samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Less directly related, but just as important, are our Stock Exchange, and our network of asset  1/3  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  managers and professional advisers. They anchor a company, especially its finance function, in Hong Kong and naturally encourage it to tap our financial intermediaries for advice and financing. 7. Turning to policy support, a key source of growth in finance in recent years has been green and sustainable finance. An area where the Government has been active in supporting is Hong Kong's sustainable loan market. 8. It is estimated that 100-150 trillion US dollar in climate finance will be needed in the next three decades to achieve a Paris-aligned scenario of limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius. In Asia, we will need 66 trillion US dollar; a significant share of this would go to China. 9. With surging demand for green financing, it is important that there are widely recognized standards that market participants can rely on when investing or when tapping the capital markets to meet their financing needs. In this regard, I would like to compliment APLMA for the good work. Its Green Loan Principles, Social Loan Principles and Sustainability-Linked Loan Principles provide useful guidance and benchmarks for the market. 10. Hong Kong as an international finance centre can contribute a great deal to channeling capital and investments and helping the region bridge green financing gaps. In fact, we have one of the Asia's largest sustainable loan markets.

As in the case of sustainable bonds, Hong Kong is the largest hub for arranging green and sustainable loans in the region, capturing one-third of the market in 2022. And we expect to maintain this position in 2022 – our preliminary internal analysis shows that green and sustainable loan issuance would double from 2021 to exceed $ billion. 11. While this is impressive, we have launched a number of initiatives to encourage further growth of our sustainable loans market. One of these is our Green and Sustainable Finance Grant Scheme, which provides subsidies to support green debt issuance in Hong Kong. Since the Scheme was launched in 2021, we have provided grants to over 210 debt instruments, totaling around $ billion, many of which were loans aligned with APLMA's principles. And we are constantly enhancing the scheme to encourage usage, such as by halving the minimum borrowing amount threshold to $ million last year. 12. In addition, we are working to address some key challenges that the industry faces, particularly as regards data and talent, by working with the industry to build database and data analytical tools, and provide relevant training and work experience. We have also simplified the process for bringing sustainability-finance professionals to Hong Kong from overseas. 13. I would like to highlight the Capacity Building Support Scheme that the Government launched last December to offer subsidies of up to $ to students and practitioners that take up sustainable finance for trainings and qualifications.
As conditions in the labor market start to improve, workers are more willing to quit a job to search for a better job. While the quit rate has been unchanged at 1.5 percent for the past 8 months, quits as a proportion of total separations increased to 49 percent in October from 41 percent a year earlier. Also encouraging, employment in Temporary Help Services has increased by 494,000 since September 2009. Firms often hire temporary workers as a precursor to adding permanent staff. Finally, initial claims for unemployment insurance continue to edge downward, indicating that the risk of losing a job is diminishing (Chart 3). There are risks associated with every economic forecast. Some risks are to the upside, while others are to the downside. An important downside risk for this year is the housing market. Recall that the housing market was the epicenter of the financial shock that resulted in the Great Recession. Unlike the real economy, which has shown recent signs of strengthening, housing markets showed some tentative signs of life early last year that gave way to further weakening later in the year (Chart 4). This pattern likely reflected in part the conclusion of tax credits supporting housing purchases. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Of particular note, house prices increased moderately early last year, but resumed their decline as the year came to a close. In October, the CoreLogic national house price index was down 3.9 percent from a year earlier (Chart 5).

