samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
BOT  2/6  and volatile, bringing with them new forms of risks. Not only will firms face risks related to finance and operation, but they will also face strategic risks and risks associated with driving digital transformation. All these uncertainties necessitate that building sufficient immunity becomes a key factor to safeguard resilience of our economy and financial system. Third, inclusivity is a prerequisite for long-term sustainable growth. Any policy or action that does not pay attention to inclusivity can threaten long-term growth and stability. In many emerging economies, income inequality is a significant cause of economic and social instability and could lead to widespread support of populist policies. Unbanked and underserved people need to have access to financial services, which can help them raise their standards of living. Emergence of FinTech and TechFin firms, along with their diverse platforms, can offer more targeted financial products at lower costs and improve financial access, especially to the underserved people. Ladies and gentlemen, To fulfil these three key imperatives, the Bank of Thailand has taken on various initiatives during the past few years: On boosting productivity, we have many exciting projects underway. Last year, the Bank of Thailand together with the Ministry of Finance and the Thai Bankers’ Association launched the PromptPay faster payment infrastructure. With PromptPay, funds can be transferred to a recipient’s preferred bank account in real time and at virtually no cost. PromptPay provides a crucial payment infrastructure, which helps propel a wider adoption of e-payment.

The basic banking account has no minimum balance requirement and offers free ATMs and debit cards to those who qualify. The scheme is expected to roll out by October this year. The Bank of Thailand is also undergoing regulatory reform to review outdated rules and regulations, to facilitate ease of doing business and ensure that our regulations do not impede competition and innovation and contribute to high costs of financial services. We started with foreign exchange regulations last year and are now reviewing banking regulations to improve digital banking environment and SME financing. In addition, the current backdrop of high household debt in Thailand and the need to improve individual’s financial safety net necessitate an overall improvement in financial literacy as well as financial planning skill. We have also tightened our market conduct regulations to ensure that misselling is minimized and financial institutions provide fair and transparent products and services. Given the growing importance of digital technology for financial services, we must also make sure that those with lower skills can reap the benefits that technology brings, to avoid digital divide. Last but not least, creating a financial ecosystem that values sustainability is critical to ensure that the Thai financial system of the future can continue to develop in such a way that would benefit all segments of the society and create minimal negative externalities. Later this month, the Bank of Thailand will host the first Bangkok Sustainable Banking Forum.
From that point on, expected returns on all assets would be lower. Higher saving was often touted as the possible reason for lower interest rates ahead of the crisis. At the time the argument was first made, during the early part of the last decade, the suggested “glut” in saving was often associated with the fast-growing East Asian countries. Some economists, notably Thomas Piketty, have suggested that, because the rich generally save more, widening income inequality may have contributed to the trend. Others have pointed out the importance of demographic factors. Whatever the underlying cause, the important point is that higher desired saving would tend to have a similar impact on the price of all long-dated assets, whatever their risk. That’s why it looks like a good candidate for the co-movement between equities and bonds evident in the early (pre-2001) part of Chart 2. The other determinants of asset prices – the level of, and uncertainty about, future economic growth – tend to have differing effects on the two asset classes. Lower expected growth will reduce investment demand and, by shifting that schedule to the left (Chart 3), will tend to reduce the equilibrium risk-free interest rate. Future profits will be discounted more generously, as before, but now the profits themselves will be lower. So despite a lower interest rate, and a rise in bond prices, equity prices fall on impact (Chart 6(b), which  5  Friedman and Schwartz (1963).

