samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
At the same time, the Albania's budget deficit declined to 3.7% of GDP in 2022 from 4.6% of GDP in 2021, while public debt reduced to 64.6% of GDP from 74.5%. This improvement reflected the fast growth of public revenues, the reduction of the budget deficit in response to the fiscal consolidation policy, as well as the strengthening of the exchange rate. Last, but not least, financial markets have been relatively calm and the banking sector has performed positively, despite the elevated trend of interest rates and the higher uncertainty that has characterized the market actors. In particular, the banking sector appears robust, with good indicators of liquidity, profitability and capitalization. This sector has already turned into a stable business partner for Albanian households, supplying them with the necessary funds for the expansion of activity, providing reliable instruments for maintaining their savings, as well as by constantly expanding the range of financial products and payment instruments. Our analyses suggest that systemic risks remain contained, while the high level of capitalization and liquidity provides a significant buffer to withstand shocks. Dear ladies and gentlemen, The good resilience of the Albanian economy in the face of the ongoing crises of recent years is an evidence, first of all, of the dynamism, flexibility and sound balance sheets of Albanian businesses and households.

The Bank’s approach has therefore been to seek to reduce these risks to financial stability by engaging with initiatives which support an orderly market transition and facilitate a shift in financing to support climate goals. I want to talk about three specific areas: disclosure, green finance initiatives and the need for coordination. Disclosure The Bank has been supportive of the FSB’s Task-force for Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The TCFD recommendations provide an excellent basis for firms to disclose their exposure to climate-related risks and opportunities and their related strategies, governance and risk management practices. Disclosure helps investors identify which businesses are best equipped to deal with the risks and opportunities that climate change presents. And that in turn creates the pressure for change that ensures the risks are managed better than they would otherwise be. For me what was ground breaking about the TCFD recommendations was the introduction of scenario analysis - where firms set out the resilience of their strategy in different climate related scenarios, including a two degree or lower scenario. To be clear these scenarios are not forecasts or predictions. Rather they are data driven stories that are designed to enable the market to drive better decisions today. They are thus hugely more informative than spot observations of current exposures. And they are absolutely what is required to help investors price medium and long term risks like these. The TCFD recommendations are voluntary. In my view that is important.
There is, however, still progress to be made; our monetary and economic union needs to be completed. Our European economic institutions are like a trimaran. Our vessel already has a robust central hull in the form of the ECB and the Eurosystem, with its credible single monetary policy. This boat must be completed with two floaters. On one side, we need a public float with a standing common fiscal capacity to better cope with macroeconomic shocks. This need not mean increasing permanently our yearly budget; rather we should construct a fiscal facility that could be activated in moments of crisis or recession. In this respect, the EUR 750 billion Next Generation EU programme – agreed in 2020 and now actively implemented – has been a major step forward. On the other side, we need a private float to foster a better capital allocation, which is just as important. The  Page 5 sur 9 Banking Union and Capital Markets Union, though somewhat “boring” and technical, should be absolute political priorities to enhance the free circulation of capital across the EU and build what I suggest to rebrand a “Financing Union for Investment and Innovation”. In the U.S., private capital flows are a major financial shock absorber between states. We can achieve the same in Europe, and make better use of the world’s largest pool of savings, including by fostering venture capital which is still underdeveloped.

