samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Specifically, I should like to reflect with you on the causes behind the launch of this project and what it has meant to date. I wish to frame it in terms of the safeguarding of the euro,  2/10  but I also aim to cover those elements which, in my view, are lacking when it comes to attaining a truly European and cross-border integrated banking sector. I shall also refer to an even broader objective: namely, achieving a real “Financial Union”. The Banking Union would be part of this, but it would encompass other elements, such as the so-called “Capital Markets Union”. European construction I think it is fair to point out that, since its creation, the EU project has improved the life of millions of European citizens. It has done so not only in economic terms, but also as regards rights and standards of living throughout the Union. Naturally, the success of this common project cannot be judged solely in terms of its economic results; we must also consider its other initial goals. These include increasing the level of political integration and promoting peace, European values and the well-being of European peoples. We should not forget that the European Union was conceived with the aim of ending armed conflict between neighbouring countries, following the horror of two World Wars. The creation in the 1950s of the European Coal and Steel Community was the first step towards an economic and political union of the European countries, with the ultimate goal of ensuring lasting peace.

Somewhat paradoxically, bearing in mind how slow progress has been, the objectives of attracting institutional investors, improving the allocation of resources, introducing a safe European asset and reinforcing the international role of the euro are more prevalent than ever. Specific progress, though limited, has at least been made. For instance, most work in terms of the EU-wide harmonisation of investment and saving products has now been agreed, including the definition of a pan-European individual pension product. 9/10  However, the complexity of the project calls for greater regulatory and fiscal harmonisation efforts, in particular regarding the taxation of capital. As a case in point, in the EU there are still more than 90 types of forms in different languages for tax refunds. This might seem rather unimportant but, often, these administrative formalities are a major obstacle to investment by market participants. Against this background, mention may be made of the report published in October 2019, during the Finnish presidency, by the so-called ´Next CMU group´8. This comprised highlevel representatives of industry who, at the request of the EU finance ministers, evaluated the progress of this project, proposing a series of measures in order to re-launch it.9 Conclusion. Allow me to conclude. Throughout its history, the EU has moved towards a greater level of economic and political integration that has provided clear social and economic benefits. Yet the pace of this movement has not been constant.
When it comes to cooperation with the home countries, we have very much appreciated their measures to enhance the safety of their banks, as this provides a sense of financial infrastructure security in our host-countries as well. We believe that these measures will be adjusted to a developing environment, and will be instrumental to also target some of the concerns of the host countries related with: a) the importance of maintaining reasonable flow of funds in euro from the headquarters of the banking groups toward their foreign subsidiaries, both for liquidity and lending support; b) the importance of gradually steering the lending portfolio of their foreign subsidiaries toward local currency of the host countries. Events of the second half of 2008 have shown us the importance of having a balanced economy and a solid financial and banking sector. Despite the increasing effects of the international crisis, the economy showed a solid growth, in an environment of declining inflationary pressure. Impact of the international crisis started to materialize in the last quarter of the year, as shown in developments of the balance of payments and in the banking sector balance sheet. Indeed, a fall in external demand and a rise in unemployment rates in some of the EU neighbor countries caused a decline in the remittances and in exports. In addition, public sensitivity to (sometimes unbalanced) news on international crisis developments, increased the uncertainty about the safety of their savings in the banking sector, and caused some deposits withdraw.

From an operational perspective, over the second half of last year, the Bank of Albania took a number of measures: •  strengthening the surveillance of financial market developments, and in particular of the banking sector;  •  strengthening bilateral and multilateral meetings with bank representatives, asking them for increased vigilance due to current international market conditions;  •  increasing contacts with other domestic institutions that regulate and monitor the financial markets, in particular with the Authority of Financial Market Supervision;  •  increasing the number of publications, including the Financial Stability Report 2007 (Sept.) and the Statement on Financial Stability (Oct.), which try to analyze the  2  BIS Review 43/2009  elements of the crisis and its potential effects on Albanian Banking Sector and the economy; •  increasing the presence in the Media, to explain the crisis, to clarify the position of our banking sector toward the potential crisis effects, and to maintain public confidence in the banking sector;  •  changing and improving the reporting framework of banks, in particular regarding their exposure to international markets (and the mother-banks) and their liabilities (deposits and exposure to credit lines) from mother-banks);  •  reviewing our “back-up” plans to assess the possibility of new actions, should we encounter a worsening scenario;  •  changing the form of our open market operations and starting to execute “open amount/fixed price” weekly reverse repurchase transactions and longer maturity ones, to better suit the liquidity needs of the banks.
Miroslav Singer: Central Bank Governor of the Year for Emerging Europe 2013 Acceptance speech by Mr Miroslav Singer, Governor of the Czech National Bank, at the Central Bank Governor of the Year for Emerging Europe 2013 awards, Washington DC, 12 October 2013. *  *  *  Let me start by thanking you for this award. I see it not so much as personal recognition, but more as recognition of the team of people that make up and define the Czech National Bank that I have the pleasure to represent here. Special thanks go to those I work with directly, among others to my colleagues on the board for their unlimited patience with my generally awful manners and attempts to claim leadership. Whenever I meet a group of investors or analysts, I always start by noting that any issues and questions requiring knowledge and wisdom would be better addressed by our experts, those requiring only wisdom would be better be fielded by my colleagues on the board, and those requiring neither knowledge nor wisdom can be safely left to me. So, let me share some of my knowledge- and wisdom-free observations with you. Ten years ago, when I was working in restructuring, I could never have imagined that I would join the central bank in less than two years and later rise to the top job there. But the offer came, and it was one I truly could not refuse.

