samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Time and again, we have seen public discussions about the state of the economy that are based on a particular observation, which shortly down the line has a significant reversal that renders lots of pages of study useless. The case of last September offers a good example. The Imacec of that month was strongly influenced by the so-called calendar effect, which is given by the number of working days in a month and its composition (how many Mondays, Tuesdays, and so on). In Box III.1 of this Report we note that in 2018 the month of September had two peculiarities that extended the calendar effect beyond the estimate: two less working days than September of last year and a distribution in national holidays that led many people to take the full week off. This produced a significant drop in manufacturing activity, which also reflected in energy consumption and the hours worked in the month (Figure 2). After some people attributed it to a more permanent economic phenomenon, the October Imacec data, released this morning, shows the transient nature of the September calendar effect on manufacturing. Actually, measured in twelve months, non-mining activity grew 5.1%, where the higher growth is explained by the performance of manufacturing and trade, the two sectors that appeared to have retreated in September. In this way, the strong fluctuations that the calendar effect may cause in particular months underscore the need to carefully analyze the evolution of high-frequency activity indicators.

Although this increase owes partly to the more volatile components of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the depreciation of the peso, inflation of the items in the basket that are most sensitive to the activity gap—ie. services and nontradables—has risen gradually, but steadily, over the course of 2018. This is in line with the growth recovery that began more than a year ago, in a context of favorable external conditions and a clearly expansionary monetary impulse. This process took a pause in the third quarter due to specific factors affecting mining and manufacturing, but it is estimated to resume in the fourth quarter. The October Imacec released this morning is an indication, as it shows activity growing 4.2% annually, with the non-mining component growing 5.1%. With this, the economy will grow 4% this year and between 3.25% and 4.25% in 2019. Inflation will follow a similar path, slowing down for some months as a result of the fall in international fuel prices, to then begin rising and converging to 3% towards the end of 2019. Key factors in this outlook are the observed dynamism of investment and a vision of the labor market that, once all the available information has been analyzed, and factoring in the impact of the significant immigrant flow of recent years, shows that its dynamism is in line with the better performance of the economy.
India started introducing Islamic financial products and services last year. It has launched its first Islamic stock market index on the Mumbai stock exchange and also licenced a non-bank financing company to operate on Shariah principles. As more countries cater for Islamic finance, the scope for cross-border Islamic finance increases. We are beginning to see more cross-border sukuk issuance within Asia as well as between the Middle East and Asia. Singapore has benefitted from this favourable global environment for Islamic finance. •  Singapore is the only non-Muslim majority country among the top 15 countries for Islamic finance. •  Islamic assets under management have surged nearly fourfold over the last five years. More than 40% of the Islamic assets in Singapore are managed by our asset management industry. •  15 banks are involved in Islamic banking, double the number five years ago. They hold about a third of the Islamic assets in Singapore. •  The rest of the Islamic assets are in outstanding sukuk and takaful. Singapore has had nearly 30 sukuk issuances to-date, with seven in 2013 alone. The prospects for Islamic finance in Singapore look bright. •  More funds continue to be established here, to meet demand from clients in Asia as well as from the Middle East. •  Several corporations have established sukuk programmes in Singapore to tap the market over the next few years. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  We can grow faster when we grow together.

WIBC Asia provides a valuable platform to bring together stakeholders in Islamic finance, from Asia and the Middle East, to foster stronger collaboration for sustained industry growth. I wish you fruitful discussions. Thank you. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
One factor that helps determine the surcharge level is based on a bank’s systemic footprint. 19 Suppose a securities dealer borrows $ and lends $ in repo. If a 5 percent leverage ratio requirement  were binding on this dealer, and that dealer planned its business around a 10 percent return on equity, it would require a 50 basis point interest rate spread to cover its capital cost. Such a cost would be quite substantial relative to typical money market spreads. Of course, this is a stylized example, and banks could well choose to 11 / 13  BIS central bankers' speeches  apply a lower cost of capital than used here for low-risk activities like money market intermediation. The mechanism by which banks determine their cost of capital for individual activities remains a topic of active research without a strong consensus. See Stiroh, “A Perspective on Supervisory Objectives and Trade-offs,” February 23, 2017. 20 See also Duffie, “Why the leverage ratio distorts market-making.” Risk, January 3, 2017. 21 There are likely other disincentives to dealers’ acting as intermediaries in money markets. For example, the  Dodd-Frank Act’s prohibition on proprietary trading may limit banks’ ability or willingness to engage in activity that is classified for regulatory purposes as arbitrage, such as in the foreign exchange swaps market. 22 This discussion is intended as a high-level summary, and omits a number of other technical requirements for  transactions to be eligible for netting.

