samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
These trends are being further supported by enhanced linkages in the payment systems to facilitate the intermediation of funds in the region. The economic transformation of Malaysia will move us to the next level of development. Malaysia has been a middle income country for almost three decades, having benefited considerably from rapid industrialisation and integration with the global economy. Moving into the next stage of economic development, the domestic economy will change to a productive structure that is more innovation-driven and knowledge-intensive, with the services sector assuming an increasingly dominant role in the economy. In this next decade, the services sector is expected to account for about two thirds of the economy, with growth focused on higher value added activities. To support and drive this transformation, a new blueprint for the financial services sector is being developed by Bank Negara Malaysia. The blueprint will chart the next phase of the evolution of the financial sector, with the aim of positioning the financial sector, including Islamic finance, not only to become a catalyst to the transformation process, but also having the flexibility to respond to the key trends that are emerging. In essence, we need to evolve a financial system that best serves Malaysians in this new environment. As the global financial services industry going forward strives to regain thrust and confidence, the starting point in Asia is to build on the solid foundations put in place during the decade following the Asian financial crisis.

First, domestic demand, supported by the large and fast-growing middle income and young population in the region, will increasingly have a greater role in driving economic growth in Asia. This would contribute towards a greater balance between domestic and external sources of growth. Second, the diversification of external markets will accelerate, towards greater economic inter-linkages with emerging economies in other parts of the world. Part of this trend includes the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015 in which ASEAN will transform into a single market with free movement of goods and services. This will include the lifting of restrictions to the flow of capital in the region. And third, is the greater financial integration within Asia that will result in an increased part of the savings in Asia being reinvested in Asia. The new spending patterns as incomes rise in the region will drive the modernisation of the retail sector across the region. Financial services to the household sector will become increasingly important in this new environment. Reforms to pensions and retirement benefit systems will be key to providing a more comprehensive social safety net, thus reducing the need for high precautionary savings and encouraging consumption. In addition, the large trade sector in Asia and large capital investments required to move towards higher valueadded activity will also provide an expanding market for financial services. The more regionally integrated financial system will allow firms and investors increased options in the regional financial markets for financing and investment.
Together, these developments bode well for the macroeconomy, suggesting that U.S. households can return to more normal patterns of borrowing to smooth consumption and to invest in autos and houses. Still, despite the return to more normal patterns of borrowing, it is worth pondering the significance of the recent change in the composition of household debt as student loans have grown to be the second-largest category of household debt after mortgages. While these loans provide critical access to schooling, they may constrain the consumption choices of young people, especially those who graduate in periods of poor employment prospects. BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  12  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  13  14  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  15  16  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  17

SPEECH  The path ahead Speech by Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, at “The ECB and Its Watchers XXIII” conference Frankfurt am Main, 22 March 2023 The euro area has been hit by an inflation shock, which is now working its way through the economy. While headline inflation is likely to decline steeply this year, driven by falling energy prices and easing supply bottlenecks, underlying inflation dynamics remain strong. In such an environment, our ultimate goal is clear: we must – and we will – bring down inflation to our medium-term target in a timely manner. But to achieve this goal we need a robust strategy, which takes into account the high levels of uncertainty we are facing today. As John Maynard Keynes once observed, “it would be foolish, in forming our expectations, to attach great weight to matters which are very uncertain”. In current conditions, a robust strategy calls for a data-dependent approach to making policy and a clear reaction function so that the public understands the sources of information that will be important to us. To that end, our future policy path will be determined by three factors: our assessment of the inflation outlook in light of the incoming economic and financial data, the dynamics of underlying inflation and the strength of monetary policy transmission. At the same time, I have made clear that there is no trade-off between price stability and financial stability.
Some central banks tried to target monetary aggregates, others to peg nominal exchange rates, and others to use an eclectic mix of indicators. Two decades ago, some central banks started conducting monetary policy targeting a specific value or range for the rate of inflation. This trend started with New Zealand in 1990, and was followed by Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Sweden in the early 1990s. This is a case in which policy development led academic advances. Progress in the academic front provided further impetus to the adoption of inflation targets as new models were developed to provide the theoretical underpinnings of inflation targets and the basis to conduct empirical work (Galí and Gertler, 2007). BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  This view was further justified by the success of monetary policy around the world in providing stability, not only in the inflation front, but also in activity and employment. The evidence that output volatility declined significantly in the US since the mid eighties was first reported by Kim and Nelson (1999), and later called the Great Moderation by Stock and Watson (2003).1 Several factors could be behind this fact, such as technical progress, better policies, deeper financial markets, and sheer good luck. Although there is no final verdict, there is evidence that points to the role of better macro policies (Galí and Gambetti, 2009).

