Depression, which affected Switzerland particularly hard. 3  See Milton Friedman, 1969, The Optimum Quantity of Money and Other Essays. 4  Comparative GDP figures are difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, comparing the banking sector’s total assets with total GDP provides some clue about the banks’ importance. In Switzerland, the ratio of total banking assets to GDP is 10%, in the US 1%, in the UK 3%, in Germany 3%, and in Japan 2%.
In recent years, average inflation has been fairly close to, but somewhat lower than, the target of 2.5 per cent. Consumer price inflation peaked in October 2008, and has since receded. In April this year, CPI inflation was 2.9 per cent. Inflation measured by the CPI varies somewhat from month to month, primarily reflecting wide fluctuations in energy prices, but also other temporary disturbances amplify the variations. CPIXE inflation shows developments in the consumer price index adjusted for tax changes and excluding temporary changes in energy prices. This indicator provides a better picture of underlying inflation. By this measure, underlying inflation peaked at 3 per cent last autumn. Underlying inflation has since slowed somewhat and was 2.7 per cent in April. Interest rates increase in favourable periods when inflation is expected to rise and when growth and inflation recede. The interest rate is a rough instrument that we can use to keep inflation in check over time and thereby contribute to smoothing fluctuations in output and employment. We have seen that when the interest rate is increased to curb the rise in prices for goods and services, interest rate-setting also contributes to stabilising asset prices. The task of steering inflation is in itself a demanding one. The instrument at our disposable must not be overburdened by too many tasks. There is a division of responsibility for economic policy. Wage formation and economic structures and incentives lay the basis for how efficiently labour and other real economic resources are used in the long term.

In November, they described the turnaround as a “heart attack”. Government authorities worldwide have taken comprehensive measures designed to improve banks’ liquidity and solidity, boost demand for goods and services and restore the smooth functioning of credit markets. In several countries, central bank benchmark rates have been set at close to zero. In Norway, a series of measures have also been implemented to mitigate the impact of the financial crisis. Norges Bank has supplied more liquidity to banks and eased the collateral requirements for loans. We have provided liquidity at longer maturities, introduced foreign exchange swaps involving both the US dollar and the euro in order to supply Norwegian krone liquidity, and loaned US dollars to Norwegian banks, which we ourselves procured from the Federal Reserve. Norges Bank’s key policy rate has been reduced by 4.25 percentage points to 1.5 per cent since 15 October 2008. To facilitate banks’ access to funding, the government has provided banks with access to liquid government securities in exchange for covered bonds issued by mortgage companies. Moreover, the government has increased loans and guarantees for Norwegian exports and raised state bank lending quotas. At the same time, Folketrygdfondet has increased its bond purchases. In order to bolster banks’ solidity, the government plans to supply risk capital to Norwegian banks through the Norwegian State Finance Fund. To restrain the decline in activity in the Norwegian economy, central government expenditure will be increased by 10 per cent this year.