samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Without going into detail at this stage, I will just mention: •  the work on the regulatory framework applicable to systemic banks, which will be pursued with the idea of taking into account that, owing to their size relative to a domestic market, certain banks can generate major systemic risk in a given country;  •  the finalisation of liquidity regulation, which must revisit the stress test scenarios applied to banks’ assets and liabilities as well as the scope of assets deemed to be liquid;  •  the adaptation of the French regulatory framework for all of the institutions that are currently credit institutions according to our national definition but which will lose this status under the new European definition, which is much more restrictive;  •  the overhaul of the banking crisis resolution mechanism, with the French mechanism – in anticipation of the forthcoming European projects – not having been updated to integrate the more powerful crisis management instruments resulting from the G20 guidelines;  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  •  the deliberations, in both the European and French frameworks, about better organisation of banking activities and of the relationships between investment banking and retail banking. The ACP will ensure that there is coherence between these different initiatives so as to avoid any unanticipated negative impacts. *** Before handing over to Jean-Philippe Thierry, I would like to stress that, although the difficult macroeconomic context persists, I remain confident about the robustness of the French financial sector.

Their aggregated profit, down 36% compared with 2010 to 14 billion euro was substantially higher than the 2008 and 2009 level, and this allowed them to significantly bolster their own funds and to continue financing the French economy. The ACP’s vigilance has been decisive in helping the banks to maintain a satisfactory liquidity and solvency situation. In 2011, the ACP conducted 136 on-site inspections; the risk profiles of 700 institutions were analysed according to a harmonised procedure with, notably, a sustained pace of meetings with the senior managers and heads of the main business  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  lines, thereby allowing the ACP to draw up detailed maps of the main risks to which they are exposed. During 2011, the two principal dimensions of prudential supervision – monitoring credit institution liquidity and solvency – required particular vigilance by the ACP. Credit institutions’ liquidity levels were monitored more closely, particularly in its dollar resources dimension; this is an area where the rationale behind the ACP’s being placed under the aegis of the Banque de France – which is responsible for central bank refinancing – is clearly demonstrated. By ensuring that the adequate risk provisioning, the reduction of management’s and market participants’ compensation and the allocation of the bulk of profits to strengthen own funds, the ACP has managed to ensure – over the longer term – the solvency of the French banking sector. Today, all the major banking groups have Core Tier 1 own funds ratios above 9%.
In view of the importance of payments and settlements systems for the efficiency and security of the banking system, these have been developed by using state-of-the-art electronic technologies and highly sophisticated and technically advanced information systems that not only meet, but often exceed, international standards. The transformation started in 1986 when SAMA installed the Automatic Cheque Clearing System. In 1989, SAMA required all Saudi banks to join the Saudi Payments Network (SPAN) which is a national ATM system. This system was subsequently extended to a point-of-sale that links customers, merchants and banks. However, the backbone of the Saudi Payment and Settlement System is the Saudi Riyal Interbank Express (SARIE). This is an interbank system that operates on Real Time Gross Settlement basis. SARIE provides an electronic link between all other payments and clearing systems which had been installed earlier. A follower of the statistical data on the payments systems, issued by SAMA, would realize the huge growth achieved in the number of ATMs, POS and transactions executed through them in addition to the transactions carried out through SAREA' System. Of course, Saudi banks and their customers have benefited greatly from these advances in technology. Banks have been able to expand their businesses by offering a range of new products, control their costs and to enhance profitability. Consumers have benefited from access to a broader range of services and from reduction in costs.