Beyond the COP26 held in Glasgow a few months ago, globally coordinated governmental policies are therefore necessary to anchor concrete and credible commitments, such as the one taken by the European Union in its Fit for 55 programme. And yes, policies to fight climate change should imperatively include an appropriate carbon price. Rest assured that central banks will do everything they can do. The ECB monetary policy strategy review, concluded last summer under President Lagarde’s leadership, sets out an ambitious action plan leading up to 2024. But central banks and financial intermediaries cannot solve everything, and substitute for adequate – and sometimes difficult – public policies. The ecological transition holds risks, including on inflation as the gradual switch to greener energies may entail higher and more volatile prices, at least in the intermediate phase. Central banks are closely monitoring this debate about a possible “greenflation”. So far, the evidence points to a non-negligible but limited direct contribution of climate policy in the recent increase in inflation. For example, the ongoing rise in CO2 prices in the European ETS market, which we are already taking into account in our inflation projections, has a modest positive impact on inflation. And the implementation of a carbon tax in Germany in 2021 has had a discernible impact in 2021: combined with other measures to tackle climate change, the overall impact on German consumer prices was estimated at 0.4 percentage point in 2021.
We have an exceptional situation, but understanding where exactly the limits are of the fiscal room for manoeuvre also depends on the culture. I see some cultures where people are very anxious that in the medium and long run the fiscal situation would be unsustainable, others that are reasoning short term. The “discount rate” which is implicit in the various cultures is not the same. We have to also take that into account. We don’t have a federal government. We don’t have a federal budget. If we unravel the Stability and Growth Pact we won’t rebuild it afterwards. It would have been unravelled. And what would I say then to American friends telling me, “you put the cart before the horse – you don’t have a federal budget or a federal government – but you have a single currency”? I understand that from the outside our setup might seem a little surprising, but taking everything into account, the credibility of the euro area, the fact that there has been a quid pro quo at the birth of the euro area in terms of the institutional framework, our setup is very solid. And don’t forget that there is also something which is not negligible. The role of automatic stabilisers is also important, and I urge the members of the euro area to display to which  BIS Review 159/2008  3  degree the worsening fiscal balances represent the functioning of automatic stabilisers.

As President of the ECB’s Governing Council, I would say again, I have no position of the Governing Council, but I think it's flattering for the Governing Council that we are called to reflect on that, by both parliament and perhaps the high-level group that has been set up by the Commission and where you have a number of eminent personalities. We will see. A little bit of philosophy again. We cannot afford to put in the future the concept of the market economy at risk as we did. I have known myself a world where you had an east and a west, a north and a south. In this matrix, we were only one square out of four where you could say they are in favour of market economies. The others were devising other ideas, which failed, and it's very good that they failed. However, the trust which was put in the resilience of the market economy is at stake now. I think we were, again, quite lucid on this. I have permanently with me the first page of the Financial Times warning of it, it was January 2007, in Davos, where I was providing the sentiment of my colleagues, as it has arisen from the governors’ meeting in Basel on the fact that market participants had to prepare for a significant correction because risks were underassessed and underestimated in global finance. But the fragility, not only of global finance but of the global economy itself, is something that we should reflect on.
The establishment of ACE will support and indeed, further propel efforts to raise the calibre and dynamism of talent across all levels in the industry. ACE will provide a range of facilities for professional development and skills development including learning and training for all the different levels of financial specialisation. The institutions that are to be housed within ACE have all embarked on measures to deliver programmes and qualifications that are benchmarked against leading education and training standards. The high quality talent that ACE will develop will contribute to the vibrancy and progress of the Malaysian financial industry. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  ACE is an initiative spearheaded by the financial services industry and it will house 10 institutions, involved in education, training and standard setting. With its strategic location in Kuala Lumpur, ACE has close proximity to the headquarters of financial institutions. Its integrated facilities will foster and facilitate collaboration amongst banking, insurance, capital market and Islamic finance industries to share intellectual capital, expert resources as well as benefit from economies of scale by the sharing of common infrastructure and facilities. Today’s ground breaking ceremony marks the official start of the construction for the ACE project. Let me take this opportunity to congratulate those involved in the Project to bring it to this stage of development.

Financial regulation – How to promote safe and secure financial innovations A sound legal framework is important for private service providers to develop secure and efficient payment services and for authorities to keep the confidence of users in the regular functioning of the payment system. The development of payment services is a continuously evolving dynamic process, driven by technological advances. Market players design new services that better adapt to users’ needs in order to expand their business. In doing so, they try to balance the new opportunities the market opens up with the financial regulation they have to comply with. However, private players want to maximize their profits and may not have the right incentives to reach a socially viable equilibrium. In this sense the regulator monitors the development of the market and technological advances to be able: to foster innovation (and better customer experience); strike the right balance between security and efficiency; adapt the regulation to new services; put in place effective consumer protection measures; ensure fair competition among market players; avoid regulatory arbitrage. The new regulatory framework in Macedonia which is in an advanced stage of drafting, aims at balancing safety and creativity. In order to protect consumers and maintain financial stability, the new framework envisages licensing regime for the non-banking payment service providers as well as an appropriate safeguarding measures for client’s funds. However, it supports the grow of start-ups in the Fintech sector by easing some of the regulatory requirements related to the initial capital, BCP, external audit etc.
The financial crisis revealed major fault lines in cross-border banking, the most important being large foreign currency balance sheets with significant maturity mismatches but with limited lender of last resort facilities in foreign currency. The nature and magnitude of this phenomenon were not well understood before the crisis.2 Maturity mismatches are, of course, the bread and butter of modern banking, although they make banks vulnerable to runs. In the case of solvent institutions, we have known theoretically since Thornton (1802) – and probably over a century, as a practical policy – how to deal with that vulnerability in a domestic setting: with central bank lender-of-last-resort (LOLR) operations, later complemented by deposit insurance. In the current setting, it is far from guaranteed that this process can be replicated at the international level. Of course, in normal times and with developed capital markets, banks can use foreign exchange swap markets to convert domestic liquidity into foreign exchange liquidity swiftly and relatively cheaply. However, this process broke down almost completely during the global run on cross-border non-US bank liabilities in the immediate aftermath of the Lehman collapse. In a situation like this, the home central bank’s ability to assist banks in acquiring the foreign liquidity denied them on the market and thus avoid a failure to deliver on their foreign currency payments, is limited by the size of its reserves or the willingness of the central bank issuing the international currency in question to help.

