samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Financial Stability Board have stipulated that banks of international systemic importance should hold a substantial capital surcharge in relation to risk-weighted assets, which is over and above the Basel III standards.7 However, this additional amount does not take national systemic importance into account. Each country, therefore, must henceforth decide individually on an appropriate additional amount based on the risk. For example, even if the international capital surcharge was set at a low level of 1%, the “Swiss finish” would result in only 25% more common equity (cf. chart 8).8 Unlike in the case of risk-weighted capital regulation, however, Switzerland does not play a pioneering role as regards the absolute indebtedness (leverage ratio) of banks. The United States and Canada, for example, both introduced a leverage ratio some time ago. These countries are therefore stricter than Switzerland regarding leverage ratio. Furthermore, one thing is often overlooked in the current debate: banking regulation is by no means restricted to capital adequacy requirements. On an international comparison, it is the overall package of measures proposed for the regulation of (systemically important) banks that is decisive. In the US, for example, the Dodd-Frank Act9 severely restricts proprietary trading by banks that accept deposits. Sweden, for example, introduced a tax on systemically important banks. A variety of other proposals, such as the establishment of a permanent bailout fund or new regulations on the organisational structures of banks, are being planned in the EU (cf.

The rules require banks to appreciably increase the quality and quantity of regulatory capital. Further, they increase the instruments at supervisors’ disposal to restrict the risks of bank operations and to ensure financial institutions have sufficient loss-absorbing capacity, and, more generally, to safeguard the stability of the financial system as a whole. Yet the mission to strengthen the regulatory framework in order to minimise the likelihood of banking crises, together with their associated costs, is far from complete. You will be aware that the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is working on the definition and appropriate parameterisation of new liquidity requirements to complement the solvency requirements. At the same time, one task to be undertaken in the near future is the enhancement of the current tools for measuring and provisioning risk on bank balance sheets. Specifically, the Basel Committee has advocated the advisability of working on improving the methods for calculating risk-weighted assets and thus increasing their consistency and homogeneity. Indeed, an appreciable degree of heterogeneity has recently been evident in the internal models banks use to calculate risk weightings under the advanced approach, whose use must be approved by the supervisor. Supervisory practice indicates the technical difficulty entailed in approving the models presented by banks and, in particular, in gauging their ability to properly measure the sensitivity of the various portfolios to risk.
For many years, we were afraid of a possible "internationalisation" of our currency. Until the early 1980s, we had a general feeling that our monetary policy was more likely to be successful if the Swiss franc were only traded domestically. We were overestimating our capacity to control markets with administrative measures. With time and experience, we came to realise that, in the long run, an internationalisation of financial markets was inevitable and that it was overall beneficial, since it would help reduce exchange rate volatility. Today, we are convinced that central banks should accept the markets' strength rather than spend time and energy trying to curb it. In sum, Switzerland, with an independent central bank and efficient financial markets, meets the conditions for successful monetary autonomy. Let us now consider whether the SNB has made good use of it. Evidence of the SNB's monetary independence Whether the SNB's monetary independence has been effective can be judged in two ways. First, by studying how monetary policy has reacted to shocks that were specific to Switzerland, and second, by assessing differences in monetary policy between Switzerland and the euro area in times of calm. Let me first discuss our reactions to asymmetric shocks. Monetary policy under special circumstances Since the introduction of the euro, there have been three major shocks that I think affected Switzerland more than the euro area. These were the stock market crisis of 2000, the September 11 events, and the war in Iraq.