A short list of the lessons should reflect all these aspects: what we have learned or think we have learned about the causes of the crisis; about the efficiency of the institutional texture and the array of instruments at hand; and, last but not least, about the most appropriate positioning in the event of a crisis. With these criteria in mind, I will refer to nine lessons, of which seven are universally valid and two hold particularly true for emerging economies, such as Romania. In order to root out any possible confusion, I would like to point out from the very beginning what these lessons do NOT deal with. First, they do not address the issue of shorter or longer economic cycles and do not suggest that a crisis means the end of an economic cycle. Second, the lessons do not provide an answer to the question whether we could ever avoid a financial crisis. 1. Low inflation is not a sufficient condition for ensuring financial stability in the long run. Past experience appeared to have confirmed the opinion that inflation is the major source of financial instability. High inflation episodes were usually accompanied by pronounced financial instability and banking sector crises or were followed by recession after the authorities took inadequate measures to curb inflation. The current global financial crisis became manifest after nearly two decades of relatively low, stable inflation. A number of factors caused low inflation to coexist with ample liquidity.
It also represents the potential to increase access to financial products through a wider range of new delivery channels. Greater application of IT in the industry can also enhance efficiency by driving down costs for consumers and businesses. Other areas include leveraging on IT in making strategic decisions in the alignment of business, in elevating institutional capacity and operational efficiency and strengthening risk management capabilities. Moving forward, the enhancement of technological capabilities becomes vital for the financial industry as it competes in an increasingly technology-driven environment. The environment and the incentive structure is also important in providing an enabling environment that promotes innovation. In particular, the regulatory framework and the tax structure are important to the innovation process. The regulatory framework should not be so onerous as to impose a high cost and a regulatory burden on businesses. Intrusive regulatory approaches on new products can become a disincentive to innovation. Tax structures can also be designed to support the innovation process. Within financial institutions, organisational structures can also create an environment for innovation by aligning the organization’s processes and implementing appropriate performance incentives. BIS Review 47/2005  1  The pace of innovation that has taken place in the Islamic financial services industry has contributed to the development of a broad and diversified range of Islamic financial products and services that has been able to effectively mobilize financial resources to meet the investment requirements of the economy.

One response to labour shortages was to bring in workers from abroad, which together with longer working hours has prevented wage drift from being felt on any great scale. Labour market surveys, however, show contrasting pictures in the Greater Reykjavík Area and regional Iceland. There is an obvious shortage of labour in various fields in the urban southwest, while availability of employment declined in the regions. Great pressure built up in the real estate market, largely reflected in a rise in real estate prices in the Greater Reykjavík Area. Prices peaked at the beginning of 2000 after increasing by almost 24% over a twelve-month period. This rate of increase has now begun to slow down, and by the end of December real estate prices had risen by 13.3% over the preceding twelve months. Credit expansion In the course of the growth period, generous wage agreements were made which boosted real disposable income. The greatest increase in real disposable income was in 1998, or 7.2%. Otherwise it rose by 4-5% annually until last year, when the figure was close to 2%. Over this period, Iceland Stock Exchange has gone from strength to strength. An important equities market has evolved in Iceland, and share prices followed an upward trend until last year. Greater real disposable income and rising share prices, which at least for a while increased shareholders' confidence in their own prosperity, fuelled growing optimism among consumers and investors.
The turnaround had already occurred just over a year ago, but in the period to autumn last year, it appeared that capacity utilisation would gradually decrease to a normal level. As the global economic outlook deteriorated, it became clear that the slowdown in our economy would occur more rapidly and be more pronounced than envisaged earlier. In November, regional network contacts reported an abrupt and marked turnaround in activity. They now report that the labour supply is no longer a constraint on production. The enterprises in the network are expecting output and employment to fall further over the next six months. Unemployment has increased since autumn last year, but is still at historically low levels. Unemployment is projected to rise to almost 5 per cent at the end of the year. Wage growth is expected to come down this year from a high level in 2008. Lower corporate profitability, rising unemployment and lower consumer price inflation will probably result in low negotiated pay increases this year. The export sector has been particularly hard hit by the global downturn. Traditional exports have fallen markedly since autumn last year. A contraction in the world economy will result in a substantial decline in Norwegian exports ahead. Moreover, due to the marked fall in commodity prices, export prices are now very low. A weak krone may help to maintain profitability in Norwegian export enterprises. Expensive and reduced access to credit, high interest expenses and uncertainty about developments ahead amplified the downturn towards the end of 2008.

Even so, around a million more people in Britain are out of work than before the crisis. Many, especially the young unemployed, have had their futures blighted. So we cannot just carry on as we are. Unless we reform our economy – rebalance demand, restructure banking, and restore the sustainability of our public finances – we shall not only jeopardise recovery, but also fail the next generation. To my mind, a market economy and its disciplines offer the best way of raising living standards. But a market economy cannot survive on incentives alone. It must align those incentives to the common good. It must command support among the vast majority who do not receive the large rewards that accrue to the successful and the lucky. And it must show a sense of fairness if its efficiency is to yield fruit. There was nothing fair about the financial crisis. It was caused not by problems in the real economy; it came out of the financial sector. But it was the real economy that suffered and the banks that were bailed out. Your members, and indeed the businesses which employ them, are entitled to be angry. But however legitimate, anger will not produce change unless its energy is harnessed to a cool analysis of what happened and why. So I want to discuss the fundamental causes of the crisis before turning to current policy. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 changed both politics and economics.
I am among the ones who think that the interest rate is often too blunt a tool to deal with financial stability issues, especially when they have clear sources that can be addressed more directly, since the policy rate affects every sector of the economy. Furthermore, under some circumstances the required movement in the policy rate for financial stability purposes may be in conflict with the price stability mandate. Assuming that such tradeoff is absent, that reasonable movements in the policy rate are expected to be useful to deal with financial stability concerns, and that there are no better tools at hand, it may be reasonable to rely on it as a tool for financial stability. However, in many situations at least one of these conditions would not hold and other options would prove more efficient. For instance, more often than not financial stability concerns are related to specific segments of financial intermediation. Concerns about rapid growth in credit to the housing sector can be tamed by changes in loan-to-value or debt-toincome ratios, for example. Dynamic provisions related to general or specific forms of credit may also help banks maintain a solid position through the financial cycle, and discretional changes to reserve requirements may also help rein in rapid bank credit expansion. Of course, all these measures are not cost free and their use must properly consider these costs against specific financial stability concerns.

