samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
And those four driving forces I mentioned at the start – the economic pressures on traditional business models, sharply-reduced technology barriers to entry, changing consumer preferences and pro-competition regulation – will only intensify the pace of change in the years 11  ahead. So what are the challenges? I would pick out two . First, customer acquisition is hard! Households and firms are loyal to their traditional suppliers: they will only switch if the offering is genuinely innovative, not just a good-looking piece of marketing. Similar considerations apply to central banking applications. Second, widespread adoption also requires attention to those two traditional characteristics of successful financial systems: scaleability and resilience. It is striking how much our conversations with leading firms have increasingly turned to these issues, even over the short period we have been running our Accelerator project. These topics are dear to central bankers’ hearts, and will play a central role in shaping the next stage in our engagement with FinTech. I look forward to our conversation today. 11  For a similar perspective, see also the most recent World Economic Forum report on FinTech: https://www.weforum.org/reports/beyond-fintech-a-pragmatic-assessment-of-disruptive-potential-in-financial-services.

I hope that what I have just shared with you on the topic of Central Bank Independence and our experiences in adopting inflation targeting as a nominal anchor will be of some uses as food for thoughts. Finally, I truly wish to congratulate the Bank of Ghana for the successful launching of Monetary Policy Committee. Thank you. 4  BIS Review 53/2002
It is often referred to as the distributed ledger’s native currency, used as a medium of exchange and store of value within the network, for example to pay transaction fees or incentivise users to keep the network secure. But cryptocurrencies have taken a life of their own outside of the distributed ledger – and this is the source of the crypto world’s problems. Cryptocurrencies are actively traded and heavily speculated upon, with prices that have nothing to do with any underlying economic value related to their use on the distributed ledger. The extreme price volatility of cryptocurrencies rules them out as a viable form of money or investment asset. This speculation in cryptocurrencies is what MAS strongly discourages and seeks to restrict. Let me now elaborate on Singapore’s strategy to develop a digital asset ecosystem as well as our regulatory approach to manage the risks of digital assets. SINGAPORE’S STRATEGY TO DEVELOP A DIGITAL ASSET ECOSYSTEM Our vision is to build an innovative and responsible digital asset ecosystem in Singapore. This is a core part of MAS’ overall FinTech agenda. As with everything else we do in FinTech, innovation through industry collaboration is key to growing the digital asset ecosystem. Crypto technologies are promising and there is great potential to improve financial services – this is a common goal shared by MAS, the financial industry, and the FinTech community. But the only way to find out what works is through experimentation and exploration – “learning by doing”.

In this respect, savings banks have always paid particular attention to the financial needs of households and companies integrated into the social fabric. Thus, by granting access to financial services to a large segment of society, they have made a considerable contribution to the increased efficiency of the financial sector and the economy. Secondly, we should not forget that savings banks allocate a high percentage of the profits they generate each year to financing social projects. Last but not least, the close relationship savings banks have with the region in which they are established is another of their differentiating and defining features. Throughout their history, they have been clearly committed to strengthening the social and economic fabric of their heartland, thus becoming key players in regional development. This, in turn, provides them with greater retail customer loyalty, which no doubt offers a higher degree of stability for their business model. Yet while all the foregoing is acknowledged and given the broad consensus that savings banks should retain their social commitments, I believe it should not be forgotten that, above all other considerations, they are deposit institutions. As such, and so as to promote the sound working of the financial system risk management, profitability and solvency should be at the heart of their concerns. Indeed, it is precisely through controlling risks, maintaining acceptable profitability and a level of solvency appropriate to their risk profile that savings banks will be able to survive and prosper over time.
Lately, we seem to have done better: market  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  participants now seem to share the Committee’s current assessment that policy rates will likely remain exceptionally low for a considerable period of time, even now that the asset purchase program has been completed. As you know, we’ve taken a number of steps in recent years to increase transparency and improve our communications. This includes regular press conferences by the Fed chair following FOMC meetings; the publishing of growth, inflation and short-term rate forecasts of FOMC participants; and a concerted attempt to lay out the guideposts that the FOMC will look at to assess progress toward our mandate. We are, though, still learning how to more effectively communicate, especially given our new and expanded set of policy instruments. A second area in which we can and must do better is safeguarding financial stability. Simply put, we failed to act both early enough and decisively enough to stem the credit excesses that spawned the financial crisis and the Great Recession. The U.S. was not alone in this shortcoming, but given our position in the global financial system, we especially should have done better. We’ve taken important steps through new legislative mandates and a broader effort to rethink our regulatory and supervisory framework. In particular, systemically important banking organizations must now hold amounts of capital and liquidity that are better aligned with their risk profiles, and the official sector is making progress in ensuring no financial firm will be too-big-to-fail.

