samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
There is a saying which is common to the Chinese and Arabs which goes, “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”. I am glad to note that a lot of progress has already been made on all the three tasks. However, the journey ahead is long. Let us continue to work together towards integrating the Islamic financial markets. In this way, we can grow much faster and much more, bringing greater economic benefit to our regions. Finally, we are honored to be given the opportunity to host IFSB’s 6th annual Summit next year, which will be a landmark event for Singapore and our Islamic finance industry. May I  3  Islamic Research and Training Institute. 4  Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance. 5  International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance. 4  BIS Review 63/2008  thank the IFSB Council, Professor Rifaat and the IFSB secretariat. I would like to extend a very warm welcome to you all to Singapore. BIS Review 63/2008  5

Trust is a term that is closely related to confidence and credibility. Trust is understood to mean when individuals share a mutual understanding that the rules of conduct governing their network work well and make things better for everyone. Trust can therefore be thought of as a kind of social capital - a shared asset that benefits everyone. Just as we speak about trust between individuals and public institutions, the same is true for publicly traded firms that interact with markets. With trust, economic systems and networks are more efficient for less effort is spent on monitoring and checking. With the establishment of trust, confidence is developed. Over time, as trust is built up, confidence and credibility are developed. Maintaining price stability is a key trust-building responsibility of the Swiss National Bank. Protracted changes in the price level, as a rule, stem from a malfunctioning of the monetary system. Price stability is important particularly because relative prices in our market economy govern the production and consumption of individual goods. Changes in the price level are liable to give misleading signals and lead to expensive mistakes in planning and investment. Inflation has other dire consequences. For the less fortunate - those unable to protect themselves against price increases - inflation means an erosion in purchasing power. This is especially true for fixed income investments. In contrast, for those that can protect themselves against inflation, it means  BIS Review 50/2002  1  that considerable resources are squandered in trying to hedge against inflation.
First, it results in the decline in the use of cash in transactions, which calls into question the availability of central bank money for the public. Increased reliance on digital payment solutions also shows how our European ecosystem has become critically dependant on non-European players (eg international card schemes and Bigtechs). Meanwhile, the emergence of crypto-assets and so-called stablecoins may compete against both commercial and central bank money, even though they do not offer the same guarantees in terms of credit risk and safety: the recent collapse of the Terra-Luna ecosystems or the sudden liquidity shortage of Celsius Network are necessary wake-up calls. I strongly welcome here, on the last days of a fruitful French Presidency of the EU, the successful trilogues on Transfer Fund Regulation (Travel Rule) and Markets in CryptoAssets (MiCA). 2. Even if the precise use cases are not yet definitively fixed, there are several material reasons to consider the issuance of a digital euro The main rationale for a digital euro is therefore to preserve the role of public money in a digital economy.

I should like, more modestly, in my remarks to offer some reflections, based upon my nearly forty years experience of working at the Bank, on the relevance, first, of monetary and broader economic policy to that question; on the relevance, secondly, of the activity of the City financial institutions; and on the relevance, finally, of the work of the international financial institutions with which the Bank of England is involved. But let me at the outset identify a common theme that underlies my remarks on all three of these areas. Don’t think that the root of the problem is that people generally simply don’t care. The harsh reality is that, with the best will in the world, we do not have - personally as far as most of us are concerned but certainly, collectively - locally, nationally or internationally - sufficient resources to satisfy all our aspirations. And since those aspirations are continuously increasing as standards do in fact gradually rise, I don’t suppose we ever will have that capacity. So we are obliged to make choices: if we devote resources to this or that purpose we will not have resources to devote to this or that other purpose however desirable in itself that other purpose may be. An absolutely fundamental issue is, of course, how and by whom such collective decisions are taken.
However, the other side of causality has not been mentioned much. Economic instability triggered by inflation is one of the main factors that leads to political instability. In other words, political instability creates inflation and inflation invokes political instability. Hence, high inflation and political instability create a vicious circle. When we look at the effects of high inflation on the economic sphere, we see that deposit savers put most of their savings into unproductive areas such as foreign currency and real estate with the aim of protecting themselves from the impacts of an inflationary environment. However, keeping most of their savings as foreign currency has achieved nothing and created real revenue loss. This is due to the fact that for economic units, the long-term revenue of foreign currency remained below the revenues of Turkish lira assets, despite devaluations in the Turkish lira. When we look at this from the investment angle, since there is a kind of tax burden on investments, this creates an additional cost for investors and causes seasonal volatility in investment. This leads to diversifications in economic growth rates. As a result, growth rates drop in countries experiencing high inflation in the long-run, moreover the quality of growth deteriorates. The average growth in the last 20 years in Turkey has lagged behind most of the developing countries. In our country, continual high inflation, apart from having a negative impact on economic growth, has led to the erosion of the quality of products and services and has caused an unrelenting regression in our competitiveness.

