samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Nick Leeson, at the time a despised and corrupt rogue-trader, today a much-admired realityTV star and after-dinner speaker, had put a huge hole in the Barings boat. Over the weekend, then-Governor Eddie George tried hard to assemble a lifeboat. All visits to London Zoo were cancelled. But the lifeboat failed and with it Barings. That Barings was allowed to fail, and did so without rupturing the system, is a key lesson for today, to which I will return later. So what does this tell us about how the Bank of England’s role had evolved on entering the 20th century? The Bank now spoke and acted as steward of the financial system, marshalling its own and others’ financial resources to keep the financial system panic-free. The Bank was at the frontline of crisis management. But these episodes also contained lessons. When the first Barings crisis came, the Bank had been reactive and backfoot. It had been blindsided by the risk to its own and the financial system’s balance sheet. The Bank was finding its feet as a crisis-container. But in attitude and expertise, it was a world away from being an effective crisis-preventer. Supporting the economy Fast forward to the start of the First World War. William Lidderdale had been replaced as Bank Governor by Walter Cunliffe. Cunliffe was not what would these days be called an equal opportunities employer. The Bank’s staff rules were stifling and sexist – although were ahead of their time compared to other City firms.

But when the landscape is dark and threatening, those charged with making monetary policy must comport themselves with a grace that reassures markets and the public that they are calmly in control of the sacred charge with which they have been entrusted. They must keep their “cool” even when the vast, infinite cry of the money changers reaches a fevered pitch, the economic seas are blue-black and the clouds in the financial markets are red as blood and tongues of fire. Presenting an image comparable to that of the visage depicted by Edvard Munch – of policymakers trembling with anguish at the daunting demands of their profession – would provide scant comfort to those who depend upon them to maintain their composure and skate ably across a cold and foreboding economic landscape, seeking to guide the economy to a better place. Central banks are just one vehicle for influencing overall macroeconomic behavior, in addition to influencing through regulation the microeconomic agents that transmit that influence to the markets – banks of deposit and other financial institutions. We work alongside another potent macroeconomic lever: fiscal authorities – governments that have the power to tax the people’s money, spend it in ways they deem appropriate, and create laws and regulations that influence microeconomic behavior. Unless fiscal authorities can structure their affairs to incent the private sector into putting the cheap and ample money the Fed has provided to the economy to work in job creation, monetary policy will prove impotent.
Banks were stronger. In the UK they were three times better capitalized than at end 2008. And to be clear –very significant government support and central bank interventions were required. I’ll come back to this later. But there is one other reason for the missing panic that I want to focus in on. After the 2008 global financial crisis, the G20 put in place reforms designed to make the global financial system simpler - to untangle the spaghetti bowl of bilateral derivatives trades that had fed the 2008 panic.2 They incentivised - and for many products mandated - central clearing of derivative trades. Global clearing has as a result, grown significantly in the past decade. Today, about 60% of credit default swaps are cleared, as well as 80% of interest rate contracts, up from about 10% and 40% respectively in 2008.3  This brought greater stability to derivative markets by ensuring that if a major financial institution were to collapse, you needn’t worry about a domino effect – with the failing firm’s derivatives contracts potentially threatening the viability of any number of other firms.4 1  Ben Bernanke, Op-Ed at Brookings Institution, 13 September 2018 G20 Leaders’ Statement Pittsburgh Summit, September 2009. 3 Bank of International Settlements Statistical Release, November 2020 4 Although it’s not my focus today, reforms to bilateral derivatives trading have also helped to reduce the chance that bilateral contracts fuel a panic.

