samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In addition, Hong Kong will contribute to the improvement of the regulatory standard of Mainland financial institutions through regulatory co-operation, technological exchanges and staff visits between the regulatory bodies in Hong Kong and on the Mainland. Secondly, with the expansion and diversification of international trade and investment activities in China, Mainland financial institutions (particularly banks) have to expand and engage in cross-border and overseas businesses. However, banks on the Mainland have to be cautious when “going global” because the operating environment, legal and regulatory requirements and staff employment system of the Mainland market are very much different from those of the overseas markets. Therefore, Hong Kong acts as a suitable “window” or “springboard”. Many Mainland banks, such as the Bank of China, have a long history in Hong Kong and have accumulated much operating experience. These banks are generally trusted and welcomed by the Hong Kong people due to their pragmatic ways of doing business. In 1996, the total asset of Mainland banks in Hong Kong was $ billion, accounting for 11% of the total assets of banks in Hong Kong. In 2009, the total asset of Mainland banks in  2  BIS Review 166/2010  Hong Kong increased to $ trillion, accounting for 19% of the total assets of banks in Hong Kong.

Some said that the development in the last three decades was a miracle and was almost incredible. Instead, I would describe it as a “world-shaking” development. Having encountered enormous difficulties and challenges at every single stage of reform and opening up, China, as the country with largest population in the world, managed to carry out an unprecedented transformation from a planned economy to a market economy. As there was no precedent to learn from, China could only rely on its own efforts and took one step at a time. Hong Kong has played an extremely important and irreplaceable role during the process of China’s reform and opening up. At the initial stage of opening up, China focused on attracting foreign investors to set up manufacturing factories. Hong Kong manufacturers were the first to move their operations to Mainland China. In the past 30 years, Hong Kong has always been the largest source of direct investment in the Mainland. In 2009, Hong Kong invested $ billion in China, accounting for one half of the total foreign investment in the country. In the course of investing in China, not only has Hong Kong injected capital but, more importantly, it has introduced skills in production and management. In the past decade, the Mainland projects in which Hong Kong invested have gone through some significant changes. The focus has been shifted from investment in the manufacturing industry to a range of diversified and multi-dimensional investments that include investment in all kinds of service industries.
To give you a few examples, the Bank of Thailand has imposed a cap on loan-to-value ratio on high-end real estate loans since 2003. We also tightened credit card and personal loan regulations in 2004 and 2005, respectively. These pre-emptive measures helped reduce balance sheet vulnerability and ensure Thailand’s resiliency against and fast recovery after the sub-prime crisis. Nevertheless, despite the success so far on the stability front, we cannot afford to be complacent about economic stability as shocks can occur at any time and in any form, thus we must remain vigilant. Ladies and Gentlemen, Economic stability is the means to an end but not an end in itself. This is because we can also have a stable economy that grows at an undesirably low rate, especially when productivity is sluggish. This brings me to the second success factor, namely high potential growth. Thailand, despite its strength in economic sustainability, has a moderate potential growth rate compared to her peers. Over the past decade, our GDP grew on average by 4.4 percent2 annually, and the average growth rate rises to 5.1 percent excluding the sub-prime crisis period. This growth performance has been somewhat lower than the Bank of Thailand’s research result3, which estimated Thailand’s potential growth at up to 6.1 percent for the next decade. Our estimate result is based on the assumption that the country’s investment growth over the next 5 years returns to its normal trend, which is approximately 10 to 12 percent growth per year as seen during 2002–2005.

