samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Tony Latter: Who or what determines monetary policy in Hong Kong? Speech by Mr Tony Latter, Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, to the Hong Kong seminar on Financial Services in Asia, organised by Lovells and the Pacific Rim Advisory Council, 13 May 2002. *  *  *  You may think this a rather naive question, to which the answer is obvious, but my experience is otherwise. Who is responsible? Let's start with the "who" question. I have encountered people who variously believe the answer to be the Beijing government; the People's Bank of China; the US Federal Reserve Board; some combination of HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank and the Bank of China (which are the note-issuing banks in Hong Kong); the Hong Kong Legislative Council; the Hong Kong Government; or the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Article 110 of the Basic Law – often referred to as Hong Kong's constitution – includes the statement that "The Government of Hong Kong shall, on its own, formulate monetary and fiscal policies". This makes it clear that neither the Mainland government nor the PBoC has any powers in relation to our monetary policy, and that the policy responsibility lies firmly with Hong Kong's own government. Since China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong some five years ago, there has been absolutely no 1 erosion of this principle.

They will also conduct peer reviews of national supervisors and issue recommendations on the basis of the outcomes. In the regulatory area, they will be able to issue non-binding guidelines on the implementation of EU law. The second pillar – macro prudential supervision The second pillar is the establishment of a new European body responsible for macro prudential supervision. The European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) will be mandated to identify and assess systemic risks on a European-wide basis. Having a common body that provides a “birds-eye view” of financial system risks will help to avoid repeating the mistakes made during the current crisis, where both regulation and supervision focused too much on individual institutions and markets. Also, by looking at risks arising from macro economic trends, as well as from developments within the financial system, the ESRB can identify threats to financial stability coming from both endogenous and exogenous factors. On the basis of its analysis, the ESRB will issue specific risk warnings as well as recommendations for policy action to address the identified risks. These will be directed to those institutions that have the power to take corrective action. This could include memberstate governments or authorities, the European Commission or other EU bodies. Warnings and recommendations will not be binding. Instead they are expected to be followed on a “comply or explain” basis. On a case-by-case basis the ESRB will decide if warnings and recommendations should be disclosed to the public.
It may be stated, on the other hand, that financial globalisation may have contributed to the discipline of central banks and to “forcing” them to conduct a monetary policy focused on low and stable inflation 21 . At the same time, a significant risk related to the financial markets integration is the possibility to shift economic problems of one country upon other countries, which is greater than before (the contagion effect). Between 1997 and 1998, countries of South-East Asia experienced this effect, when all of a sudden capital flew out, bringing about financial crisis in economy after economy, which could not be prevented by either the monetary or exchange rate policy. Re 4) One of the vital dimensions of globalisation is the fast spreading of knowledge, technology and knowhow. The flow of know-how also applies to the public sector, including the central bank. One of the features of modern central banking is gradual homogenisation of the strategies applied to the monetary policy. Since 1990, when for the first time the central bank of New Zealand started to implement the strategy of direct inflation targeting (DIT), over 20 central banks followed and adopted that strategy. As a result, the DIT strategy (applied since 1998 by the NBP) is now the dominating strategy of the monetary policy, applied by the majority of central banks in developed countries 22 , and more and more, by central banks of the developing countries (such as Turkey, the Philippines, Ghana, Romania and Armenia).

Krzysztof Rybiński: Globalisation and its implications for monetary policy Address by Mr Krzysztof Rybiński, Deputy President of the National Bank of Poland, at a series of seminars by the Centre for European Regional and Local Studies and the UNESCO Chair, Warsaw University, Warsaw, 6 April 2006. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, Globalisation is a term used frequently in the economic debate nowadays, and it would be difficult to find an area of economic research that is “globalisation-free”. However, its meaning is so broad, that when globalisation is referred to in a discussion, various people understand various things. For this very reason, a discussion on globalisation and the monetary policy should commence with an attempt to define the term. One of the definitions of globalisation is provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) 1 , where it is construed as “the growing interdependence (integration) of national economies, in particular as a result of the growing international trade and financial flows”. Moreover, an element of globalisation that is worth mentioning is the fast flow of information and knowledge, which is the driving force behind globalisation processes. One should keep in mind that globalisation is not a completely new phenomenon 2 . In view of the existence of political barriers to international trade, the flow of capital and goods was equally as possible one hundred years ago as it is today.
Øystein Olsen: Promoting high-quality research in financial economics Closing remarks by Mr Øystein Olsen, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the Norwegian Finance Initiative (NFI) conference 2012, Oslo, 20 June 2012. *  *  *  In 2011 Norges Bank established the Norwegian Finance Initiative – NFI. Through the NFI we aim to promote excellence. Excellence in research, in curiosity and in criticism. One objective of NFI is to contribute to a qualified debate in Norway on the fund, its strategy and its management. Top-quality research at academic institutions in Norway is a necessary condition for this. The fundamental idea of the NFI is to provide incentive programs that will lead to long-run structural improvements in research and teaching in financial economics. Over the past year, we have introduced seven programs, directed at both students and faculty of financial economics at academic institutions in Norway. One important program involves co-sponsoring positions and hiring of outstanding academics. In this way the Norwegian Finance Initiative can help academic institutions in Norway build the infrastructure needed to sustain a lively research culture. Another NFI program is the publication bonus. The publication bonus has been established by the Norwegian Finance Initiative to provide incentives for existing faculty to go the extra mile to produce high-quality, high-impact research. The program also signals to young scholars the value their institutions place on this level of achievement.