But it was evident too in the formation earlier last  BIS Review 8/2002  1  year of the Guild of International Bankers, our co-hosts this evening, and of which you, Lord Mayor locum tenens, are the Founding Master. It takes on the mantle - or, perhaps more appropriately, takes over the ledger - from the Bankers Club which has contributed so much to the City's professional esprit de corps over so many years. So it has, as I said, been a long, hard year, President, but it has certainly had its positive moments. And I should like to conclude by paying tribute this evening to the role of the City Corporation and of the Mayoralty, and their contribution to many of the positive developments we have seen - through their own example in promoting community involvement, including their support for the Heart of the City campaign; through their own role in maintaining security and co-ordinating the "public" infrastructure - both vital to all our contingency plans; and through their support for the fundamentally international character of the City, not least in opening the way to the Guild. I am profoundly grateful to them for all the help and support they give to us all. It is in that context that I ask you now to rise and join me in a toast to "the Rt Hon The Lord Mayor, the Corporation of the City of London and the Sheriffs." 2  BIS Review 8/2002
Svein Gjedrem: From oil and gas to financial assets – Norway’s Government Pension Fund – Global Speech by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the conference “Commodities, the Economy and Money” in Calgary, Canada, 20 June 2008. *  *  *  Introduction Good morning and thank you for the invitation to this highly topical conference. I have been asked to talk about the “objectives and experience of the Norwegian oil fund”. In doing so, I will try to explain the set-up and purpose of the Fund and draw some preliminary conclusions about the outcome so far. Since Norway became an oil nation some 40 years ago, the petroleum sector has grown to become an important part of our economy. Today, petroleum accounts for approximately 25 per cent of Norway’s gross domestic product (GDP). And even though the production of oil is declining after peaking around the turn of the millennium, total petroleum production will remain high for many years to come. The economic challenges posed by petroleum extraction were widely recognised early on. As early as in 1974, the Norwegian parliament discussed these challenges in depth, and in the early 1980s, the idea of a fund that would stabilise petroleum revenue spending was launched. Due to domestic economic turmoil and financial crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it took time before the idea of a fund was turned into actual savings. Why a Pension Fund? The Government Petroleum Fund was formally established in 1990.

Achieving success in becoming a world-class player in an environment of greater competition will hinge on the ability of the Malaysian financial services industry to innovate and provide enhanced value propositions for consumers. This underscores the importance of capacity building by the financial institutions in research and development and re-engineering of business processes in search of operational excellence and enhanced customer service delivery. A strong culture of excellence is therefore vital: one that is embedded into all levels of the organisation; one that fosters and rewards innovation and service quality. A customer-centric approach is, and will continue to be, the winning formula for a financial institution to make its mark as a world class financial services provider. Ladies and Gentlemen, While it is acknowledged that substantial investments in terms of time and resources are required for an institution to develop into a world-class player, it is envisaged that the learning curve can be made considerably steeper via collaboration between financial institutions with complementary strengths. This has been one of the underlying premises in the approach taken by Bank Negara Malaysia in granting the new takaful licences to consortia of financial institutions. Such strategic alliances are expected to promote greater efficiency gains within the takaful industry, leading to greater benefits to consumers. This in turn should translate into the takaful operators making the quantum leap forward.
Thank you for your attention. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches

The new centre in Singapore will facilitate the sharing of cyber threat information in a timely manner, and enable a rapid and coordinated response to emerging threats. Second, MAS is reviewing its Technology Risk Management Guidelines. We do this regularly, but this time we are doing it differently. For the first time, MAS is partnering the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) to cocreate the guidelines. We will develop cyber risk management guidance with the industry, for the industry. Third, penetration testing. MAS already requires key financial institutions to conduct penetration testing of their cyber defences by independent third-parties. We need to go further. MAS is partnering ABS to establish guidelines for “red-teaming”, to enhance cyber security testing. Red-teaming is a covert penetration test conducted on a financial institution’s live environment – its people, processes and technology – to assess their ability to respond to infiltration attempts. It will complement other forms of testing and assessments that are already in place. I cannot emphasise enough how mission-critical cyber security is to the FinTech agenda. SOME POTENTIALLY TRANSFORMATIONAL FINTECH INITIATIVES I have described our strategies. Let me now highlight five specific FinTech projects in Singapore that could potentially prove transformative in solving real-world problems. Enhancing Customer On-Boarding: KYC Utility First, solving the “know-your-customer” (KYC) problem. KYC is one of the biggest pain points in the financial industry. It is an obligation in any customer on-boarding. But the process is costly, laborious, duplicative, and still not all that effective in detecting tax evasion or money laundering.
If current rates of machine advance were to continue, it is simply a matter of time before humans lose pole position. And, once passed, what hope of humans ever catching up? As the evolutionary arc of humans split from animals thousands of years ago, the upwards arc of machines may be about to detach from humans. Some of the writing is already on the wall. In 1997, a significant milestone was passed when the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion, Gary Kasporov. A generation later in 2016, another milestone was passed when an algorithm called AlphaGo, developed by AI company DeepMind, for the first time beat the world champion at Go (a game considerably more complex than chess), Lee Sedol. These are just board games and two-person board games at that. The game of life is infinitely more complex, involving many-more moves among many-more combinations of players. Nonetheless it is worth asking how machines compare when it comes to the everyday, but complex, tasks humans perform. Looked at function by function, some of that paranoia about the rise of the robots begins to look justified. The processing capacity of super-computers already exceeds the human brain by an order of magnitude. Courtesy of Moore’s Law, that gap will widen at an ever-increasing rate over time. For some critical faculties - seeing, hearing, learning - machines are already well ahead of humans. The sensors in a self-driving car have far-better vision than any human. Alexa already does a much better job of hearing than Andy.

Financial services are a critical tool to help people step onto the economic growth ladder and create a brighter future by tapping their own creativity in creating jobs and incomes. It can also be instrumental for broader human development, by letting clients invest in themselves and seek protection from shocks and bad fortune. It is however, gratifying to note that following the survey, commercial banks and other nonbank financial institutions in Zambia have increasingly become receptive to lending to small and medium-sized enterprises and have in this regard established departments dedicated to small and medium enterprise lending and introduced financial products specifically designed to meet the financing needs of these businesses. In working with Banking on Health, banks have shown interest in learning about the private health sector, a sector whose business characteristics were largely unknown to banks. However, banks can still misunderstand the risks, overestimate the costs, and underestimate the potential returns of lending to sectors, such as the health sector. In addition to the structural barriers in the financial sector that limit access to finance, many private health care providers have limited financial and business-management skills and often struggle to prepare a bankable loan applications or business proposals. It is difficult for commercial banks to assess the credit risk of a loan without the financial statements and business plans to support the loan application.
Svante Öberg: My view of monetary policy 2006–2011 Speech by Mr Svante Öberg, First Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at Handelsbanken, Stockholm, 18 March 2011. *  *  *  I have now been at the Riksbank for over five years and my appointment as Deputy Governor of the Riksbank expires at the turn of the year. I will have celebrated my 65th birthday by then and I have informed the General Council of the Riksbank that I will not be seeking reappointment. This makes it natural for me to look back at the conduct of monetary policy over the last five years and, in the light of this experience, discuss the direction of monetary policy in the years ahead. The three theses that I will argue for in this speech are:   Monetary policy was too expansionary before the financial crisis    Monetary policy worked well during the crisis    The repo rate needs to be raised at every meeting this year (and perhaps next year too)  Monetary policy was too expansionary in the years before the financial crisis My first thesis is thus that monetary policy was too expansionary in the years before the full force of the financial crisis hit the world in September 2008. This applies both in Sweden and abroad. I will present arguments to support this thesis in this section. Abroad Monetary policy was expansionary in the years before the financial crisis in both the United States and the euro area.