The U.S. economy became substantially more open, with trade increasing substantially as a share of GDP. Deregulation in the 1980s (telecom, transportation, finance) and since then have helped make the U.S. economy more dynamic and flexible. The U.S. financial system became stronger, more resilient, better at matching capital to ideas, and better at spreading and managing risk. And finally, U.S. macroeconomic policy was very supportive. Good fiscal policy choices in the 1990s helped produce significant surpluses, freeing private savings for private investment. The gains in price stability delivered by the Fed under two chairmen provided a critical foundation for the sustained increase in private investment that helped translate a shift in the technological frontier into accelerating productivity. These forces reinforced each other. None would have been as powerful without the impact of the others. Globalization, deregulation and changes in the financial structure all worked together to produce a more competitive business environment, motivating major improvements in investment and in efficiency. Good monetary policy and fiscal policy provided a supportive environment, with higher public savings and low inflation. BIS Review 25/2005  1  Luck seems to have played some role, too. The strategic environment seemed in some ways more stable and secure. The size and frequency of external shocks that hit the United States and the world economy during this period were in some ways less acute and easier to manage. Are these improvements in underlying or structural productivity growth sustainable? This is a hard question to answer.
In a tight labour market with mounting recruitment difficulties, companies said they now needed to pay up to retain as well as attract staff. This is a message echoed elsewhere across the Bank’s Agency network, covering the whole of the UK. 53  Bunn, Pugh and Yeates (2018). 18  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  18  If so, this is a significant development. Until recently, the pick-up in wage pressures had been confined to workers moving jobs. Those remaining in post had seen no pick-up in pay. They had been the missing link in the pay chain. In a tight labour market, that link now appears to be being forged. If workers who stick as well as twist are now getting pay rises, this will add impetus to cost and inflationary pressures. It is against this background that the MPC signalled in its May Inflation Report that some further modest tightening of monetary policy was likely to be required over the next few years to return inflation sustainably to target, provided the economy evolved broadly in line with its projections. Any such tightening, the MPC emphasised, was likely to be gradual in pace and limited in extent. At its meeting in June, the MPC voted to maintain Bank Rate at 0.5%. With two other MPC members, however, I voted to raise Bank Rate by 25 basis points.

The aim in doing so was exactly in line with the May Inflation Report – to reduce modestly the degree of monetary policy accommodation, given a tight labour market and gradually mounting pay pressures, to return inflation to target sustainably. Some context is important here. Voting for a 25 basis point rate rise, a full decade after monetary policy was first placed on an emergency setting, is hardly either surprising or radical. A Bank Rate rise of 25 basis points would still leave monetary conditions in the UK extraordinarily accommodative by any historical metric. And the aim in doing so is to lower the risk of needing to tighten policy less gradually in future and cause a sharper adjustment in the economy. Truth be told, I would have voted to raise Bank Rate at the MPC’s May meeting had data on the economy held firm. What we saw ahead of that meeting was a string of weak data suggesting consumer spending might be faltering. I believed there was option value in waiting to see if these data signalled the start of a lasting retrenchment by households, or were instead a temporary snow or statistical blip. With only a modest policy tightening needed over a number of years to return inflation to target, there was “no rush”. In the event, data on the consumer since the May MPC meeting has, virtually without exception, bounced back strongly. That includes measures of retail spending, consumer confidence and consumer credit.
Of a total of NOK 1 021 billion in loans to wage earners, pensioners, social security recipients and students at the end of 2004, NOK 208 billion represented non-mortgage loans. Since the third quarter of 2004, growth in mortgage loans has slowed while growth in other loans has increased. Growth in mortgage loans, however, remains higher. In the last decade, loans from finance houses to households have increased from three to four percent of household loans and now amount to a total of NOK 47 billion. Each quarter Kredittilsynet (Financial Supervisory Authority) conducts a survey of selected finance companies that are engaged primarily in consumer financing. Consumer loans are defined here as both card-based loans and other unsecured consumer loans. The survey shows that several of the finance companies in the sample have recorded strong growth in lending. However, growth has slowed. The survey shows that compared with total loans to the household sector, the number of defaults on consumer credit is high but relatively stable. Losses are low. Profitability in these companies has improved considerably in recent years, illustrated here by net interest income as a percentage of average total assets. This indicates that the enterprises take into account the high risk when pricing consumer credit. At the same time, it is surprising that more new participants have not entered the market when profitability is so high. Some consumer loans are probably extended as mortgage loans. This possibility is closed to households that do not own their own dwelling.

