samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Denis Beau: After the crypto-winter, the spring of crypto-assets regulation and supervision Keynote speech by Mr Denis Beau, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, at the World Bank Global Payments Week 2023 "The Future of Payments", Marrakesh, 18 May 2023. *** Dear colleagues from the World Bank, Ladies and Gentlemen, According to some commentators, in a context of cascading bankruptcies (i.e. Terra /Luna, Celsius, Three Arrows, Genesis, BlockFi, FTX), the crypto ecosystem may have entered a so-called "crypto-winter". I don't know if this winter is going to last but I believe that it should be seen as "spring time" by regulators and supervisors, whose initiatives should be burgeoning. Recently, many countries have indeed sped up their regulatory work within their jurisdiction. However, we have also seen variances in combining three regulatory approaches: banning crypto-asset activities; containing and isolating them from traditional finance and the real economy, which implies banning certain specific aspects and practices (e.g. advertising); regulating the crypto-asset market, either by assimilating crypto-assets to traditional financial assets and applying the corresponding existing regulatory regime, or by adopting a dedicated regulation (e.g. on stablecoins). With the exception of China, the world's major economies and currency zones have developed or are in the process of adopting a combination of the last two approaches, based on the principle of "same activities, same risks, same rules".

Indeed, an even stronger version of this argument is that the very success of the regime contributed to the decline in market participants’ perception of risk and encouraged them in the leveraged acquisition of risky assets. According to this view, the MPC ought to put independent weight on credit and asset price developments and should have kept policy tighter during the years leading up to the crisis. That would have generated an undershoot of the inflation target in the near term but reduced the likelihood of a disruptive unwinding of the financial imbalances further out. The first point to make is that interest rates affect the whole economy through a variety of channels. Raising Bank Rate in order to curb a credit boom would be fine if that credit boom was also associated with excessive demand growth and overheating in the real economy. But that, by and large, was not the case during the years leading up to the financial crisis. Raising interest rates enough to have had a material impact on the credit boom would most likely have resulted in an even higher value of sterling, markedly weaker activity and higher unemployment. Would businessmen, households and Parliament have accepted this as a price worth paying to bring down credit growth with the hope of forestalling a hypothetical future financial crisis? I suspect the answer to this would be No, even though equipped with 20/20 hindsight we might take a different view.
We estimate that if we had not cut the MPR by a combined 350 basis points (bp) between January and February, this rate would be some 250 bp above where it is today. A similar situation can be seen in the case of consumer loans. The cost of mortgage financing, meanwhile, has been less sensitive to the changes in the MPR precisely because those are long-term borrowing decisions. However, without the drop in long-term rates – which has partly originated in the monetary easing – mortgage rates would have stayed largely above their current levels (figure 3). We estimate, then, that the monetary policy decisions recently adopted have begun to pass through to the credit conditions faced by households and firms. This pass-through should continue in the near future, especially after the reduction in the MPR that the Board determined last week. We will keep monitoring these effects permanently, because for us it is essential that the MPR propagates to market rates smoothly. We certainly expect the latest MPR reduction last Thursday to result in additional decreases in the banking system’s lending rates. This type of exercises also permits to evaluate the impact of the higher degrees of uncertainty, volatility and risk we have been observing since last September.

