samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The United States is in one of the longest phases of rising GDP of the post-war period and, last year, the euro area had the highest growth in ten years. However, it takes time for the strong economic activity to affect inflation. Although the recovery has come far after the years of financial crises and low growth, wage increases have been unexpectedly low in many advanced economies. In large economies such as the United States, Canada, Germany, Australia, as well as in Sweden, unemployment is close to or below levels at which wage growth, historically speaking, tends to pick up. In Sweden, we have had a number of years with a combination of low productivity and low expectations of inflation and wages, which partly explains the low wage demands up to now. Even if Sweden has had a strong employment trend in recent years, technological innovations and international competition will entail a transformation in which jobs will disappear and need to be replaced by new ones. These forces, in combination with long-term stagnation in the euro area after the financial crisis, are also leading to employees becoming more cautious with their demands. 3 It is feasible that the upheaval these forces cause at workplaces may also make it difficult for individuals to assess whether they risk becoming unemployed and, if so, what their position might be on the labour market. Low wage expectations are a global phenomenon and can contribute towards those already in employment becoming less interested in looking for a better-paid job.

Such discipline is not possible without meaningful public disclosure of a bank’s financial condition. I think we would all agree that there is no greater enemy to a stable financial marketplace than a lack of confidence, and surely nothing undermines confidence more than a lack of reliable information. Discipline by the market is not always pleasant – a lesson many companies have re-learned recently. Yet better quality information, or what we often call transparency, can boost the confidence of depositors, investors, and creditors, and it can contribute to stability by encouraging banks to adopt a more proactive approach to managing their risks. In this regard, just last month the Basel Committee published the results of a two-year study on public disclosure practices of internationally active banks as a guide to the industry and accounting standards setters on areas where disclosure can be improved. BIS Review 35/2001  3  While many countries have made great progress over recent years to improve the quality and level of disclosure, disclosure practices have not kept up with the changes in how banks manage their businesses and in how they measure and mitigate their risks. To improve this situation, I believe that the notions of what is public versus proprietary information must change. It is critical to approach the question of disclosure as users of financial statements. Shareholders, creditors, and counterparties cannot understand the risks of their own exposures to a bank until they first understand that bank’s appetite for risk and its approach to, and methodologies for, managing risk.
There are I think strong arguments to keep these two models separate and require banks that wish to issue payment stablecoins under the new regulatory regime to do so through legally remote and otherwise distinct entities. I want to turn now to the third potential development: the issue of a central bank digital currency either for retail or for wholesale purposes. As many here may know, the Bank and HM Treasury published a consultation paper in February on the Digital Pound – a Sterling digital currency that would be issued by the Bank of England for general purpose retail use. No decision has been taken to implement the Digital Pound but the Bank and Treasury’s assessment is that it is likely to be needed if current trends in payments and money – some of which I have been discussing – continue. This assessment rests on two main considerations. The first is the need to anchor the value and robustness of all monies circulating in the UK. Physical cash issued by the Bank plays an anchoring role at present in a world in which only commercial banks issue private money. If future trends continue, cash use is likely decline further and cash itself will become less is useable in all everyday transactions, for example if internet commerce grows and if merchants increasingly accept only digital payment. At the same time, new, non-bank players are likely to enter the scene, issuing private money, such as stablecoins, for payment purposes.