So there is a limit to the scope of the Bank’s activities in this area. The success of the policy is not to be judged by the increase in bank lending. Its aim is to increase the money supply. There are already tentative signs that the programme is beginning to have beneficial effects with the growth rate of broad money picking up. So there are certainly grounds for believing that the rapid falls in activity are coming to an end. But there are some equally solid reasons for believing that the path to full recovery could be protracted. The most obvious is that the supply of bank lending to companies and  BIS Review 76/2009  1  households remains constrained. The stock of bank lending to non-financial companies has been falling in recent months, and household lending has been flat. Part of this undoubtedly reflects weak demand in the face of the recession. But the evidence from prospective borrowers, and the terms on which lenders are willing to extend credit, suggest that banks’ ability to finance a sustained recovery remains impaired by low levels of equity capital. Stress tests designed to assess the viability of banks are very different from tests of the capacity of the banking system to finance a recovery. Investors continue to demand high returns to finance banks. Put bluntly, market data on credit spreads imply that some banks are viewed as a worse credit risk than some of their customers.
Finally, it is important throughout the process of restructuring a banking system that the general public does not have to fear for the loss of their life savings. A reliably funded deposit insurance mechanism, a central bank that can provide liquidity to solvent, viable banks and a wellfunctioning payments system are essential elements of the public sector safety net. The safety net’s true beneficiaries are not financial institutions, but the general public. IV. The Role of the Basle Committee What do I see as the near and medium-term role of the Basle Committee and this organization of banking supervisors? What should be our goals to meet before the next such conference, to take place in New York in the Year 2000? Let me begin by saying that the Core Principles lay out the major highway to effective banking supervision, but do not provide a detailed street plan. One important element of feedback we are receiving from the Core Principles Liaison Group, consisting of members of the Basle Committee and members of the emerging markets, along with more informal feedback, is the need to provide more detailed street plans. There are several ways to achieve that. BIS Review 86/1998  -8-  The first is to continue to elaborate on the Core Principles by producing papers on key topics to augment and update the Compendium. The Compendium is the set of relevant papers issued over the years by the Basle Committee which elaborate further on the Core Principles and provide the next level of detail.

As banks develop new methods of evaluating capital adequacy, we can consider whether these approaches provide new tools for assessing capital adequacy from a supervisory perspective. The second area is transparency. The challenge of understanding the impact of changes in the financial system on banks and financial markets should add impetus to our efforts to increase transparency in the financial markets. As understanding the nature of the borrower and its risks becomes more complex, the demand for better and more timely information is increasing. Moreover, we supervisors have a special interest in putting good information in the hands of investors, lenders and counterparties, and that is the powerful assistance that market discipline can provide supervisors. We have seen how a bank’s equity price, its funding spreads and its access to markets can provide feedback on the bank’s prospects, and how these market signals can be a decisive factor in motivating management to address problems. We also have seen through current events how the absence of sufficient information can mask critical weakness in the corporate and banking sectors, leading initially to an over-optimism that is followed by excessive risk aversion. The Basle Committee has created two working groups, the Transparency Subgroup, led by Susan Krause of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Accounting Task Force, led by Nick LePan, of the Office of Supervision of Financial Institutions in Canada, to suggest ways in which banks, bank supervisors, the accounting community and others can further transparency.
Secondary market purchases of Treasury securities reached about $ billion per month during the second LSAP program (a time when proceeds from agency debt and MBS were being reinvested in Treasuries), and we doubled our per-issue concentration limit from 35 percent to 70 percent. Meanwhile, monthly purchases of agency MBS were successfully ramped up from a pace of $ billion per month for just reinvestments in the first half of 2012 to more than $ billion per month later that year when additional purchases under the third LSAP program were also conducted. This volume represented a substantial share of monthly gross issuance.25 Staff actively monitored indicators of market functioning available in the broader market and through our own operations for signs of any material deterioration.26 As necessary, we modified our operational schedules (while still meeting the policy directive we were given) to ensure smooth functioning, such as periods of ramping up or winding down purchase programs. The Fed also put in place active policies to help prevent market dysfunction as a result of its operations. Preventive measures included concentration limits on holdings of individual Treasury securities and prohibitions against purchasing some specific, highly-demanded securities.