I owe a big debt of thanks to my predecessor Zdeněk Tůma, who steered the bank to a position where its reputation, which had been severely tarnished before his arrival, was growing steadily. He achieved this by, among other things, imposing his own highly developed sense of self-control and restraint on the bank. As the Czech National Bank started communicating less on general topics and more on its areas of expertise, it became recognized as an institution of true independence and authority – to such an extent that the Czech political system allocated all supervisory competences to it and continues to broaden its responsibilities. I believe that the crises from which a significant part of the developed world is still emerging have – at least for smaller economies – justified a scheme in which some or all supervisory roles are allocated to the central bank, which holds responsibility for stability issues anyway. But I also have to warn against the trend where the public sees central banks gaining more and more competences and mandates and starts to overestimate their ability to deal with crises. Central banks are far from omnipotent, and this trend may harm them. After all, their independence is only a product of the political system in which they operate. And such independence depends chiefly on their reputation. A central bank’s reputation is based on qualities such as accountability, transparency, and proper management of its own operations, as well as on its ability to make good choices and good decisions.
Some would say that part of the answer would be to cap particularly retail interest rates charged by banks. Do you see that as part of the answer? This is a long-running debate here. Even though the ECB rate is quite low, when you look across Europe, the mortgage lending rates in Ireland are higher. The ECB has provided a legal opinion on the draft law, and it highlights, in line with the Central Bank of Ireland analysis, that a policy that caps the interest rate runs the risk of having an unintended effect, which is that it will deter entry. The Irish banking system is quite concentrated. Many people would like to see more banks enter to compete and, through competition, lower the rates. If you have a legal approach, where there is a legal regulation capping the interest rate, then the incentive for foreign lenders to come in is less. We have this long-running debate about the contribution of the quite high default risk in Ireland being built into those higher rates. I understand the intent: trying to make housing more affordable is a big issue. But personally, and in terms of the official advice of the ECB, we think capping interest rates is not the advisable way to go. You don’t even see a role for it, say, if you were to consider the housing situation to be an emergency scenario; that it would be a temporary measure given to the central bank? Well, again let me come back to the basics here.

This was another step in a long chain of communications about the balance sheet —incremental steps that highlight the evolution of our communication practices. I hope you would agree that we have taken a very measured and careful approach. This process started with the initial release of the Policy Normalization Principles and Plans in September 2014, which indicated that the FOMC planned to reduce securities in a gradual and predictable manner. Related comments followed in the minutes of the July 2015 FOMC meeting and the December 2015 FOMC statement. Subsequently, FOMC participants discussed potential long-run frameworks for monetary policy implementation as detailed in the November 2016 FOMC minutes. Next, the March 2017 FOMC minutes reaffirmed that a change in balance sheet policy would be gradual and predictable, and achieved primarily by changing the reinvestment policy. These minutes also noted that most participants judged a change in reinvestment policy would likely be appropriate this year, should economic data develop as they expected. Then, in the May 2017 minutes, it was noted that nearly all participants had a favorable view of a phased-in, cap approach whereby reinvestments would be decreased gradually. Participants favored this 2/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  strategy because a preannounced schedule would be gradual and predictable, limiting the magnitude of the runoff could help mitigate any adverse market effects, and the strategy would be relatively easy and straightforward to communicate.
BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Costly and inefficient Self-insurance remains the most popular tool. Individual countries’ reserves remain the largest component of the global financial safety net – reserves have risen from $ trillion in 1995 to over $ trillion now. To be sure, self-insurance is prudent to a point – indeed it is something we have encouraged banks to do. But there are several problems with excessive reserve accumulation: (i)  First, reserves are distributed very unevenly across and within some regions. Emerging markets with adequate reserves (largely in Asia and the Middle East) are over-insured by about $ trillion in total. By contrast the Central and Eastern European region and Latin America are underinsured by around $ billion [Chart 3]. This suggests the distribution of reserves does not correspond well to the distribution of risks. (ii)  Second, even when they are in abundance, there are doubts about countries’ willingness to run down their reserves. In the last financial crisis, nine of the largest emerging market economies refrained entirely from using reserves. There is some evidence that markets judge countries according to their relative rather than absolute level of reserves. So no one wants to blink first by running them down. (iii)  Third, issuing high yielding local currency debt to purchase reserves is costly to emerging markets, resulting in an annual cost of around 0.5% of GDP 8. (iv)  Finally, reserve accumulation causes distortions to domestic economies with potential spillovers to the global system.