The Rt Hon Sir Edward George GBE: Towards a safer banking system  Speech by The Rt Hon Sir Edward George GBE, Governor of the Bank of England, to the Association of Professional Bankers Sri Lanka 12th Anniversary Convention, on 27 August 2000. *  *  *  Mr Governor, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is an immense pleasure, and a very great honour, to have been invited to address this Annual Convention. The theme of the convention is “Towards a safer banking system”. It is a theme which gladdens my heart. The safety of the banking system is fundamental to financial stability in a broader sense. It is vitally important, of course, to you - as professional commercial bankers. But it is vitally important, too, to us, central bankers, because you simply cannot have monetary or broader economic stability, which is a key part of our responsibilities, without stability of the financial system - they go together like love and marriage! And monetary and financial stability are vitally important, too, to our societies at large and to the individuals that make up our societies - they are absolutely necessary, if not in themselves sufficient, conditions for the economic prosperity to which we all aspire. The question is what can we do - working together - to improve the safety of our banking systems.
In short, the following is needed: •  An insolvency regime which ensures that banks can be effectively closed at a low cost to the deposit guarantee system  •  An effective depositor protection with a quick pay-out to depositors and a credible financing  •  The ability to take special measures, such as guarantees, to avoid the failure of a bank threatening the financial system in its entirety  •  A broad tool box to be able to enforce, also in those exceptional cases, the principle that the state will not bear the losses of shareholders and creditors, where it should be possible to tie conditions to any guarantee issued and with the option of temporary nationalisation as a last resort. But drawing up a broad structure is perhaps the easiest part. After that, it is necessary to find a concrete legal framework. In the end, this responsibility falls on our governments. A few countries seem to have much of this in place already. And some have come quite far in this work and devote quite a lot of resources to the project. Those that have not I think are well advised to get started. It is just never a good idea to set up the fire brigade first when the city is on fire. 10  BIS Review 62/2008  But it is a delicate task trying to find an efficient and legally secure system which will also work cross border.

One means is to fix a system that enables the authorities to take control over the bank and to write down not only capital but also claims in an orderly manner, while extending a guarantee to the new financing needed when the bank is under public control. The payments needed to maintain the stability of the financial system would be effectuated, while other payments could be temporarily stopped. A draft model for such a system was presented by the Banking Law Committee in Sweden in 2000 and the proposal is currently being considered by the Swedish Government. As I understand it, there is also work being done in other countries to bring about solutions that would mean that the authorities could claim in all credibility that it was possible to reduce claims even in more complex cases, where there was a risk to financial stability. Ideas that have been put forward include immediately being able to impose a partial payment stop on certain claims, haircuts, in connection with the authorities taking control over the bank and transferring the assets to a temporary bank, known as a bridge bank. To be effective, all these proposals make considerable demands for having IT systems in place that can quickly distinguish different types of claims. A number of other preparations are also required, for instance to be able to transfer contracts.
Developments throughout the 1990s would seem to suggest that this channel is gaining in importance. However, it is difficult to quantify with any degree of accuracy to what extent monetary policy affects price expectations. The relationship between monetary policy and price expectations is probably fairly unstable. This will be dependent on confidence in the implementation of monetary policy. The Executive Board of Norges Bank currently assesses the Bank’s key rates eight times a year on previously announced dates. In addition to making decisions on interest rates, after each of these monetary policy meetings the Bank issues a statement on its assessment of probable interest rate changes in the future. At the press conference on 9 August announcing the most recent rise in interest rates, the following statement was issued: “today’s decision to raise interest rates brings the overall increase in interest rates to 1.25 percentage points from the beginning of the year. This represents a substantial step in the adjustment of the interest rate that is appropriate on the basis of the analyses in the June Inflation Report. However, the probability that the next change in interest rates will be an increase remains greater than the probability of a reduction”.

Page 1  Competitiveness and productive investment: What parts do they play in the reform of insurance regulation? – speech by Charlotte Gerken Given at JP Morgan European Insurance Conference  Page 2  Published on 14 June 2022  Charlotte Gerken talks about the goals of competitiveness and productive investment, and the impact these are having on the Review of Solvency II. She says that changes to regulations for UK insurers could help to achieve these goals. Then she focuses on: investment flexibility the valuation of liabilities process improvements  Speech Thank you for your introduction and for inviting me to this conference. Since the Government announced the Solvency II review, there has been much emphasis on the desirability of reform to enhance the insurance sector’s competitiveness and its capacity to make productive investment. Today I would like to outline how competitiveness and productive investment relate to the Prudential Regulation Authority’s (PRA) approach to the review by focussing on three areas: 1. Investment flexibility 2. The valuation of liabilities 3. Process improvements To put the review in context, though: the core framework underlying the Solvency II regime and its principles are broadly fit for purpose, and are in line with existing and emerging international standards. The review does not involve tearing it up and starting again – not least because of the substantial sums invested by industry in the last decade in adopting it. Industry responses to HM Treasury’s Call for Evidence[1] were largely in agreement with this approach.
Attackers can carry out sophisticated and prolonged attacks that can be difficult to identify and defend against. According to a study by FireEye, the median time it takes to detect a cyber intrusion is 78 days. We need some common risk management standards in cyber defence. The risk management systems in financial institutions and regulatory and supervisory frameworks for cyber resilience are uneven and still evolving. There is no international equivalent of the Basel Capital Accord in cyber risk management. But given the clear and present danger that cyber risk poses, MAS has put in place a mix of mandatory requirements and best practice guidelines in this area. Given their role as repositories of public monies and conduits for payments, banks in particular must meet higher cyber security standards. MAS expects banks to: limit unscheduled system downtime of their critical IT systems to not more than 4 hours within a year; conduct due diligence on third-party service providers’ controls to safeguard customer information; and report all significant cyber incidents to MAS within one hour. But cyber risk management should go beyond banks. The connectedness among participants in the financial system means that a cyber-attack on one party can potentially escalate into a more systemic problem. We need to level up the cyber resilience of all financial institutions, not necessarily to the level of banks but at least to a basic level – what we call cyber hygiene.