In addition, the latitude of changes in regulation is much more limited than that of interest rates. A more constructive approach may be to design rule-based countercyclical regulation with a clear purpose to minimize the risk of financial crisis. Nevertheless, we still need to learn more about the interactions between monetary and financial policies. Final remarks A natural reaction to a crisis is to think that everything is wrong and that all must be changed. Emerging markets, and in particular Chile, performed well during the crisis, and above all during the recovery. Therefore, a first lesson must be on the factors that produced these good results, and macroeconomic management was certainly central to the rapid recovery. The financial system was resilient, which shows that the regulatory framework was appropriate. However, our role is not to congratulate ourselves for our achievements in the past, but to look at strengthening our macroeconomic framework. As development proceeds, new challenges arise due to financial innovation, and it is extremely important to look for lessons while the crisis unfolds, to take advantage of financial development without risking financial stability. There is a need to study the interactions between monetary and financial policies further, especially given the challenges stemming from the global outlook. Implementing monetary policy in a flexible inflation targeting framework has shown its benefits; incorporating financial frictions and the appropriate policies should help us to navigate better in a very uncertain world.
However, unlike regulations or supervisory standards, compliance with the best practice standards developed by our committees is not mandatory for the broader market. Furthermore, there may be instances where implementation may vary given the diversity of entities in the market and the different profiles of market engagement. This is particularly relevant for the global FX market, with its range of market participants. 21 Central banks play an important role in convening industry stakeholders to develop high standards of behavior that promote fairness and integrity, and in pushing the industry to affirm them. Nonetheless, central banks are not acting as regulators when they sponsor these committees, even when they have relevant regulatory powers. Since best practice standards that are articulated by the committees that we work with are not, in and of themselves, binding, promoting their adoption is both challenging and important. We work on a number of fronts in this effort. We strive to engage a wide diversity  18  See “The Introduction of the TMPG Fails Charge for U.S. Treasury Securities” for more information. 19  The New York Fed has organized workshops and conferences on reforming culture in the financial services industry. Additionally, several executives have spoken publicly on the topic. See here for more detail. 20  The G30, the Basel Committee, the European Systemic Risk Board, and the FSB have issued papers on culture, governance, and misconduct risk. The Bank of England’s Fair and Effective Markets Review called for higher conduct standards for the fixed income markets.

The central bank of the Netherlands – De Nederlandsche Bank – has developed new approaches for the supervision of corporate culture and decisionmaking. 21  The MPG is working with the BIS FXWG to develop market-based adherence mechanisms for the FX Global Code. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  of market participants as we develop best practices. This is to ensure that the practices reflect all relevant segments of the market and to promote buy-in and thus foster their adoption. As I mentioned before, both the TMPG and the FXC are expanding their membership such that a range of market participants feels vested in their missions. In addition, we engage with other sectors of the marketplace, such as trade associations and infrastructure providers, to educate them about best practices that have been developed and facilitate their potential adoption of aspects of them. When central banks operate in the markets ourselves, we expect the best practices to apply. This has two aspects. First, we align our own practices to the best practices, except where it would inhibit our policy functions. As a corollary, we expect those institutions that choose to become our counterparties to comply with the best practices as well, so that when we transact, we do so with the confidence that our counterparties are adhering to these standards of behavior. Finally, we keep supervisors, regulators and other official sector bodies, inside and outside our four walls, abreast of the work of our committees.
Within this framework, compared to the previous report, the revised forecasts are based on a deeper contraction in 2009, and a global recovery that will be visible by mid-2010, rather than at the beginning of 2010. I would like to clarify that the word “recovery” in this Report refers to “a significantly positive growth in economic activity in year-on-year terms”. 14  BIS Review 67/2009  Table 3: Forecasts for Annual Growth 2009  2010  Previous Forecast New Forecast Previous Forecast New Forecast IMF World  0,5  -1,3  3,0  1,9  Developed Countries  -2,0  -3,8  1,1  0,0  USA  -1,6  -2,8  1,6  0,0  Eurozone  -2,0  -4,2  0,2  -0,4  Developing Countries  3,3  1,6  5,0  4,0  Total OECD  -0,4  -4,3  1,5  -0,1  USA  -0,9  -4,0  1,6  0,0  Eurozone  -0,6  -4,1  1,2  -0,3  World  -0,2  -2,1  2,0  1,9  USA  -1,8  -2,7  2,3  1,8  Eurozone  -1,4  -3,4  0,8  0,3  OECD  Consensus Forecasts  Source: IMF World Economic Outlook, January and IMF World Economic Outlook, April. OECD Economic Outlook, 2008/II, December and OECD Economic Outlook, Interim Report, March. Consensus Forecasts, January and Consensus Forecasts, April.