All of these central bank functions are mutually dependent and, together, highlight the fact that the structure and workings of the banking system are integral to a country’s financial stability and economic growth. Clearly, monetary policy cannot succeed in its mission if the underlying financial system is unstable. The importance of an efficient, safe and sound banking and financial system for a country’s long-term economic prospects cannot be overstated. In any market economy, the banking and financial system plays a central role in mobilizing a society’s savings and in channeling these savings into investment and other productive uses. This intermediation process is one of the core determinants of the pace of a country’s economic development. Moreover, the banking and financial system must facilitate transactions in an economy by ensuring that they can be effected safely and swiftly on an ongoing basis. Both buyers and sellers of goods and services must have confidence that instruments used to make payments will be honored and accepted by all parties. These crucial functions of transforming savings into productive uses and making payments are often taken for granted. But, in fact, it can be difficult to ensure that the legal and institutional framework within which these functions are performed is consistent with the often conflicting goals of free choice, economic efficiency, safety and financial market stability. BIS Review 17/1997  -4-  Experience has proven that there is no easy way to shape financial institutions in a manner that appropriately balances these goals under changing economic conditions.
In looking for the origins of the crisis, one also observes instances of fiscal indiscipline, which caused problems at the Euro area level. In some member states, as for example in the case of Greece, EU funds were not put to proper use and in some cases ended up imposing a burden on future government finances. In my previous appointment at the European Court of Auditors, where I was responsible for coordinating the overall audit report on the spending of the EU budget, in almost every report  1  See L. Bini Smaghi, “Eurozone, European crisis and policy responses”, Goldman Sachs Global Macro Conference – Asia 2011, 22 February 2011. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  during my six-year term, Greece was invariably singled out because of its problems and serious deficiencies in the spending of EU funds. Greece often had to pay back to the EU budget funds that it badly needed. It is evident that such weaknesses in the administrative and political structure put an unnecessary burden on Greece’s fiscal position. A recent study describes the first nine years of the euro, between 1999 and 2007 (that is, the pre-crisis period), as “ ‘wasted good times’ during which the foundations were laid for the present crisis … Almost as soon as the euro had been introduced, consolidation fatigue set in”.2 Moreover, governance at the EU level was weak. The application of the corrective arm of the Stability and Growth Pact was softened through intervention at the political level in 2003.

As Figure 3 shows, in the current recovery, growth in consumption has been much slower than in the 1982 recovery and has, unfortunately, tracked the anemic initial recovery from the 2001 recession. While the 2001 recession damaged many a household’s finances, through an abrupt decline in stock-market wealth, the current recovery has been hampered by households trying to rebuild their finances given sharply diminished housing wealth in addition to declines in the value of their other investments. While there have been concerns about business fixed investment, Figure 4 shows that this component of GDP has grown quite well relative to the last two recoveries – although somewhat slower than the 1982 recovery. Despite the concern over economic uncertainty voiced by many businesses, investment has been growing. The real laggard in this recovery has been housing. While housing is a relatively small component of GDP, it can be quite volatile – and often grows rapidly during an economic recovery. In addition, purchases of appliances, home furnishings, and housing-related services are impacted by slowed housing activity. Given the problems that flow from the bursting of the housing bubble, Figure 5 shows that residential fixed investment is roughly where it was at the trough of the recession – and thus not providing its more usual contribution to growth in the early stages of a recovery. Just how moribund the housing market has been is shown in Figure 6. Both housing starts and building permits have leveled off, but are showing no signs of a significant recovery yet.
Mixed signals from the rest of the world... New US statistics indicate continued strength in the US economy. Preliminary figures show that GDP increased in the second quarter by 1.7 per cent, calculated as an annual rate, compared with the first quarter of this year, which is in line with the assessment we made in July. At the same time as the new outcomes were published, the statistics authority released revised GDP figures for previous periods. These show that GDP growth has been slightly higher since 2007, and that the fall in GDP during the financial crisis was thus not as large as indicated by earlier statistics. In the United Kingdom, GDP was slightly better than expected during the second quarter. The indicators for July also point to a gradual recovery in the British economy. However, in Japan, which showed positive signals at the start of the year, newly-received statistics over the summer have not been as clear. GDP growth slowed down during the second quarter and the recovery in both the household and corporate sectors appears to have been dampened slightly further at the start of the third quarter. At the same time, data shows that emerging markets are slowing down somewhat. In China, preliminary figures for the second quarter show that GDP increased by 7.5 per cent as an annual percentage change, which was a slowdown compared with the previous quarter. Indicators for the other BRIC countries, that is, Brazil, Russia and India, show some slowdown.