Adnan Zaylani Mohamad Zahid: Ethics & professionalism - leaders as role models for the next generation of Islamic finance professionals Speech by Mr Adnan Zaylani Mohamad Zahid, Assistant Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Chartered Institute of Islamic Finance Professionals (CIIF) 4th Anniversary Dinner and Conferment Ceremony, Kuala Lumpur, 6 November 2019. * * * I wish to extend my sincerest thanks to the Chartered Institute of Islamic Finance Professionals (CIIF) for inviting me here this evening to join the celebrations for the 4th anniversary of the Institute as well as the conferment ceremony of the Chartered Professional in Islamic Finance (CPIF) professional designation. I understand that this evening will also see the conferment of the first ever Fellows from amongst the existing Chartered members of the Institute, all of whom have served the Islamic finance industry with distinction over the years. The Institute’s efforts to support the professionalisation of the Islamic financial services industry is part of a long journey that we embarked on some time ago, forming a key step towards achieving a vision of an industry that is rich with talent. Developing talent development together as an industry Recognising that talent development is a long-term endeavour, Bank Negara Malaysia had set out the initial plan in the Financial Sector Blueprint 2011–2020 in which several affiliate institutions had been identified as having crucial roles to play in the development of talent for financial services industry as a whole.
While other economies have been spared having to deal with the curse of cheap credit, US households and European sovereigns have, over the last decade, largely the same story to tell. Easy money is bad for you. 2  Speech by Mario Draghi at the Global Investment Conference in London, http://www.ecb.int/press/key/ date/2012/html/sp120726.en.html  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  Throughout economic history, mobility of both capital and labour has been an important engine of growth. Today it is discomforting to see signs, albeit small, of financial protectionism. Walls are being erected between countries in the form of investment quotas, taxes and other measures. These walls harm borrowers, savers and investors alike. Norway is a rich country, and over the years we have benefited enormously from exploiting our bountiful natural resources. However, our future wealth is still conditional on a prosperous future for the whole world. Europe remains our most important trading partner, and still accounts for a large part of our financial investments. We have a large and direct interest in Europe’s success. European economies need to carry out deeper structural reforms to restore competitiveness and growth. The burden of high and rising debt will otherwise become too heavy to carry over time. Until these issues are clarified in more detail, the uncertainty and its associated risk premiums may persist in the market for some time to come. For Europe, it is now possible to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The capacity to withstand market turmoil was demonstrated during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. For a period of 18 months, Fund losses totalled roughly EUR 90 billion – more than 25 per cent of Norway’s GDP. The losses did not go unnoticed and led to a public  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  debate on the investment strategy. The conclusion was that the strategy is robust and that Norway must accept such fluctuations in the Fund’s capital, given the high equity share. This point was made clear through 2009 and 2010, when those losses were reversed, and additional gains made. The government remained faithful to the strategy, reaffirming its commitment to the Fund’s long-term investment strategy. The large size of the Fund can also be exploited. Last year the Fund started investing in real estate as a new asset class. The first property investments were made in France, Germany and the UK. We are now preparing for property investments in the US. Direct real estate investments will provide a fairly stable, inflation-adjusted cash flow. Over time, in accordance with the mandate, we aim to invest up to 5 percent of the Fund in real estate. The investments will be allocated to more countries as we gain experience. Slide 11: Considerable overweight in Europe The large size and the long investment horizon also entail a need for diversification. From the start, the Fund has been invested with a considerable overweight in Europe.
This crisis has highlighted the vulnerabilities that may emerge in a monetary union lacking common fiscal and financial policies. It is thus worth considering a greater transfer of sovereignty in these areas. On the home front, the challenges the Spanish economy faces are enormous. The latest episode of the sovereign debt crisis is severely impacting agents’ confidence and the economy’s financing conditions, placing it in a position of extreme vulnerability. Following two consecutive quarters of negative growth, our economy is once again in recession and the prospects of recovery are not immediate. Moreover, the prolonged cyclical weakness is preventing swifter headway in redressing public finances and in reducing private-sector debt, and casting doubt on the resilience of the financial system. That has triggered tensions on the debt markets and activated perverse feedback loops. Lastly, the Spanish economy risks seeing its capacity to obtain external funding severely blocked. While in the short run this does not actually constrain ordinary funding flows (given the banking system’s possibility of resorting to ECB funding), the prolongation of such a situation will be extremely harmful in the medium term. Spain is in this situation despite the fact that its authorities have implemented far-reaching reforms in recent years to resolve the inefficiencies in its economic functioning, to correct the serious deterioration in public finances and to redress and restructure the financial system, in order to restore financing flows. Resolving these problems is taking longer than expected, but that should not lead to reform fatigue.