But, if a delay in monetary policy normalization or a very shallow trajectory in normalizing short-term interest rates were to cause inflation expectations to move meaningfully above our 2 percent inflation objective, then an inertial policy would likely become detrimental in achieving the FOMC’s objectives. The third, and related, issue I want to address is the care needed in using rules, such as Taylor 1999, as a guide to policy. As the paper convincingly shows, over time, financial market conditions have become a much more important factor in evaluating the appropriate setting of monetary policy and the level of short-term interest rates. This reflects several factors. First, over the past few decades the U.S. capital markets have grown in size and scope, and our financial system has become much less bank-centric. This has loosened the linkage between the federal funds rate and financial market conditions. Second, the U.S. economy and financial markets have become more interconnected globally. Thus, the impact of U.S. monetary policy has become more diffused, and financial market conditions have come to depend increasingly not only on developments at home, but also on developments abroad. As an example, the current low level of U.S. Treasury bond yields reflects, at least in part, the fact that long-term interest rates in Europe and Japan are much lower. While simple policy rules provide useful benchmarks for policymakers, their very virtue – their simplicity – is also a significant shortcoming.
The exception to this, and it is a very important one, is on the form of exit we call “resolution” – led by my colleagues Dave Ramsden and Sasha Mills and their hard-working team in the Resolution Directorate, with extensive support from PRA supervisors. On this type of exit we have done and said a lot, not all of it palatable to everyone in the audience but all of it designed to reduce the risk of the cost of bank failures falling onto the taxpayer rather than investors. Resolution – which in the case of smaller banks entails a Bank Resolution process – provides a backstop for the financial system for failed firms, with resolution reserved for larger firms because of the greater scope their failure has to cause collateral damage. Quietly, we have done a lot of work on forms of exit that see banks leaving the market before the backstop is needed. In fact, the PRA has over the past 8 years facilitated the orderly and solvent exits of 15 banks and 45 insurers. That these firms (as well as many more credit unions) exiting has gone largely under the radar and without impacting financial stability is a sign of success, and of a healthy functioning market. Almost all of these orderly exits have followed a wind-down or run-off process, which our supervision teams have worked intensively on with firms in order to execute them successfully.

Jean-Pierre Roth: Switzerland as an industrial location and National Bank policy Summary of a speech by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Europa Forum Lucerne, Lucerne, 27 October 2003. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  In a high-wage country such as Switzerland enterprises can only maintain their position in the face of international competition by a process of ongoing innovation. The resulting structural change in the direction of highly technological and increasingly productive economic sectors is also a prerequisite for strong economic growth. In an international comparison, however, Switzerland’s growth is poor. This weak perfomance in terms of growth highlights the need for action in economic policy. Monetary policy cannot, however, fulfil this role. The primary task of monetary policy is to ensure price stability. Price stability is an important locational advantage that Switzerland has to offer. Moreover, monetary policy can also contribute to stabilising the economy and warding off undesirable exchange rate shocks. It is, however, not in a position to bring about a sustained improvement in economic growth. The result of such an attempt would merely be economic overheating with the threat of a subsequent slide of the economy into recession. Lasting effects on economic growth may, by contrast, emanate from education policy, research policy, policy on foreigners and fiscal policy.
Long-term saving A visible difference from the other Nordic countries is that the Norwegian state has capital savings in the Government Petroleum Fund. The Fund has grown rapidly in recent years, and we expect continued strong growth in the years ahead. The National Budget for 2006 presents projections for the period to 2009. The projections are based on the assumption that the price of oil will fall from the current level to NOK 260 per barrel. This is lower than long-term futures prices but is a high price estimate in relation to historical prices. 8  Productivity growth in service industries is compared here. There may be sources of error due to choice of method in the production of national accounts figures, but the main impression can also be supported by the use of other sources. Comparing developments in productivity in manufacturing is of little relevance since the structure of this industry varies widely among the Nordic countries. 9  Seniorpolitikk og IA-avtalens delmål om å øke pensjoneringsalderen. (Norwegian only) Report no. 04/2005. National Insurance Administration. 4/8  We know little about future oil prices. The chart shows actual developments since 1960 and the projections in the last Long-Term Programmes and in the National Budget for 2006. We see that considerable weight has systematically been given to the prevailing oil price when making projections. Just as systematically, there have been surprises that have resulted in a different path for the actual oil price.

