samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Higher inflation expectations boost demand and increase the extent of the pass-through of higher costs to consumers. As a result, companies have the opportunity to almost completely pass costs to prices and thereby maintain or even increase their profits, which in turn discourages them to take efforts in order to reduce costs and improve labour productivity. Monetary policy should prevent the inflationary spiral from getting out of control. Therefore, it should respond to transitory factors to the extent they transform into steady factors through higher inflation expectations. This is especially relevant when households’ inflation expectations and companies’ price expectations are at their peaks recorded over several years, as they are now. Third, monetary conditions are adjusting to key rate increases faster. Over the period after our July meeting, the yield curve of federal government bonds with maturities of up to three years has risen. Furthermore, yields on long-term government bonds remain almost unchanged since last March, when we started to raise the key rate. I would like to remind you once again that the stability of long-term interest rates is crucial for the stability of bank rates on investment loans and mortgages. Interest rates in the deposit market were growing in July—August. The demand for bank deposits started to edge up. As of the end of July, the outflow of funds from retail time deposits ended for the first time since the beginning of last year. Moreover, it even reversed to a slight inflow in August, according to recent data.

As the economy continues to adjust to these changes, the situation is still uneven across different sectors. In addition to the above-mentioned oil industry, passenger transportation and international travel still remain below pre-pandemic levels as well. When restrictions were toughened, public catering and entertainment companies faced a decline in the demand for their services. Nonetheless, a lot of industries are demonstrating steadily higher output and sales than before the outbreak of the pandemic. Specifically, there has been a surge in the demand for durable goods (computers, telecommunication devices, and household appliances) and online trade and delivery services. The lockdown period boosted the demand for countryside housing and better housing conditions in general. These uneven trends across both industries and regions are also described in the Regional Economy report released by our regional branches before the quiet period. The situation in the labour market also evidences that the economy has not only recovered, but is generally returning to its pre-pandemic growth path. The number of vacant jobs is at its peaks. High demand for labour resources is demonstrated by companies in construction and transport, a whole range of manufacturing enterprises, and in trade. These are the industries that started to bounce back earlier and were recovering faster and where demand exceeds prepandemic levels. A further expansion of output is possible through a restoration of the inflow of labour migrants, but — first of all — through an increase in labour productivity.
Jean-Pierre Roth: The challenges of an international financial centre: the Swiss case Speech by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, to the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce, London, 26 February 2002. *  *  *  It gives me great pleasure to have the opportunity to address your distinguished assembly today. Like all the Swiss I know, I always enjoy coming to London. Even though there are considerable differences between our two countries, we have many things in common. We are both proud of our history and of our colourful traditions, we cherish our freedom and our independence. What’s more, in both our countries, the financial industry has been a pillar of our economic strength in recent times. But these days, the most striking parallelism between the United Kingdom and Switzerland can be seen in monetary affairs. Both countries are “outs”: they do not belong to the Euro-zone. In Britain, the currency is still the pound sterling and, in Switzerland, we still have a preference for our franc. We thus both face the same challenge: living next to a large currency area which absorbs most of our foreign trade. This situation is new for both of us. It is of course not up to the Swiss central bank governor to speculate how long this situation will last in the United Kingdom.