Jean-Claude Trichet: Introductory remarks at ETUC Congress Speech by Mr Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, at the 11th ETUC (European Trade Union Confederation) Congress, Seville, 22 May 2007. *  *  *  Let me begin with a few remarks about the importance of price stability for the welfare of euro area citizens. The successful maintenance of stable prices and longer-term inflation expectations that are securely anchored at levels consistent with price stability is a necessary condition for attaining sustainable growth in economic activity and sustainable employment creation. Looking back over the period since the euro was launched euro area inflation has indeed been very close to 2% on average. Stability-oriented monetary policy has therefore directly improved the well-being of euro area citizens, inter alia, by supporting the purchasing power of their income and savings. While single monetary policy continues to deliver on its mandate, the euro area economy also faces significant challenges that point to the need for structural reforms. Among these challenges, improving the productivity performance of the euro area is particularly important: at the level of the euro area as a whole, the average annual increase of labour productivity declined from 1.6% between 1991 and 1998 to 0.8% between 1999 and 2006, whereas it increased in the United States from 1.3% to 2.2%. Pursuing structural reforms is also essential to maintaining the competitiveness of the euro area as a whole and to translating the opportunities brought about by globalisation into achievements.
Barbon developed the argument that wealth creates demand and he extolled conspicuous consumption: he wrote that “a poor man wants a Pound; a rich man a Hundred”. Clearly, Barbon never quite imagined that one day investment bankers would take his idea to a whole new level. And, finally on Barbon, he was around at the time of the founding of the Bank of England. Indeed, the records suggest that he very much wanted the Bank of England not to be founded, and instead that his own idea of a national Land Bank should have received the favour of the Crown and Parliament. That did not happen, and so I guess that Barbon would not be happy on finding out that the Bank of England will, over three hundred years later, take on regulating his industry of insurance. But then his writings suggest that Barbon was no fan of regulation. From my perspective this is a very exciting time because after nearly three years of work on a wide range of subjects covering the legislation, the new model of prudential supervision, our staff, property, IT and other things, we can see the new Prudential Regulation Authority starting to take shape for real. We are in the process of moving into our new home at 20 Moorgate. There were several reasons why we chose a City location.