In the case of private consumption, there is also a reduction in durable goods consumption due to the peso depreciation and slower growth in real wages associated to the upward revision to the inflation forecast. As for investment, there is the downward correction of the survey from the Capital Goods Corporation on investment plans for 2015. Thus, measured in real terms, gross fixed capital formation should be 23.7 percent of GDP this year. In this projection, gross national savings rises to 21.5 percent of GDP in 2015, reflecting an increase in private saving in the past few quarters. This greater national saving has driven a further reduction in the current account. Accordingly, we estimate that this year it will be near 0 percent of GDP (table 1). On the external front, this projection assumes that our trading partners will grow more in the two-year period 2015–2016 than in previous years. The terms of trade should improve, helped by the drop in oil prices, whose impact will partly outdo the downward adjustment of the copper price. The baseline scenario assumes that copper will trade at an average of 280 dollar cents per pound in 2015–2016. In the same period, Brent oil should average 62 dollars per barrel and WTI oil, 55 dollars per barrel (table 2). Another element contributing to domestic output and demand resuming greater growth is that monetary policy continues to add significant boost to the economy, helping to keep mediumand long-term interest rates at or near record lows (figure 8).
The MPC process, however, involves no pressure to reach agreement. We are each accountable for our views; full minutes are taken and published; our individual vote is publicly recorded. This is counter-intuitive for anyone from a PLC background. It is impossible to believe that a split in the Board of a major corporation, certainly a split that was aired in the press, could exist for any length of time. Either the split would need to heal rapidly, or more likely some high-profile departures from the Board would ensue. But in the MPC a system which permits different views to surface publicly is both refreshing and appropriate. Since economic analysis involves a great deal of peering into the future, it is not surprising that there should be disagreement. There is, of course, the old joke of putting nine  BIS Review 102/2000  2  Economists into one room and getting ten views. But it is better to be open about the disagreements than try to forge a false sense of consensus. Of course, alongside this transparency and open voting system goes a degree of personalisation within the Press. An industry has grown up geared to guessing our personal habits, psychoanalysing our personalities and classifying us into different species of the aviary. And alongside this has gone a demand for even greater transparency which falls only a little short of having TV cameras in the Committee Room.

Via this re-evaluation, negative rates loosen the perceived lower bound on the future distribution of short-term interest rates.4 Through this mechanism, negative interest rates have a marked impact on transmission, particularly in the euro area, as they push down the short and medium segment of the risk-free curve, which for the most part is the segment of the curve that determines the pricing of loans to non-financial corporations. It follows that control of this segment of the curve directly influences the level of lending rates. To illustrate the effectiveness of negative policy rates, ECB staff undertook a counterfactual exercise. They constructed the forward curve that would prevail in a scenario without either the negative interest rate policy or the forward guidance on the future path of the policy rates. As shown in Chart 2, the forward curve derived from the overnight index swap curve would be pinned at a higher level and would be distinctly steeper (the dashed blue line on the right) than the forward curve that we observe today (the red curve). 3 / 19  BIS central bankers' speeches  While this mainly serves as an illustration, as it is based on a number of assumptions and input parameters, it is indicative of the sort of tighter interest rate constellations that the euro area economy would face in the absence of this important policy tool. Our negative policy rate thus contributes substantially to providing monetary accommodation.
By the end of the 1930s, there were only six British banks left with reserve liability. In the US, a similar process was underway. Systemic bank failure during the Great Depression was taken as evidence of the inadequacy of extended liability in protecting depositors. As in the UK, making a call on shareholders was deemed likely to make a bad situation worse. It was quickly replaced with Federal deposit insurance in 1934. With reserve liability gone, so too did the rationale for shareholder vetting. So by the 1930s the governance and balance sheet structure of banks was unrecognisable from a century earlier. Ownership and control were amicably divorced. Ownership was vested in a widely dispersed set of shareholders, unvetted and anonymous. Their upside payoffs remained unlimited, but their downside risks were now capped by limited liability. The pool of reserve capital had largely evaporated. Later in the 20th century, these governance and balance sheet features spread across the financial system. During the 1990s, many of the larger global investment banks abandoned their private partnership status to become limited liability public companies. In the UK, a number of mutually-owned building societies followed suit and turned public. The rationale was familiar from a century earlier – the desire to break their balance sheet chains. By the end of the 20th century, joint stock banking was pre-eminent. What impact did these governance changes have on banks’ risk-taking incentives? Finance theory here is admirably clear.

