samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
See Söderberg (2018) for a description of the development of means of payment. 2 [25]  rates, where a small number of central banks in practice conducted monetary policy for the entire world and thus ‘lent’ their credibility. 2 In Sweden, this system of fixed exchange rates did not function so well and this led to several major devaluations. The larger central banks also lost credibility for various reasons and the global economy underwent a period of high inflation in the 1970s and 1980s. Independent central bank with inflation target replaces gold The global developments over the past 30 years have entailed major changes to the monetary policy landscape, not least in Sweden. During the 1980s, work began in the leading countries of the world economy on rebuilding the confidence in monetary policy that had been lost in the 1970s. 3 At the beginning of the 1990s, Sweden experienced a severe financial crisis following the rapid winding up of several decades of hard regulation of the financial markets. During the crisis, there was strong pressure to devaluate and the defence of the fixed exchange rate finally became untenable. When the Riksbank abandoned the fixed exchange rate, monetary policy sought a new way to promote price stability, and Sweden joined the global trend of reinforcing the credibility of monetary policy. The answer became a more independent Riksbank with an explicit inflation target, and Sweden became one of the first countries in the world to try this new path.

(2020), “Bank of Japan’s policies have been a success”, Nikkei Asian Review, March 6. Rogoff, K. (1985), “The Optimal Degree of Commitment to an Intermediate Monetary Target.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 100, pp. 1169-1189. Rogoff, K. (2017), “The curse of cash”. Princeton University Press. Sims, C. (2016), “Fiscal policy, monetary policy and central bank independence”, Jackson Hole Symposium. 24 [25]  SOU 2007:51, “Riksbankens finansiella oberoende” (The Riksbank’s financial independence). SOU 2013:9, “Riksbankens finansiella oberoende och balansräkning” (The Riksbank’s financial independence and balance sheet). SOU 2019:46, “A new Sveriges Riksbank Act”. Sveriges Riksbank (2020a), “Monetary Policy Report”, April. Sveriges Riksbank (2020b), “Consultation response, SOU 2019:46”. Söderberg, G. (2018), “What is money and what type of money would an e-krona be?”, Sveriges Riksbank Economic Review 2018:2, Sveriges Riksbank. Ubide A. (2020), “Euro yearbook”. Vredin, A. (2019), “Särskilt yttrande av kommitténs sakkunnige Anders Vredin” (Special comment by the committee's expert adviser Anders Vredin), SOU 2019:46, pp. 1898-1908. 25 [25]
And yet policy plays an important role in determining the dimensions of financial booms, and policy helps determine the ability of the financial system and the economy to adjust to its aftermath. We need to undertake a broad set of changes to address the vulnerabilities in our financial system revealed by this crisis. Just as a long list of factors contributed to the trauma, there is no single reform that offers the promise of sufficient change. The Presidents Working Group on Financial Markets and the Financial Stability Forum, which bring together policymakers and regulators from the major financial centers around the world, are in the process of outlining a comprehensive framework of reforms. Many of these recommendations will focus on changes to the mortgage finance market, the ratings process for ABS and structured credit products more broadly, regulatory and accounting treatment of these instruments and special purpose financing vehicles, the disclosure requirements on instruments and institutions, and other dimensions of the securitization process. I want to conclude with a few comments on some of the broader policy questions we face in designing these reforms. Regulatory reform and simplification The regulations that affect incentives in the U.S. financial system have evolved into a very complex and uneven framework, with substantial opportunities for arbitrage, large gaps in coverage, significant inefficiencies, and large differences in the degree of oversight and restraint upon institutions that engage in very similar economic activities.