Even if there are no unequivocal solutions, some measures are valid for several countries: raising the retirement age, eliminating early retirement incentives, reduction in replacement rates, integrating public pensions within a system which allows future payments to be financed so that the ageing of the population does not create imbalances between generations. Should men and women retire at the same age? This is a sensitive and important issue triggering a whole host of reactions and different points of view. Apparently, in accordance with current jurisprudence, I would say they should retire at the same age, as the European Court of Justice maintains that there should be no discrimination or distinction between men and women in any area. How urgent is pension reform? Extremely urgent, in all euro area countries. When we look at demographic trends, we tend to put it off as we are talking about long-term developments. It seems that the movement is slow and long, and that there is time. However, it is a complete illusion because it is an issue that has to be tackled as early as possible. The more radical left-wing and the unions are opposed to it and say that you are technocrats who only pay attention to numbers. As an important international leader, do you not believe that there are also social costs which need to be taken into consideration? We are, after all, talking about millions of people and all the weakest categories of the population. It is a crucial factor.
In this regard, the IFSB has already made progress in developing the prudential standards on the capital adequacy and risk management framework, and has commenced work on developing standards on corporate governance. Appropriate accounting standards have also been put in place to reflect the true and fair value of banking operations that would lead to greater accountability and responsibility on the part of financial institutions. While the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) has made a significant contribution in formulating and issuing accounting and auditing standards for Islamic financial institutions, efforts need to be intensified to promote of the adoption of these standards. The International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM) further provides the environment that will encourage active participation by both Islamic and non-Islamic financial institutions in the secondary market for Islamic financial instruments. Several global sovereign sukuks have been issued in the international market that has attracted wide interest, both by Muslim and non-Muslim investors. The next phase in this development is the raising of funds from this market by multinational corporations and multilateral institutions. As the volume increases, it would strengthen the inter-linkages and integration amongst the Islamic financial centres. In addition to structuring a variety of attractive off-the-shelf instruments, efforts need to be intensified to create a benchmark curve for future issues. With a well-developed system, the trading of instruments would encourage the free flow of capital movements and would in turn facilitate greater Islamic fund management activities.

Those costs would ultimately be passed on to European households and businesses. Moreover if the large stock of existing trades of EU firms – tens of trillions of euros in size – was trapped at a CCP which was no longer recognised by the European Commission, those EU firms would face capital charges as much as ten times higher than today unless and until they could move them. 25  Fragmenting liquidity would drive up costs somewhat in the remaining market as well. On current volumes, almost 90% of swaps are traded by non-EU firms and could remain in the main UK-based liquidity pool. Given the size of this market, the impacts could be expected to be much smaller, although not insignificant. Fragmentation is in no one’s economic interest. Nor is it necessary for financial stability. Indeed it can damage it. Fragmenting clearing would lead to smaller liquidity pools in CCPs, reducing the ability to diversify risks and diminishing resilience. And higher costs would reduce the incentives to hedge risks, increasing the amount of risk that the real economy would have to bear. The Bank of England fully recognises European concerns. I know because I shared similar ones as Governor of the Bank of Canada. These were addressed then through common standards and cooperative supervisory oversight, allowing $ clearing to move to a more efficient and resilient hub in London.
Another reason why monetary policy has become less effective in stimulating the economy is because the impetus from a given level of monetary accommodation likely has become attenuated – that is, less powerful – over time. Historically, attenuation has not been important because monetary policy typically has not stayed exceptionally easy for long periods of time. But this time is different and that difference may be important. So how might the monetary policy impulse on economic activity have become attenuated over time? I would suggest two potential channels. The first channel is that monetary policy works, in part, by changing the timing of purchase decisions. If interest rates decline, the drop in financing costs may induce some households to buy a motor vehicle or purchase a home now rather than in the future. Of course, if the car or home is purchased today, this will borrow at least a portion of those sales from the future. There is a limit to how many cars and homes most people will want to buy, given their budget constraints. In this case, as the stimulus from the policy stays in place, the impulse on economic growth will gradually “wear off” as there are fewer and fewer households who can be induced to pull their future planned purchases forward to the present. The same argument applies to mortgage refinancing activity. The stimulus comes from the refinancing activity, which increases the amount of income that borrowers have available for other expenditures.

Rapid growth in lending such as we have witnessed in a number of Asian economies can be a warning sign because it tends to be associated with a lowering of credit standards as banks lend to customers whose creditworthiness is more marginal. Moreover, much of this lending may find its way into the property market and stock market, adding to the upward pressure on asset prices arising from the inflows themselves. Reversal of inflows or a slowing down of the economy, as in Thailand, thus exposes the banks to both credit risk and market risk as asset prices fall. 15. With large capital inflows, banks may also find themselves incurring substantial net foreign currency liabilities. They will thus additionally be exposed to substantial foreign exchange risks if the domestic currency weakens. Financial liberalization and increased competition 16. Associated with, and leading to the global integration of financial markets is the trend of financial liberalization and increased competition. The trend has increasingly freed banks from direct controls on interest rates and on their permitted business activities in many Asian economies. We can see this in banking systems as far apart as those in China where the process of commercialization of the banking sector is now underway and in Japan which is planning its own version of Big Bang in the next few years. This new freedom can bring increased opportunities for the banks and can be a powerful incentive to increased efficiency in 4  International Capital Markets, IMF 1996.
On the one extreme, the PRC and FPC might now decide that the current scope of the framework has served us well, and that it is enough for PRC to continue with its leverage ratio supervisory expectations that currently apply to all firms. On the other extreme, the PRC and FPC might decide that there is benefit in extending the leverage ratio framework to all PRA firms, whether from a micro-prudential or a system-wide perspective. Similarly, the Bank’s MREL review is considering the thresholds for being subject to a resolution strategy requiring use of the Bank’s stabilisation powers, and in connection to that the resulting MREL calibration for mid-tier firms. These links and their implications for the different reviews are being closely coordinated across the three authorities – the PRC, the FPC and the Resolution Authority. No decisions have been made on either, but I expect all three authorities to be saying more on these reviews over the summer – so watch this space. Mortgage risk-weights Finally, I want to close with something that I hope is of interest to both the larger and smaller firms in our audience. Last time I was here, I spoke about the significant decline in UK mortgage risk-weights for firms using internal models – from an average of around 15% in 2009 to around 10% today. This has led to increased prudential risks, and an increasing divergence between firms that use these models and firms that do not.

