samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
This created an incentive for investors to be the first to get out whenever there was any uncertainty over the underlying value of the assets in the fund. By being first in line, they could exit while the fund could still repay at par, leaving others to bear any losses. The longer the investor waited, the greater the risk that the fund would be forced into the fire sale of assets to meet redemptions and end up “breaking the buck”. As the crisis unfolded, the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury and others took a series of actions to contain the spiral of funding runs and asset fire sales. First, the traditional lender of last resort function was strengthened through the introduction of the Term Auction Facility (TAF) and foreign exchange swaps with foreign central banks. Then, as the crisis intensified, lender of last resort liquidity provision was extended to directly backstop key wholesale funding markets and opened to certain nonbank firms. The Federal Reserve created a direct backstop to the tri-party repo system through the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF). When the Reserve Fund broke the buck after the failure of Lehman Brothers, precipitating a run on money market mutual funds, the Treasury guaranteed money market fund assets and the Fed introduced the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Fund Liquidation Facility (AMLF). The Fed also backstopped the commercial paper market (formerly funded in large part by money market mutual funds) by introducing the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF).

If we believe these activities provide essential credit intermediation services to the real economy that could not be easily replaced by other forms of intermediation, then the same logic that leads us to backstop commercial banking with a lender of last resort might lead us to backstop the banking activity taking place in the markets in a similar way. However, any expansion of access to a lender of last resort would require legislation and it would be essential to have the right quid pro quo – the commensurate expansion in the scope of prudential oversight. Substantial prudential regulation of entities – such as broker-dealers20 – that might gain access to an expanded lender of last resort would be required to mitigate moral hazard problems. For example, firms might take less care in managing liquidity and capital if they know they have a lender of last resort backstop and be subject to less counterparty and creditor discipline. In addition, the fact that an institution has access to a lender of last resort facility has value to the institution, even if that institution never taps the facility. Thus, without a corresponding imposition of offsetting obligations and costs, the granting of access would create a significant competitive advantage. Extension of discount window-type access to a set of nonbank institutions would therefore have to go hand-in-hand with prudential regulation of these institutions. Many thorny issues would have to be resolved. For example, who would have access and on what terms and conditions? How would foreign-owned broker-dealers be treated?
But the deficit that would be permissible – without endangering long-term confidence in fiscal policy – if activity were to go on weakening is an open question that we should be reluctant to put to the test. Budget policy’s other foundation stone, in addition to the targeted surplus, is the spending ceiling. This has been observed to date but the safety margins have shrunk. Additional savings will therefore be needed if activity weakens as much as now seems likely. To exceed the spending ceiling the first time it is exposed to serious strains would harm confidence in the budget system that has been established. For monetary policy the situation is also relatively good. Inflation has been low for a number of years, frequently lower in fact than the Riksbank’s 2 per cent target. Now that it has crept up above 2 per cent in recent months and thus exceeds our target, I am not aware that anyone has taken this as a sign that we do not take the target seriously. Inflation expectations, as measured by a variety of indicators, have also been well in line with our target. This is the fruit of the policy we have followed. Had we continually stretched the limits in the past, there would have been less room in which to take prompt action, as we did a fortnight ago, for instance. As you are all probably aware, the interest rate hike of 0.25 percentage points in July, to 4.25 per cent, was controversial.

Worldwide, policymakers and markets have anticipated that the US sluggish recovery could face further downside risks as US fiscal and monetary policies could run out of “bullets” to provide the much needed stimulus. For the Eurozone, doubts on the potential contagion of sovereign debt crisis to other European countries remain, reflecting the ineffective impact of domestic policy on the economic recovery in these economies. Looking ahead, a more positive sentiment on the Eurozone is contingent on the growth performance of Germany and France in particular. But, recent signs of economic weakness in external and domestic demand in these countries have been somewhat worrisome, and new data release could either calm or jerk market sentiments. Despite these rather gloomy prospects in advanced economies, I remain cautiously optimistic on the performance of Asian economies for the rest of this year. My assessment is conditional on the ability of Asian economies to maintain economic resilience and pursue an appropriate policy mix to preserve economic and financial stability. Evidenced since the 2009 US crisis, major economies in Asia have been able to cushion the adverse impact of global economic roller coaster by expanding domestic demand, supported by expansionary fiscal policy and monetary accommodation. Once world trade has resumed growth after the initial contraction in the aftermath of 2008 US crisis, Asian exports have continued to grow robustly on the back of regional trade expansion and strong growth in Asia, particularly China and India.
6  See, for example, Galbraith, J. and G. Tkacz, “How far can we forecast? : Forecast content horizons for some important macroeconomic time series”, Department of Economics Working Paper 13 (2006), McGill University. BIS Review 138/2007  3  out forecasting memory with the time series models. We were better than the model up to one year ahead and we had a forecasting memory four quarters ahead. Forecasts for employment If we instead look at employment forecasts, we believed that employment would rise more in 2003 and 2004 than it actually did (Figure 2). Instead, productivity growth was repeatedly stronger than expected. But on the other hand, employment has been stronger than expected in our assessments over the past year. The forecasts we have made for employment growth are on the whole more accurate than those of the time series model and the forecasting memory stretches eight quarters ahead (Figure 6). If, on the other hand, we only look at developments over the past two years, the Riksbank has succeeded in forecasting employment about as well as the time series model. This means that we have not succeeded in adding any further information on top of what the simple model can capture. How is the relationship between employment forecasts and outcome? The correlation is almost 0.9 one year ahead and just over 0.4 two years ahead (see Figure 9). The correlation is stronger than for GDP and agrees with the picture we obtained when we compared the forecasts with the time series model.