The rational actions taken by even the strongest financial institutions to reduce exposure to future losses have caused significant collateral damage to market functioning. This, in turn, has intensified the liquidity problems for a wide range of bank and nonbank financial institutions. In this environment, banks have faced several different types of liquidity and funding challenges. They have been called on to fund a range of different contingent liquidity and credit commitments, as is typically the case in crises. The substantial impairment of securitization and syndication markets has been an additional challenge because it has reduced banks’ access to liquidity and their capacity to move assets off balance sheets. As the market value of many securities has declined, and investors have reduced their willingness to finance more risky assets, liquidity conditions have eroded further. In response, even the strongest institutions have become much more cautious, building up large cushions of liquidity, bringing down leverage and reducing financing for their leveraged counterparties. Policy measures The self-reinforcing dynamic within financial markets has intensified the downside risks to growth for an economy that is already confronting a very substantial adjustment in housing and the possibility of a significant rise in household savings. The intensity of the crisis is in part a function of the size of the preceding financial boom, but also of the speed of the deterioration in confidence about the prospects for growth and in some of the basic features of our financial markets.
Mr President, no company can sustainably grow if it does not provide mechanisms by which employees can influence their working lives. Labour is more than a commodity. Unlike non-living factors of production, such as, machinery and raw materials, the work of human beings raises questions about the impact of work and work relations. As you review your collective agreement frameworks, I wish to remind you that there are a lot of common interests and important interdependencies between employers and employees despite the apparent conflicting interests. For instance firms need workers and workers need jobs. Ladies and gentlemen, there can be no true bargaining without prudent and effective leadership on either side of the table. This kind of leadership is required for us to achieve our collective objectives. We are desirous of seeing a Union leadership, which is well-informed and constantly upgrading their leadership skills for the attainment of organisational goals and workers welfare. In conclusion, I wish to once again implore you to actively participate and take a keen interest in the deliberations of this Forum. It is my expectation that you will have an opportunity to carry out an appraisal of your individual and collective skills and how they impact upon the job market and workers welfare in the financial sector. With these remarks, Ladies and Gentleman, I declare this Forum officially open. I Thank You  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches

Tarisa Watanagase: Banking supervision and external audits Speech by Dr Tarisa Watanagase, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the Regional Meeting of SEANZA Forum of Banking Supervisors, Madrid, 21 September 2004. *  *  *  Distinguished guest speakers, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good morning, let me begin by thanking the SEANZA forum and especially Mr. Reyes, the Chairman of SEANZA and Deputy Governor of Bangko Sentral ng Pillipinas for inviting me to share my thoughts on banking supervision and external audits. I would like to spend the next fifteen minutes discussing three main issues. First, I will outline why the relationship between banking supervisors and external auditors matters; second, I will cover our experience with external auditors from both the regulatory and supervisory perspectives; and I will close by offering a few remarks on the challenges ahead for supervisors and external auditors of Thai banks. While the auditors’ duties are to report on the reliability of banks’ financial statements to the board of directors and shareholders, the supervisors’ main concerns are to maintain the stability of the banking system. Despite these differences in our respective goals, the day-to-day work of external auditors can complement that of bank supervisors. First, many countries are moving towards a risk-based approach to banking supervision, an approach which emphasizes a thorough assessment of an institution’s internal control environment and risk management systems.
Management will now enjoy greatly enhanced freedom and flexibility in determining how to best deliver products and services to the marketplace, and the market will judge the correctness of those choices. Some have perceived the newly authorized powers to benefit only large bank holding companies. This is not correct. The strategic freedom the Act provides is available to all banking organizations, regardless of size. Indeed, more than two-thirds of initial institutions seeking to become financial holding companies have assets of less than $ billion. Institutions will have to decide for themselves how, or even whether, they should take advantage of the newly authorized activities to build value for their customers and shareholders. Many franchises will succeed by focusing on traditional, face-to-face banking, which continues to have real economic value. Newer technological capacities and techniques are awe-inspiring, to be sure, but effective and profitable banking is ultimately about trust, and human nature hasn’t changed we still appreciate a face across the desk. In addition, as some large organizations have become even larger through mergers, many community banks have been able to attract customers whose needs have not been met by larger institutions. How institutions pursue new opportunities will be just as important as their decision whether to pursue. It is one thing to gain FHC status and begin to prudently experiment with new powers, and quite another to dive head-long into the deep end of the pool with full-scale acquisitions or rapid expansion into new businesses.