Technology can help to deal with these issues, but this creates its own set of problems. Banks need to be able to afford the necessary investment in technology and to develop or obtain the expertise to utilise technology properly. The objectives of our reform measures The KPMG/Barents Consultancy Study broadly anticipated these trends. The policy prescription was that we should not stand in the way of the forces of change, nor should we simply do nothing and see what happens. Rather, it was concluded that we should try to manage the process of change through careful reform. The underlying aim of our reform package therefore is to help to improve efficiency and innovation in the banking sector through increased competition. Among other things, this might provide incentives for the local banks to think harder about merger and acquisition. If we had simply done nothing and left competitive barriers, like the interest rate rules, in place, this might have sent misleading signals to the local banks, and prevented them from reacting quickly enough to the changes taking place around them. A further objective of our reforms was to increase the attractiveness of Hong Kong as an international financial centre. Also, bearing in mind that increased competition can bring with it increased risk, we were also conscious of the need to take steps to enhance the safety and stability of the banking system.
Work is also ongoing to define the appropriate corporate governance and prudential standards to be applied at the financial holding company level. With regard to capital requirements, whether there should be a standard capital rule for all financial holding companies is currently being reviewed. The more important consideration is to minimise excessive leveraging and ensure that the financial holding company has the necessary infrastructure to have an overall view of the risk taking activities within the group. Ladies and Gentlemen,  4  BIS Review 10/2005  It is envisaged that in a more liberalised financial system, market discipline will play a greater role in driving performance in banking institutions. In this regard, shareholders are expected to be more involved in overseeing the performance of banking institutions and the effectiveness of the board of directors and management. The policy on shareholding will therefore be enhanced to promote greater shareholder activism within banking institutions. Shareholders need to be concerned with the practices of banking institutions, particularly those which can have adverse implications on depositors' interests and on financial stability. Similarly, given the increasingly competitive environment, advancement in risk management practices and the strengthened corporate governance framework, a more flexible policy framework on lending to connected parties will be put in place. However, to prevent abuses of such flexibilities, there will be safeguards and conditions that need to be observed by banking institutions.

The strength of domestic demand, in particular, private expenditure, together with sustained exports, is expected to continue to support growth in 2005. This will be reinforced by sound domestic economic fundamentals as well as strong corporate and financial sectors. Private investment is likely to remain on an upward trend as companies upgrade facilities and install new capacity in response to strong domestic and external demand. The strength of the economy, the highly diversified economic structure and the strong fundamentals increase Malaysia's potential to absorb and respond to the challenging external environment. Bank Negara's monetary policy has played a supportive role to the economy throughout 2004. Going forward, this stance will be maintained. Inflation has risen from the earlier low levels but it is expected to remain relatively low in 2005 despite the US dollar depreciation and the higher international price of oil. Temporary increases in the inflation rate caused by one-off supply shocks or price adjustments do not warrant a monetary policy response. The focus of monetary policy is to continue to support further expansion in business investment activity to enhance the long-term growth potential of the Malaysian economy. During 2004, Bank Negara Malaysia also implemented a number of measures to enhance the operational efficiency and transparency of its monetary policy. In particular, almost one year after its introduction, the new interest rate framework is operating well, with the Overnight Policy Rate providing the signal to the market on the stance of monetary policy.
The spread of the Delta variant has so far not required lockdown measures to be reimposed. But it could slow the recovery in global trade and the full reopening of the economy. Consumer spending is increasing, although consumers remain somewhat cautious in the light of the pandemic developments. The labour market is also improving rapidly, which holds out the prospect of higher incomes and greater spending. Unemployment is declining and the number of people in job retention schemes has fallen by about 28 million from the peak last year. The 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  recovery in domestic and global demand is further boosting optimism among firms, which is supporting business investment. At the same time, there remains some way to go before the damage to the economy caused by the pandemic is overcome. There are still more than two million fewer people employed than before the pandemic, especially among the younger and lower skilled. The number of workers in job retention schemes also remains substantial. To support the recovery, ambitious, targeted and coordinated fiscal policy should continue to complement monetary policy. In particular, the Next Generation EU programme will help ensure a stronger and uniform recovery across euro area countries. It will also accelerate the green and digital transitions, support structural reforms and lift long-term growth. We expect the economy to rebound firmly over the medium term. Our new staff projections foresee annual real GDP growth at 5.0 per cent in 2021, 4.6 per cent in 2022 and 2.1 per cent in 2023.

