samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Dr. Puey believed that the government must have faith in the central bank in providing benefits for the country as a whole. The Governor and senior management should have enough courage to voice their critical, even dissenting opinion when such an action is necessary. His view was that the Governor and his senior management cannot be saints, but must carry out their work adhering to the principles of honesty and integrity. Neither can they act indifferently, because when it is necessary to reprimand the government, they must do so. Dr. Puey was determined to protect its officials from political interference. He issued regulations prohibiting Bank of Thailand officials to stand for political office or write articles on politics, which are still in force today. I totally agree with what Dr. Puey had thus said and practiced without fail. However, since Governor Puey left the office at his own will to concentrate on another job which he loved dearly, that is, rector of Thammasart University, we have had nine governors over a period of almost 30 years. Out of this nine, only two retired from the office, the other seven were either fired or pressured to leave the post by the Government for some reason or another and in most cases the causes of removal had nothing to do with their performance in conducting monetary policy. BIS Review 53/2002  1  How could this have happened?

Nevertheless, in the case of Thailand after the crisis, the banking system has not yet been fully functioned and this, to a certain extent, undermined the effectiveness of the monetary policy. The macro-model gives a range of core inflations with probability distribution being described into a fanchart. This fanchart takes into account the related uncertainties and gives some flexibility in a range of forecasts. Based on the most likely outcome, the MPC will announce the expected rate of inflation for this year and next year. According to the most recent assessment, the core inflation will be 0.5-1 percent in 2002 and 0.5-1.5 percent in 2003, providing growth of between 3-4 percent in 2002 and 2003. Finally to enhance transparency of the process, Inflation Report is published on the quarterly basis providing forecasts of inflation and economic growth for the next eight quarters along with the quarterly press release. For the final part of my talk, I would like to dwell on the issues of Central Bank Independence. The first issue is whether a Central Bank can have too much independence in the sense that it can be harmful. To this, I incline to say yes, but only in a rare circumstance. Bad decisions relating to monetary or financial institutions operations can be damaging with wide impact. To prevent this from happening, a mechanism should be installed such as a Monetary Policy Committee or a Financial Institutions Policy Committee comprising of qualified external directors so that important policy measures are made through group decisions.
The expansion of private capital flows was gradual, and, until about ten years ago, was primarily concentrated on flows among the developed economies. It is only in the past ten years that the explosion of private capital flows to emerging market economies has taken place. Data from the World Bank suggest that annual capital flows to emerging markets were less than $ bn in the early 1970s, rising to around $ bn in the late 1990s. At their peak, capital flows to emerging markets were around 5% of those countries' GDP. Unfortunately, capital flows on this scale can reverse themselves as suddenly as they appear. The result of such sudden and large reversals of short-term capital flows has been a series of international financial crises, in Mexico in 1994-95, Asia in 1997-98, Brazil in 1998-99, and, more recently in Turkey and Argentina. The frequency and scale of these crises, if they were to continue, would be a serious impediment to the evolution of the international capital market. Unless we can both reduce the frequency and severity of such crises, and improve our techniques of crisis resolution, then the demonstrators against globalisation will be provided with unnecessary ammunition. The costs of recent crises have been large. Between 1996 and 1998, the reversal of private capital flows to the five Asian countries primarily affected (Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand) was almost $ bn, equivalent to about 15% of the pre-crisis level of GDP.