And finally, market discipline ensures that the market provides another set of eyes on the soundness of institutions. In the broader sense, we could conclude that strengthening market discipline within a clear prudential framework can help achieve a better balance between financial system stability and economic efficiency. In that sense, as the Central Bank, we are very well aware of our responsibility in implementing sound and coherent policies and delivering these policies and policy related messages to the markets within the context of maximum transparency and timeliness. All these components contribute to financial security and in turn enhance the financial stability in the system, accommodating policy makers’ further decisions. Actually, financial security and stability are so much interrelated that one could easily argue that the stability is also a prerequisite for the security in the system or vice-versa. Lastly, financial security and thus, stability contributes to the health of the financial systems, efficient allocation of resources and effective management and distribution of risks in the economy. Maintaining and safeguarding financial stability is a must for the authorities of every country not only to have a sound national financial system but also to contribute to the overall soundness of the world financial markets. Policy coordination between institutions on international and national levels will certainly be the most important aspect of this dynamic process. Thank you for your attention. BIS Review 76/2007  3
So, establishing and maintaining financial stability should be high up everyone’s agenda, and we should embed financial stability as the objective of public policy towards regulating the financial system. You can reasonably ask, why is this difficult to achieve? Financial stability is difficult to define quantitatively and precisely. Some people say that you know it when you have it, but it might be better to say that you know when you don’t have it. What is being done to tackle the issue? A month ago, the Government issued a consultation paper which seeks to define the financial stability objective that will be given to the new Financial Policy Committee of the Bank of England under its plans. The objective is defined at the high level as protecting and enhancing the stability of the financial system of the UK. More precisely, the Bank’s objective “relates primary to the identification of, monitoring of, and taking of action to remove or reduce” risk to the stability of the UK financial system as a whole or to a significant part of the system, “with a view to protecting and enhancing the resilience of the UK financial system”. But the paper goes on to include in the objective the statement that: this does not require or authorise the Bank “to exercise its function in a way that would in its opinion be likely to have a significant adverse effect on the capacity of the financial sector to contribute to the growth of the UK economy in the medium or long term”.

Their response to the cry of this time is different is to assert that “it almost never is.” Why, then, is it so hard to understand the true picture of financial crises? I think that the issue here lies clearly in the characteristics of banks. One of the conclusions of work on the history of financial crises is that they have worse outcomes when they involve banks. As an example, if you remember the stock market crash of 1987, which seemed very bad at the time, it did not threaten the banking system, and its effects were contained. It was not a major financial crisis in its own right. The reasons for this difference when banks are involved have to do with the nature of banks. At the heart of banking is a technical term called maturity transformation, or more simply, banks borrow at a shorter term and lend at a longer term in respect of the duration of their deposits and loans. This is the essence of banking. Banks transform savings that may be required by their owners at short notice into longer-term loans. This is a benefit to the economy and society because it allows longer-term borrowing by companies and by all of us to buy houses. But it makes banks inherently illiquid. If all depositors decided to ask for their money back at the same time the bank would struggle to pay-out and survive. This is because the bank will generally find it difficult to realise its assets in time.
The impact of interest rate changes is transmitted with a lag, but monetary policy gradually delivers results, now as ever. Reducing imbalances and restoring stability is in everyone’s interest. Some strain is inevitable during an adjustment from heavy imbalances, so complaints come as no surprise. But this does not mean that the wrong monetary policy measures are being applied – it could even mean quite the opposite. The Central Bank’s policy rate is high. The press release announcing the Board of Governors’ decision on February 8, which I quoted earlier, stated that the current interest rate may suffice to bring inflation to target within an acceptable period of time. It is impossible to state this categorically now, because it depends on the inflation outlook. What is certain is that the policy rate will be lowered as soon as the Central Bank deems this compatible with the inflation target. It is wrong to claim that this is ruled out because the interest rate differential with abroad must be maintained to prevent turbulence when glacier bonds mature. However, an untimely reduction in the policy rate will benefit no one. It has been claimed that the Central Bank is undermining the króna with its interest policy, which will cause businesses and households to abandon the currency. In this context it must be remembered that without a tight monetary stance and high interest rates, the króna would probably have depreciated by more than it actually did, demand would have grown faster and inflation moved much higher.

