samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Take, for example, the business model of an online retailer that wants to keep its inventory as small as possible. The company receives numerous orders and payments from customers every day and must dispatch the goods ordered. At the same time, new goods have to be reordered, as well as paid for. If the retailer’s customers pay for their online purchases using instant payments, the retailer will receive the purchase amount during the order process. It can then use this money immediately to dispatch the goods without any credit risk, and to reorder them if necessary. Instant payments can also add value in the case of cross-border payments. Addressing inefficiencies in cross-border payments is a priority of the G20. Together with the BIS Innovation Hub, central banks around the world are experimenting with how to connect instant payment systems across borders. Examples include Project Nexus and the linking of payment systems between India and Singapore. As a result of these benefits, we at the SNB are convinced that an immediate and final transfer of value in cashless payment systems between end users will become the new standard. Until now, cash was the only way this was possible for end users. Page 5/11  When will instant payments be launched in the Swiss market? Before instant payments can be launched, the payment system infrastructure needs to be upgraded (cf. slide 6). This has been under way for some time. During the course of this year, the SIC system itself will become instant payment-capable.

But global institutions would need local guides to venture into new markets. Here there is a role for local or regional banks to partner with global banks. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  (3)  As to who should be borrowing, given the public goods nature of the long term infrastructural projects, the government should take the lead. Options for financing include direct government borrowing, concessional borrowing from overseas development assistance, or through Public Private Partnership (PPP). (4)  Beyond banking, developments in the capital market and regional cooperation initiatives provide channel to intermediate cross border savings to finance infrastructure investments. These include the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund (AIF), the Credit Guarantee Investment Facility (CGIF), and Asian Bond Market Initiative (ABMI). Going forward, the combination of the above arrangements should provide a division of task that is healthy and balanced for the region. Secondly, on the role of Thai financial intermediaries, I see the following prospects for the Subregion. In addition to our strength in core banking business, the Thai banking sector has been partnering with foreign entities to serve the broad-based demands of the economy. Thus, we can play a meaningful role in bridging between the global financial players and the smaller local intermediaries. We can also contribute in terms of expertise and experiences. •  So what is Thailand’s value proposition? Thai banks can play a role and compete in the business of financing small and medium enterprises.
Yet even theoreticians, and practitioners alike, including our Governing Council, soon realised that turning theory into practice raised additional issues. Let me discuss three. 1. The time horizon of forward guidance In theory, a small commitment reaching into the distant future is enough – through the power of rational expectations on all the expected real interest rates – to have a powerful impact today. This stretches credibility in two senses: first is it a realistic description of the way the world and expectations work? Even Michael Woodford has been working on models of limited planning horizon that mitigate its power. The second way in which time stretches credibility is whether long-dated commitments are believable. 2. Defining dates or states It was recognised long ago that so-called “open ended” (or “Delphic”) forward guidance was not 1/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  very effective and there was a shift towards more conditional “Odyssean” guidance, which is “calendar-based” and/or “state-contingent”. But “calendar-based” or “state-contingent” forward guidance pose other challenges which are quite evident in the current policy debate. “Calendarbased” is very clear and easy for markets to understand (“I’ll meet you at 8pm” v “I’ll meet you half an hour after I leave home”). But it’s the commitment that is the most hostage to fortune because large shocks can occur in the interim. “State-contingent” is less risky in this respect because it adjusts according to evolutions in the economy. State-contingency gives us flexibility on timing, but experience tells is sometimes less clear and hence less powerful for markets.

Large local banks, in turn, stopped lending to the smaller banks. Banks stopped lending to finance companies. The interbank market simply ceased to function for fear of default. In such a situation, the central bank had no way to act as lender of last resort. It could buy in government bonds, but the banks with bonds to sell are not the ones with liquidity need. Money did not go round. In such a situation, if instead the market for corporate bonds had existed, financial institutions would have had some corporate bonds in hand - instead of just boxes of loan contracts. They could have sold the bonds. They might incur some losses. But at least they can look after themselves in the midst of crisis - regardless of the perception about their credit. The local bond markets in emerging Asia, therefore, is an important safeguard that can help prevent a crisis. And since we want the Asian countries to become more and more closely linked, lack of crisis is certainly good news. The bond market is a much better channel for capital flow than the bank channel. If capital comes in through the banks, foreign lenders may lend too much. They may bet on the eventual government bail out. On the other hand, if it comes through the bond market and if it is transparent and well-managed, resource allocation could be improved. However, for the local bond markets to be attractive to foreign investors, one has to accomplish many things.
The Annual Report concludes that these barriers are the outcome of various factors: inappropriate regulations, small firm-size, limited regional and sectoral job mobility, a degree of educational mismatch between labour supply and demand, and insufficient innovative capacity. Overcoming these constraints calls for responses that are not always straightforward or simple either in technical or political terms. But it should be stressed that these reforms can bring about positive synergies with the expansionary monetary policy being pursued by the ECB, even in the short term, owing to their impact on growth expectations. Thank you. BIS central bankers’ speeches  7