This means we trim out the most volatile price movements in the consumer basket to achieve the best sense we can of underlying price stability. In the July statistics, we saw some of the fastest rates of increases in a while for the largest, leastvolatile components of core services, such as rent and purchased meals.3 So the jury is out as to whether we have seen a reversal in the recent upward ascent of prices toward our 2 percent target. As to achieving “moderate interest rates”, the dashboard shows that we have overshot the mark. Interest rates on the lowest-quality credits – on “junk” – are historically low, as are the spreads they are priced at above the current historically low nominal rates for investmentgrade credits. I have been involved with the credit markets since 1975. I have never seen such ebullient credit markets. The 30-year Treasury yield is trading at a hair over 3 percent. If Ambassador Jaishankar and I were to abandon our service to our respective nations and form a company, we would use our good names to borrow as much money as we could at current rates.
This crosscountry financial fragmentation hindered common monetary policy transmission to the whole of the euro area, and even posed a threat of a repeat of the 2012 sovereign debt crisis. In this setting, in March the ECB announced the launch of a new financial asset purchase programme (PEPP) which grants it the necessary flexibility to be able to concentrate its purchases at certain moments in time or on government bonds issued in certain jurisdictions, with a view to preventing fragmentation in monetary policy transmission. The volume of purchases initially announced under the PEPP was € billion for the whole of 2020. In June the term was extended up to at least June 2021, and the volume by a further € billion, making for a total of € trillion. Today we can safely say that the PEPP has been clearly successful in curbing financial market deterioration in all euro area countries. This is particularly visible in sovereign yields, which are now close to their pre-crisis levels, but it may also be perceived in other market segments such as corporate issuance. This decline in the cost of sovereign debt has amplified the room for manoeuvre of the fiscal authorities in all euro area countries, enabling them to take unprecedented measures to sustain the income of households and firms.

In the current phase of gradual economic recovery not only are restrictions still in force in some areas of activity, but also, as we are seeing, it is proving necessary to reintroduce others as a consequence of the fresh outbreaks of the disease. It therefore seems appropriate to maintain support measures of this kind, to prevent the temporary suspension of activity from turning into a permanent loss of productive capacity. The damage caused by their premature withdrawal would exceed the possible cost of maintaining them until the recovery shows signs of sufficient strength. However, given the significant heterogeneity of the effects of this crisis, in particular in this recovery phase, support measures should be much more focused now and their timing adjusted to the duration of the crisis. At the same time, there are already signs that the pandemic may give rise to certain structural changes, although the full extent of these is, for the time being, difficult to know. On one hand, the pandemic has led to significant changes both in the behaviour of economic agents and in the extent of teleworking and, generally, in the application of new technologies in different areas. These changes, in so far as they are confirmed to be structural, will give rise to changes in consumption and production patterns which it will be necessary to adapt to. Likewise, this crisis has revealed certain vulnerabilities associated with, for example, the global fragmentation of production, which had remained relatively unnoticed in recent years.
I think this approach provides synergy; employs joint resources and enables more efficient achievement of the vision that we all share. I am pleased that we will formalize our commitment and readiness for joint action with the first Memorandum of Cooperation in the field of financial education and financial inclusion in Southeastern Europe. We must all strive to be strongly committed, not only to declare, but also to enable efficient implementation in practice. No doubts I have, that this will be the case. At the end of my address, on behalf of all the stakeholders, I would like to express sincere gratitude to INFE-OECD and EFSE for their support all these years. It is unquestionable that many of the activities we have taken so far would have been difficult to carry out without their support. I truly hope that we justify the trust given to us. The mission that we have is important, as by supporting financial literacy, we support provision of public good. In doing so, we must not forget that “Financial literacy is not an end in itself, but a step-by-step process. It begins in childhood and continues throughout a person’s life all the way to retirement” – George Karl. Therefore, we must be consistent, inclusive, committed and patient while playing our role in the financial education of our society. I wish you a successful and fruitful meeting. Thank you. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches

Philipp Hildebrand: The Swiss National Bank’s ability to act in the crisis Summary of a speech by Mr Philipp Hildebrand, Vice-Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Executive MBA HSG, Universität St Gallen, St Gallen, 21 January 2009. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  The global financial system is in the midst of the biggest crisis of the postwar years. Above all, the crisis is the most complex of this period. Problems in the US sub-prime mortgage market led to the breakdown of both markets and general trust. In particular, the interbank market, the nerve centre of the financial markets, froze up for several months. Governments and central banks managed to prevent the financial system from collapsing. The interbank market has been revived and risk premia have come down from their former record levels. In the meantime, however, the financial crisis has worked its way through into the real economy, which is now moving into a sharp downturn. In order to fight the crisis, the central banks have lowered their key interest rates aggressively. The instrument of the Swiss National Bank (SNB), the repo rate, has practically reached zero. However, this certainly does not mean that the SNB is incapable of action. If needed, there are other options available. The National Bank can extend the terms of repo transactions or give consideration to the purchase of government and corporate bonds.
Some of you may know that FAA had its beginnings as a division within the Asian Institute of Finance, to review the quality of programmes being offered by AIF’s affiliated institutes. As the components of a quality assurance framework and process started to come together under the AIF, it became clear that in order to realize the vision of a highly competent and high performing workforce in the financial sector, assuring the quality of the learning programs that serve the industry was vital. This led the Board of AIF to take the decision to establish an independent entity which would spearhead and develop this important role to its full potential. That decision was motivated by two objectives. The first was to ensure that the quality assurance function would be fully independent of any interests in program development or delivery. This is necessary to provide a high level of confidence to the industry which should be able to rely on quality assurance assessments as a basis for decisions on training and development priorities. As a separate agency with a transparent governance structure in  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  place, FAA has been able to build a high level of credibility in providing an independent, objective assessment of the quality of training and development programs in meeting defined learning objectives. The second objective was the desire to contribute towards raising standards on education and development in the area of financial services.