58   729 22723 1 1 7 23 4 3 7 72 8 72 3  72 8 23 7 23 6921 3234 8 31 727263   8  127263 9   9 3  76 8 8 7 8 3 4   1 3   9 3 31 3  % 1 8723 729 87 8723 66272  9 88 &  1 88 231 39263 88 372 31 2 1 87 & 4263  3829 73  B 3 ' 23 3 3 72 87 7263 877 7  37  6 3 386 8 9 26237 8 0367 3    8 92 9 87 28234 7231     8 87 3 23 728 3234 %  78 23 3 88 8 3 729 127263 3 3 729 9 1 729 729 4 32 31 8 9 23  3 729 3 38  3 3  28 4 37 3  31 347 8223  11 92    3 127263 1 4  8  9 73 3 1 23 3   2728 7 33  c6L?589  63  343   9  98 1 5   141 611 8  7 48945  4861 633  8 633 1 1 41 3   '(''12n3 +9  861 ,3 4 48 48  1 8 48 # 561 763 63  4 4 8 4S61S5 8  63 83 83 18     7896  86    !
Percent 7 7 6  6  5  5  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0  –1 1985  –1 1989  1993  1997  2001  2005  2009  2013  2017  1) Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US. Unweighted average. Sources: Thomson Reuters and Norges Bank  9  When the financial crisis engulfed the global economy in 2008, central banks responded forcefully. During the crisis, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve cut their policy rates by 4 to 5 percentage points. Many central banks still found it difficult to provide a sufficiently accommodative monetary stance, and the room for further interest rate cuts was gradually exhausted. Norges Bank Economic perspectives 15 february 2018  Central banks were led into unknown territory and implemented unconventional measures. They have purchased securities on a large scale. In addition, a barrier has been breached. In the euro area, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan, policy rates have been cut to below zero. Monetary policy has been stretched far. The purpose of the large-scale asset purchases by central banks has been to bring down long-term interest rates even further. This policy has had a broad impact. The average real yield on ten-year government bonds is now negative in the OECD area. Portfolios were rebalanced, which also pushed down yields on bank and corporate bonds.

The potent medicine has worked. Growth in all the major advanced economies has gained a firm footing. Unemployment in major economies is lower than before the financial crisis. Price and wage inflation is rising from low levels. The need for monetary accommodation is thus diminishing. Global interest rates have bottomed out. Policy rates in the US, UK and Canada were raised in the course of 2017, with more central banks likely to follow suit in 2018. The Federal Reserve has begun to unwind its bond holdings. Other central banks have tapered their asset purchases. The global interest rate rise will probably be gradual (Chart 11). After a long period of very low rates, the effect of higher interest rates on the economy is uncertain. It is also uncertain how quickly wage and price inflation will rise as activity gains momentum. 1) Chart 11 Policy rates. Percent 8  8  Current policy rate 2)  Expected policy rate 2021  6  Historical average 1990 – 2007  6  4  4  2  2  0  0  –2  –2 US  Euro area  UK  1) In the chart, the policy rate for the US refers to the mid−point of the target range for the federal funds rate. For the euro area, historical policy rates are calculated using the interest rate on the ECB’s main refinancing operations from 1999 to 2007. Before 1999, the Bundesbank’s discount rate is used.
We therefore instituted an additional regular survey of just the major lenders; some of the resulting data appears in our publication Trends in Lending, together with a commentary on credit developments informed by the associated discussions with the lenders. We would, however, have liked access to more information on the evolution of credit by industry and firm size so as to get a better handle on where credit constraints were biting hardest. Gaining access to micro-prudential supervisory data relating to individual institutions collected by the FSA has proved invaluable in assessing the resilience of the banking system and thus its ability to supply the credit to support the recovery. One area where more information would be useful is on the activities of the shadow banking sector. Almost inevitably, one has less knowledge of these institutions than of regulated entities. But we have seen that serious problems can arise in such hidden corners of the financial sector. High-quality flow of funds data, similar to that available in the United States, would also be valuable. That would facilitate a better understanding of the factors influencing  BIS Review 142/2010  5  changes in agents’ balance sheets, and thus be valuable in the pursuit of both monetary and financial stability. Cross-sectional information on balance sheets within the household and business sectors could also be useful in evaluating the seriousness of financial strains.

With this in mind, a further strengthening of the capital situation and – in conjunction with this – a further realignment of the business model in order to achieve sustainable profitability, are still central challenges facing the big banks. The profitability and the capital situation of the banks with a domestic business focus – the cantonal, regional and Raiffeisen banks – were significantly higher in 2009 than the longterm average. The dip in GDP from mid-2008 to mid-2009 has so far barely had any effect on these banks, with the result that the provisioning requirement for credit risk continued at a low level in 2009. Nevertheless, in our estimation, the position of these bank categories is less comfortable than may appear at first glance. First of all, the capital situation of the Raiffeisen banks and the state-guaranteed cantonal banks needs to be put into perspective: the Raiffeisen banks can count the additional funding obligation required of members in the  BIS Review 85/2010  1  cooperative as capital until the end of 2011, and the cantonal banks are entitled to a reduction in required capital due to the state guarantee. In the absence of these concessions, the capital ratios – particularly for the Raiffeisen banks – would be markedly lower. Second, according to our assessment, the risk exposure of the domestically focused banks is higher now than it was in 2009. For one thing, the interest rate risk of cantonal and Raiffeisen banks is at historically high levels.