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Legal issues in the Islamic financial services industry Speech by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the 4th IFSB Seminar on Legal Issues in the Islamic Financial Services Industry, Kuala Lumpur, 28 September 2009. *  *  *  It is my great pleasure to speak at this 4th IFSB Seminar on Legal Issues in the Islamic Financial Services Industry that has brought together so many international experts and industry practitioners to discuss legal issues in Islamic Finance. Such dialogue is important to achieving a common understanding and solutions to issues in Islamic finance, thus contributing to its overall development. Islamic finance has continued to expand and demonstrate its resilience in the current more challenging international financial environment. This advancement has been in terms of the increased range of Islamic financial products and services, the development of the Islamic financial infrastructure and institutions, the greater maturity of the Islamic financial markets and the more comprehensive supporting legal and regulatory framework. More recently, the international dimension of Islamic finance has gained significance with the move to further liberalise domestic Islamic financial system and the strengthening of the international Islamic financial architecture. In Malaysia, Islamic banking assets at the end of the second quarter of this year, now constitutes close to 19% of total banking assets. Total financing now amounts to RM118 billion and accounts for 20.1% of the total financing portfolio of the banking industry. Net nonperforming financing remains low at 2.4%.
For example, the Federal Reserve has new tools, like the authority to pay interest on reserves and reverse repurchase agreements with an expanded set of counterparties, which were not available pre-crisis. 2 The money markets in which the Trading Desk of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (the Desk) operates have different dynamics than before, in part because of our large-scale asset purchases. We want to take stock of these changes and ask ourselves what the best way of implementing monetary policy is today and in future environments in a manner that is consistent with the Federal Reserve’s normalization principles. 3 To make good choices about the monetary policy implementation framework going forward, it is, of course, useful to learn from the past. Our task is to assess the strength and weaknesses of existing and previous frameworks, particularly through the lens of what happened during the recent global financial crisis, when central banks were called on to innovate in a number of ways. In addition, the varied experience of other central banks prior to the crisis can also provide valuable insights. What have they learned about what worked well, or did not work so well, with their frameworks? The current framework in the United States looks very different than the pre-crisis framework. One way in which it is different is that excess reserves are much higher than they used to be. This shift is due, in large part, to the large-scale asset purchases that the System undertook, starting in December 2008.

Mervyn King: Address by Mervyn King to Trades Union Congress Address by Mr Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, to the 2010 Trades Union Congress, Manchester, 15 September 2010. *  *  *  President and Congress I want first to thank you for inviting me to address Congress. Members of your General Council have made a huge contribution to the Bank of England by serving on our board – the Bank’s Court. Carrying on that tradition today is Brendan Barber. By bringing a distinct and important perspective to our discussions, Brendan has helped us through some extremely turbulent times. I am grateful to him. Recent times have indeed been turbulent. After a decade and a half of stability, with rising employment and living standards, came the crisis and recession – the biggest economic upheaval since the Great Depression. Before the crisis, steady growth with low inflation and high employment was in our grasp. We let it slip – we, that is, in the financial sector and as policy-makers – not your members nor the many businesses and organisations around the country which employ them. And although the causes of the crisis may have been rooted in the financial sector, the consequences are affecting everyone, and will continue to do so for years to come. Thankfully, the costs of the crisis have been smaller than those of the Great Depression. But only because we learnt from that experience. An unprecedented degree of policy stimulus, here and abroad, prevented another world slump.
To bridge this shortcoming, the region’s financial markets need to be substantially expanded and developed so that the region’s markets can effectively allocate surplus savings within the Asian region. The current focus on regional bond market development is therefore a step in the right direction. But my point today is that while developing the bond market is important, two additional areas of market developments in tandem with the work on the bond market should also be looked at to ensure a balanced development of financial infrastructure in Asia. The first is human resource: that is the need to build a steady supply of high quality financial personnel to serve the Asian financial markets. In the short term, this issue can be partly addressed by promoting a greater role of Asian financial institutions in cross-border transactions or businesses within the Asian market. The expanded role of Asian financial institutions will enhance the experience of Asian financial firms in cross-border transactions and help transfer financial skills and technology among market participants in the region. For the long term, we should be thinking of establishing a regional finance institute that aims specifically to train and develop financial personnel for the Asian market. To me, this type of initiative looks practical and is economically feasible because Asia’s large domestic market will always call for substantial demand for trained financial personnel.

