samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Bandid Nijathaworn: Some thoughts on IMF reform on crisis prevention and crisis resolution Speech by Mr Bandid Nijathaworn, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Thailand, presented to the G-20 Workshop on Reform of Bretton Woods Institutions, Tokyo, 28 February 2006. *  *  *  Thank you Chairman, First, let me thank the Ministry of Finance of Japan for inviting me to this workshop on the reform of the Bretton Woods Institutions. This workshop is another reminder that the work on IMF reform is still ongoing. Next year will be a full ten years since the height of the Asian financial crisis. Over the past decade, many important ideas on the reform of the IMF have been advanced, but still there is no consensus on how the reform should move forward. I see today’s workshop as another opportunity to contribute to this ongoing debate. And whatever the outcome may be, the reform will certainly mark a critical turning point for the global economy, as the Bretton Woods Institutions attempt to adapt their roles and responsibilities to the forces of globalization. Today, I have been asked to speak on IMF crisis prevention and crisis resolution. Given the limitation of time, and the fact that the recommendations on these two issues have been many and are well-known, I thought the best way for me to add value to today’s discussion is to share with you our thoughts on the subject, as well as to make three specific points.

This is a time where I believe it is important to encourage more care and conservatism in the discipline of risk management. There are three areas at the top of our hierarchy of concerns. First, it is very important that the major dealers make the investments necessary to improve the operational infrastructure that underpins the credit derivatives and broader over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market. Operational risk and infrastructure failures have played a prominent role in past financial crises, and the infrastructure weaknesses that have characterized the credit derivatives markets since their inception are another credible source of concern. The major market participants, both the dealers and the traditional and nontraditional investors, are in the process of improving the infrastructure that supports these markets. The changes underway to clean up the backlog of unconfirmed trades, to automate the entire post-trade-processing environment, and to improve the settlement process in events of default will help reduce operational risk in the derivatives market and reduce some sources of uncertainty that could exacerbate a market shock. We are encouraged by the progress made to date and will continue to encourage further improvements. Second, we believe that the major dealers, as well as the large commercial and investment banks, should take a cold, hard look at financing conditions and margin practice, particularly with respect to hedge fund counterparties and in OTC derivatives.
Some banks have even moved their core banking systems into the cloud to reap the benefits of its scalability and resilience. Cloud computing has considerably enhanced risk management. Risk assessments are now more comprehensive, more granular, and more real-time. But the cloud has also introduced new risks. The risks are not so much in the technology of cloud computing per se but in the business and operating models of cloud services. Cloud services are essentially a utility provided by specialist third-party providers. And as with any third-party service provider, there are outsourcing risks associated with these cloud service providers or CSPs. But with cloud computing, these outsourcing risks are much larger, given how much of a financial institution’s data and processing functions rely on CSPs. Financial institutions have less knowledge, let alone control, of where their data are stored in a cloud computing infrastructure spanning several different jurisdictions. Data breach or loss might occur due to a natural disaster, targeted attack, or poor security processes at the CSPs. The outsourcing risk is compounded by concentration risk. The top 4 CSPs in the world had a market share of 80% last year. About 25% of the core banking systems of global systemically important banks or G-SIBs is 5/9  BIS central bankers' speeches  now residing on the cloud. A large supplier of cloud services can potentially become a single point of failure when many financial institutions rely on them. The regulatory response to cloud computing has taken two forms.

Chart 8: LCFIs’ trading portfolios and financial leverage – 2007  Line of best fit  80 70 Total assets/Tier 1 Capital  UBS 60  Deutsche  SocGen Barclays BNP  50 40  RBS  30  Citi BofA  20  Credit Suisse HSBC JPM  10 0 0.0  0.1  0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 T rading assets/total assets  0.7  0.8  Sources: Published accounts and Bank calculations  BIS Review 139/2009  17  Chart 9: Leverage and risk-taking in international banks – 2007 Total Adjuste d Asse ts/Tier 1 Capital 80  4% T 1 capital ratio  70 60  UBS  Deutsche  Credit Suisse  SocGen RBS BNP Citi Barclays  50 40 30  BoA  20 HSBC JPM  10 0  0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 Risk We ighted Assets/Total Adjuste d Asse ts Sources: Published accounts and Bank calculations. Notes: These adjustments aim to ensure a common accounting treatment of exposures between US and European banks.
Richard W Fisher: Containing (or restraining) systemic risk – the need to not fail on “too big to fail” Remarks by Mr Richard W Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, before the Market News International Seminar, New York, 6 June 2011. *  *  *  The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve System. Thank you for that kind introduction. This discerning audience no doubt noted that despite being overeducated, I am not a formally trained economist. I do not have a Ph.D. in economics; those who do will correctly deduce that I am somewhat “dismal” in comprehending the arcana of “the Dismal Science.” After my undergraduate education in economics and my studies at Oxford, I took a different path. I earned an MBA and then went to Wall Street and into funds management before cashing out and taking to public service. My perspective on monetary policy and regulation is shaped less by theory and more by my experience as a market operator. I confess that in matters of monetary policy and regulation, I am often in the minority. This does not make me the least bit uncomfortable. The majority opinion is not always right; indeed, my experience as an investor has biased me to conclude that more often than not, the consensus view is the wrong view, even among the most erudite.