The Principles are centred on four pillars – fairness, ethics, accountability, and transparency. Hence, the short-hand name FEAT Principles. They are not prescriptive but represent an industry consensus that individual financial institutions take reference from when formulating their own data governance policies and practices. We believe that the FEAT Principles will help to promote public confidence and trust in the use of data analytics and artificial intelligence in our financial sector. Conclusion Let me conclude. Technology and Finance must come together. And they must do so in a manner that maintains Trust. Finance, Technology and Trust are like the three musketeers of old. Like Athos, Finance allocates resources to those who need it. Like Porthos, Technology represents the aspiration for Finance to innovate. Like Aramis, Trust engenders confidence in Finance. The motto of the three musketeers is: “Tous pour un, Un pour tous” – “One for all, All for one”. If Finance, Technology, and Trust can do the same, we can have innovation and dynamism with safety and stability. We can benefit not only the financial industry, but society at large. We can raise productivity, expand opportunity, and enrich the lives of our people. Thank you. 10 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches
The forces of innovation also raise a number of issues concerning the divergence of Shariah views underlying a number of the Islamic financial transactions. While such a divergence of opinions in Islamic financial transactions is not a new phenomenon, it has now prompted increased international dialogue among the Shariah scholars from the different parts of the world. It is the closer linkages between the global Islamic financial markets and the increased platforms for greater engagement on Shariah issues that will contribute towards promoting an increased common understanding and mutual acceptance on the rules, standards and Shariah views, and for convergence to occur. This would evolve global Shariah standards for the Islamic financial industry. As Islamic finance continues internationalise with expanding scale, there will be greater financial intermediation linkages among the East Asian, West Asian, and the Middle East regions – creating the "New Silk Road". While this New Silk Road of financial flows is enhancing connectivity between Asia and the Middle East, both regions have, as in the case of the old Silk Road, extended the New Silk Road to the rest of the world. Global investors  4  BIS Review 121/2008  and the international financial community have already drawn benefits from the increased diversification of investment activity to the two regions. The expansion of the interlinkages of intermediation to and among these regions would in turn contribute towards a more efficient allocation of capital in the global financial system.

This growth is spurred in part by the growing funding requirements in emerging market economies, in particular, in Asia and the Middle East. This is reinforced by the continued confidence of investors in the Islamic financial instruments. Malaysia's Islamic finance journey Let me now turn to Malaysia's journey in the development in Islamic finance. Islamic finance in Malaysia first started as a strategy for greater financial inclusion, so as to have a greater outreach to the underserved segment of society to basic banking and insurance products that are compatible with Shariah principles. After three decades, the Islamic financial industry in Malaysia has evolved as an integral and competitive component of the overall financial system that operates in parallel with the conventional financial system. The Malaysian Islamic financial system is founded on three major strategies. Firstly, the Islamic financial system has been evolved as a comprehensive financial system that is diversified in terms of its institutions, markets and players. The Islamic financial system comprises the Islamic banking institutions, the takaful industry, the non-banking institutions and the Islamic money and capital markets. The supporting financial infrastructure includes the robust regulatory and supervisory framework that is reinforced by the legal and Shariah framework, the payment and settlement systems and the mechanism for the liquidity operations by the Central Bank. The assets of the Islamic banking system now comprise 16% of the market, while the takaful sector has garnered 7% market share.
François Villeroy de Galhau: What can monetary policy do? Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, at the House of Finance Days of Paris-Dauphine University, Paris, 14 March 2016. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, It is a great pleasure for me to participate in this first edition of the House of Finance Days of Paris-Dauphine University. In order to “[imagine] the finance of tomorrow” – to quote the theme of this event – it is essential to understand all facets, and in particular to be able to decipher the prevailing environment. Through its three main tasks, the Banque de France plays a key role as, firstly, it implements monetary strategy, as a member of the Eurosystem alongside the European Central Bank in Frankfurt; secondly, it ensures financial stability, by supervising the banks, insurance firms and, more generally, the financial system; and, lastly, it provides an economic service to households and SMEs/VSEs. Today I will focus on the monetary policy that we conduct in the framework of the Eurosystem. Monetary policy has long been considered a technical or even an austere subject. But, since 2008, it has been far more widely discussed: central banks in different countries have played a major role, and a role largely hailed as positive, in exiting the crisis. Today, however, their actions to address the persistence of very low inflation are subject to debate. I would first like to talk about our objective, then our instruments and their effectiveness.