These properties would provide supporting evidence of the economic reasonableness of the calibration. And it would provide assurance that the package is serving its policyholder protection purpose. In particular, as MA portfolios become more diverse then a question arises as to whether the assets currently backing a book of business are assets that another party would be able and willing to take as funding. To achieve a material reduction in the level and sensitivity of the current risk margin, the PRA considers it necessary for the design of the MA to appropriately reflect uncertainty around future credit risk experience that would likely be reflected in any transfer price. The FS is the key determinant as to the amount of any expected future investment profit firms can recognise upfront. A calibration of the FS that is too low exposes firms to risk that this future investment profit does not emerge in practice and the associated implications this would have on their ability to meet their liabilities as they fall due. A successful outcome of the Solvency II review will be DB scheme members, trustees and insurance policyholders having long-term confidence in the resilience of the insurance sector, and in the security of their benefits. Page 9  Conclusions and next steps Solvency II has only been in force for around six years, but we have already learnt a lot. Particularly in respect of the relationship between the regulatory framework and firms’ business models.
As long as economic resources are mobile this is  Chart 8a: In the short run there are diminishing  probably a reasonable thing to do. When thinking  returns to scale  about what determines supply capacity at the level of an individual sector we generally think the process exhibits what are called “constant returns to scale”. If you double all the resources involved you double potential output. So in Chart 8a the response of output to demand looks like a straight line. And the nice thing about this is that, if we add up demand across a lot of sectors it doesn’t matter what the distribution of that demand looks like. Demand in individual sectors can move anywhere along that straight line and all that will matter for total output is the total amount of spending5. But economic resources aren’t perfectly mobile, not in the short run at least. Even if people can move relatively quickly from one job to another, it takes time to repurpose a building and to retrain an employee. And when some of those capital resources are slow to move supply looks more like the curved line in Chart 8a: there are “diminishing returns to scale”. This implies that shifts in demand can, even for a given aggregate, lower aggregate supply. Chart 8b is meant to get this across. Suppose two sectors start with the same level of demand D and that they each have the right level of resources.

Whether that has any implications for the medium term is less clear. The dispersion in demand and spare capacity is likely to narrow during the recovery phase. Over time, if some of these shifts in demand prove more persistent, the economy is likely to adapt to them and their effect on aggregate supply and costs to diminish. More generally, the rapid dynamics of the virus, combined with the vast scale of the furlough schemes (which act like extremely large automatic stabilisers for employment), make it more difficult than usual to infer what short-term gyrations in GDP mean for inflationary pressure further ahead. The lockdowns mean that, on a quarterly basis, GDP is likely to have fallen in the fourth quarter of 2020 and to do so again in 2021Q1. This will no doubt prompt headlines about a “double-dip recession”. But this is quite unlike any normal economic cycle. Its size, shape and speed are all highly unusual. As far as medium-term inflation is concerned, what matters more than these gyrations in output per se – very large though they are – are developments over time in the labour market. The rate of unemployment is the best single measure we have of economic slack. It also affects households’ confidence about their income and is therefore correlated with rates of saving.
Around half of these loans are at variable interest rates and can thereby be initially affected by higher interest rates, and it is households with these loans who have experienced problems in paying them. Most US households still have a good ability to pay. At the same time, the financial institutions have, on the whole, strong balance sheets. This means that even a relatively large deterioration in credit quality in this sector would only lead to limited losses for the mortgage market as a whole. On the other hand, it is not impossible that developments may affect the US households’ consumption. Are there risks with subprime loans in Sweden? Can we expect to see a similar development in Sweden? No, I do not see any risk at present that we will experience this type of development in the Swedish mortgage market. In Sweden, loans to the subprime sector comprise an extremely small percentage of the total number of mortgages, no more than 0.5 per cent. The percentage is much lower in Sweden than in the United States. This is largely because our mortgage market and the US mortgage market are very different. In Sweden, lenders focus primarily on the borrower’s ability to repay. We also have greater access to information on borrowers’ incomes and assets, which makes it easier to assess credit risks. The Swedish and US mortgage institutions also have different methods of financing their lending.