In the July report we describe a potential scenario in Sweden if house prices were to fall at the same time as indebtedness is high.3 Experiences from other countries show that this would probably mean that households increase their savings and reduce their consumption, which would subdue demand in the economy and push up unemployment. The effects on GDP and unemployment may therefore be both substantial and long lasting. Relevant examples here are Spain and Denmark. Experiences also show that the higher households’ debts are, the greater the negative consequences will be of a fall in housing prices.4 At the same time, there would probably be long-lasting difficulties in attaining the inflation target, as the uncertainty over future inflation increases significantly. Conducting a flexible inflation-targeting policy in this context involves taking into account the risk of a crisis occurring by balancing the effects within the normal forecast period against the long-term risks I described. There is of course considerable scope here for different assessments, for instance, to what extent monetary policy affects the probability of a crisis, as well as how a crisis scenario would play out. These are difficult monetary policy deliberations without easy answers. As Sweden is a small country with its own currency and strongly dependent on other countries, it is particularly important that we do not create  2  See, for instance, M. Schularick and A.M. Taylor (2012), “Credit Booms Gone Bust: Monetary Policy, Leverage Cycles, and Financial Crises, 1870–2008”, American Economic Review 102, pp. 1029–61.
The global standardsetters are open to such ownership, but only on the condition that legislation and regulation provide the powers for effective consolidated supervision and transparency of such structures, including the parent company. This implies for instance that the bank group can be protected from the risks emanating from the non-financial owners, such as through ring-fencing. In my experience, nonfinancial ownerships have often caused problems for banks and the supervisors must monitor such relationships closely. This applies in particular to so called “pocket banks” which are dominated both in ownership and activities by the needs of the parent company or major owners. Should banks have a widely spread or a concentrated ownership? I have an open mind on this issue, too. Both alternatives have their advantages and disadvantages. A broad ownership may better protect the interests of the minority shareholders, but if financial problems occur the majority owners have stronger incentives to provide capital injections. The governance of a bank is sometimes promoted by having strong owners, but there are also examples of strong owners misusing the bank for their personal purposes. All in all, you should be open to different forms of ownership but monitor them closely. Should you allow different forms of banks, such as commercial banks, savings banks, credit unions, development banks and micro-finance institutions? In my view: Yes, of course. Competition is best served by having a range of bank ownership structures such as shareholding, mutual ownership, nonprofit organisations, etcetera.

Zamani Abdul Ghani: Reinventing retirement strategies in the new world of risks Keynote address by Mr Zamani Abdul Ghani, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the 4th Asian Conference on Pensions & Retirement Planning: "Reinventing Retirement Strategies in the New World of Risks", Kuala Lumpur, 26 November 2007. *  *  *  Introduction It is my great pleasure to be here today at the 4th Asian Conference on Pensions and Retirement Planning. Let me first extend a warm welcome and Selamat Datang to all the participants from abroad and fellow Malaysians here today. During this "Visit Malaysia Year", which is also the year Malaysia celebrates its 50th year of independence, I do hope our foreign participants will make time to enjoy Malaysia's diverse culture, and experience the many unique sights, sounds and flavours, as well as discover why Malaysia is “truly Asia”. I am indeed very pleased to be invited by the Asia Insurance Review to address this major Conference. This Conference brings together both experts and learners who all share deep interests in the development of the pension and retirement planning. I was told that we have amongst us today distinguished market practitioners and participants from the insurance and banking industry, regulators, pension providers, consultants, and investment managers from 17 countries. I wish to congratulate the Asia Insurance Review for bringing together such a gathering here in Kuala Lumpur , and organizing this Conference for the fourth consecutive year.
They suggest a marked slowing in output, employment and investment under this scenario, consistent with the Bank’s in-house macro-economic models. This is micro-to-macro in practice. Chart 27: Firms’ expectations for economy under a no-deal, no-transition Brexit  Sources: Bank of England and Bank calculations. Recently, the Bank has used its regional network to augment its local engagement. Two years ago, I began a programme of “Townhall” visits to some of the UK’s most poorly-performing regions, often organised in conjunction with local charities, faith or community groups including Age UK, Citizens’ Advice, the Board of 45  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  45  Deputies of British Jews, the Muslim Council of Britain, Oxfam and the YMCA. These Townhalls engage the public directly on issues around the economy and finance. They, too, are a micro-to-macro approach. So far, I have undertaken 14 Townhall visits covering all parts of the UK.61 They are a direct conversation between the Bank and the public, typically on local economic and financial issues. They draw on the sorts of listening and facilitation techniques more familiar from anthropology and sociology. Intelligence-gathering means extracting economic narratives, rather than facts, about the forces shaping people’s lives and decisions. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz calls this approach “deep hanging out”.62 Deep hanging out is harder than it sounds. A day’s talking leaves me tired. A day’s listening leaves me exhausted. Entering a room as the least knowledgeable person, at least on local issues, can be a culture shock.