Much of the Fed’s ability to respond as effectively as it did during this crisis, whether it was from a monetary policy, a “lender-of-last resort” or a supervisory perspective, came from its breadth and depth of knowledge and experience with financial institutions, financial markets and financial market infrastructure, both inside and outside of the United States. That said, there is also no question that the Federal Reserve and other regulators could have done more to prevent this crisis. That is why, even as the Fed has engaged in extraordinary efforts to stabilize the financial system over the past couple of years, it has also been moving quickly to make the internal changes necessary to strengthen our effectiveness. In addition, the Fed has been working with other regulators in and outside of the U.S. to craft and implement the broader changes in regulation and supervision that are necessary to make our financial system more robust and resilient going forward. Turning to the outlook, the recession now appears to be over, but the economy is still weak and the unemployment rate is much too high. These circumstances underpin the FOMC’s commitment to keeping short term rates exceptionally low for an extended period. However, at the same time, it deserves emphasizing that the Federal Reserve will be willing and able to exit from this period smoothly when the time comes to ensure that inflation stays low and inflation expectations well anchored.
I am sure that this is no surprise to you when you have to deal with the agencies; you go here for one thing, then go to another place, face another regulation, and the two are not consistent. There is a very clear priority for the government to resolve this issue by, despite being almost a cliché, providing the one-stop facilitation service. So that businesses and investors, both foreign and Thai, do not have to go through all numerous government agencies each with their own cumbersome and often conflicting laws and regulations. Currently, the government’s efforts in regulatory guillotine are underway, however, the speed obviously needs to be accelerated, otherwise, it is really hard to improve the business climate in our real ease of doing business. The final reason why Thailand remains a great place to do business is that there are some new trends that will help mitigate some of the long-term structural weaknesses in the Thai economy which are holding us back. What are some of these? First, automation and our demographics; automation is coming very strongly in Thailand, maybe to some lesser degree in other countries in the region. However, looking forward, the costs of automation would come down and the benefits are clear. With the COVID19 that has brought lockdowns, everybody sees the need for automation to avoid the work interruptions and relying less on human workers. This will help mitigate one of the long-term structural weaknesses in Thailand of poor demographics.

To address this issue, last week, the Bank of Thailand as well as the Ministry of Finance filed a new 2-part measure, which received the cabinet approval. The first component of that 2-part package was a 250-billion-baht facility to encourage lending to SMEs using credit guarantee schemes. The second component was a 100-billion-baht package orienting towards what we called “asset warehousing”. Under this facility, they can park their assets with the bank and not have to worry about paying any interest or principal payments on Page 3 of 11  that debt. Furthermore, they also have the option to repurchase those assets at a later date at a fair price. The reason we undertook these measures is to provide support for firms that are experiencing excessively high debt burdens but are still viable over the long term. These measures would help, not just to alleviate the debt burden, but also to reduce the likelihood that borrowers are forced to undertake fire sales of assets which would have a negative impact on the economy by causing all asset prices to drop. Another aspect is that most of these measures that have been undertaken are of a very long horizon which is to ensure continued economic recovery. For example, in the previous SMEs loan scheme, loans were extended for 2 years with the credit guarantees component extending for 2 years. This time, however, we are extending the measures to be very long; the loan component is 5 years, and the credit guarantees component is 10 years.
Muhammad Al-Jasser: Diversifying sources of finance Remarks by His Excellency Dr Muhammad Al-Jasser, Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), at the Euromoney Saudi Arabia Conference, Riyadh, 17 May 2011. *  *  *  Thank you Padraic for inviting me again to this yearly event entitled this time “Diversifying Sources of Finance.” It is a fact that finance and the financial sector have been at the centre of global attention since the financial market crisis in 2008. That crisis involved a temporary breakdown in the credit system which produced a global recession, and this example shows the critical role that finance plays in generating or undermining economic growth. This morning, I would like to address the role of government, including SAMA, in enabling the environment for private enterprises including the SMEs, and then describe the current situation in terms of local and global sources of finance for economic development. I will conclude with some lessons from the recent global financial crisis. The first source of finance is internal to the Saudi economy, and the second is external. Domestically there is credit intermediation by channeling local savings into productive investments. Externally savings are allocated between economies, where Saudi Arabia competes with others for the global pool of savings. 1. Role of government  The government targets investment in social infrastructure (education, health, housing, etc.) to promote the wellbeing of the people, and is also pursuing diversification of the economy to create work opportunities for its young population.