Most of these are not statistically based, but rather convenient rules-of-thumb that ended up shaping our perception and driving sentiments. Unfortunately, in this information age, these perceptions and negative sentiments can be perpetuated rapidly and become self-fulfilling. The widespread negative coverage in the mainstream media feeds on our confirmation bias, where we seek out information that confirms rather than contradicts our preconceptions. And when such information becomes widely available, we risk falling into a self-reinforcing process known as the ‘availability cascade’, whereby a simple idea, whether it be right or wrong, gains traction given repetition and inherent simplicity. As the saying goes, “Repeat something often enough and it will become true.” Second, we tend to, in some other instances, base our perception on prior evidence and situations that we are familiar with, rather than update our views with new information. For many economists and analysts, Malaysia is an oil-dependent economy. When the oil price goes south, the Malaysian economy suffers. While this was true many years ago, these simple relationships are continuously assumed to be fixed and hold to perpetuity. Despite the many structural changes leading to a more diversified Malaysian economy and reduced reliance on oil, this perception has persisted. For the uninitiated, the percentage of oil revenues to government 2/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  revenues was 41.3% in 2009 compared to only 14.6% in 2016. This fact seems to elude many analysts.
I should first clarify that many of the aspects to which I will refer, especially those relating to the budget balance and revenue and expenditure aggregates, are based on the information provided in the Draft Budgetary Plan for 2021 which the Government published a few weeks ago. This Plan is based on the same macroeconomic forecast that underpins the Draft Budget and includes almost all the revenue and expenditure measures. There are two advantages to incorporating this information. 18  First, not only does the Draft Budgetary Plan include the budgetary outlook for the State and Social Security for 2021, but it also includes the general government outlook, and in addition, in National Accounts terms. In a country as highly decentralised as Spain, to analyse budgetary policy correctly it is essential to take account of general government. Second, the Draft Budgetary Plan does not include the increase in general government revenue in 2021 resulting from the European funds linked to the NGEU programme, nor the expenditure that these monies will fund. Accordingly, in comparison with the information contained in the Draft Budget, it provides for a more exhaustive analysis of the composition of public finances in 2021. 2.1  Main public spending measures  Overall, the Draft Budget envisages a highly significant increase of 24% in total expenditure and of 26% in primary expenditure compared with the 2020 budget outturn projection.

First, foundational digital infrastructure – systems that allow different users, different solutions, and different devices to seamlessly interact with one another. Just as physical infrastructure like roads and railways helped to connect and advance the industrial economy, we need digital infrastructures to enable a vibrant digital economy. What are these digital infrastructures? One, a digital identity, so that we can interact with one another digitally, with trust and confidence, knowing who is on the other side of the transaction. In Singapore, we introduced Singpass as a digital identity to facilitate secure, consent-based verification for residents to digitally access more than 700 different government services. 1/3  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  Two, interoperable electronic payments. We need not only digital payment solutions but common payment rails or networks for these different payment solutions to be interoperable. In Singapore, we built PayNow, an instant payment service. Residents can move money to one another's bank account in real-time at zero cost, with just three clicks on their mobile phones, regardless of which bank app they use. Three, a trusted data exchange so that individuals and corporates can access all their relevant data in digital form for purposes of carrying out digital transactions. In Singapore, we established MyInfo, a platform which allows residents to access via their mobile devices more than 100 of their personal particulars and share them with third party service providers through open, secure APIs. Second critical enabler - connectivity and collaboration.
We believe that this work should be continued in cooperation with the banking community and businesses so that such shifts in the market become predictable and smooth and everybody is able to reap benefits from innovation and technology. In conclusion I would like to emphasise once again that we hope the Central Bank and the banking community will continue to cooperate constructively. We are open to dialogue and the exchanging of views. Although banks may sometimes be sensitive to our measures we do our best for healthy, responsible and fair banks to retain stability, develop their business and meet the economy’s demand. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches

[4] See “Response to Feedback on SIBOR Reform and the Future Landscape for SGD Interest Rate  Benchmarks” here . [5] US agencies referred here are: Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the Federal Deposit Insurance  Corporation and the Oﬀice of the Comptroller of the Currency. [6] Bilateral business loans and syndicated loans outstanding as of end September 2020. [7] By end April, all lenders and borrowers to cease issuance of SOR-linked loans and securities that  mature a er end 2021. To support this, all D-SIBs should be ready to oﬀer a full-suite of SORA-based products to their customers by end-February 2021, while all non-D-SIB banks should be ready to oﬀer new SORA-based products by end-April 2021. [8] See “Response to Feedback on SIBOR Reform and the Future Landscape for SGD Interest Rate  Benchmarks” here . © 2021, Government of Singapore. https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/speeches/2021/pushing-ahead-with-sor-sora-transition-in-2021  7/7
Therefore, the CBT will not react to the first round effects of short-term volatility in commodity prices, especially when domestic resource utilization remains at depressed levels. However, if an uptrend in commodity prices coincides with a strong and durable rebound in global economic activity that would in turn have adverse effects on inflation expectations, then the CBT will tighten monetary policy appropriately to keep inflation in line with medium-term inflation targets. Since the last quarter of 2008, the CBT, without endangering its main objective of price stability, has focused on containing the adverse effects of the global crisis on domestic economy, and this task has to a large extent been achieved. Monetary policy will continue to focus on permanent price stability in the period ahead. Strengthening the commitment to fiscal discipline and the structural reform agenda would support the relative improvement in Turkey’s sovereign risk, and thus facilitate macroeconomic and price stability. In this respect, before concluding my remarks, I would like to underline once more that timely implementation of the structural reforms envisaged by the Medium Term Program and the European Union accession process remains to be of the utmost importance. Thank you for your attention. BIS Review 31/2010  17