By the way, let me note that this pause occurred before mid-December, so it cannot be attributed to the recent spate of heavy snow storms. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  By contrast, New Jersey’s economy has seen no pick-up in activity and, in fact, activity there continued to decline at a modest pace through the end of 2010. We monitor Puerto Rico using an index produced by the Government Development Bank of Puerto Rico. This index shows that the recession there, which started back in 2005 – well before that experienced in the mainland – appears to have subsided. As of November of last year, activity was no longer falling, although indications of a recovery are still mixed. Turning to jobs, the latest data indicate that businesses in the region, on balance, were not expanding their workforces at the end of last year. As a result, the total number of jobs in the region has held steady, lagging behind the job growth rate experienced nationally. Much of this recent weakness in employment stems from job losses in the retail, wholesale and manufacturing sectors in our region. In the rest of the nation, these sectors expanded during the last quarter. Moreover, our state and local governments cut jobs much more severely than governments did elsewhere. At the same time, job gains in some of the region’s strongest sectors – professional and business services, finance, education and health – were not large enough to completely offset these losses.
Banknote character speech by Andrew Bailey i  Given at the unveil of the Alan Turing £ polymer Banknote  Banknote character ‐ speech by Andrew Bailey | Bank of England  Page 1  Published on 25 March 2021  Andrew Bailey reveals the design of our new polymer £ banknote. He talks about why Alan Turing was chosen to feature on it. Turing was a mathematician and a pioneer of early computers. His critical work on codebreaking saved the lives of many people in World War Two. He was also gay at a time when it was considered a crime. In 2017 a new law named after Turing pardoned all men, like him, who were convicted based on their sexuality. Our new note celebrates Turing as someone who embodies the spirit of our country and left a legacy for LGBTQ+ rights. The note will enter circulation on Wednesday 23 June, which is Alan Turing’s birthday. Speech It’s my great pleasure to unveil the new £ note, which will feature one of Britain’s most important scientists, Alan Turing. Turing is perhaps best known for his codebreaking work during World War II, which played a decisive role in bringing that conflict to an end. But he is also recognised as being a pioneer in computing and artificial intelligence, and someone whose work has had an enormous impact on how we all live today.

Over the period since 2011, we’ve witnessed a number of fundamental changes in the banking sector: The regulatory and supervisory framework has substantially raised requirements and expectations around capital, liquidity and risk management including, for example, more rigorous stress testing and capital surcharges for systemically important firms; The macro/finance environment of sluggish growth and low rates is putting pressure on bank business models. We are now in the eighth year of interest rates near zero in the U.S., which has hurt bank profits and affected risk-taking and business model choices. Ongoing technological innovations have altered both the opportunities and the threats facing financial institutions. Marketplace lending, distributed ledger, and robo-advisers promise great opportunity, while cyber threats, data privacy issues, and IT-related vendor management issues are legitimate concerns. With that idea in mind, I thought it would be useful to look at the last five years of this Forum’s program in order to identify key themes and common topics. I’d like to discuss three specific issues: systemic risk, governance, and regulatory reform. First, systemic risk has been a central topic of discussion at each Global Risk Forum over the past five years. Given the acute trauma of the financial crisis and its systemic nature, that is not surprising. I did find it interesting to see how the discussions of systemic risk have shifted over these five years. Initially, the discussions were primarily focused on defining systemic risk, including the underlying shocks and propagation channels.
We have often argued in Europe for simpler approaches for small firms, but the differing legal traditions across the EU27 and the desire to harmonise regulation and supervision are powerful forces in the opposite direction. It is impossible to know at this stage, but under some Brexit outcomes we might have room to revisit this question for small domestic firms. It is notable that both Switzerland and the U.S. are taking quite radical steps in this area; while I am cautious about the leverage-ratio-only capital regimes they are working on, and small British firms might be cautious about a 9% leverage ratio requirement, we are taking a close interest. Sixth, there is the debate – which came up most recently in the context of the Treasury Select Committee’s inquiry into Solvency II – about whether our competition objective would be better cast as a primary objective. I have a number of reservations about this idea. One is purely practical: with the FCA and CMA already having primary competition objectives, do we really want a third regulator doing this for the financial services sector? It strikes me as a recipe for bureaucratic overlap. Another is that the sort of referee role the PRA often plays, making sure that firms are competing fairly and not by running excessive risks with policyholders’ and depositors’ funds, is itself the most important contribution we make to competition.