Here at the ECB, we are absolutely convinced that whatever we do, it will not have as strong an impact if it is not accompanied by reforms. Asset purchases are not an excuse not to implement reforms. The effectiveness of the purchases depends on these reforms. That said, the programme was designed to work and it is big enough to work. Even though the amount of risk-sharing is very small – 20% – with the rest staying with the national central banks? This is fully consistent with a single monetary policy because all decisions will be taken by the Governing Council. Moreover, it has to be said that the fact that we have greatly limited the level of risk-sharing reflects the philosophy of the Maastricht Treaty: a centralised monetary policy with national fiscal responsibility. We have acknowledged the fact that the euro area is not a fiscal union. There are those who say we could have taken the first step in this direction. But this is a political decision which is for the governments to make, not us. At what point will QE stop? We will make purchases from early March until at least September 2016, i.e. 19 months, and shall continue until there is a sustained improvement in medium-term inflation. When it will end is therefore not an urgent issue, it will be assessed based on a range of indicators, including inflation expectations. Could it end before September 2016? It will end only once we get a strong sense that inflation is converging towards 2%.
According to data from INSTAT, the Albanian economy grew by 2.7% in the third quarter of 2012, and similar growth rates are expected for the fourth quarter as well. Services, industry and agriculture sectors supported the economic growth, while the construction sector continued to contract. Assessment of third-quarter and fourth-quarter aggregate demand components confirms, to a great extent, the expectations noticed from previous periods. Foreign demand has been  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  the main driver of economic growth in the country. Net export deficit narrowed in the third quarter of the year, mainly due to growth in exports of goods and services. Third-quarter data attest to continuation of this trend. During October-November, exports grew by 14.3%, while imports fell by 5% on a year earlier. As a consequence, trade deficit has dropped by 15.5%, y-o-y. On the other hand, the domestic demand has remained sluggish due to lack of fiscal stimulus and slow performance of consumption and private investments. Indirect available data for the third quarter of the year depict improved consumption but low private investments due to incomplete capacity utilization on production, uncertainties about the future and tighter financing conditions. Fiscal indicators have reflected the overall performance of the economy and the fiscal consolidating policy pursued in 2012. Slow growth in budget revenue and expenditure, and budget deficit contraction characterise fiscal developments. Fiscal revenue for the first 11 months of the year increased by 2.0%, y-o-y, reflecting the low contribution of related taxable component.

9  6  Similar arguments are made by Marvin Goodfriend Mervyn King in their Review of the Riksbank’s Monetary Policy 2010–2015, (Stockholm: 2015). 7  Claudio Borio, Magdalena Erdem, Andrew Filardo and Boris Hofmann, “The costs of deflations: a historical perspective,” BIS Quarterly Review, March 2015, pp. 31–54. 8  See the box entitled “A tale of two crises: recent developments in euro area and US employment,” in the December 2015 issue of the ECB Economic Bulletin, and, for a longer term analysis, the article entitled, “Productivity developments and monetary policy,” in the January 2008 issue of the ECB Monthly Bulletin. 9  Lawrence Summers, “Reflections on the Productivity Slowdown,” Keynote Address to the Conference: Making Sense of the Productivity Slowdown, Peterson Institute for International Economics (Washington, D.C.”: 16 November, 2015): http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/transcript-20151116keynote.pdf. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  There may well be some truth in this. After all, it’s well-known that the national accounts often take a long time to fully count the effects of innovations in technology. For example, US national accounts did not reflect the output from automobiles for nearly 15 years after the Ford Model T was available. 10 But even if we are mis-measuring productivity, we still need to raise it: the euro area is still lagging considerably behind others. And worse still, we only seem to be able to achieve productivity growth if it’s traded-off against employment.
With regard to public sector employment, it is proposed that temporary employment be reduced to 8%, over the next three years, from its current level of 23%. According to the draft budget, this would involve converting 250,000 temporary employees into permanent employees within this period. Also, there will be an increase in the number of sectors allowed to increase their replacement rate to 100%. For general government as a whole, this measure will mean, according to the budget, that there will be 67,000 public sector vacancies in 2017. Overall, these measures would result in growth of 1% in the wage bill in the State budget, as compared with the decline of 1.2% in 2016. At the same time, the restriction is maintained on current spending on goods and services, which declines by 14%. 6/9  As regards public investment, real investment is projected to increase by 23%, with respect to the initial budget for 2016. However when the effect of certain defence-related payments outstanding from other years is taken into account, State investment is budgeted to fall by almost 20%, which is accompanied by a significant reduction in business investment in the public sector. Turning to the Social Security system, the increase of 0.25% in pensions, arising from application of the indexation formula in force following the 2013 reform, is notable.