Compared with our June staff projections, the outlook has improved for 2021 and is broadly unchanged for 2022 and 2023. Inflation Inflation increased to 3.0 per cent in August. We expect inflation to rise further this autumn but to decline next year. This temporary upswing in inflation mainly reflects the strong increase in oil prices since around the middle of last year, the reversal of the temporary VAT reduction in Germany, delayed summer sales in 2020 and cost pressures that stem from temporary shortages of materials and equipment. In the course of 2022 these factors should ease or will fall out of the year-on-year inflation calculation. Underlying inflation pressures have edged up. As the economy recovers further, and supported by our monetary policy measures, we expect underlying inflation to rise over the medium term. This increase is expected to be only gradual, since it will take time for the economy to return to operating at full capacity, and therefore wages are expected to grow only moderately. Measures of longer-term inflation expectations have continued to increase, but these remain some distance from our two per cent target. The new staff projections foresee annual inflation at 2.2 per cent in 2021, 1.7 per cent in 2022 and 1.5 per cent in 2023, being revised up compared with the previous projections in June. Inflation excluding food and energy price inflation is projected to average 1.3 per cent in 2021, 1.4 per cent in 2022 and 1.5 per cent in 2023, also being revised up from the June projections.
Interest rate expectations 19 and 20 June Per cent  5,0  5,0  4,5  4,5  4,0  4,0  3,5  3,5  3,0  3,0  2,5  2,5 Repo rate Based on bank securities/ FRA 20 June 2007 Based on bank securities/ FRA 19 June 2007 M PR 2007:2  2,0 1,5  2,0 1,5  06  07  08  09  10  Source: The Riksbank  10  BIS Review 111/2007

Finally, Thailand is well positioned geographically to serve as a supply-chain hub for many industries, and stands to gain from the expanding set of opportunities created by a growing and more integrated Asian economy. Thailand’s underlying strength places us in a position to reap the substantial benefits from such regional expansion and integration. However, realizing these benefits will be a challenge and requires considerable adjustments. The key task is to ensure the necessary structural reforms to enhance Thailand’s international competitiveness. Factors of production will need to be relocated from sunset to sunrise sectors. The quality of our human capital should be continuously strengthened to handle broadened and more complex activities as well as competition. Logistics and basic infrastructure need to be upgraded to support increased flows of goods and services. Government policies, rules, regulations and the legal framework must be improved and updated to facilitate all of this. In a world with so much uncertainty, what is certain is that we cannot simply make-do with the status quo. Lifting our growth potential requires vigorous change and transformation in what we do and how we do it. Ladies and gentlemen, As the familiar French proverb – “Rome was not built in a day” goes; these structural challenges cannot possibly be addressed in the short-term. Successful implementation of this reform agenda requires a medium- to long-term perspective. The public sector will play a critical role in this. This brings me to the final part of my address, the BOT’s policy focus going forward.
A relationship in which financial sector disruption can become the tool of other policies is difficult to square with financial stability. Third, we need on both sides to have deep supervisory cooperation in all areas of cross border financial activity – banking, insurance, markets and market infrastructure. Depending on the circumstances, that can mean line of sight, joint discussion of risks and mitigation – in short ensuring that the importer of risks has information and influence. It means assurance not just about business as usual but also that failing firms that are active cross border can be resolved effectively and safely by their home jurisdiction. We have such arrangements at present with non-EU jurisdictions whose firms are highly active in the UK. In areas such as global financial infrastructure, supervisory co-operation can mean a degree of joint supervision. Again, we have such arrangements with non-EU jurisdictions – and indeed with EU jurisdictions particularly in the payments area. We are likely to need to develop such arrangements more generally at the international level in future to manage the technology driven changes in cross border payments systems. But such arrangements must be practical. Effective supervision of systemically important firms in business as usual cannot be achieved with multiple hands on the steering wheel. Firms need clear and consistent messages. This is true, a fortiori, at times of stress.

In its role as the regulator, the Bank of Albania’s vision is to contribute to the future, aiming to establish a highly adequate environment for boosting financial innovations and modernising the financial structure. Our regulatory regime aims at fostering innovation, being a positive catalyser and not a barrier. We aim at being avant-garde for a modern financial infrastructure. But experience shows that technology always is a step ahead and rapidly spreading. Technology has no limits and we, as regulators, should adopt rules and laws that these technologies be used by the consumers, individuals or businesses. At the same time, we should be aware of the risks that accompany these new technologies. Finding a perfect balance between the promotion of new ideas and the regulatory prudence constitutes one of the major challenges in this regard. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Bank of Albania has designed a payments regulatory framework, which paved the way for the development and modernisation. This framework provides all banks or other suppliers of financial services with the possibility to access the payment system in an equal and transparent way, thus contributing to the development of a competitive payment industry, without any asymmetry. Bank of Albania welcomes the contribution of innovation and technology in financial services as a support for achieving its strategic objectives for financial inclusion and reduction of cash use in the economy. These objectives serve crucially to both the transmission of the monetary policy and the safeguarding of financial stability.
development, because for years now, the Central Bank has had to cope with  We should access the international  the conflict of interest of trying to  capital market when market conditions  conduct an independent monetary  are favourable to Sri Lanka to build a  policy while at the same time, raising  buffer to avoid unwarranted domestic  funds for the government as cheaply as  market pressure due to limited resource  possible. This conflict of interest poses  availability. This would broaden and  challenges to the monetary policy  Central Bank of Sri Lanka – ROAD MAP 2017  29  conduct of the Central Bank. Therefore,  Sri Lanka, implements a number of  taking away the debt management  concessionary development credit  function would enable the Central Bank  schemes through Participating Financial  to have a greater room to manoeuvre to  Institutions (PFIs), with a view to uplift  conduct an independent monetary  living standards to enhance financial  policy. literacy as well as financial inclusion, and  Foreign Exchange Management: With a view to further relaxing foreign exchange transactions, the Central Bank  to ensure balanced regional growth and equitable development.  A New Loan Scheme for the Micro,  has implemented several new policy  Small and Medium Scale Enterprises  measures in the recent past with the  (MSMEs): A new loan scheme for the  support of the government.