Switzerland is directly affected by the EU’s intention to introduce a system of automatic exchange of information between banks and tax authorities in order to enhance tax revenues on savings income within the European Union. One can of course fear that such a plan might trigger capital transfers to non-EU financial centres for purely fiscal reasons. Our position is known: we do not want the Swiss financial centre to become a privileged haven for funds seeking to avoid EU regulations. We are thus ready to consider a reform of our withholding tax regime along the line of the EU directive. We even consider the possibility of handing over to the EU part of the tax on interest earnings of EU residents. We have already 50 years of positive experiences with a withholding tax: it is a convenient and efficient way to collect resources without income declaration. We have never considered introducing any system of automatic exchange of fiscal information for our own citizens, and we are not ready to consider such a scheme for foreign depositors. We feel that our current system secures an appropriate balance between protection of the private sphere and safeguarding the interest of the State. There are many misunderstandings between Switzerland and the UK about this fiscal issue. Let me recall a few points: –  First, it is wrong to say that foreigners can invest their funds tax-free in Swiss banks. We have a 35% withholding tax imposed on all interest and dividend payments made in favour of residents and non-residents.
Ravi Menon: The wellness of investing - eating well, sleeping well, feeling well Keynote remarks by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at SIAS 1st Master Series Investment Conference, Singapore, 11 July 2019. * * * Mr David Gerald, Founder, President and CEO of Securities Investor Association (Singapore) (SIAS), ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Let me begin by congratulating SIAS on 20 successful years as an effective champion for retail investors in Singapore. You have been an ardent voice for investors – a voice of reason and balance, unwavering in looking out for the interest of investors, but always in a co-operative way with all stakeholders. You have been a strong advocate for good corporate governance – engaging boards to strengthen governance practices, and facilitating a constructive dialogue between investors and listed companies. You have also been a valued partner of MAS. You are a long-standing supporter of MoneySense, the national financial well-being programme, helping us to deliver financial education messages so that investors can make better informed decisions. The journey has not been easy for SIAS. Funding is a perennial challenge. You have had to rely entirely on your own fund-raising efforts and the goodwill of donors and sponsors. This is not ideal from a long term perspective. MAS is willing to support SIAS. We are working closely with SIAS and other stakeholders to come up with viable funding options, to achieve financial sustainability while ensuring SIAS’ credibility as an advocate for investors.

1 Includes Southeast Asia, Greater China, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan 2 “Asia-Pacific Private Equity Report 2019”; Bain & Company 3 “Southeast Asia PE & VC: Investment Activity May 2018”, SVCA 4 “World Population Prospects 2019”; United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs  7/7  BIS central bankers' speeches
This is correct, of course, to a point: the Bank’s policy influences exchange rate developments to a considerable degree, and the exchange rate is higher than Iceland can tolerate for the long term. But the Central Bank’s high policy rate is not the source of the problem. It is a response to the conditions reigning in our economy: strong excess demand no matter where one looks, large output growth, sharp increases in purchasing power, excess demand for labour, influx of capital … the list goes on. The Central Bank decided to raise the policy rate now because inflation has risen once again, and indicators suggest that it will be higher in 2007 and 2008 than earlier projected. Demand has grown more rapidly than was expected when the Bank  2  BIS Review 131/2007  announced its last interest rate decision. Output growth is greater than estimates allowed for. Private consumption is on the upswing, and indicators imply that consumption growth will accelerate even further. Gross capital formation was greater in 2006 and 2007 than previously estimated. Real estate prices continue to rise rapidly, pushing inflation upwards as well. A shortage of labour, wage drift, growing wage costs, and rapidly rising disposable income are also contributing factors. And it appears as though some people think that, under these circumstances, the best solution is to let an inflation episode flow through the economy, as it were. But inflation wouldn’t merely flow through; it would pass into the economy and settle there.

Pension Funds It is estimated that the assets of the pension funds which are available to pay pensions, stood at 345 billion kronur at the end of 1997, an increase of more than 39 billion kronur, or 12.7 percent, in the course of the year. The composition of pension fund assets has change somewhat. Holdings of market listed securities expanded by 25.6 billion kronur while holdings of other securities declined by 3.7 billion kronur. At the end of 1997, the pension funds held 21.7 billion kronur worth of domestic shares. The pension funds’ holdings of foreign securities grew sharply in 1997, or by 12.6 billion kronur, about one-half of which was in shares. At the end of 1997, the pension funds held foreign securities valued at 22.2 billion kronur. Payment Intermediation Over the last two years, the Central Bank has increasingly turned its attention to payment systems, both to specific payment forms and to settlement systems. The Bank has released two reports on this subject, one on electronic payment forms and another on a comparison of payment intermediation in Iceland with international practice. In recent years there has been growing international concern that settlement systems do not adequately take into account settlement risks. Two responses have been adopted. First, strong conditions have been imposed on net settlement systems which lower risk, and plans have been laid for the contingency that a settlement party is unable to meet its obligations.
Banking is already the second biggest global spender on AI systems (after retail) and the sector is expected to invest a further $ billion on AI this year.22 A quarter of major banks’ activities and almost a third of all UK payments activity are already hosted on the Cloud, and there are considerable opportunities for even more intensive usage.23 Cloud service providers offer ready-made solutions that can speed up time to market, provide superior analytics, and enable businesses to adjust quickly their business models. If deployed at scale, cloud technology could provide lowcost, resilient computing power and easy access to AI capabilities, unlocking 30-50% unit cost savings.24 These savings can be passed onto customers and, if properly managed, improve the resilience of the overall system. For these reasons, the Bank of England is open to greater adoption of the Cloud and usage of AI. This means ensuring that these technologies are adopted in a safe manner, in ways that increase resilience. Careful attention will have to be given to risks, including of those associated in the single point of failure and market concentration. Two providers account for nearly half of revenues in cloud computing, bringing scale and efficiency, but also concerns about dependence and a single point of failure in the case of a cyberattack. In AI and ML, there is a reliance on data, but when there are biases in data or algorithms, or the situation isn’t captured by past experience prediction becomes difficult and judgement becomes more important.