On top of maintaining their central role in the payments system, this means that, even if operating an ‘originate and distribute’ model in their investment banking business, commercial banks still have substantial funds to employ in asset portfolios. This can be achieved in a number of ways: for example, holding onto originated assets, buying assets after they have been securitised by other banks, or entering the principal investment business. All three are underway to a greater or lesser degree. In the UK, until quite recently large banks probably held on to more loans than their peer group22. In the US and parts of Continental Europe, the commercial banking sector acquired massive portfolios of securitised assets in the first half of the decade, possibly diversifying sectoral or geographical exposures. And a range of banks have been entering or reentering the principal investment business. What to make of all this? Well it certainly underlines the difficulty of using the growth or composition of bank balance sheets as the sole basis for judging credit conditions. With so much credit distributed and traded via capital markets, quantity data have to be put alongside prices (yield spreads) and, ideally, qualitative information. It is in that context that the Bank is planning to introduce a formal survey of credit conditions next year. This important initiative is designed to help us get behind the money and credit data.
The Conference Report summary of the legislation’s key provisions, provided in plain English by the Senate Banking Committee, states that it seeks to end “the possibility that taxpayers will be asked to write a check to bail out financial firms that threaten the economy by: creating a safe way to liquidate failed financial firms; imposing tough new capital and leverage requirements that make it undesirable to get too big; updating the Fed’s authority to allow system-wide support but no longer prop up individual firms; and establishing rigorous standards and supervision to protect the economy and American consumers, investors and businesses.”8 While there is much to criticize about Dodd–Frank, I cotton to those blunt statements on ending too big to fail. For, if after the myriad rules and regulations are written and implemented we have not eradicated too big to fail from our financial infrastructure, reform will have failed yet again. I have spoken to this topic on several occasions.9 If you pull up a copy of the Sept. 28, 2009, Wall Street Journal, you will find an article I wrote with my colleague Harvey Rosenblum about the interference too big to fail poses for the effective conduct of monetary policy. In looking at regulatory reform and implementing Dodd–Frank, I think a key point worth repeating is that the distinction between “commercial banks” and “the shadow banking system” is a false one. The two became intertwined beginning with the bypassing of Glass– Steagall strictures by Sandy Weill and Citicorp and the deregulatory initiative of Gramm– Leach–Bliley.

Consumer goods price inflation hovered around zero for most of the last ten years, until the recent rise in oil prices. As a result, the purchasing power of UK consumers has risen with higher real wages achieved without any cost to employers. In other words, for a period the beneficial tailwind allowed the economy to run at a higher level of activity than would otherwise have been the case, without generating additional inflationary pressures. But the economic environment overseas has taken a turn for the worse. In many ways it is a tale of two cycles. The financial cycle The first cycle has been in the financial sector in the West. A banking cycle is not a new phenomenon but the scale of the expansion of cheap credit for some years and speed of the downswing in the last year has been exceptional. It started in the US with a real downturn in the housing market and rising default rates on sub-prime mortgages in particular. That led to a freeze in the structured credit markets built on those loans as investors lost confidence in the credit ratings they depend on. In finance at least, it is still true that when America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold and the sub-prime crisis swiftly spread to financial institutions across the world. They became uncertain about the value of the financial positions they held, let alone what their counterparties held.
Things get even more difficult when national supervisory practices are transferred into national law limiting the usual range of discretion needed by a supervisor to correctly do his job. These new national rules risk not removing but creating new elements of fragmentation and supervisory arbitrage. Conclusions Let me conclude by recalling a key lesson from the recent financial crises. The crises did not solely result from weaknesses in the regulatory framework. It is important to remember that the supervision of banks did not function optimally, either. We can all agree that banks should be subject to consistent prudential requirements based on their business model, risk profile and governance arrangements; to only name the most important characteristics. Prudential requirements should not be driven by the location of a bank’s business or headquarter. Ultimately, banks which face comparable economic and financial conditions should receive the same regulatory and supervisory treatment. This is why a truly European Banking supervisor, the SSM, was created. The SSM’s first year of supervision was overall a successful one. But we continue to face challenges so there is no reason at all to stop training. We have to stay vigilant and keep on with the work we have started. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3

