samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Ardian Fullani: Central banking in the time of integration Conclusions by Mr Ardian Fullani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the Fifth Conference of the Bank of Albania on “Central Banking in the Time of Integration”, Tirana, 25 March 2005. *  *  *  Dear friends! During two days of the Fifth Conference of the Bank of Albania on “Central Banking in time of integration”, having guests from the country and international institutions, personalities of academic and banking area, too many important ideas and suggestions emerged. The tight agenda did not allow detailed discussion on them; however, I hope that they will serve as starting points for further debates and analyses to sort out central bank challenges in the time of integration. It is somewhat difficult to make a concise summary of numerous papers presented in this conference. I would categorize the main conclusion into two large groups according to the main pillars of the central bank, that is the price stability and the financial sector stability. Concerning the first pillar, that of price stability, the discussions were focused mainly on the monetary policy effectiveness and central bank independence. To maintain stability is more difficult than to achieve it. Prof. Bolle indicated in a very excellent way that current price stability should be considered as fragile, which requires constant efforts, either by the BoA or by other institutions.

Andrew Sentance: Prospects for global economic recovery Speech by Mr Andrew Sentance, Member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, at the British Chambers of Commerce Annual Convention, London, 18 March 2010. *  *  *  I would like to thank Michael Hume and Abi Hughes for research assistance and I am also grateful for helpful comments from other colleagues. The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of England or other members of the Monetary Policy Committee. Over the three-and-a-half years I have spent so far on the Monetary Policy Committee, one of the things that has struck me most forcefully is the way in which the UK economy is so heavily influenced by international developments. The global financial crisis and the recession which resulted from it have highlighted that very clearly. But even before we felt the full force of the crisis in late 2008 and early 2009, UK inflation was pushed up to over 5% by a surge in global energy and commodity prices. And looking back over the whole history of the MPC since 1997, most of the shocks to UK growth and inflation that the Committee has had to worry about have had a significant international or global dimension. 1 These global influences on the UK economy partly reflect our economic history.
11 As a result of this arrangement and by pledging its foreign currency reserve, the Riksbank could lend a total of approximately SEK 200 billion in US dollars. Conversely, swap agreements were also established between the Riksbank and two of the Baltic central banks. 12 These experiences indicate that, in the future, even tougher requirements will be placed on international cooperation between central banks. How should we organise this in the best way? Can we expect other countries’ central banks to always be able to assist with currency in a crisis situation or must special agreements be drawn up? The development also raises the issue of whether an international ‘lender of last resort’ is needed. 13 These questions are particularly important for Sweden, which has its own small currency. And they will become even more relevant if the major Swedish bank Nordea carries out its plan to change from a subsidiary to a branch structure. With the current subsidiary structure, the central banks in the countries where Nordea has subsidiaries are responsible for providing ELA to them. After the transformation into a branch structure, the Riksbank will take on the main responsibility for providing ELA, should it be needed. This means that the Riksbank will have a greater need of being able to obtain foreign currency in a crisis situation.

It is sometimes hard to explain where this inflow comes from, but it indicates that in the economy there are sources that generate income, that create savings potential, meaning, the savings, although maybe not sufficient, is still substantial in our country and that deposit growth is just below the one in the good years, but it is positive and continuous, which is encouraging. Does this mean that the banks are more focused on collecting capital, than releasing money in the economy in form of credits? We can state that the deposit growth is higher than the one in the last several years, but the deposit growth is also a reflection of lack of enough alternatives for investments. You know  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  that the stock exchange is in standstill, we don't have some other developed financial markets where the citizens can place their savings, so every savings is mainly placed in form of banks deposit. Despite the inflation slows down, in the last several months, according to the NBRM estimations, it seems that the banks restrain over landing. Is this an indicator for the unfavorable conditions in the economy, or on the market, or is it a try for further reduction of the inflation? No, the inflation is not an issue, since it is on quite moderate level, 2.8 percentages is the latest data for August and we expect average inflation of about 2.8 percentages for the entire year, there is no probability for inflationary pressures in the following period.
In the field of blockchain technology, the world has also considerably changed over the past year, with the rise of decentralised finance, the success of non-fungible tokens (NFT), not to mention the first, sometimes spectacular, "clashes” between these new ecosystems and regulatory authorities, in countries as different as China and the United States. 1/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  2. Faced with this changing world, how should we, as central banks and financial sector supervisors, position ourselves? First of all, to be relevant in a changing world, we need to be able to distinguish what does not change. And fundamentally, what does not change in the financial sector is the need for confidence. Consumers of financial services need to have confidence: in the security of transactions, in the protection of their assets and in their freedom of choice. The players in the sector also need to have confidence: in each other, because they remain interdependent, in the rules of the game, i.e. in the regulatory conditions under which they can carry out their activity. Central banks and supervisors clearly have a role to play in maintaining this confidence, in all the forms I have just mentioned. In this respect, I would like to share with you three convictions: Firstly, the mechanisms of confidence cannot be replaced by “algorithmic” confidence, i.e.