The lesson is that today’s oil price should not be regarded as a forecast of future prices, not even if the level is priced into long-term futures. Substantial uncertainty must be expected. The management of the Petroleum Fund will be part of the State Pension Fund. This essentially involves a name change. The capital will not be earmarked for pension payments. On the other hand, the intention has long been for the capital in the Petroleum Fund to be used as a means of easing the burden in connection with the large pensioner cohorts expected from about 2015. With the assumptions set out in the last national budget, only a share of the rise in pension payments ahead can be financed by an increase in returns on the Fund. The bulk of the increase must be financed by higher ordinary tax revenues. A number of analysts have calculated that with high oil prices the Petroleum Fund will be sufficiently large to finance pension payments. Norges Bank has analysed the uncertainty surrounding such expectations. We have looked at the probability that the capital in the Petroleum Fund will be sufficient by calculating developments in market value and pension payments using a model with uncertainty. We have used Statistics Norway’s projections for pension payments. Standard assumptions concerning uncertainty with respect to returns on the Fund’s investments have been incorporated. The main uncertainty is nevertheless associated with the production volume and prices for oil and gas.
In fact, the cost of maritime freight has tripled, and the prices of other inputs and commodities, such as construction materials, food and agricultural produce, have also risen considerably (Figure 11). All of this has been reflected in higher producer prices and increased short-term inflation expectations in several economies. Although global markets expect the effect on inflation to be mostly temporary, concern has increased in those economies where demand-boosting policies have been most significant. In the United States, inflation surprised to the upside in March and April, while a large fiscal stimulus package is being implemented and monetary policy remains highly expansionary. Measured inflation expectations have risen, while financial markets have experienced bouts of inflation-related volatility. In Chile, inflation has evolved as expected, as the CPI’s annual change rose to 3.6 percent in May. Expectations are in line with the two-year policy target. The annual variation of the CPI has continued to be mainly determined by the behavior of goods and energy prices. The former continues to be pressured by tight inventories in a context of high demand. The latter reflects the rise in oil prices and the low comparison base. Core CPI today stands at 3.4 percent (Figure 12). III. Projections  Expected growth for this year substantially increases in the central scenario, to a range between 8.5 and 9.5 percent.

Niklaus Blattner: The demographic challenge – macroeconomic perspectives Summary of a speech by Mr Niklaus Blattner, Vice-Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Conference "Die alternde Gesellschaft als sozio-ökonomische Herausforderung" (the aging society: a socio-economic challenge), University of Basel, Basel, 9 February 2007. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  Demographic aging, i.e. the growing average age of the population, or the reversal of the age pyramid, is also a matter of concern for a central bank. Without a careful analysis of the long-term developments in the real economy, any monetary policy assessment, and consequently any inflation forecast, will be inadequate. In addition to the activities in the money and capital markets, the longterm growth outlook – and thus also the population perspectives – are factored into the Swiss National Bank's monetary policy assessment. The aging of the population is a fact. It is linked to three main trends, which will greatly influence Switzerland's demographic landscape in the decades to come: first, the economically active population will decrease, second, the old-age ratio, i.e. the ratio of people over 65 to those between 20 and 64 is on the rise, and third, longevity is increasing. In future, Switzerland will have to produce more with fewer resources. "Fewer resources" because the economically active population is declining, "produce more" because the old-age ratio is worsening and longevity increasing.
Consumption should also strengthen further over time, in line with developments in real disposable income, as employment conditions continue to improve. This outlook is also reflected in the new ECB staff macroeconomic projections. The projections foresee average annual real GDP growth in a range between 2.1% and 2.9% in 2007 and between 1.9% and 2.9% in 2008. In comparison with the December Eurosystem staff projections, the ranges projected for real GDP growth in 2007 and 2008 have been revised upwards, largely reflecting the strength of GDP growth in the second half of 2006 and the lower energy prices, which, if sustained, would have a positive impact on real disposable income. In the Governing Council’s view, the risks surrounding this favourable outlook for economic growth are broadly balanced over the shorter term. At longer horizons, risks lie mainly on the downside. The main risks relate to the possibility of a renewed increase in oil prices, fears of a rise in protectionist pressures and concerns about possible disorderly developments owing to global imbalances. As regards price developments, according to Eurostat’s flash estimate, annual HICP inflation was 1.8% in February 2007, unchanged from January 2007. The fall in headline inflation rates since the summer of 2006 has been predominantly due to lower energy prices. Looking ahead, last year’s volatility in energy prices will lead to significant base effects, affecting the profile of annual inflation rates this year.