The increasing scepticism of the 1960s and the 1970s about monetary policy’s ability to fight inflation has given way to confidence that prudent, consistent and forward-looking monetary policy can contain the destructive forces of inflation. Global inflation figures suggest that such confidence is largely justified. In the industrialized world, inflation declined from 12% in 1980 to 1.4% in 2002.2 In the developing world, the decline of inflation has been even more remarkable with yearly rates tumbling from an average of 31 percent in the early 1980s to currently under 6%.3 Along with a significant decline in inflation, volatility of economic growth has fallen everywhere. Both in the U.S. as well as in Germany, the volatility of real GDP, averaged over four quarters, was about 30 percent less during the 1984 to 2002 period than it was between 1960 and 1983.4 The evidence therefore confirms that monetary policy efforts to achieve and maintain price stability promote stability in output and thereby help create economic conditions which are ultimately conducive to employment creation. (see annex for table 1)  2. New Challenges for Monetary Policy  Not unlike successful athletes, central bankers must never be complacent in victory. It would therefore be at best inappropriate and at worst irresponsible for the global central banking community to consider its job done. There will be no “End of Central Banking”. For one thing, there is no guarantee that the elimination of inflation throughout much of the world economy is a permanent achievement.
As Mark Twain almost said, labour market history, if not repeating itself, has certainly rhymed. This should come as no surprise. As in the mid-19th century, this is a time of huge change in the jobs market. Rarely a day passes without concerns about job prospects in some of the UK’s most iconic industries, from steel to oil and gas to cars. And rarely a week passes without evidence of jobs and industries being fundamentally reshaped by globalisation and technology, be it the digital economy, the sharing economy or even the Second Machine Age. There is no shortage of explanations for these searing developments. They are part cyclical, as the global economy continues to recover from a financial crisis which is likely to be the most costly since the Great Depression. But these changes are also in part structural given tectonic shifts in demography, inequality and technology, to name but three. None of these challenges is of course entirely new either. My own interest in economics was spawned in the early 1980s by just such a challenge. At that time, more than 3 million people were unemployed in the UK, or almost 12% of the working population. In Yorkshire, where I grew up, the unemployment rate peaked at close to 13%, hit by a double whammy of deep recession and a contraction in steel, textiles and coal-mining. Unemployment at that stage was not for me a statistic. Nor was it the bloodless theorising I would go on to study at university.

Mohd Razif bin Abd Kadir: Promoting the takaful industry in Malaysia Speech by Mr Mohd Razif bin Abd Kadir, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the Launch of ING Public Takaful Ehsan, Kuala Lumpur, 5 April 2011. *  *  *  It is my pleasure to be here with you this morning for the official launch of ING Public Takaful Ehsan. Indeed, this momentous occasion, which also celebrates an alliance between ING Management Holdings (M) Sdn Bhd, Public Bank Bhd and Public Islamic Bank Berhad, signifies yet another milestone in our continuous endeavour to provide sufficient financial safety net for the general population and at the same time, promote the development of a progressive takaful industry, that is agile, dynamic and able to adapt to the increasingly challenging environment. In 2009, Bank Negara Malaysia unveiled the plan to issue 2 new family takaful licences as part of the initiative to increase the penetration rate of insurance and takaful as well as to further liberalise the financial sector. Despite the prevailing tough global economic conditions and uncertainties in the international financial environment back then, an overwhelmingly strong number of applications were subsequently received, which led to the issuance of 4 family takaful licences instead of 2 as originally planned. This speaks volume of the interest and confidence of leading market players in the growth prospects of the takaful industry in Malaysia. For more than 2 decades, the takaful industry has been blessed with tremendous growth and strong performance.
Some of the issues in resolving large, internationally active financial firms have been recognized for some time – the multiplicity of jurisdictions, differences in insolvency regimes across countries, complexities in unwinding certain books and the largely untested nature of national, much less international, resolution processes for such very large financial firms. Over the last 20 years, the international legal and supervisory communities have undertaken several efforts to address these issues. In the wake of the financial crisis, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision formed a Cross-Border Bank Resolution Group to identify what improvements could be made to the international resolution process and recommend actions to be taken. It published its recommendations in March 2010. The CBRG’s report is admirable in its clear description of the problems encountered in the fall of 2008 and the concrete nature of its recommendations. I will be referring to them throughout my remarks. As the CBRG was completing its draft report, the Financial Stability Board asked a working group, the Cross Border Crisis Management Group, to advance the development of recovery and resolution plans for cross-border institutions as recommended by the CBRG. I’d like to make three points today. The first is to highlight the importance of timely supervisory action in preserving the value in a financial firm. The second is to underscore the important innovation in supervisory practice represented by recovery planning. The third is to paint a picture, an admittedly optimistic picture, of the improvements in the international resolution process made possible by following the recommendations of the CBRG.