Timely movements in short-term interest rates are the means by which both the average cost of a mortgage, and its variability, can be reduced to the minimum necessary to attract loan finance. In so doing we should be able to avoid crisis - and inevitably large changes of interest rates of the kind that we have seen so often in the past. Indeed, since the inflation target was adopted in October 1992 there have been no changes of interest rates of that kind - all changes were decided at the regular monthly monetary meetings. Moreover, the switch last May to a fixed timetable of meetings for the Monetary Policy Committee - with all interest rate decisions announced at 12 noon on the Thursday on which the MPC meeting concludes - was a major step forward in reducing uncertainty in financial markets. Through the Looking Glass ..... So if interest rates must be flexible, in which direction are they likely to move next? I wish I could tell you. Inflation, as measured by RPIX, rose to 3.0% in April, compared with 2.6% in March. But that jump largely reflected the Budget changes to excise duties which took effect earlier this year than last. That will drop out of the index in the third quarter of this year when RPIX inflation is likely to fall back towards its target level of 2½%. However, this relatively optimistic short-term outlook reflects an extraordinarily benign inflation environment.
Looking back at the first speech I gave as an MPC member this time last year,8 gas prices barely featured. Rather the focus was on supply chain disruptions and the potential threat of the Omicron variant, which had just started to emerge as I spoke in Newcastle. Second, the shock was large. Although it has eased somewhat in recent months, the January European wholesale gas price future – most relevant for next year’s household energy bills that enter the CPI basket – rose more than ten times to its August peak. Third, these gas price rises passed-through to the CPI inflation that the MPC targets relatively quickly: in a matter of months – certainly at a shorter horizon than the 18-24 months typically associated with the lagged pass-through of monetary policy actions to inflation developments. And fourth, higher gas prices exerted an adverse supply-side effect on the UK economy, and thus induced a difficult trade-off for monetary policy: inflationary pressures rose at a time when economic activity weakened. Taken together, these characteristics implied that gas price driven volatility in CPI inflation was inevitable.

“UK Monetary Policy – ‘Crossing the river by feeling the stones,” speech given at the Confederation of British Industry, Newcastle upon Tyne. Bank of England  Page 14  Pill, H. (2019), “Whatever it takes within our (new?) mandate” in R. Barwell and J. Chadha (eds.) Renewing our monetary vows: Open letters to the Governor of the Bank of England, pp. 37–54 (London: National Institute of Economic and Social Research). Pill, H. (2010). “Monetary policy in a low interest rate environment: A checklist,” NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 6(1), pp. 335-345. Tenreyro, S. (2022). “The economy and policy trade-offs,” Dow Lecture, National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Bank of England  Page 15  Endnotes 1  2  3 4  5 6 7 8  9  10 11  12  13  14  15 16 17 18 19  20  See: Vickers (2022). “The regulation of inflation: Reflections on 25 years of the MPC,” Beesley Lecture, 9 November 2022. The MPC’s communication following its 3 November 2022 meeting set out why both the market-implied path of future Bank Rate and the path where Bank Rate was maintained at a constant 3% level were seen as inappropriate given the prevailing economic circumstances. This is a form of guidance. But the preferred outlook for Bank Rate was left to be determined by the evolution of the data. See: Evans et al. (2015) for an articulation of this approach.
Further, retail deposits cover a substantial portion (75%) of the total stable funding needs (60% for European banks as a whole). Assets Consolidated assets saw growth of 2.1% in 2022, below levels seen in 2020-2021 (3.8% on average). However, the drop in financial assets in Spain (by 5.4% to March 2023) is noteworthy, while assets abroad (expressed in euro) rose (by 7.2% to March 2023). The latter increased to represent 53.7% of the total – 4.3 pp more than one year ago (32% in 2008). Much of the decline in financial assets in Spain is owing to the reduction in balances held with central banks (-31.9%) and, to a lesser extent, to the dip in loans to the resident private sector (-2.5%). Meanwhile, the increase in financial assets abroad was the result of growth in lending to the resident private sector in third countries (10.3%) and in debt securities (16%), against the background of a depreciating euro.9 The pass-through of monetary policy interest rate rises to average rates on the stock of loans took place gradually over the last 16 months, although it quickened in early  4  Standing at 54.1% of total consolidated assets at end-2022, a rise of 14.7% since 2019. 5  Interbank funding and financing from other financial corporations, as well as marketable debt instruments (whose share of the sector’s funding had dropped in recent years) increased their weight in liabilities by around 2 pp in 2022.