My view has been that the further appreciation of the Swedish krona has risked leading to impaired target fulfilment, and this has been the motivation behind my stance in favour of a lower repo rate path than that decided upon. Am I not concerned that a lower repo rate path would lead to excessive inflation, considering how inflation has increased recently due to higher energy and commodity prices? It remains to be seen how permanent these increases will be. In our most recent forecast, which assumed the stabilisation of these prices, underlying inflation, even in the main scenario, was estimated at less than 2 per cent for most of the forecast period (see Figure 2). On the basis of this forecast, there is thus scope for a more expansionary monetary policy. One matter that I intend to address at the next monetary policy decision is the wide gap between CPI inflation and CPIF inflation that we saw in January and February. This gap is partly due to a detail, related to mortgage costs, in the calculation method used, which also results in higher CPI inflation over the rest of the year than was forecast in the monetary policy report in February. However, in my opinion, the underlying inflationary pressure in the economy is still low, which, for example, is reflected by the low outcome for CPIF inflation. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Monetary policy has to be forward-looking, as its influence on the economy is subject to a time-lag.
It enables banks to settle cross-border payments in different currencies in real time, using either commercial bank digital money or wholesale CBDCs. Project Ubin has also served as a foundation for Project Dunbar – a blueprint for a multicurrency settlement platform that operates across countries using wholesale CBDCs. Project Dunbar is a partnership among MAS, the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub, Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank Negara Malaysia, and South Africa Reserve Bank. Commerical banks will be able to transact directly with one another using the wholesale CBDCs of their respective countries, eliminating the need for intermediaries and reducing the time and cost of cross-border transactions, if Project Dunbar succeeds. Not all cross-border payment improvements need CBDCs or the blockchain. Singapore’s realtime retail payment system – PayNow – is building direct linkages with other countries’ payment systems. PayNow has already linked with Thailand’s PromptPay, enabling individuals in the two countries to transfer funds directly to one another’s bank accounts using just the payee’s mobile phone number. PayNow plans to link up with Malaysia’s DuitNow and India’s Unified Payment Interface next year. But establishing bilateral payment linkages one jurisdiction at a time is hard work. We need a multilateral solution. MAS is therefore working with the BIS Innovation Hub onProject Nexus - a common blueprint for how countries can fully integrate their real-time payment systems onto a single crossborder network. If it works, it will make PayNow globally interoperable much faster.

6/8  BIS central bankers' speeches  • Digital bonds have many advantages: - they can be issued in smaller denominations; - primary issuance settlement times can be shortened; and - coupon and redemption payments can be automated. Decentralised Finance Web 3.0 can potentially disrupt the world of Finance. This is the phenomenon of decentralised finance or DeFi, where end-users perform financial transactions directly with one another using smart contracts, without the need for financial intermediaries. It is a fundamentally different approach to financial infrastructure, compared to the centralised systems of today. DeFi is already a growing reality, albeit nascent. Crypto tokens are bought and sold on decentralised exchanges, without the need for intermediaries to clear and record the trade. Another example is borrowing and lending, where anyone can lend and borrow directly to others via a liquidity pool managed by a smart contract. DeFi has the potential to yield significant economic and social benefits. By replacing intermediaries and central counterparties, these open crypto networks can potentially reduce the cost of finance. When firms of all sizes, and even individuals, can directly access financial infrastructure, it could mean more competition and inclusion. But DeFi is not without risks and vulnerabilities. These open crypto networks are not at the stage where they can meet the high standards of governance, security, and resilience that are required of critical infrastructure by central banks and regulators.