The benefits for monetary policy clearly outweighed the costs of  Page 3/4  Zurich, 22 September 2022 Thomas Jordan  News conference  the side-effects. Without negative interest, price stability could not have been ensured and economic developments would have been significantly less favourable. Negative interest will remain an important monetary policy instrument, which we will use if needed. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention. I now hand over to Martin Schlegel, who will speak about the mortgage and real estate markets. Page 4/4
And so it is my pleasure to welcome you to this ceremony today, formally to witness the appointment of Standard Chartered Bank as the Settlement Institution for the new euro clearing system. This system will enable a wide range of financial transactions in euro to be settled on a real-time basis here in Hong Kong. Not only should this be useful to those involved with trade and remittances in euro, but it should also facilitate financial institutions to manage international liquidity and investment portfolios in Hong Kong. The system will encompass not only the best, internationally agreed, principles of payment system design but also state-of-the-art technology. It will provide RTGS settlement for euro denominated fund transfers; a linkage with the US dollar payment system to provide real-time PvP settlement for EUR/USD transactions; and linkages with the CMU to provide DvP settlement for euro-denominated debt securities, in readiness for the potential development of that market. We expect to see all these features implemented by the second quarter of 2003. For the moment there will be no cheque clearing capability, but this is something which could be added later if there was sufficient demand. As in the case of the US dollar clearing, we have adopted a private sector solution, with a commercial bank as the Settlement Institution. This is not only consistent with the tradition in Hong Kong, but is also in line with international practice and with the recommendations of the Bank for International Settlements.

Such is our aim in Hong Kong. But this does not mean throwing money into each and every idea which comes along - there’s no point in constructing highways if no-one wants to drive down them. There must be a reasonable business case. On the other hand, no venture no gain. The opening up of a footpath may lead to the emergence of heavy traffic. Thus we have been selective in the initiatives which we support and, although not every project may have been an unqualified success, examples such as our HKD RTGS system which we pioneered in the mid-90s; the CMU which provides such an excellent settlement and custody service for debt securities and which is being linked up with a growing number of overseas counterparties; and the relatively recent USD clearing system; all of these present a strong track record. We are here today to mark another milestone in this infrastructural development - in the field of clearing and payments. Our USD clearing system, introduced in 2000, has demonstrated that a niche exists for services of this type in this part of the world. USD RTGS turnover has grown to about 3,000 transactions a day with a value of some $ billion; and over 1,000 USD cheques are being processed daily. Enquiries and discussions with banks suggested to us that there was also a business case for a roughly parallel service in euro.
Simon M Potter: Role of central bank interactions with financial markets Remarks by Mr Simon M Potter, Executive Vice President of the Markets Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at New York University’s Stern School of Business, New York City, 27 November 2012. *  *  *  It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak to you today. Having taught classes at New York University (NYU), I know firsthand the quality and analytical rigor of the students and faculty. You should all be proud of the excellent curriculum and education you are receiving here at NYU. I would like to thank Kim for giving me the opportunity to speak this evening and the public service he is providing through his leadership of the center. My remarks today will focus on the role of central bank interactions with financial markets. Because of the New York Fed’s position within the us financial system, our staff is in continuous contact with financial market participants, including investors, intermediaries, financial market utilities and analysts. Much of this contact occurs through the Markets Group at the New York Fed. For most of my professional life prior to becoming head of the Markets Group earlier this year, I had been a research economist working at the New York Fed. Like many research economists, I was trained to understand the economy with mathematical models that contain at best a rudimentary description of a financial system.

As noted above, many of the emergency liquidity facilities rolled out in the crisis were developed in a very short period of time by experts with years of experience in these various markets. All of the new facilities were designed to price the emergency liquidity such that as market stresses eased, their use would decline. This is exactly what happened. Furthermore, the most convincing evidence that the facilities correctly addressed market failures related to liquidity is the fact that none of them lost any money.19 Conclusion The past few years have seen important changes in the role of central bank interactions with financial markets. Some of the main lessons I take away are: published statistics and market prices only tell part of the story of developments in financial markets, at best; beliefs of market participants and the distribution across markets matter, and information on them needs to be collected and analyzed on a frequent basis; active operations in financial markets allow central banks to flexibly respond to unexpected events and understand market functioning issues and changes in market infrastructure. Most importantly, the global financial  18  The Federal Reserve established swap arrangements with the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Banco Central do Brasil, the Bank of Canada, the Danmarks Nationalbank, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea, the Banco de Mexico, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Norges Bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Sveriges Riksbank, and the Swiss National Bank.