However, even once the Fed normalizes the size of its balance sheet and securities portfolio, the composition of its securities portfolio will not yet be “normal.” The projections I mentioned earlier—which assume ongoing implementation of the FOMC’s capped portfolio reduction strategy—estimate that the domestic 3 / 13  BIS central bankers' speeches  securities portfolio could contain more than $ trillion in agency MBS at the time the balance sheet reaches a normalized size, even though the FOMC has indicated a preference to hold primarily Treasury securities in the longer run. Meanwhile, the maturity profile of the Treasury portfolio at that time is projected to be more skewed towards longer-term holdings than it was before the crisis, when the Fed held one-third of its portfolio in Treasury bills, and about twothirds of its holdings matured in less than three years.16  A role for asset purchases at the zero lower bound As they digest the experience of the past decade, policymakers, academics, and market participants are engaged in an active dialogue on appropriate monetary policy strategies and the role of unconventional policy tools in future zero lower bound episodes.17 Amid widespread concerns of a secular decline in nominal interest rates, this is not just a theoretical discourse. The median of FOMC participants’ projections for the longer-run value of the nominal federal funds rate is currently 2¾ percent, leaving little room to ease the stance of policy through changes in overnight rates.
Average annual growth of almost 7 percent between 2002 and 2007 faltered in 2008 and turned into a contraction in 2009 as the exports and investment flows dried up considerably due to the global crisis. However, all signs now indicate that the economy has rebounded quickly and is headed towards renewed growth and an improving fiscal balance in 2010. The resilience of the Turkish financial system, combined with our flexible and effective liquidity management framework shaped by the experiences of past crises, has turned out to be considerable assets in managing the recent crisis. As a result, growth forecasts of international institutions for the Turkish economy have been revised upwards repeatedly and reached as much as 7.2 percent, the highest among OECD countries. The crisis and slowly emerging global architecture in its aftermath present major opportunities that have once again highlighted the importance of economic cooperation  2  BIS Review 101/2010  and coordination among countries and economies. In the case of the Middle East this is perhaps best embodied in the multiple synergies in financial integration and joint investment opportunities between Turkey and the Arab world. It is a great pleasure to see that the relations within our region have been strengthening on a solid ground. The strong historical, cultural and social ties among our countries constitute a solid basis to further develop multilateral relations.

Commercial relations between Turkey and the Middle East have been increasing quite rapidly in the last few years, as well as cooperation and exchange of information and dialogue between public authorities. Global crisis made clear that especially our region is one of the high growth bases in the world, which in turn, constitutes a potential to grow tight commercial and financial relations. Recently, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria signed a joint declaration on Thursday to launch an initiative to form a free trade zone and a visa-free zone. These nations will also set up a joint cooperation council. Significant steps have been taken towards developing our commercial relations as witnessed by trade volumes between countries. On the heels of 2001 crisis, the trade volume of Turkey with the Middle East Region was just about USD 6 billion. It reached USD 43 billion just before the financial crisis and stood at USD 29 billion as of 2009. In the same period, the share of Middle East in Turkish trade volume climbed up by 5 percentage points to 12 percent, where as the share of European Union declined by 10 percentage points to 43 percent. Let me give you several country specific examples. Syrian-Turkish economic relations have strengthened rapidly in the past few years, particularly following the implementation of a free trade agreement between the two countries in 2007. All in all, trade volume between Syria and Turkey has doubled since 2006 and reached to 1.75 billion USD in 2009.
Besides, we are especially concerned about the collateral adequacy and will take further measures to decrease pressure on market-traded bonds through providing liquidity against other types of assets. Amid the increased volatility of the foreign exchange market, the Bank of Russia will stick to the conservative approach to the assessment of banking sector demand for liquidity. Meanwhile, the volume of ruble liquidity provision will be sufficient for the banking system to function properly and the money market rates to remain within the interest rate corridor bounds. The Bank of Russia will also continue to permanently monitor the situation in all the segments of the financial market and is ready to take the required measures to ensure its stable functioning. It is crucial for normal functioning of the economy and successful implementation of all macroeconomic policy measures. Currently the Russian economy faces both external and internal challenges. The uncertainty over further developments is really high and the sensitivity of the economy and especially the financial markets to various developments increases, at some point the reaction can be excessive. In these conditions the Bank of Russia is ready to be flexible and take unconventional decisions in meeting strategic objectives of ensuring financial and price stability. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches

Wage growth is now put at 4.5-5.0 per cent in most sectors. It is reported to be even higher in building and construction. Profitability continues to improve in all industries in region South-West. In many industries, profitability growth is somewhat lower than in the previous round. The exception is import-competing manufacturing where profitability is stable and in the service industry where it is improving further. So far, the buoyant activity level in the region has resulted in an accelerating rise in prices in highly sheltered sectors such as building and construction and services. More generally, enterprises report that prices have risen in the past 12 months. Six of ten companies expect prices to continue rising at the same pace during the next 12 months, while more than 25 per cent of the companies expect prices to rise at a faster pace. For the country as a whole, inflation has edged up since the beginning of the cyclical upturn. The yearon-year rise in the consumer price index (CPI) was 1.9 per cent in August. Energy products such as electricity and oil has accounted for a considerable portion of the rise in prices over the past year. Electricity prices, including grid rent and taxes, were 25 per cent higher in August than one year earlier, while petrol prices were close to 11 per cent higher. Since the beginning of 2001, energy prices have exhibited an average increase of over 7 per cent. Variations in energy prices may also lead to wide monthly variations in consumer price inflation.
The results achieved indicate that in this difficult macroeconomic environment the banking system has not only preserved its reliability, but has continued to perform its economic role of financial intermediary. Another positive trend is especially worth noting, prompted by this Forum. Banks are not focusing only on coping with current issues and obstacles. Regardless of the difficulties, banks are putting much thought and effort into developing and implementing new business solutions and products based on the opportunities offered by the information and communications technologies. New solutions are sought not only in the area of good management of risks and business processes, but also in developing new services and sales channels. I would not allow myself to give examples from the experience of one or another bank. The Forum will provide plenty of opportunities to find this out for yourselves. I will use as illustration of my words the payment infrastructure. The connectivity achieved by the operator of the main retail payment systems in this country in the past year, presently makes available to the Bulgarian banks the so-called SEPA connectivity to several thousand banks in the European Union. This, on its own part, provides new opportunities for providing reliable and high-quality services to ultimate customers. As part of my congratulatory address on the occasion of the opening of this Forum, I will allow myself to pose a question, namely the question of the connection between the information and communications technologies management and sales management, or to put it more broadly – marketing.

I also feel that the ambitions are even greater. This is obvious even from the motto of the forum. So I wish you success in your work! Thank you for your attention! 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Paul Fisher: The Financial Regulation Reform agenda – what has been achieved and how much is left to do? Speech by Mr Paul Fisher, Executive Director for Supervisory Risk Specialists and Regulatory Operations of the Bank of England and Deputy Head of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), at Richmond, the American International University, London, 30 September 2015. *  *  *  It is now 8 years since the start of the great financial crisis, and 7 years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG in the United States, followed by the bailing out of HBoS and RBS in the UK. The consequences were not limited to the financial sector – the economic recession that followed in much of the developed world was both deep and prolonged. This naturally created an imperative for changes to the regulation of the financial system to prevent the same thing happening again in future. Since I became Deputy Head of the Prudential Regulation Authority (the PRA) in June 2014, I have been asked a number of times to comment on how far the regulatory reform agenda has advanced. How close are we to ending “too big to fail”? How much more regulatory change can one expect?

Today, although I will focus mainly on the U.S. economic outlook, I also will discuss how global economic and financial market developments factor into my thinking about U.S. monetary policy. As always, what I have to say today reflects my own views and not necessarily those of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) or the Federal Reserve System.1 U.S. Economic Outlook Recent economic and financial developments have not yet led me to make a fundamental change in my outlook for U.S. growth in 2016. At this point, I have marked down my growth outlook very modestly. However, financial market conditions have tightened since the start of the year, mostly in response to international developments. If this tightening of financial conditions were to persist, it could potentially lead to a more significant downgrade to my outlook. I continue to expect that the economy will expand over the course of this year at a pace slightly above its long-term trend – sufficient to push the unemployment rate down a bit further and to more fully utilize the nation’s labor resources. On inflation, we continue to fall short of our 2 percent objective for the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) deflator. This shortfall looks likely to continue longer than I had earlier anticipated due to the persistent strength of the dollar and weakness in energy prices. However, I continue to expect a gradual return to our 2 percent objective as the transitory factors that have held down inflation dissipate.