The most important money market interest rates in both the secured and unsecured interbank segments – we show SARON in blue and three-month Libor in red – hovered around 0% from 2011 to 2014. After the SNB lowered the interest rate on sight deposits to −0.75% in January 2015, money market rates rapidly settled close to −0.75%. At the time the SNB imposed a negative interest rate on banks’ sight deposits, it also introduced a fairly generous system of exemption thresholds. Let us now take a closer look at the purpose of these exemption thresholds and how they work in conjunction with the negative interest rate on sight deposits. Page 7/13  The role of the exemption thresholds A key question is: must all sight deposits be subject to negative interest in order to keep money market rates close to the SNB’s negative interest rate on banks’ sight deposits? The short answer is: ‘No’. The slightly longer answer is: It is sufficient to charge negative interest only on those sight deposits that exceed a certain threshold. Any balances that fall below this threshold can be exempt – or, to put it another way, can be subject to an interest rate of 0%. From an aggregate perspective, these exemption thresholds were deliberately chosen to be fairly generous, so as to limit the burden on the banking system to the minimum deemed necessary for the implementation of monetary policy.
When we don’t reinvest principal repayments on Treasuries, the securities the Federal Reserve would otherwise have bought end up in private hands instead. And when we don’t reinvest agency MBS principal repayments, this means that any new mortgage that was taken out to fund those repayments ends up being sold to private investors. While the mechanism varies, the end result, in theory, is largely the same. 4 / 15  BIS central bankers' speeches  So how should the Fed implement a reduction in the balance sheet size? The approach should underscore that the balance sheet will be reduced in a way that is gradual and predictable, so as to credibly assure market participants that the balance sheet will decline in a way that avoids surprise, disruption, or volatility. As part of this, it should be simple, and easy to communicate to the public. The FOMC’s plan for normalizing the balance sheet does exactly this.13 It decreases principal reinvestment, an approach which provides for an appropriate pace of reduction in the balance sheet and is quite straightforward to communicate. It accomplishes this by reinvesting principal maturities only to the extent that they exceed gradually increasing caps.14 For Treasuries, the cap will be $ billion per month initially and will increase in steps of $ billion at three-month intervals over 12 months until it reaches $ billion per month. Agencies follow a similar pattern, starting at $ billion and rising in three-month steps to $ billion.

And one in five trans people would not report transphobic bullying in the workplace. Employers need to adopt a zero tolerance policy for bullying and harassment and they need to encourage reporting of incidents. This needs to include ways to call out bad behaviour as well as clear processes for reporting and dealing with incidents. In addressing these issues, we can also benefit from our experiences with gender and ethnic diversity. One of the major lessons we have learned from promoting gender diversity is the need for visible support by senior leadership. That means empowered employee networks with executive sponsors. But it also needs a wide range of senior management to participate in and lead LGBT+ events and initiatives, within their own organisation and externally. Visible buy-in from the top is necessary for change to permeate and catalyse a cultural shift. We also need to raise awareness amongst staff and managers on LGBT+ issues. This is especially important as the concerns of the community may not be familiar to those outside it. A more informed workforce will inevitably be more understanding and inclusive. Finally, we need to track our progress. That means finding ways to encourage colleagues to disclose by handling data sensitively and explaining why it is needed in the first place. Our commitment - an ‘out and proud’ charter  Building on our experience with gender and ethnicity, we see the value in making a formal commitment to supporting LGBT+ colleagues that will drive change through our organisation.
Mervyn King: Monetary policy developments Speech by Mr Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, to the CBI Dinner, Nottingham, 20 January 2009. *  *  *  Certain truths are self-evident. One is that financial markets and the economic outlook can change quickly and in surprising ways. You in the Nottingham business community know that only too well. In line with businesses across the United Kingdom, your economic fortunes have changed markedly over four months. Before last September, the world economy was slowing and at home the Monetary Policy Committee published a central projection of falling output in the United Kingdom in the third quarter. Inflation, though, was still rising. But after the failure of the American investment bank Lehman Brothers, there was a widespread collapse of confidence in the banking systems of the industrialised world. That led to an unprecedented and synchronised downturn in business and consumer confidence around the world. Our business contacts at home and abroad, and my international counterparts, started to report that orders and confidence had, in the same telling phrase, “fallen off a cliff”. Global equity prices fell more in the month following the failure of Lehman Brothers than in any but a handful of months in the Bank of England’s 300 year history. Chinese electricity production, having risen steadily at 15% a year, fell in November to a level 8% lower than a year earlier – the steepest fall on record. Car sales in Brazil contracted by a quarter compared to a year earlier.