They were also implemented during a limited period of time and thus did not become part of a more permanent support system. The Riksbank thus reacted quickly to the problems that arose. Of course, the Swedish banks were not exposed to the US housing market to any great extent. But they were dependent on the markets functioning in order to get funding. In order to cover the loss of normal funding channels, the Riksbank provided loans of approximately SEK 500 billion during the autumn of 2008.12 This increased the Riksbank’s balance sheet total from approximately 7 per cent to approximately 22 per cent of GDP, that is more than the balance sheets of the Federal Reserve (FED) and the European Central Bank (ECB) in relation to GDP. Around half of this lending was in kronor and half in dollars. In order to be able to lend so much in dollars, the Riksbank borrowed dollars from the FED through a rapidly-concluded swap agreement. The Riksbank’s own dollar assets were far too small. In the autumn of 2008, the foreign currency reserve corresponded to SEK 200 billion and was invested in a number of different currencies. In 2009, the reserve was strengthened by borrowing approximately SEK 100 billion via the Swedish National Debt Office (see Figure 14). Monetary policy also reacted quickly and forcefully. The repo rate was cut rapidly from 4.75 per cent in September 2008 to 0.25 per cent in July 2009. The largest cut came already in December 2008.
7  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  7  Chart 5 Interest rate expectations track actual interest rates9  Given the long and painful recovery from the financial crisis and the fall in house prices, expectations of future income and of future house prices were depressed. Consumer confidence hit an all-time low after the GFC and remained subdued until 2014. Expectations of future interest rates may also have been low; however to the extent that the low risk free rate in the period was associated with a recession, this may not have had an upward effect on price. One would expect these factors to have waned following the economic expansion beginning in 2013, though real pay growth did not start to recover until some years later. Brexit uncertainty following the referendum result in 2016 is likely to have had a further general dampening effect on expectations. Moreover, as well as changing the expectation of future economic prospects, the financial crisis and the recession and unemployment may well have increased household risk aversion. Psychological scarring following crises can cause perceptions of risk to become overstated, and lead households to prioritise balance sheet repair in response10. Miles and Monro, “UK house prices and three decades of decline in the risk-free real interest rate”, forthcoming 10 For a more detailed discussion, see Haldane, A.

Previously, we’ve seen transactions spike prior to the end of stamp duty holidays, followed by a brief trough before transactions start to recover, consistent with a large share of the impact coming through shifts in the timing of transactions, rather than an aggregate increase in demand.20  But there may also be some reasons to believe that the recent increase in demand for housing, and perhaps the composition of that demand, which has driven the UK market in recent months reflects some more persistent drivers and that the market will not fall back to its pre-pandemic decade performance when the tax incentives have gone. A survey conducted by Nationwide in April found that, amongst homeowners moving or considering a move as a result of the pandemic, three-quarters of them said they would still be moving or considering moving even if the stamp duty holiday hadn’t been extended. Moreover, the stamp duty holiday in Scotland has already come to an end with no material drop-off in demand. There has been a clear shift in attitudes towards remote working – both by employees and employers - as a result of the pandemic. According to the Understanding Society Covid special survey, half of respondents who have been working from home during the last year report wanting to work from home often or always once social distancing measures end, compared to just over one in ten prior to the pandemic.
Second, forward guidance remains the anchor for monetary policy. As I explained before, for our first interest rate hike to be implemented, all three of the well-known conditions need to be met. Another crucial element of this forward guidance is the sequencing of the exit strategy, whereby we will not raise interest rates until net purchases under our asset purchase programme have come to an end. Third, given what I have just said regarding inflation prospects, we cannot rule out the possibility that all the conditions in our forward guidance will be met sooner than we had expected some months ago. And as a result, movements in our monetary policy towards normalization seem more likely. In the coming months, we will have to decide how to exercise our optionality. And as far as this how is concerned, the key word should be, in my view, gradualism. In other words, I see no reason to overreact. This view is based on several considerations. We first have to take into account that the length of the medium term, which is the time horizon of our monetary policy orientation, is dependent on the state of the economy and the nature of the shocks hitting it. When demand shocks prevail, the medium-term horizon is shorter and closer to the standard transmission lag of around two years.

All of these factors reflect the design and intent of the new framework as well as the process that we followed to develop it. The third and final topic that I would like to address this morning concerns what supervisors are doing right now to prepare for Basel II’s implementation - and what banks can do as well. 4. What are we doing to prepare for Basel II’s implementation? Now that the framework has been published, the Basel II project has entered a new phase focusing on implementation. Over the coming months and years, reality checks will continue to play a role for both bankers and supervisors in ensuring Basel II’s validity and feasibility as we implement the new framework. For our part, I believe that we can divide supervisors’ preparations into three main areas of  BIS Review 66/2004  3  focus. These include reviewing the calibration of the new framework; adjustments to the framework to reflect advances in risk management practices; and fostering a more consistent application of Basel II across jurisdictions. I’ll take a few moments to outline our work in each area. a)  Evaluate calibration of Basel II  First, the Committee has long expressed its commitment to ensuring that the framework performs as intended before it is implemented. This includes reviewing whether the framework delivers the amount of capital that we believe is necessary to protect the safety and soundness of individual banks on the one hand, and the broader banking system on the other.