Both the leverage ratio and the calibration of MREL are not intended to focus on the riskiness of a firm’s balance sheet. The leverage ratio is a relatively simple metric of capital over a firm’s total 3/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  exposures, and in this way it acts as a guardrail against uncertainties in the measurement of risk, which – from bitter experience of the problems which can sometimes arise from risk-weighting – I consider very important. As a backstop to the system, the MREL calibration focuses heavily on the potential impact of a failure, rather than the likelihood of the failure. This is in line with the resolution authority’s objectives and mandate. It is not surprising then that when you combine the two, the resulting capital requirements may feel high to mid-tier firms that are not designated as systemic and, on the face of it, appear to engage in lower risk activities. The third link between the two reviews is that both reviews are also considering the scope of each framework. When the PRC and FPC finalised their leverage ratio framework in 2015 we decided to apply the framework to our largest and most systemic firms and return to the question of whether to include other firms in scope in the future.
The repo rate had never been this low before. In July 2009, the Riksbank also assessed that the repo rate would remain at this exceptionally low level for the next 12 months or so. This was expressed in the repo-rate path at the time. In order, to underline the assessment that the repo rate would remain at this low level throughout the following year, and to keep down longer-term interest rates too, the Riksbank, on three different occasions, provided loans totalling almost SEK 300 billion at a fixed interest rate of 0.25 per cent for one year (see Figure 15). In July 2010, the Riksbank began normalising monetary policy. The repo rate was raised from 0.25 per cent to 0.5 per cent and has subsequently been raised another four times to 1.50 per cent in February 2011. The large loans were repaid by the banks without being replaced by new, similar loans. The Riksbank’s balance sheet total thus fell to approximately 10 per cent of GDP. This is in contrast to the balance sheet totals of several other central banks, which have continued to increase. It has been possible to carry out the reduction of the Riksbank’s balance sheet without giving rise to any significant problems on the financial markets.

They were also implemented during a limited period of time and thus did not become part of a more permanent support system. The Riksbank thus reacted quickly to the problems that arose. Of course, the Swedish banks were not exposed to the US housing market to any great extent. But they were dependent on the markets functioning in order to get funding. In order to cover the loss of normal funding channels, the Riksbank provided loans of approximately SEK 500 billion during the autumn of 2008.12 This increased the Riksbank’s balance sheet total from approximately 7 per cent to approximately 22 per cent of GDP, that is more than the balance sheets of the Federal Reserve (FED) and the European Central Bank (ECB) in relation to GDP. Around half of this lending was in kronor and half in dollars. In order to be able to lend so much in dollars, the Riksbank borrowed dollars from the FED through a rapidly-concluded swap agreement. The Riksbank’s own dollar assets were far too small. In the autumn of 2008, the foreign currency reserve corresponded to SEK 200 billion and was invested in a number of different currencies. In 2009, the reserve was strengthened by borrowing approximately SEK 100 billion via the Swedish National Debt Office (see Figure 14). Monetary policy also reacted quickly and forcefully. The repo rate was cut rapidly from 4.75 per cent in September 2008 to 0.25 per cent in July 2009. The largest cut came already in December 2008.
SPEECH  From market neutrality to market efficiency Welcome address by Isabel Schnabel, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the ECB DG-Research Symposium “Climate change, financial markets and green growth” Frankfurt am Main, 14 June 2021 On behalf of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the co-organizers – the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) – I am pleased to welcome you to the Symposium “Climate Change, Finance and Green Growth”. While all of us would certainly have preferred to convene in person, the event’s virtual format does at least have the welcome side effect of lowering our carbon footprint. The programme of the Symposium is highly topical: it features six state-of-the-art academic papers and a moderated discussion focusing on the interaction between climate policies, financial markets and sustainable development. The Symposium underscores the ECB’s commitment to better understand the consequences of climate change for output and inflation, to explore the role that central banks can play in fostering the transition to a low-carbon economy, and to support high-quality academic research on climate change. In view of the Symposium’s agenda, my opening remarks will focus on the scope for the ECB to contribute to the global fight against climate change. While this topic is also an important element of the ECB’s ongoing monetary policy strategy review, my remarks should not be seen as an indication of its eventual outcome.