  Funding of the restructuring firm.   The reactions of rating agencies and of customers either influenced by rating agency actions or subject to bylaws or guidelines.   Legal authority and enforceability across jurisdictions. The appropriate legal authorization not only needs to exist in each home country jurisdiction, but we also need proposed legal mechanisms to ensure that: –  Supervisors in other countries will not treat the triggering of bail-in as an insolvency event;  –  Supervisors in other countries will coordinate with the home country in exercising any supervisory trigger in their jurisdiction; and  –  The company’s debt conversion will be honored in all jurisdictions (through choice of law or other legal foundation). I’ll conclude with the timing of the trigger. A key question is when such a mechanism has the greatest chance of success. In my personal view, it seems unlikely that the proverbial “one minute to midnight” is the right moment for action – by then most firms would face a severe shortage of liquidity and serious constraints in the ability to undertake new business. Timing that is too early brings with it a host of repercussions and risks, of course. If I interpret a bail-in mechanism against the three-part supervisory program for troubled firms that I described at the beginning, conversion of debt to equity stakes is a mechanism to replenish capital, a critical element, but just one of the three key elements.
The IMF could, for instance, encourage its Governors, in general the Ministers of Finance, to become more actively involved in its work, in terms of decision-making and not merely in a consultative capacity in the Interim Committee. A similar question faces the G-7, which feels the need to embrace emerging market countries, but is unclear about how to go about it, and finds it difficult to come up with acceptable ways of choosing its partners. The design of a new architecture provides, perhaps, a good occasion to address these long-avoided questions. Two avenues could be explored. BIS Review 43/1998  -8-  The first would be to “revitalize” the IMF Interim Committee. It could become an essential structure, because no other can match the scope of its responsibility and the legitimacy of its members, who are collectively responsible for key developments in the world economy. At present, however, it is hampered by the ritualism of its meetings and an insufficient awareness of its uniqueness and potential. This is why I think that the suggestion of the French Minister of Finance, M. Strauss-Kahn, to consider its transformation into a “Council” with decision-making, rather than merely consultative, powers, is particularly important. This is not a new idea. This transformation, pursuant to Article XII, Section 1 of the Fund’s Articles of Agreement, could give it a new start. This approach was envisaged under the Jamaica accords, but deferred at the time because of the experimental nature of the Interim Committee.

The defining trend of the last ten years has been the weakness of productivity. Given the size of the financial sector in the UK, I can see fintech driving competition and a 4  pick-up in productivity in the medium term . 5  And as a member of the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee, in line with our remit , I need to be open minded about, not just the risks, but the opportunities fintech could pose to the financial system. The FPC recently discussed the current risks posed by crypto-assets and judged that they do not pose a material 6  risk to UK financial stability . We judge that crypto-assets themselves may have limited utility, particularly as money. They are too volatile to be a store of value, and with high transaction costs and slow settlement times, they are an inefficient 7  medium of exchange . However, we also recognise the opportunities in the technologies that underpin crypto-assets. Adapting these technologies for the demands of the financial system poses significant challenges. Balancing the resilience, performance and privacy features of distributed ledger technology is not an easy problem to solve – and many developments are currently focusing on performance and privacy, at the potential cost of resilience. But the distributed ledger and cryptographic technologies used by crypto-assets have the future potential to deliver benefits both to the financial system and to the economy it serves, including increasing efficiency and resilience and contributing to a more distributed and diverse payments system.