Some argue that raising the minimum wage, despite its costs, can potentially promote investment and improves labour productivity. Some prefer to provide direct fiscal incentives for firms to invest. Others see public investment as holding the key. The jury is still out as to how successful these approaches will prove to be in catalyzing an investment up-cycle, and ultimately alleviating the labour market issue. Fortunately, the currently conducive macroeconomic environment is already providing ample incentives for businesses to invest. Financing costs are currently low. Strong baht facilitates imports of capital goods. Firms stand to gain more from AEC integration if they carry out their planned investment in a timely manner. Collective efforts by all will also generate positive externalities, and can go a long way in easing the labour shortage problem for all parties. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  One fundamental force that may exacerbate the labour shortage problem is the demographic change. Slowly but inexorably, the Thai society is aging, as the total fertility rate is consistently lower than the replacement rate. The number of people aged 65 and above will double in less than 10 years. As projected by NESDB, by 2030 the working-age population will fall from the current rate of 68 percent to just over 60 percent, making Thailand’s old age dependency ratio slightly higher than the Asian average. The government can help manage this demographic transition by speeding up the reform of immigration policy, and simplify registration procedure.
This means that a single European scheme is not an essential component of Banking Union in the short term. Key features of the SSM Finally, there is of course the Single Supervisory Mechanism, or SSM. As you know, progress here is already well advanced: the Regulation setting up the SSM has already been approved by Council and is now being discussed by the European Parliament. So what are its key features? Above all, the SSM will be one system. Some commentators have claimed that, because the SSM is decentralised, nothing will change and supervision will remain essentially national. This is not correct. The ECB will be the legally competent supervisor for all banks in  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  participating countries. It will have direct supervisory powers over large, systemic banks, which we estimate to number around 140. We will not directly supervise the thousands of remaining smaller banks, because this would be inefficient when national supervisors are already in place with the necessary knowledge and technical skills. But the ECB and the national supervisors will act as a single system. To ensure cohesiveness, all the components of the system will have to act in accordance with guidelines, ECB specific regulations and manuals of supervisory practices that will be approved by the Supervisory Board. Moreover, the ECB will receive supervisory data on all banks in the SSM allowing it to keep track of developments across the system.

This is making credit very hard to come by or unduly expensive in some parts of the euro area. Banking Union would limit financial fragmentation in a number of ways. An impartial supervisor conducting credible stress tests would lessen fears that banks are hiding bad assets in some countries. Depositors’ confidence would be mitigated by harmonising deposit guarantee schemes. And a supervisor with a truly European focus would never undertake actions that can encourage fragmentation, like insisting on national asset and liability matching. So we can see that there is a strong case that a genuine Banking Union would have made a big difference both before and during this crisis. But while one might accept this in theory, it of course begs the question, is this what is happening in practice? Is the Banking Union we are building truly effective? Or are we just seeing a new label placed on what will remain an essentially unchanged and nationally driven process? These are the questions I want to take up in what follows. How far are we towards completing Banking Union in Europe? On the five elements of a genuine Banking union that I mentioned at the beginning, progress is currently positive on all fronts – but it is also uneven. First, the single rulebook to a large extent already exists, and will be complemented by the agreement on the Capital Requirements Directive IV expected in the next months.
Fiscal data, overall, are in line with this target, albeit work should still be done with regard to the rigorous implementation of public borrowing and spending plan. The monetary policy implemented by the Bank of Albania is at very simulating parameters. Interest rates and financing costs are at historical low levels. The Bank of  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Albania has ensured that the market is fully supplied with liquidity and has provided longterm guidance on the monetary policy direction. In accordance with the monetary policy direction, the Bank of Albania has continued to implement easing supervisory and regulatory measures. Also, we will announce a major project very soon, aimed at addressing definitely the issues related with the treatment and reduction of non-performing loans. All these measures have contributed to and are expected to better support the Albanian economy with funds. As I said above, the economic and financial equilibriums of Albania are solid. The current account deficit improved in the first quarter and the Albanian foreign exchange position is quite positive. Banking system’s liquidity and capitalization indicators have been improving. The growth of non-performing loans decelerated and the Albanian banking system is profitable. Taking into account the international setting, I would like to guarantee the public that the banking system has no direct exposure to the Greek crisis. Our analyses, both at individual bank and system level, confirm that that it would maintain the soundness and normal operations even in extreme adverse scenarios.