In the UK, Iwoca has made over £ worth of loans based on trading data, such as sales and customer reviews, to over 25,000 small businesses over the past five years. Even the big banks are getting in on the action. Earlier this month, Santander announced that it was partnering with eBay to offer small business loans, based on sales, cash flow and customer review data to sellers on the eBay platform. These initiatives are welcome but are still too small to plug the SME funding gap in the UK. To make real inroads, SMEs must be able to identify the data relevant to their businesses, incorporate it into their individual credit files, and easily share these files with potential providers of finance through a national SME financing platform. This would put into practice the recommendations from Professor Jason Furman’s Digital Competition Panel report on how to extract value from data and promote competition. One of the most important recommendations in this regard is to give consumers control of their data. This would allow consumers to move their personal information from one platform to another and avoid lock-in effects, opening the door to new services.19 To some extent, this is what Open Banking hopes to achieve. Although to make this a success means establishing common off the-shelf API standards and operating platforms onto which developers can build. An open platform for SME lending would enable open banking and empower SMEs.
Another aspect that needs to be addressed is the role of adequate control systems and financial risk management. A proper system of financial risk control and management must start by defining policies at the highest level, the board of directors. It also requires the involvement of senior management in tracking and monitoring risk. And, ultimately, it needs the development of an organizational culture that is capable of properly combining the goals of profitability and leadership with risk sensitivity. In this regard, a topic that is central to the discussion of financial reforms is the overall structure of incentives of financial intermediaries. I believe this is an issue that all players in the financial system must follow with care. As a result of the current problems, we will observe more regulation in financial markets and everyone, even those of us not at the center of these difficulties, must remain watchful. Problems of moral hazard, transparency and new ways to meet the requirements of central banks to provide liquidity are leading to a review of regulatory frameworks at the international level. We must be aware that more regulation leads to the search of ways of avoiding them, which may end up threatening financial stability. This last dimension must be taken into account in the analysis and regulatory proposals, which obviously introduces an extra element of complexity in this area. Thank you. References Allen F. and D. Gale (2000). “Financial Contagion”, Journal of Political Economy, 108(1). Benmelech E. and J. Dlugosz (2009).

Thus in the period 19942006, the cumulative appreciation of the real effective exchange rate ranged from 8% in Slovenia to 105.9% in Lithuania. 8 Economic theory offers arguments that real exchange rate appreciation is not dangerous as long as it reflects changes in the equilibrium real exchange rate. However, policy makers in these countries, especially in the recent years, are not really comforted by these theoretical discussions which consider that real appreciation is only movement to equilibrium. What they are seeing in their countries are common signs of overheating of the economy and loss of competitiveness, which deepens the external imbalances. In the beginning of transition, current account deficits were understandable and not too much cause for concern, as these countries were importing technology and previously unavailable goods. However, the size of the deficits in the last several years exceeds the level that is usually deemed sustainable. Thus, the current account deficit in the new member states in the period 1996-2005 ranged from 5% to 7.7% of GDP, but in the last two years it has been reaching 10.1% and 11.3% of GDP. The average current account deficit in the SEEU countries in the same period is even higher, and it is estimated that in 2007 it will reach 16.3%. 9 Even though deficits are projected to fall in some of the countries, in general they remain a cause for concern in most of them. Besides the trade deficit which,  7  Source: IMF World Economic Outlook Database, April 2008. 8  Source: Eurostat.
Petar Goshev: South Eastern European countries’ competitiveness and challenges on the road to EU Introductory speech by Mr Petar Goshev, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, at the international conference “Competitiveness of the South Eastern European countries and challenges on the road to EU”, organized by the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, Skopje, 30 May 2008. *  *  *  Honored guests, Dear friends, I wish you a very warm welcome to the Conference of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia on the Competitiveness of the South Eastern European Countries and Challenges on the Road to the EU. Similarly to the several conferences and workshops organized by our Bank in the recent years, this one will also seek to develop a discussion on a very important topic for the countries in transition striving to reach the income level of the EU member states. Although real convergence is not directly in the focus of interest of the monetary authorities, the unbreakable tie between the nominal and real convergence makes this topic extremely important also from a viewpoint of the monetary policy. Therefore, at this Conference we will try to analyze once again the achievements of the new EU member states, particularly their experience, their successes, but also their failures regarding competitiveness of their economies on the road to EU and EMU membership.