This is all about reducing the cost of resolution and thereby the risk to the stability of the system. Just like recovery plans, resolution plans need to be there to be used, and I can assure you that the Bank of England, in its role as a resolution authority, will be placing great emphasis on the existence of credible and useable resolution plans. They will be a tool for the authorities rigorously to ask  2  BIS Review 156/2009  the question, “With this structure and business model, could I achieve a resolution at an acceptable cost”. This will be true for domestic banks and for those operating across borders, and in the case of the latter there is a large amount of work to be done to ensure both complete coverage of resolution regimes and that they can work together. I have emphasised that I see RRPs as a device to enable tough questioning of structures and business models. I want finally to illustrate the sorts of questions that should arise by referring briefly to a couple of well known cases of the last two years or so. Let me start with Northern Rock, the first casualty in the UK and use this case to illustrate the role of a recovery plan.
Monetary policy with a steady hand Speech given by Huw Pill Chief Economist  The Society of Professional Economists Online Conference 2022 The Challenges of Change 9 February 2022  My thanks to Jack Meaning, Alberto Polo, Rich Harrison, for helpful discussions in the preparation of this speech. I would also like to thank Andrew Bailey, Lennart Brandt, Ben Broadbent, Alan Castle, Michael Goldby, Jonathan Haskel, Andrew Hauser, Michael Saunders, Martin Seneca, Fergal Shortall, Tom Smith, Matthew Swannell and Silvana Tenreyro for their comments. Opinions (and all remaining errors and omissions) are my own. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  Good afternoon everyone. It is a great pleasure and honour to speak at today’s Society of Professional Economists conference. Thanks to George Buckley and his fellow organisers for the invitation to participate. Last week’s MPC decision Let me start with last week’s MPC decision. As you all know, the MPC decided to raise Bank Rate by 25bp to 0.5%. The Committee also agreed to commence the unwind of gilt holdings accumulated through quantitative easing (by ending re-investment of maturing bonds), as well as announce an intended unwind of the corporate bond portfolio.1  This further withdrawal of the monetary policy accommodation introduced at the outset of the pandemic was motivated by a forecast with three important and inter-related elements, which I will address in turn. First, the evolution of international energy and goods prices, which continue to drive headline inflation developments in the UK.

Difference rules thereby avoid introducing the policy mis-calibration and resulting noise that stems from using poorly estimated or mis-specified R- and Y-star measures.23  10  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  10  I will explore briefly this idea in a narrower setting using a version of a model built by my colleagues Rich Harrison, Martin Seneca and Matt Waldron (a sketch of which is provided in the Annex). Essentially, this is a canonical three equation new Keynesian macroeconomic model estimated for the UK, with a few additional features to ensure more realistic persistence in inflation and output. Although estimated, I would emphasise that this is a stylised representation of the UK economy – I am using it for illustrative purposes, rather than to foreshadow any specific policy decision. In the background of the model are ‘cost-push’ shocks that introduce a difficult trade-off between inflation volatility around target and output gap volatility, which monetary policymakers seek to manage by varying the policy rate. My focus here is on the treatment by monetary policy of shocks to the R- and Y-star concepts embodied in this model. One can think of these as risk premium and productivity shocks. The crucial feature is that shocks to these starred variables have two components: one temporary, the other persistent. Neither policymakers nor households and firms can observe these shocks in real time. Rather, they have to learn about the persistence of the driving shocks over time on the basis of how the observed data evolve.
Svein Gjedrem: Monetary policy and the krone exchange rate Address by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the Annual Meeting of ACI Norge - The Financial Markets Association, Oslo, 26 August 2004. The text below may differ slightly from the actual presentation. The address is based on the assessments presented at Norges Bank’s press conference following the Executive Board’s monetary policy meeting on 11 August, Inflation Report 2/04 and on previous speeches. The  Charts in pdf-format can be found on the Norges Bank’s website. *  *  *  In most countries, price stability, or low and stable inflation, is the objective of monetary policy. The historical experience of Norway and other countries shows that high and variable inflation results in considerable fluctuations in output and employment. In addition, a fall in the level of prices could easily accompany a period of decline. The first explicit inflation target was introduced in New Zealand in 1990. Canada followed in 1991, the UK in 1992, and Sweden and Australia in 1993. Norway introduced inflation targeting in the spring of 2001. Approximately 20 countries currently use inflation targeting in their monetary policy. In this context, I would like to mention that the central bank of Sweden was able to draw on its own experience from the 1930s when it sought to motivate and firmly establish inflation targeting during the 1990s. Admittedly, Sweden did not have an inflation target but a price target for monetary policy in the period 1931-1937.