More fundamentally, stronger than currently expected wage developments would pose significant upward risks to price stability, not least in view of the favourable momentum of real GDP growth observed over the past few quarters. It is therefore crucial that the social partners continue to meet their responsibilities. In this context, wage agreements should take into account price competitiveness positions, the still high level of unemployment in many economies, as well as productivity developments. The Governing Council will monitor the upcoming wage negotiations in the euro area countries very carefully. The monetary analysis confirms the prevailing upside risks to price stability at medium to longer horizons. Annual M3 growth was unchanged at 9.8% in January, thus remaining at the highest rate observed since the introduction of the euro. At 10.6%, the annual growth rate of loans to the private sector also remained strong in January. Strong growth in private sector credit reflects the continuation of the upward trend in the growth of borrowing by non-financial corporations seen since mid-2004. Meanwhile, in the context of rising mortgage rates throughout the euro area and a slowing increase in house prices in some regions, the growth of household borrowing has shown some further signs of moderation in recent months, albeit remaining at still high rates. Taking the appropriate medium to longer-term perspective for assessing trends in money and credit growth, the latest developments confirm the continuation of a persistent upward trend in the underlying rate of monetary expansion.
It also started to become clear for old Taraldsen; but immediately afterwards, he became very confused again; because he understood the entire scope of this; he had the entire town's bills of exchange in his head; and of course he had seen a lot of this kind of thing during his long life but all of those were trifles compared to what would happen now. His voice shook as he almost ceremoniously asked: "Will Carsten Løvdahl's papers be protested?" "Yes," replied Marcussen without looking up. Old Taraldsen trotted out of the offices; but on the steps he met the messenger from Aktiebanken: "Is it true? – Taraldsen!" "Now the entire town is going to collapse," answered the old man, throwing up his arms in despair. Kielland’s description of a financial crisis and its consequences was realistic. There was speculation then and there is speculation today, but in other kinds of financial instruments than at that time. We might find employees at Lehman Brothers today who have expressed themselves in the same way as old Taraldsen. It seems to be an inherent property in financial markets that financial bubbles and crises occur from time to time. A monetary policy that is oriented towards stabilising inflation and inflation expectations will reduce the impact. We have seen that when the interest rate is raised to restrain the rise in prices for goods and services, it also has the effect of stabilising house and property prices. In some areas, however, regulations and frameworks – cf.

Substantial progress has been made to strengthen this infrastructure over the past two and a half years, and the resilience of the broader financial infrastructure has been a source of strength for the financial system during this crisis. However, the systems and practices that support the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market significantly lags that of securities markets and other mature markets. We need to move quickly to put in place a more integrated operational infrastructure that supports all major OTC derivatives products, is highly automated, has robust operational resilience and risk management, and is capable of handling very substantial growth in volumes. Conclusion The U.S. economic and financial system is undergoing a very challenging period of adjustment, and we are likely to be living with a high degree of uncertainty for some period of  6  BIS Review 27/2008  time about the ultimate magnitude and duration of the slowdown underway. But it is important to recognize that we have already seen a lot of adjustment. Prices and risk premia in many markets already reflect a much more sober and cautious view of the world than they did a year ago. And the degree of stress on markets that we have seen over the past six months is due in part to the sheer magnitude and speed of that adjustment to a more cautious view of the future. The United States, the world economy, and the financial system as a whole, are more resilient, than they were on the eve of previous downturns.
The measures implemented cannot prevent the pandemic from having severe economic consequences. But they can ease the situation for firms and households. They can also prevent unemployment from becoming entrenched at a high level. Thank you for your attention. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches

Taking into considerations the two points I earlier raised, Bank Negara Malaysia has worked closely with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water to establish the Green Technology Financing Scheme (GTFS), a framework designed to improve the preconditions for financial institutions to finance viable and innovative green technology companies. This is achieved through arrangements that help to bridge information gaps between financiers and businesses. These arrangements also involves credit enhancements and financial incentives, to address current market short comings in meeting a legitimate economic need. Also critically important are efforts being pursued to strengthen the capacity of financial institutions, to provide continuing advisory support to businesses that are mutually beneficial to both business ventures and financial institutions. Central to this effort is the certification process to verify that businesses which qualify for the GTFS are not only able to demonstrate the required technical capabilities, but are also commercially viable. Other complementary efforts include education and awareness programmes, organised around the country to inform and update, financial professionals as well as businesses on the latest developments in the green technology sector. Likewise, courses offered by IBBM are designed to equip finance professionals to effectively assess the viability and risk of green technology projects. In 2010, a Joint Action Committee comprising of government agencies and financial institutions was formed to provide an efficient and coordinated platform to tackle implementation issues, such as, on the compliance and monitoring processes of green projects financed under the GTFS.