The number of guarantees approved during the period amounted to 1,668 with a total value of Rls 644 million against loans to the tune of Rls1.6 billion granted by banks under the umbrella of the program, which benefited about 1,113 small and medium enterprises. This is in addition to loans provided by the Saudi Credit and Savings Bank, for financing young people and small enterprises, as well as the Centennial Fund, and Abdul Latif Jameel’s “Finance Program” that provides material support for youth’s projects and training courses. Dear audience, In conclusion, I wish to emphasize that the status of small and medium enterprises in the Kingdom still needs a lot of care and an appropriate environment to perform their required roles in the economy, especially in the field of Saudization of jobs. This important symposium may, hopefully, discuss this topic from its different aspects and provide the necessary recommendations to assist competent authorities in making appropriate decisions for this important sector. Thank you all for listening and wish you success. BIS Review 171/2010  3
The annual return on the actual portfolio was ½ percentage point lower than the return on the benchmark portfolio. The results were not due to investment in high-risk fixed income instruments. At the end of 2008, as much as 64 per cent of the bonds in the Fund’s fixed income portfolio had the best  BIS Review 58/2009  5  credit rating, AAA, 20 per cent had the second best, AA, while ten per cent were rated A. Five per cent of bonds were rated BBB. Only one per cent of the fixed income portfolio has a lower credit rating. Realised losses as a result of bankruptcies have been low. How then can an excess return become negative from one year to the next? The Fund’s fixed income portfolio is well diversified across different types of bonds and different regions and the active strategies had low correlation in normal markets. However, the financial crisis revealed that these strategies were exposed to more underlying, systematic risk. Correlation was not expected to be high between investments in, for example, Japanese inflation-indexed government bonds, bonds issued by international organisations such as the European Investment Bank, European covered bonds and US mortgage-backed bonds. These experiences and the abrupt turnaround in market liquidity suggest that active management of the fixed income portfolio should be limited and measured on the basis of a number of criteria, as laid down by Norges Bank’s Executive Board. The Fund currently has extensive holdings of bonds that are difficult to trade in today’s market.

The financial crisis showed that the entry of foreign banking groups into a domestic market, besides advantages, it is also associated with elements of risk, which must be addressed duly and timely. Third, the countries in our region have different needs for investments, highlighting those in road infrastructure, energy and health care. Also, demographic developments, including migration, and slowing population growth trend, have brought about increased costs of public pension schemes and other elements of social protection. Therefore, despite fiscal consolidation efforts, budget deficits have been present and steady all the time. During the financial crisis period, public authorities were committed to overcoming the situation. Almost all governments of the countries in the region were committed to implementing fiscal stimulus policies, aimed at increasing the support to the real economy and the financial system. Monetary policy followed an easing trend, cutting the interest rates and satisfying the interbank market needs for liquidity. Back to Albania’s case, I would like to emphasize that our experience in absorbing the impacts of the crisis proved successful. Albania, I think, is one of the countries that:   Did not experience any bank failure or capital injection by the state;    Courageously withstood the crisis of confidence in the banking system, where financial intermediation was never interrupted;    The economy continued to grow in positive terms, albeit at a slower pace;    Inflationary expectations remained anchored throughout all time.