My colleagues have essentially expressed similar views. Last week we therefore decided to contact the ECB to initiate discussions on an agreement that would make the Swedish krona available for settlement on TIPS. An absolute requirement that we have in these discussions is that the security surrounding TIPS must correspond to the expectations in Swedish legislation. It is still too early to say when TIPS could be available for the Swedish krona, but if it all works out, I am hoping it will be in 2021. When the Riksbank supplies a settlement service that is available 24/365 our expectation is that the RIX participants settling instant payments will use the platform offered by the Riksbank. But we will proceed with caution and support the private solution that is available, BiR, until TIPS is introduced and all conditions for using it are in place. During the implementation period the Riksbank will make sure to have a close dialogue with the market and be responsive to views and wishes on how TIPS can be made available to the Swedish krona. We will return to the exact forms for such a consultation later in the autumn. 8 [8]
One can thus imagine that part of the explanation as to why an alternative repo rate scenario may give a smaller mean squared gap than the main scenario could be that it is only a purely model-based adjustment of the main scenario. This raises another question: If one were also to supplement the alternative repo rate paths with personal judgements, would one always conclude that the main scenario would give the lowest loss? The answer to this question should reasonably be “yes, at least most of the time” – there are some reservations, which I will discuss in a moment. We try to conduct the policy we judge to be the best or “best balanced” and if we judged that another repo rate path than that in the main scenario would give a better outcome, we would of course choose that one instead. This should be visible in the mean squared gap analysis, that is, there should not be alternative repo rate paths that give a dot that lies south-west of the main scenario. Consideration to developments beyond the forecast horizon and risks There may also be other reasons why the main scenario does not necessarily provide smaller mean squared deviations than an alternative repo rate scenario. One is that the calculations are based on forecasts that extend no further than three years ahead. But there may sometimes be reason to consider what might happen beyond this time horizon, even if this is difficult to capture in a normal quantitative forecast.

More specifically, it is a question of finding the interest rate that will minimise the squared forecast deviations during the forecast period between actual inflation and the inflation target and between actual and normal resource utilisation, where the latter deviation is weighted by λ – a bit of a tongue-twister to put into words. But it can be illustrated relatively conveniently with the aid of a figure. The figure measures the variation in inflation along the horizontal axel and the variation in the real economy along the vertical axel. The variations are measured using the mean squared gap, that is, the average squared deviation across the forecast horizon. Such mean squared gaps can be calculated for various possible interest rate paths and one can then compare different interest rate paths by marking the mean squared gap in the figure. The closer to origo, or the further south-west in the figure, the smaller the two mean squared gaps are, and the better success the accompanying interest rate path has in stabilising inflation and the real economy.2 We say that inflation targeting, or the interest rate path, is effective if it is not possible to reduce one of the mean squared gaps without the other gap increasing in size at the same time. Theoretically, we could imagine there is a very large number of effective points. These points form a “front” as illustrated in the figure.
Neither can we rule out an intensification of the recent global trends and a stronger than expected impulse from abroad, by either a steeper recovery of world activity and/or better commodity prices. Some of this seems to have permeated financial markets, where the prices of riskier assets have risen. Although it is still premature to validate such optimism, it is clear that the markets are in a better mood than last year, including local markets, which have even been outperforming many of their peers. On the domestic front, after several years of subdued growth, we cannot rule out that a more persistent phenomenon may be affecting the economy’s ability to grow, in which case spending plans of both public and private agents would need some revision. One area calling for special attention is the labor market. While acknowledging that it has gradually adjusted without significantly increasing unemployment in the past several years, it is possible that, after years of low growth companies wish to make more drastic changes in their payrolls, particularly if the expected growth recovery towards the end of the year stalls. In contrast, in a context where no macroeconomic imbalances are hindering growth, a scenario where an improved external outlook consolidates, plus the end of a cycle of mining investment adjustments and a rebound in sentiment, could lead to a more dynamic recovery than expected. All considered, the Board believes that the risk balance for both inflation and activity is unbiased. Summing up, inflation has evolved in line with December forecasts.