In line with this global tendency, the  The Central Bank, since the 1980s, has  Central Bank of Sri Lanka has also been  been pursuing monetary targeting (MT)  improving its monetary policy  as its monetary policy framework to  framework over the years. achieve price stability. Under this framework, monetary aggregates were used as a key nominal anchor in the conduct of monetary policy and the final objective of price stability was expected to be achieved by influencing money  In particular, the Central Bank has officially announced that the monetary targeting framework would be gradually replaced by migrating towards a flexible inflation targeting framework. aggregates. Reserve money was  Under this enhanced monetary policy  considered the operating target and  framework, the Central Bank would  broad money was used as the  focus on stabilising inflation in mid-  intermediate target of monetary policy  single digits over the medium-term,  under this framework. while supporting growth objectives and  Nevertheless, monetary targeting has  flexibility in exchange rate management. become a less meaningful framework for  Generally, an inflation targeting  monetary policy conduct, given issues  framework is characterised by an  such as the instability in the money  announced numerical inflation target, a  demand function amidst financial  medium-term inflation forecast, which  innovations and the weakening  facilitates forward looking monetary  relationship between money and  policy decision making and a higher  inflation.
Corporate governance regulations and best practices We have seen considerable reform in the regulations and codes of corporate governance, as well as the actual practice of corporate governance in the Asian Roundtable economies. For instance, Pakistan, Chinese Taipei and Thailand all adopted new codes in 2002, while new or updated codes have been adopted in Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Korea since 2003. This has yielded visible benefits. There is greater clarity in many Asian economies regarding the fiduciary duties of the directors of listed companies. There has also been progress made in terms of more independent directors being introduced to the boards of listed companies in the Asian region . Accounting rules have also been beefed up across the region. Some of the Asian Roundtable countries have made significant moves towards convergence with international standards and best practices on accounting. China, India, Indonesia and Philippines, have for example revised their accounting standards to bring them more in line with international standards. Corporate governance in Singapore Corporate governance in Singapore has similarly undergone evolution. I shall leave it to the speakers from the Singapore Institute of Directors and the Singapore Exchange to share on these more fully. I will talk briefly instead about our overall approach to corporate governance. Regulatory framework – balance of mandatory rules and best practices First, let me touch on the regulatory framework for corporate governance. In recent years, we have moved away from a merit-based approach towards a disclosure-based approach.

Institutional investors are allocating more funds to Asia, in search of higher yields and to benefit from the strong growth in the region. Improvements in corporate governance are part of this story. But even in this positive climate, we must remain wary of risks. Terrorism and avian flu are not distant threats. The abundance of liquidity in global and Asian markets has also led to a narrowing of credit spreads that is unlikely to persist for long. The repricing of risk may be triggered by a variety of events, arising for example from a geopolitical disturbance, an unexpected setback in economic growth, or the failure of a major borrower in global financial markets. The repricing of risk, unwinding of spreads and contraction of liquidity in higher risk assets and markets may be sudden, and may not be orderly. On the positive side, the innovations we have seen in global financial markets, including the extensive securitization of assets and growth of the derivatives market, has parceled out risks more widely and perhaps more evenly in the system. But it also makes the system less predictable in the event that things go wrong. We cannot predict how contagion will spread in global markets. It is critical that the hard lessons on corporate governance learnt during the fall out from the Asian crisis are not lost during the current period of benign economic growth and relatively easy availability of funds.