But we have done a lot to lean against this – most importantly our holistic approach to Pillar 2A, our success in getting Basel to lower very significantly the standardised risk-weight for lower-LTV mortgages, our introduction of the modular approach for IRB applications and the introduction of a leverage ratio into our regime. 1 Besides these 17 new UK banks, the PRA also authorised new banks to meet ring-fencing requirements and overseas banks. The total of all banks authorised by the PRA since its formation in 2013 is 39. 2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  2    Third, related moves that we have made on the insurance side including a New Insurers Unit, our proportionate Non-Directive Firms regime for small insurers outside the scope of Solvency II, our active use of what flexibility there is in Solvency II to lower the administrative burden for smaller firms, and our new regime for insurance-linked securities. My aim in mentioning these things is not to bore you, though I can see I may have succeeded in doing that, but to illustrate the simple point that the PRA has been very active in advancing its competition objective over the first five years of its existence. The objective has had a significant impact already: I would argue that, with the exception of the leverage ratio, we simply would not have done any of the things I’ve just mentioned if we did not have a competition objective.
This might be legal support, consultations, or any other services. We observe a variety of such services that are usually added to bank deposit and loan agreements. Currently, this right is only available in regard to voluntary insurance, that is, in a narrow range of financial services. We believe that this approach should be extended to almost all financial services. In order to mitigate such risks of incomplete information disclosure, we need changes to the laws. The second law allowing the establishment of requirements for the form of a bank deposit agreement has also been drafted. These laws were passed in the first reading. We are aware that you have a lot to discuss in the course of the spring session, especially taking into account that it will be shorter than usual. However, in my opinion, these are essential draft laws since they are socially focused. Therefore, we would be very grateful to you if you find time to consider them as soon as possible. I would like to thank you once again for the continuous and meaningful dialogue between the deputies and the Bank of Russia, in particular for the enormous work carried out last year when we needed prompt legislative decisions to protect individuals and companies against the aftermath of the pandemic. If it were not for such legislative changes, we would have been unable to make prompt decisions in our turn. Thank you for your attention. If you have any questions, my colleagues and I would be glad to answer them. Thank you.

Ong Chong Tee: Financial integration – a collective effort towards efficient and resilient markets Speech by Mr Ong Chong Tee, Deputy Managing Director (Financial Supervision) of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Launch Event for EU-Asia -Pacific Forum on Financial Regulation, Singapore, 14 October 2016. * * * Mr Olivier Guersent, Director General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (European Commission) Dr Michael Pulch, EU Ambassador to Singapore, Mr Ashley Alder, Chair of the IOSCO Board and Chief Executive of Hong Kong SFC, Mr Ryozo Himino, APRC Chairman and Vice-Minister of International Affairs, Japan FSA, Mr Paul Andrews, IOSCO Secretary General, Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, On behalf of all my colleagues at the MAS, let me extend a warm welcome to everyone at this launch event of the EU - Asia- Pacific Forum on Financial Regulation. It is a privilege and honour for the MAS to host this inaugural forum on financial regulation between the EU authorities and members of the IOSCO Asia-Pacific Regional Committee (APRC). This launch event will no doubt set the stage for the in-depth closed-door discussions to follow over the course of today. The impetus for this forum is a recognition that the financial markets of Europe and Asia are increasingly inter-connected. One measure, for example, is the total portfolio assets held by investors from the largest five EU economies1, in the Asia and Pacific region 2.
Investments in financial assets and real estate – Financial institutions are no longer required to ensure that $ credit facilities extended for investment purposes be withdrawn when the investments are either wholly or partially liquidated. This will relieve FIs of the need to institute additional arrangements to track their non-resident client's investments in financial assets. These measures, which take effect from tomorrow, should pave the way for even greater liquidity and range of activities in the FX, equity and debt capital markets. They should also attract offshore $ activities back onshore. We are still maintaining the two core requirements of the non-internationalisation policy – the restriction on lending for purposes of speculating on the $ and the requirement to swap into foreign currency the proceeds of $ loans, debt or equity issues if these proceeds are to be used offshore. Some market participants have suggested that we should go all the way and lift these requirements too, but we continue to believe it wise to maintain a basic stance of not encouraging internationalisation of the $ through these two requirements. They are unlikely to hinder the activities of legitimate players. They will also provide us basic safeguards in case activity in currency markets turns out not to be self-stabilising, which from time to time seems to be the case. Conclusion The new financial landscape offers many opportunities for the astute market players and investors, but at the same time, presents many challenges for regulators and supervisors.