In my view, this process should be supported through: the regulatory approach to in-formalised activities; completion of the financial infrastructure which reduces costs on formal activities; and coordinated initiatives with the public sector. The Bank of Albania should pay a crucial role in the financial education field, in compiling and implementing the national strategies and promoting the increase of financial literacy in Albania. This should be considered vital to the long-term growth of the society’s welfare. In addition, the Bank of Albania will continue the work to increasing financial inclusion of the population. Modernisation of the payment system and the increased level of electronic payment is already a starting point of this process, next the utilizing of this opportunity for providing access to both payment and financial services which in turn affect they economic development of the country. Meanwhile, being aware on the role and importance of structural reforms, the Bank of Albania will continue to contribute – through advises and attention on public interest – in their progress. I believe that these reforms will boost productivity, unlock growth potential and build on the premises for a rather fair distribution of their results to the society. 4/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  The forth priority is the support to European integration. Even though the opening and speed of this process will depend, on a large extent by our European partners, our task as an Albanian authority is to proceed with neither delay nor hesitation.
The other step concerns the choice of the central parity rate for entry in ERM II. As explained earlier, this, however, remains a multilateral decision to be taken by consensus and the matter, therefore, is not at our sole discretion. What are your expectations with regard to the central parity rate? As I have just pointed out, exchange rate stability is vital for our open economy and we wish to preserve this important feature of the currency during ERM II. We have reason to believe that this is not an unrealistic expectation. It is based on the outcome of a study the Bank carried out on the equilibrium exchange rate. According to economic theory, the central parity rate in ERM II stands a better chance of being sustainable over the two-year period if it corresponds to the equilibrium exchange rate. Thus, if one could identify the latter rate, one would automatically have an idea of the most appropriate central parity rate for ERM II. The equilibrium rate, however, is not specifically known and cannot be observed. It can only be estimated under a number of assumptions and the estimates are sensitive to the methodology used. Recognising this caveat, the Bank used several methods to estimate the equilibrium exchange rate. Both the methodologies and the results of the Bank's study were shared with local and foreign experts, from the ECB and from fellow national central banks in the EU and in North America.

As of now such competence resides mostly in big internet platform companies. However, many data subjects have no way to make better use of their own digital footprints, or data about themselves currently scattered in various different platforms, for their own benefit. 12. For example, SMEs are facing the long-standing problem of having limited access to finance. Conventional credit scoring approaches are not particularly favorable to SMEs because they often lack auditable operating data, which large corporates have. This disadvantage hinders not only the growth of SME businesses, but also the stability of our job markets and economic growth. Worse still, the blow of the pandemic has put the survival of many SMEs at stake, and their need for financing is stronger than ever. So is there a way to better empower data subjects to make better use of their own data for their own benefit? 13. With this objective in mind, we are expanding our financial infrastructure to enable data to take the centre stage. Our recently launched initiative, the Commercial Data Interchange (CDI), is a centralized platform which allows data owners to share their digital footprints voluntarily with banks through data providers in an efficient and secure manner. With a more substantial body of up-to-date and authenticated data shared by SMEs (such as monthly or even daily trading and turnover statistics), banks could use data analytics to perform more accurate credit assessments, and then provide more tailored services to SMEs.