For several years the Bank of England and other UK participants in the international fora argued for a major reform of the international monetary system and the IMF in order to address this issue. The gravity of the present crisis demonstrates the urgency of rectifying both of these deficiencies. In the past year the true scale of the risks taken by financial institutions has become painfully apparent. As losses mount it has become obvious that banks did not have sufficient capital to support their inflated balance sheets. Questions about the adequacy of liquidity have turned into questions about solvency. In response, banks have been trying to raise new capital and shrink their balance sheets. The banking system is in the throes of a difficult and prolonged adjustment to much smaller balance sheets relative to their equity capital – or leverage, as it is known. Leverage ratios of large banks remain at remarkably high levels, and the required adjustment will not happen quickly. I know that bankers around the world realise this. The incentives they face to adjust, in whatever way they can, are now overwhelming. With fresh capital from the private sector difficult to obtain, banks have opted to reduce their lending and that is why the flow of credit to all parts of the economy, here and abroad, has been heavily disrupted. And the credit that is still flowing is available only on materially tighter terms and conditions.
The repercussions of this event rippled through the crypto ecosystem, causing cascading liquidations[25] that underscored the interconnectedness and opacity of crypto markets. Ultimately, it showcased how swiftly confidence in the industry could deteriorate. Similarities to the FTX case can be seen in the recent civil charges brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission against the biggest remaining crypto exchange: Binance. These civil charges allege that Binance’s CEO and Binance entities were involved in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure and calculated evasion of the law. [26] Should these allegations be proven, this would be yet another example of the fundamental shortcomings of the crypto ecosystem. The recent crypto failures also show that risk, in itself, is technology-neutral. In financial services, it does not matter if a business ledger is kept on paper as it was for hundreds of years, in a centralised system as we have now or on a blockchain as in the crypto asset ecosystem. In the end, whether a firm remains in business or fails depends on how it manages credit risk, market risk, liquidity risk and leverage. Crypto enthusiasts would do well to remember that new technology does not make financial risk disappear. The financial risk either remains or transforms into a different type. It is like pressing a balloon on one side: it will change in shape until it pops on the other side. And if the balloon is full of hot air, it may rise for a while but will burst in the end.

Our assessment in May was that economic growth in the United States would slow at the end of this year, chiefly due to the assumption that fiscal policy would be less expansionary. Coupled with gradually rising interest rates, it was judged that this would dampen private consumption and housing investment somewhat. Despite the slowdown, however, the economic outlook was expected to be mainly bright over the coming years. Data for the second quarter indicates that private consumption has slowed somewhat earlier than anticipated. It is possible that this is partly due to the high oil price, which has lowered households’ real incomes. Even though more recent data from the United States has given a mixed impression, I think there is reason to be somewhat less optimistic about developments in the United States in the period ahead than indicated in the assessment in May. Growth this year of almost 4½ per cent now appears likely. In 2005 and 2006 there is reason today to expect about 3½ per cent annual GDP growth. Growth in the euro area was judged in the latest Inflation Report to increase gradually this year following a very weak development in 2003. New information during the summer broadly confirms this outlook. In Germany it is mainly net exports that are contributing positively to GDP growth, while in other countries, notably in France and Spain, it seems to be domestic demand that is growing relatively quickly.