We saw a much calmer development in Sweden in the 1950s and 1960s when electrification became widespread. This contributed to a rapid technical transformation, which largely followed a calm course, although it involved a very extensive migration and in its later stages involved entire industries being wiped out. However, this was a period that was in many respects quite different from our current day and different from the period at the turn of the previous century. Sweden had the advantage of having remained neutral in the Second World War and we were able to benefit from a relatively stable demand from the countries building up their economies from the ruins. We had capital market regulations and the international scene was dominated by the Cold War, which led to a clear bipolar world. The USA dominated our part of the world and provided support for clear international financial structures, partly based on the need for solidarity. What has happened so far in Sweden? To return to today’s situation, we can conclude that the Swedish economy is doing better than it has for a long time. Price stability has been established. Production and employment have increased at a rapid rate and would appear to continue to do so. Looking at the past six years, the economy has grown by an average of 3% per year and at the moment we appear to be in an annual rate of between 3 and 4%.
This would directly conflict with our monetary policy, since any hedging would be equivalent to a purchase of Swiss francs against foreign currencies, which would intensify the upward pressure on the Swiss franc. Therefore the broadest possible diversification of our foreign currency investments is our sole means of reducing exchange rate risk. At the end of September, 48% of foreign currency holdings were invested in euros, compared with 60% at mid-year, with 28% invested in US dollars, and 24% in other currencies. We are continuously evaluating new asset classes and currencies in both advanced and emerging economies; this year, the SNB began investing in the South Korean won. Our goal is to further diversify our foreign currency investments and thereby reduce risk concentration. To avoid undesirable third-market effects, our entire investment activity is invariably undertaken with a high degree of prudence and caution in respect of potentially adverse effects on markets. This applies equally to inflows and reallocations of investments, as well as to the establishment of new positions. If, for example, we see ourselves confronted with very high foreign currency inflows, we might place these in sight deposit accounts at other central banks, before investing them in securities. The SNB has absolutely no interest in causing market distortions or influencing currency movements in other countries. Issues surrounding the Libor and reference interest rates I would like to conclude by exploring some of the issues in connection with the Libor rate, and the global discussion on reference interest rates in money markets generally.

Thus at present, there are no consequences for the implementation of our monetary policy. Discussions are also currently underway at the international level on the meaning and structure of benchmark interest rates on money markets. The SNB, as member of a BIS working group, is also involved in these discussions. From the point of view of monetary policy and financial stability, the working group identifies core requirements for credible and robust reference rates. Central banks or banking oversight bodies could play a supportive role in reform efforts, inasmuch as the extensive use of benchmark rates affects the general public. However, since reference interest rates are primarily there to cover the needs of the financial markets, market participants are themselves ultimately under obligation. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
This is ultimately the objective of the next phase of banking union: building a single European supervisor via the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). There are four ways in particular I expect the SSM to make a difference to banking in Europe: by improving the quality of supervision; by creating a more homogenous application of rules and standards; by improving incentives for deeper banking integration; and by strengthening the application of macro-prudential policies. The SSM should create the conditions and incentives for deeper integration of the European banking market, which should in turn make the euro area less vulnerable to fragmentation. Barriers that existed in the past to deeper retail banking integration, for example opaque supervisory approval procedures, will no longer be relevant with a single European supervisor. The substantial compliance costs that came from having to observe different sets of rules and interact with several different authorities should also be reduced. At the same time, the benefits of cross-border integration should increase. Cross-border banking groups will be able to optimise their internal management of capital and liquidity. Further efforts to reduce fragmentation and a drive to achieve genuine banking integration can help Europe exit the crisis in at least three ways. First, more integrated banking markets intensify competition: banks, as well as other financial market participants, will have to change their strategies. More competition means that capital is allocated more efficiently. This promotes access to new funding opportunities for companies, encourages investment and thus contributes to higher economic growth.

We would also like to reaffirm our unwavering commitment to the financial inclusion cause and look forward to deepening our cooperation with all stakeholders to fulfil the promise of greater financial inclusion, thereby bringing hope and better opportunities to our communities. Thank you. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3