But it is those very things that make intelligence from the Townhalls distinctive and valuable. Statistical surveys cannot capture narrative in a way conversations can. The Townhall visits have been one of the most enlightening things I have done in my almost 30 years at the Bank of England. The Bank has recently expanded and deepened its range of local initiatives. One of these is Citizens’ Panels.63 After a couple of trials last year, the Bank recently began rolling-out Citizens’ Panels across each of its regional agencies. These panels have an independent external chair, drawn from the local region, to facilitate discussion. Each is attended by a senior Bank policymaker. Messages from the panels will be drawn together periodically and published externally. Complementing Citizens’ Panels, the Bank’s direct engagement with community groups is now being expanded through a set of “Community Forums”, working in partnership with local charities and community groups. The Governor recently launched these forums with events in Tower Hamlets and Glasgow. Other Governors and Directors have their own Community Forums planned through this year and beyond. The Bank’s education programme also has strong local presence. The educational materials developed by the Bank for 11-16 year olds, econoME, have been taken up by a third of schools across the UK. Last year, staff ambassadors visited close to 300 schools across the UK to deliver talks on the economy and economic policy. These are examples of a central bank acting locally.
M R Pridiyathorn Devakula: Financial markets and new financial instruments Opening address by Mr M R Pridiyathorn Devakula, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the SEACEN-IMF Institute course on Financial Markets and New Financial Instruments, Bangkok, 6 September 2004. *  *  *  Dr. Subarjo Joyosumarto, Mr. Sunil Sharma, Distinguished Speakers and Participants, It is indeed a pleasure for me to be here this afternoon to officially open the SEACEN-IMF Institute Course on Financial Markets and New Financial Instruments. On behalf of the Bank of Thailand, I would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone of you to Bangkok. Today’s course is the second of three SEACEN courses that the Bank of Thailand plans to host this year. We are pleased to be given the opportunity to support the work of the SEACEN Centre, and all its member central banks. These series of courses are indeed most topical, as the global economic recovery gathers momentum, financial market activities also pick up, along with innovative financial practices and instruments. The IMF recently adjusted its forecast of global GDP from 4.6 percent to 4.9 percent, the highest growth rate in nearly three decades. Economic performance in Asia has also been in sharp contrast to the situations we faced four or five years ago, reflecting the synchronized recovery of the global economy. With the strong economic recovery comes the demands from firms and enterprises for more sophisticated and efficient services from their financial intermediaries. This is expected to happen in Asia as well.

Closing address At the end, let me thank the colleagues from the EBRD for the highly insightful presentations on the state of the economy and the main challenges of the WB region as well as the main findings of the Transition Report, which primarily focuses on digitalization. This does not come as a surprise knowing that digitalization has been significantly boosted during the pandemics, bringing a number of benefits to the societies, including support for faster transition and income convergence. Despite the efforts, income gap of the Western Balkan economies in comparison with the EU still remains wide - regional income is only about 38% of the European income. This largely correlates with the level of productivity in the region that significantly lags behind the EU productivity. And, the increase in productivity can be achieved only by structural and institutional reforms, including digitalization that can lead to more efficient allocation of resources. Thank you. 3/3  BIS - Central bankers' speeches
In contrast to risk in investment decisions, which can be measured, compensated with profitability or mitigated with insurance, uncertainty can make it difficult to make decisions or lead to postponing them pending the availability of more information. This does not mean that uncertainty is a black-or-white issue, or that it must be completely eliminated for an economy to function. Uncertainty is intrinsic to a changing environment, exposed to exogenous influences or to the evolution of society and markets, especially in countries undergoing transformations as part of their development process. However, the level of uncertainty does matter and there are probably certain thresholds beyond which its burden on the economy becomes very costly. That said, the next question is whether anything can be done to reduce uncertainty when it becomes too high. In this respect, both theory and experience indicate that uncertainty is not a totally exogenous variable and that it can be bounded on the basis of greater credibility of stakeholders, systems, and processes. In particular, a diversity of possible states can be limited to the extent that their course is dominated by the predictable action of the relevant agents and the processes in which their actions are framed. In the case of monetary policy, for example, special value is placed on anchoring expectations around an inflation rate close to the authorities’ target. This increases the effectiveness of said authorities’ decisions, aligning agents’ behavior with the achievement of said targets.

Page 25 of 27  Table 3 Structural parameters Long-term copper price  Long-term oil price (dollars per barrel)  (dollars per pound)  Trend non-mining GDP next 10 years  Nominal neutral MPR (percent)  Technical mínimum MPR (percent)  (annual change, percent)  Dec-15/Mar-21  Dec-15/Mar-21  Jun-19/Mar-21  Jun-19/Mar-21  Jul-09/Mar-21  2.7  70  3.25-3.75  3.75-4.25  0.5  June 2021  June 2021  June 2021  June 2021  June 2021  3.3  60  2.4-3.4  3.25-3.75  0.5  Source: Central Bank of Chile. ***  Page 26 of 27