[17] Before considering specific avenues to address the implications of climate change, we therefore need to thoroughly explore whether the Treaties provide a sound legal basis for the ECB to support society’s collective effort to combat climate change. The legal basis for ECB policy action Both our primary and our secondary mandate provide potential legal foundations for the ECB to consider its role in addressing the challenges arising from climate change. [18] In fact, as I have argued previously, our primary mandate requires us to take climate change into account if its consequences pose a threat to price stability in the euro area. [19] Emerging evidence suggests that climate change may indeed hamper the transmission of monetary policy to the real economy, affect potential growth as well as the equilibrium real interest rate, and increase macroeconomic volatility. [20] If climate change does pose a danger to price stability, the provisions of the Union’s legal framework dictate that the ECB would need to take – possibly pre-emptive – action to safeguard the continued fulfilment of our primary mandate. [21] Our secondary mandate could provide an additional justification for taking climate change into consideration in our monetary policy decisions: it obliges the ECB to ensure that our measures support the  general economic policies in the EU, with the important restriction that our actions must not prejudice our price stability objective. [22] Our supporting role means, however, that we neither have the primary responsibility for these policies nor the power for autonomous policy-making to address climate change.
During the same period, the net income account deficit widened by 3.2% to US $ million from US $ million in the third quarter. This was largely on account of an increase in income on equity payments and interest payments. The current account transfers, increased to US $ million from US $ million recorded the previous quarter, explained by the disbursement of budget grants amounting to US $ million. 43. The capital and financial account deficit widened to US $ million from US $ million recorded in the third quarter. This was largely due to the unfavourable performance of the financial account arising from a surge in short-term deposits abroad by the private sector, despite the increase in foreign direct investment. Developments in the financial sector 44. The overall financial condition of the banking sector for the quarter ended December 2010 was satisfactory. On aggregate, the banking sector’s capital position, asset quality and liquidity were satisfactory. However, the earnings performance of the sector declined largely on account of an increase in the non-interest expenses (due to increases in staff emoluments, reorganization costs and additional tax provisions). 45. Overall financial condition and performance of the Non-Bank Financial Institutions sector was rated fair during the quarter under review. The sector was adequately capitalised with “fair” asset quality, while earnings performance was rated “satisfactory”. 46. As part of the overall objective to enhance financial inclusion, the BoZ undertook provincial sensitisation tours on savings and credit covering all the nine provinces of Zambia.

Copper export earnings, at US $ million, were 7.8% higher than US $ million recorded during the third quarter of the year, reflecting an increase in the average realised price by 6.8% to US $ per tonne from US $ per tonne recorded in the third quarter. In addition, copper export volumes increased by 0.9% to 224,128.6 tonnes from 222,034.6 tonnes. 39. However, cobalt export earnings declined by 1.4 % to US $ million in the fourth quarter of 2010 from US $ million in the previous quarter. This followed a slide in the average realised price by 3.9% to US $ per tonne from US $ 33,467.08 per tonne in the preceding quarter despite a rise in export volumes by 2.6% to 2,308.0 mt from 2,249.9 mt recorded in the third quarter. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  40. Similarly, non-traditional exports (NTEs) f.o.b. fell by 5.1% to US $ million from the US $ million realised the previous quarter. This was largely due to declines in export earnings from copper wire, cotton lint, electrical cables, fresh fruits and vegetables, petroleum products and electricity. 41. In the period under review, merchandise imports, at US $ million were 15.4% higher than US $ million recorded the previous quarter. A surge in import bills associated with commodity groups, such as, food items, chemicals, iron and steel and item thereof and industrial boilers and equipment explained this outturn. 42.