There are legal arguments about the merit of such claims that I will not comment on here. The fact of the matter is, however, that the Icelandic Government made three good faith attempts to close the issue through negotiated settlements but got caught up in political dynamics and the case might be on its way to the EFTA Court. But the financial risks for the parties involved are dwindling, as it now appears that the estimated recovery from the estate of Landsbanki will cover almost 100% of all deposits in the foreign branches. And of course, the priority given to deposits in the Emergency Act is of vital importance to that result. Let us now turn to some of the lessons learnt from the crisis. First, as regards the EU/EEA framework, the bottom line is that we cannot have a level playing field in banking, except perhaps in risk-adjusted terms, as long as the EU passport is not matched by EU supervision and an EU-wide safety net, which is the logical solution. Furthermore, EU-active banks from small countries with their own currencies should have reduced passport rights and/or face higher capital charges, as they have a less credible LOLR and are therefore more risky, other things being equal. Subjecting all banks in the EU to supervision by an EU supervisor is probably too much, and in practical terms, it might make sense to have two types of bank licences.
I should also mention here that a couple of other inflation-targeting countries with which we have an extensive professional exchange – the UK and Norway – have recently begun to attach much greater importance to forecasts based on other assumptions than a constant policy rate and that this appears to have worked well. We expect to be able to make use of our development work as early as the next Inflation Report. In that Report we intend to publish forecasts based on implied forward rates, a measure that may not be exactly the same as market expectations of the future repo rate, due, among other things, to maturity premiums, but that nevertheless are a reasonable approximation. It doesn't really matter that much whether one chooses to condition the forecast on implied forward rates, surveys that attempt to give a more direct reading of market expectations, or some other fairly reasonable assumption about future monetary policy. We have chosen, however, to use implied forward rates, since this is a relatively  4  See, for example, Svensson, L., ”Monetary Policy and Real Stabilization” in Rethinking Stabilization Policy, A Symposium Sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, August 29-31, 2002, 261-312. 5  The only exceptions were Inflation Report 2001:1 and 2001:2 when no such estimates were published, since market expectations largely coincided with the assumption of an unchanged repo rate. 4  BIS Review 11/2005  simple way to get a fairly reasonable idea of future monetary policy.