But other sectors, those most exposed to international competition - most of agriculture, large parts of manufacturing and some service sectors - were already then having a much more difficult time. Understandably, they were more vociferous. They had been hit, initially, by the exaggerated strength of sterling against the major European currencies in the run up to decisions about the euro. And they were hit, subsequently, by the successive waves of turmoil spreading through the world economy which saw exchange rates fall and demand dry up in Asia and elsewhere. So, faced with this dilemma, what were we to do? It is true that the external factors - unhelpful as they were in a more fundamental sense, in terms of the imbalance in the economy - did act as a restraining influence on overall aggregate demand and on inflation, and that meant we had somewhat more time than we would otherwise have had to moderate the growth of domestic demand. But even allowing for that we in fact had no choice but to tighten policy. BIS Review 98/1998  -3-  It wasn’t that we didn’t know that the internationally-exposed sectors were under the hammer we’d have had to be blind as well as deaf not to have known. Our problem was that if we had held back more than we did, in order to shelter the exposed sectors, we would have put the whole economy - including the sectors we were trying to protect - at risk of accelerating inflation.
Banknote character speech by Andrew Bailey i  Given at the unveil of the Alan Turing £ polymer Banknote  Banknote character ‐ speech by Andrew Bailey | Bank of England  Page 1  Published on 25 March 2021  Andrew Bailey reveals the design of our new polymer £ banknote. He talks about why Alan Turing was chosen to feature on it. Turing was a mathematician and a pioneer of early computers. His critical work on codebreaking saved the lives of many people in World War Two. He was also gay at a time when it was considered a crime. In 2017 a new law named after Turing pardoned all men, like him, who were convicted based on their sexuality. Our new note celebrates Turing as someone who embodies the spirit of our country and left a legacy for LGBTQ+ rights. The note will enter circulation on Wednesday 23 June, which is Alan Turing’s birthday. Speech It’s my great pleasure to unveil the new £ note, which will feature one of Britain’s most important scientists, Alan Turing. Turing is perhaps best known for his codebreaking work during World War II, which played a decisive role in bringing that conflict to an end. But he is also recognised as being a pioneer in computing and artificial intelligence, and someone whose work has had an enormous impact on how we all live today.

The process of selecting Turing started when we asked the UK public to “Think Science” and put forward nominations for scientists they would like to see appear on a banknote. We had an overwhelming response, with nearly 250,000 members of the public making a nomination. I’m glad that so many of you wanted to be a part of this process. There's something of the character of a nation in its money, and we are right to consider and celebrate the people on our banknotes. We were aided in the selection process by our Banknote Character Advisory Committee, made up of seven external members and two members of Bank staff. The Committee had the unenviable task of narrowing down the nearly 1,000 unique nominations to a shortlist of just 12. Each of those on the shortlist were hugely significant in their own right, and collectively the shortlist celebrates the important contributions scientists have made to our nation's history, and indeed, our leading position in scientific research. However, it was Alan Turing who was ultimately selected. I’d like to reflect on why that was. I think, at the root, it’s because Alan represents something of which we’re all very proud. Even if we can’t precisely articulate the reason. I believe that part of the answer lies in him being someone who, not content with abstract ideas, applied himself to the physical embodiment of those ideas. And from his sheer force of will, came enormous leaps of progress.