There were signs of strain in particular segments of these markets, such as dislocations in forward exchange rates and a notable decline in the liquidity of currency swaps. However, market participants were generally able to execute trades and manage currency exposures in these markets on an uninterrupted basis. The resilience of foreign exchange markets owed in part to the availability of CLS Bank for  2  BIS Review 40/2010  eliminating time gaps in the settlement of different currencies, to the efficient collateral exchange achieved through credit support annexes and to the standardization of trade documentation. Credit intermediation and market disruption While those capital markets demonstrated meaningful resilience to financial stress, that was not the case for other parts of the financial system – namely, those involved in more complicated forms of credit intermediation. Many of the most acute problems were driven by a build-up in leverage in which large amounts of opaque, illiquid, long-term assets were financed by short-term liabilities. These activities took place both in traditional financial intermediaries and in what is often referred to as the shadow banking system. The shadow banking system performs a function similar to that carried out by banks and other financial institutions. In particular, it takes the short-term, highly liquid investments that households and other investors want to hold, and it uses them to fund the longer-term, relatively illiquid loans that businesses and households demand to finance their economic activity.
Central banks must also avoid misperception and for that reason, they should not rely on a limited set of indicators but should use a comprehensive and rigorous analysis aimed at picturing the economy as a complex and permanently evolving system. Central banks also have the difficult task of identifying shocks hitting the economy and of addressing them appropriately by assessing their potential implications in terms of risks to price stability. Model analysis, monetary analysis, model -based forecasts are additional useful tools employed in this context. This is precisely the approach taken by the ECB, which developed its two-pillar-strategy in order to help to sort through the wealth of potentially conflicting statistics. Conclusion Let me now briefly conclude my remarks by asking the question: what information do we really get from asset prices, and particularly from inflation - indexed securities? Financial markets do indeed play a critical role in the process of setting monetary policy. In effect, the influence of monetary policy on the real economy and ultimately on prices is largely transmitted through asset prices. As pointed out by Blinder, the economic activity is not directly affected by the changes in the key policy rates, but rather by long-term interest rates and, where relevant, through wealth effects. In short, monetary policy affects the economy through its interaction with long-term expectations, which in turns affect asset prices and then economic activity and inflation. But central banks also rely on financial markets for information to help explain their monetary policy decisions.

1/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  In recent decades, however, the prime position of the dollar has been unchallenged. Its surpassing of the sterling occurred in the 1920s, although many historians would ascribe the preeminence of the dollar as coming to the fore with the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944. Since then, the “dollar dominance” continued unabated despite the US experiencing various challenges, including the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s and the recession in 1981. Closer to present times, the dominance of the dollar continues to hold even after the Global Financial Crisis, the most damaging crisis since the Great Depression. Although the privileged position of the dollar was not in question, the magnitude of its influence certainly varied across time. It was not linear, consistent nor smooth-sailing. In fact, over the past few years, it was a favorite past time of market commentators to call time on the ‘reign’ of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. A few candidates were cited to supplant the role of the dollar in the past, including the yen, the euro and recently, the renminbi. Necessity for Economic Rebalancing In 1971, the US Treasury Secretary John Connally, famously said to the European finance ministers that the “dollar is our currency, but your problem”. This statement had validity then, as it does now. For emerging markets in Asia, this braggadocio or arrogance rings true.