To support this, we need to see a strong focus on public metrics that set out the climate impacts 5  Climate BES was first announced in the July 2019 Financial Stability Report and further detailed provided in the December 2019 Discussion Paper 4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  4  of both investment and corporate activities. In turn, this will help to facilitate the development of capital market instruments that package risk and return and asset allocation strategies that align portfolios with the transition. The Bank will support the work to make this happen, consistent with the objective of our Financial Policy Committee to support productive finance and thus the economy. Returning to Bretton Woods for a moment. The UK economy and financial system is very open, and like Covid, climate is a common global risk and we cannot hope to insulate ourselves through domestic action alone. We are committed to working closely with willing international partners through initiatives such as the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), of which we are a co-founder and very active member, and where much progress has been made in raising our collective ambition as central banks and regulators as well as identifying best practice in identifying and mitigating climate risks in the financial system.
Goh Chok Tong: Integration of Awqaf (Islamic endowment) in the Islamic financial sector Speech Mr Goh Chok Tong, Senior Minister of the Republic of Singapore and Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the opening ceremony of the Singapore International WAQF Conference 2007, Singapore, 6 March 2007. *  *  *  Excellencies and Distinguished Guests Ladies and Gentlemen A very good morning to all of you, and a very warm welcome to our guests from the Middle East and the region. I hope you will find time from your busy schedule of meetings to enjoy the sights, sounds and culinary delights of Singapore. For Singapore offers you a unique experience – we are traditional yet modern, Asian but cosmopolitan, geographically small but with a large global outlook. Singapore is indeed honoured to host this first international conference in the region on waqf. I congratulate the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS), the Islamic Research and Training Institute of the Islamic Development Bank Group and the Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation for taking the initiative to organise this event. We look forward to more such meetings. Asia and Middle East rediscovering each other Asia and the Middle East have had a long and fruitful history of exchanges. Links between our two regions are ancient. Long before Marco Polo travelled to China, Arab merchants were already doing business in Asia using overland and sea routes.

Many of these Middle Eastern banks service Islamic financing needs. Singapore welcomes more banks from the Middle East to set up here and to partner us in the growth of our financial centre. Beyond Middle Eastern banks, we have also seen international banks such as Citigroup and Standard Chartered introduce Islamic finance and murabaha products from Singapore. More financial institutions are using Singapore as a launch pad for innovative new Islamic products. Singapore will continue to co-operate with market participants and other countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE on the development of Islamic finance. Integration of Awqaf into Islamic finance Let me now turn to waqf. Historically, the revenue generated in waqf has been applied to traditional uses like maintenance of religious buildings. But this is changing. Proceeds from the estates are now used to contribute more widely to society. Rules governing the administration of waqf have become increasingly progressive. In Kuwait and Qatar, revenue from waqf has been used to build hospitals, universities and commercial and office complexes. Townships have even been built in Morocco. Such innovative financial uses help to unlock the economic potential of waqf. In Singapore, we have the example of an integrated mixed-development at Bencoolen Street, comprising a mosque, service apartments and a commercial complex. This was made possible through the innovative financing solution provided by the launch of the musyarakah bond. MUIS, which administers a number of waqf, has also made use of the proceeds to fund Islamic education.
Fortunately, inflation expectations remain relatively stable at levels somewhat above the current inflation rate. This stability should help prevent an undesirable further drop in inflation relative to our 2 percent objective. That said, there are some nascent signs that the economy may be doing better. For example, based on the first estimate, which is subject to revision, real (gross domestic product) GDP increased at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the third quarter of 2013, above the trend of the past four years. And the most recent payroll employment report showed a pickup in the monthly pace of job gains. The 3-month moving average rose back above a 200,000 pace after slowing to about 150,000 as of July of this year. I hope that this marks a turning point for the economy. But before we rush to this conclusion a few more cautionary comments are appropriate. With respect to GDP growth, it turns out that inventory investment contributed ¾ of a percentage point to that overall growth rate. Thus, because this impetus from inventories will likely reverse this quarter, the real GDP growth rate is likely to slow to around a 2 percent annual rate or a bit less in the fourth quarter. With respect to payroll employment, we have seen such bursts in payroll growth before over the past few years and have been disappointed when the pickups proved temporary and did not lead to a rise in the overall growth rate. But, I have to admit that I am getting more hopeful.

Are we doomed to end up like the ancient civilisation dwelling on Easter island, which prospered for hundreds of years, living off a tree whose reproductive cycle exceeded the life-time of an individual, and for which reason no one had ever bothered to replant as existing trees died off? The second question probably provides a clue towards understanding the issue surrounding the first. If a section of society makes a sacrifice to reform, the benefits derived in the process may accrue to the rest of society in a greater proportion than to the people making the sacrifice. The obvious solution to this dilemma would be for all sectors of society to share in the costs and benefits of reform in an equitable manner. And this is where Government and all the other social partners have a crucial role to play. It is to take the lead in agreeing on a programme of reforms and carrying their respective constituencies with them. The Malta Council for Economic and Social Development could, I believe, provide a congenial forum for this purpose. But try we must because the challenge is a formidable one and we should not labour under any illusion that it can be wished away. This is not a time for carrying on as usual. Nor is it a time for behaving as though the universal laws of economics or current world realities do not apply to us.