News conference  Zurich, 17 December 2020 Thomas Jordan  Introductory remarks by Thomas Jordan Ladies and gentlemen It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Swiss National Bank’s news conference. Owing to the coronavirus pandemic, we can unfortunately only meet virtually today. The pandemic is placing a very heavy burden on people across the world, and Switzerland is no different. Our sympathies go in particular to those who have fallen ill themselves or who have lost relatives and friends. In my remarks, I will begin by explaining our monetary policy decision and our assessment of the economic situation. I will then discuss the topic of climate change and the SNB. Fritz Zurbrügg will report on developments in the area of financial stability and the impact of the pandemic on the demand for banknotes. Andréa Maechler will then comment on the situation on the financial markets and will look at the upcoming replacement of the CHF Libor with SARON. We will – as ever – be pleased to take your questions afterwards. Monetary policy decision  The coronavirus pandemic is continuing to have a strong adverse effect on the economy. Against this difficult backdrop, we are maintaining our expansionary monetary policy with a view to stabilising economic activity and price developments. We are keeping the SNB policy rate and interest on sight deposits at the SNB at −0.75%. In light of the highly valued Swiss franc, we remain willing to intervene more strongly in the foreign exchange market.
“Recent developments in the Chilean Financial System and Challenges ahead” Rosanna Costa, Governor of Central Bank of Chile Chile Day – December 12 and 13, 2022 – London, United Kingdom Good morning distinguishes authorities and dear friends. I am going to talk about the recent developments in the financial system in Chile and the view of the Central Bank of the challenges ahead. Introduction In December of last year, the former Governor of the Central Bank of Chile (and nowadays the Minister of Finance) presented in this very same forum in London about the developments and prospects of the Chilean economy. By then, our country was going through a process of strong recovery from major shocks that affected our economy: first the social unrest of 2019 and then the pandemic of Covid-19. Therefore, the discussion last year focused on the aftermath of the pandemic and the different measures that were adopted by the Central Bank and the government to mitigate its effects on the real economy. Since July 2021, the Central Bank has been hiking the monetary policy interest rate, due precisely to strong pickup of household consumption driven by governmental aids and pension funds withdrawals. A year ago, the Central Bank also raised a note of caution for 2022 and 2023 due to the weakening of the capital markets, identifying several factors including the reduction of long-term savings due to pension withdrawals and its impacts on access to long-term financing for companies and individuals, risk of fiscal deterioration and persistent uncertainty, among others.

However, the mandates of most central banks, including indeed both the Eurosystem and the Banco de España, also cover other objectives. There is, in particular, an area which deserves special attention in this context. I am referring, of course, to the function of promoting financial stability. It is precisely in this area where the impact of financial integration is less clear. Does financial integration promote financial stability? Or does financial integration put financial stability in danger? As a matter of fact, while the effects of higher integration on per-capita income and on the efficiency of monetary policy transmission have received a lot of attention by researchers, the impact of financial integration on financial stability is under-researched. That is why we are holding this conference. Despite the lack of research, it seems clear that there are some areas where financial integration favours financial stability. Firstly, a more integrated financial system enlarges the opportunities available to investors, lenders and borrowers to diversify the different risks associated with their financial decisions. Through such diversification, they should become less exposed to idiosyncratic shocks, asset prices and financial flows should behave in a smoother way and as a result, the risk of financial distress should be reduced. Secondly, in a more integrated system, financial intermediaries would find it easier to grow and at the same time would find the incentive to do so in the enlargement of their potential markets.