They responded positively to the Bank’s recommendations, and there was no question that credit growth slowed substantially. However, there are now many indications of a return to the earlier situation, so the Bank must reiterate its words of warning. At the same time as the Central Bank announced its interest rate decision yesterday, it published Monetary Bulletin. This outlines the main assumptions behind the Bank’s decision along with indications about its policy in the near future and the viewpoints it considers important to bear in mind for economic policy. In the current edition, major changes were made to the assumptions behind the baseline forecast, which enhance both the credibility of the forecast and monetary policy transparency. By doing so, the Central Bank of Iceland joined the vanguard of the inflation-targeting central banks. Monetary Bulletin reveals that inflation developments have turned rather more favourable than the Bank’s previous forecast had indicated, and although underlying inflation was somewhat higher in February and March than was hoped, the Bank expects both headline and underlying inflation to decrease rapidly in the next months. By both measures, inflation will be close to target from the middle of 2008. There is no doubt that this outcome is largely thanks to the tight monetary stance, which included raising the policy rate by 3.75 percentage points last year. As usual it should be pointed out – and especially in the current climate – that exchange rate uncertainties can complicate this picture.
2  ...and have led to major differences between the banks, so now the framework will be changed... Around three years ago, the Basel Committee published several reports where they analysed several globally-active banks’ capital requirements calculated using internal models.3 One conclusion from the work was that there are major differences in the banks' risk weights that cannot be explained by differences in underlying risk. As a result of this, among other things, the Basel Committee has discussed reducing the degree of freedom given to the banks with regard to some of the models. This concerns, for instance, the banks’ exposures to large corporates and other banks. In addition, they have discussed further measures in the framework for the banks’ internal models to reduce the differences in risk weights and capital requirements 2  See Finansinspektionen’s report ”Stability in the Financial System, December 2014”, http://www.fi.se/upload/43_Utredningar/20_Rapporter/2014/stab2_2014ny.pdf 3 See for instance the BIS publication “Analysis of risk-weighted assets for credit risk in the banking book”, http://www.bis.org/publ/bcbs256.pdf  6 [12]  between different banks. Let me make myself clear here. There is no doubt that the banks’ internal models will continue to be an important component when determining the banks’ capital requirements. The constraints I have mentioned here will, if they are introduced, limit the banks’ freedom with regard to using internal models. At the same time, they will increase confidence in the banks’ capital levels and make it easier to compare the banks.

Museums and various activities organised in light of promoting national values and raising the public awareness help to better transmit the message embedded in banknotes, and educate the public through the art in banknotes, featuring elements of our national identity. For this particular reason, numismatists take delight in the subtleties of colours and images of the banknotes. In the apparently just pieces of paper, they are able to distinguish and recognise different ages, and the degree of social freedom. 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  In addition, banknotes may also depict concerns of a society, of course, when the artist was able to properly read this concern. Hence, the green of US dollar was chosen as a symbol to express the need of the stability in the period of civil war. The 2017 series of Norwegian currency reflects the concern on the return to the human basic needs, which are taken away by digitalisation. In reflection to this concern, the portraits of distinguished people of art and science are replaced with the symbols of natural resources, strongly related with the identity of the Norwegian people, such as the Viking ship, fish or the lighthouse. All these facts show that nothing has threatened the educational and national mission of the banknote. Owing to this reason also, it continues to carry it out by resisting even the virtual forms of the currency. In addition, as a Harvard researcher states, the paper may disappear earlier than the banknote.