When the monthly allocations to the Petroleum Fund are larger than the foreign exchange transfers from Petoro (SDFI), Norges Bank will purchase foreign exchange in the market to cover the difference. The Ministry of Finance determines the amount of the monthly transfers to the Petroleum Fund on the basis of its estimates in the National Budgets and the Revised National Budgets. The Ministry may also adjust the amount on the basis of new information concerning, for example, developments in oil prices. Given the current high level of oil prices, purchases in the next few months will probably be considerably larger than they have been during the summer. Norges Bank has not defined a target for the exchange rate. Nevertheless, developments in the krone are of considerable importance to interest-rate setting because the exchange rate influences inflation and output. Portfolio investments may easily dominate movements in the krone exchange rate in the short term. Themes in foreign exchange markets shift. In periods, investor focus on stock returns feeds through to exchange rate movements. During periods of political and economic unrest, investors may choose individual currencies as a safe haven - often the Swiss franc. The Norwegian krone was probably also perceived as a safe haven when oil prices rose in the autumn of 2002 as a result of the uncertainty concerning a possible war in Iraq. In the period from March to May 2003 and throughout the autumn, the krone showed a tendency to appreciate.
It has been slow to recover since and today still stands 8 percent below its 2006 peak and, for that matter, below where it was anytime during the last expansion. 9 Davis, Faberman and Haltiwanger argue that low recruiting intensity may reflect employers’ increased hiring standards. That squares with anecdotes we hear that employers are being very picky and waiting for the perfect applicant. It could be that hiring standards become more stringent during an economic downturn. For example, if there is an unusually high degree of downward nominal wage rigidity, as Mary Daly and Bart Hobijn of the San Francisco Fed document has been the case over this cycle. 10 then employers may respond by filling fewer openings. If this story is true, then the high ratio of vacancies to hires is a further indication of slack in the labor market. Alternatively, a low rate of vacancy filling might signal a persistent structural problem. For years, I’ve been hearing business people complain of difficulty in finding sufficiently qualified candidates. This phenomenon may be indicative of a skills mismatch between jobs and workers. If this is the case, then it is possible that the steady-state level of the vacancy rate has increased, which would help explain why the improvement in vacancies we’ve seen over the past few years has been slow to translate into similar progress on hiring. Now, it’s unclear if these trends are widespread.

The repo-rate path chosen by the majority does not meet the well-known necessary but not sufficient condition for a well-balanced monetary policy formulated by the Deputy Governor of the Norwegian central bank Jan Qvigstad (2005). Applied to inflation and unemployment, this condition means that the inflation gap (the difference between inflation and the inflation target) and the unemployment gap should have the same sign. As the inflation gap is negative and the unemployment gap is positive for the majority’s repo-rate path for most of the forecast interval, this condition is not met. With a lower repo-rate path, on the other hand, the gap for both would be reduced and target attainment for both inflation and unemployment would thus increase. The fact that monetary policy is not well-balanced for the majority’s repo-rate path is clearly demonstrated if one uses mean square gaps to measure target attainment as in Figures 7 and 8. Figure 7 shows the forecasts for the CPIF and unemployment that are compatible with the main scenario’s repo-rate path and the higher and lower repo-rate paths published in Chapter 2 of the Monetary Policy Report in February. Panel b shows that the repo-rate path of the main scenario does not meet the Qvigstad condition. Neither is it effective, as a lower repo-rate path stabilises both inflation and unemployment better. Figure 8 shows the main scenario’s repo-rate path and the lower path that Karolina Ekholm and I advocated at the meeting.