The nagging concern is whether this determined pursuit of macro-economic stability will be maintained - whether in fact the degree of macro-economic convergence that has been achieved is likely - in the terms of the Treaty - to be “sustainable”. A particular worry is that macro-economic stability, on its own, is not enough. It has not been enough to prevent the progressive emergence of very high, and very different, levels of unemployment in a number of the major Continental European economies. Unemployment has been for some considerable time, and it remains, much the most urgent and important economic issue confronting us in Europe. I do not suggest for a moment that the right answer would be to abandon macro-economic discipline and revert to old-fashioned demand management policies. In anything other than the very short term that would be likely to make matters worse. I share the broad consensus view that Europe’s unemployment problems originate essentially in rigidities on the supply-side of the economy. The point is that unless we are all more successful in bringing down this structural unemployment, through micro-economic policies designed to improve structural, supply-side flexibility, then some countries could find it difficult to continue to live with a common macro-economic discipline without significant tensions.
We must not forget that inflation forecasts are made under great uncertainty and that inflation is affected by unpredictable factors. Nevertheless, during the 10 years we have employed inflation targeting, the average inflation rate has remained very close to the target level. To summarise, we can observe that the growth rate for 2003 was weaker than we had expected in 2002. The inflation rate, however, was more or less as expected. It is possible that we became slightly too pessimistic with regard to economic activity in 2003. When we made our monetary policy decision in December the international upturn appeared to have been confirmed, and there were also signs that the Swedish economy was strengthening. Inflation had developed roughly as we had calculated in earlier forecasts. Although energy prices did not fall as far as we had calculated, domestic inflationary pressure excluding energy prices proved to be lower than expected, probably because of the weak labour market development and good productivity growth. The falling import prices had an even more significant effect on inflation. We assumed in our inflation forecast for the coming years that import prices would cease falling and instead begin to rise gently as international economic activity improved. The forecast for domestic cost pressure was adjusted slightly downwards as this was expected to show only a slight increase during the forecast period.

•  The management of the Fund is delegated to Norges Bank. The Bank’s task is to implement the investment strategy and exercise ownership rights. Norges Bank also provides professional advice to the Ministry on investment strategies. Norges Bank has built an organisation with emphasis on investment returns and based on three fundamental principles: Accountability, transparency and professional standards. Norges Bank manages parts of the funds internally, while parts are managed by external managers appointed by the Bank on a commercial basis. Transparency and disclosure of information are key features of the Fund. All investment principles and guidelines as well as strategic advice and second opinion reports are made public. We publish quarterly reports on Fund performance, which are presented at press conferences. The Fund’s annual report discloses a list of every single investment held at the end of the year, and also provides an overview of corporate governance work, including voting at general meetings. Initially, transparency was aimed at building confidence among Norwegians, but we have also seen that our policy of transparency is highly appreciated internationally. The Fund’s investment strategy is to maximise financial return with moderate risk. The longterm strategic allocation is defined in terms of a benchmark portfolio, which consists of equities and fixed income instruments. Equities account for 60 per cent of the Fund's strategic benchmark portfolio, while fixed income instruments account for 40 per cent.
However, there are lessons and experiences on many different levels and my intention is instead to apply the more unpretentious strategy of “starting in my own backyard”. More specifically, what I intend to do is to review three aspects concerning developments in Sweden since the financial crisis, give my personal reflections on them and indicate what lessons I think there are to learn. Such a review need not be as self-indulgent and provincial as one might fear, but should be of rather general interest. There are clear links between developments in Sweden and the current international debate on monetary policy. Furthermore, Sweden has for some reason often been one of the first countries to face various new situations that have had to be dealt with. And even though other countries have yet to encounter the challenges already faced by the Swedish economy, they may have to do so sooner or later. 3 The three aspects I would like to discuss are the following: •  The Riksbank is one of relatively few central banks that have explicitly used the policy rate to try to counteract the build-up of financial imbalances – a policy that is usually called “leaning against the wind”. It is probably the only central bank that has had to abandon this policy, temporarily at least, in order to focus fully on the inflation target.

In the four years since our last gathering, we were hit by a sequence of global shocks, unprecedented in their diversity and density of occurrence – first the pandemic, then the energy crisis, the full-fledged war on European soil and the refugee crisis, and all coupled with the long-standing and ongoing climate crisis. These shocks further triggered some major structural changes – the pandemic speeded up digitalization and changed the working habits all over the globe, but also led to severe global supply disruptions. On top of that, the war led to global trade and investment fragmentation,  1/4  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  and further exacerbated inflation pressures, thus forcing the central banks to aggressively raise interest rates. Quite a different world than when we last met here on a similar occasion. As stressful and demanding these recent years have been, for policymakers and economists they were also a lifetime opportunity for learning important lessons. In times like these we often say: "Don't waste a good crisis.". From each and every of them we can learn something and by doing that we can benefit. When it comes to these recent crises, I would highlight three key lessons we should take away – resilience, adaptability, and cooperation. First, on resilience. We live in an increasingly shock-prone environment in which unpredictability is becoming the norm. Who would have thought in 2019 that we would have a pandemics and major war in Europe in next three years?