While the openness makes it easier to evaluate monetary policy, one can say that the evaluations are also an important part of the openness. Only a couple of decades ago central banks were fairly secretive. Very little of what was carried out became known to the general public. There have been considerable changes since then. The process of development from uncommunicativeness to increasing openness that has taken place at central banks around the world has probably contributed to the success of monetary policy. What I mean here is that they have succeeded in anchoring inflation expectations at a low and stable level. The Riksbank is one of the most open central banks of all. We began publishing our inflation forecasts in 1997 and since then we have gradually become more open in our view of economic developments. Other central banks are also moving towards greater openness. For instance, only a few days ago the Federal Reserve in the United States began publishing forecasts four times a year instead of twice. They have also extended the forecast horizon from two to three years, just as we at the Riksbank did a couple of years ago. It is thus essential that monetary policy is evaluated and discussed. This applies both to the principles behind monetary policy and to how well we succeed in meeting our objective. To make this possible there must be a clear basis for the decision.
Recognizing this vulnerability, the Group of Twenty (G20) in its 2009 Pittsburgh Summit statement stipulated that all standardized derivative contracts would be moved to central clearing, and that the remaining non-standard derivatives would be subject to higher capital requirements.2 While there will inevitably be a residual share of derivatives that do not lend themselves to standardization, authorities need to continue to work collaboratively to keep this residual share to a minimum. Why is standardization so important? Standardization has advantages in terms of increasing transparency, price discovery and liquidity. Standardization is also important because it allows the derivatives to be centrally cleared in a CCP. Without central clearing, participants have bilateral credit exposures to each of their counterparties. Moreover, they cannot fully assess their credit risk exposures in this framework since there is no information on the other derivative contracts that their counterparties have with other market participants. Central clearing replaces this complex web with a single set of relationships between the firm and the CCP as its counterparty. This allows for netting, so that a firm’s risk is limited to its net exposure to the central counterparty. This both reduces risk and increases transparency. 2  See Group of Twenty (2009) The G20 Pittsburgh Summit Leaders’ Statement. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  Consequently, members of the CCP have less of an incentive to pull back in periods of stress and this makes the market more resilient.

Implications for the exchange rate  In principle, the following applies: the more the single currency proves to be a stable and strong currency, the greater will be its advantages for Switzerland, too. With the launch of the euro, the standard deviation of the trade-weighted exchange rate of the Swiss franc vis-à-vis the currencies of the European trading partners has narrowed considerably. The decrease in exchange rate volatility is due to the fact that the euro - as already mentioned - has to some extent replaced weak and extremely volatile currencies. This is a welcome advantage for the Swiss economy, which is closely interconnected with the EU. The volatility of the exchange rate is one thing; the level of the exchange rate is another. Since the beginning of 1999, the Swiss franc has appreciated by more than 9% against the euro. In the  BIS Review 60/2002  3  beginning, the development of the Swiss franc exchange rate against the euro was relatively stable. However, in the aftermath of 11 September, investors became increasingly risk-averse. This led to a further strengthening of the Swiss franc, which had already appreciated during the year 2000. The strength of the Swiss currency is a considerable challenge for our export-oriented economy. One has to put things in perspective, though. First, rather than on the nominal exchange rate, the competitiveness of the Swiss economy depends on the real exchange rate, which is corrected for inflation.
The challenges facing the European economy are considerable and set in an institutional context that has been disrupted by the “no” votes in the recently held French and Dutch referendums on the ratification of the Constitutional Treaty. The difficulties of entrenching growth that is sufficient and consistent with the European model and with the general public’s expectations may have influenced the disappointing results returned by these referendums. But this is something which is closely related to the difficulties at the national level in pushing through the necessary reforms and explaining them convincingly. The significance and implications of these results should not be underestimated. But they need not check European integration. Rather, they should act as a spur to further integration by means of European and national policies that respond to the demands of the public. In any event, European integration has not been a linear process in the past and I am fully confident that the European Union will be capable of overcoming these difficulties just as it always has when obstacles have stood in its way. On the plus side in the current circumstances is the fact that it has a currency shared by a large number of countries and a federally organised central bank which are a focal point of stability and exemplify Europeans’ ability to embark on and co-ordinate ambitious undertakings that contribute effectively to the collective well-being.

Encik Adnan Zaylani Mohamad Zahid: Prevention of corruption in project management Opening remarks by Mr Encik Adnan Zaylani Mohamad Zahid, Assistant Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Talk entitled "Prevention of Corruption in Project Management", Kuala Lumpur, 3 April 2017. * * * It is my great honour and pleasure to welcome officers from the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), particularly the speaker for today, Assistant Commissioner Mr Mohan Munusamy. A warm welcome is also extended to the project teams comprising the steering committees, contractors and consultants. My appreciation also goes to all my fellow Bank staff who are here today. In more recent times, the Bank and MACC have collaborated on a number of fronts. The recent strategic cooperation between the Bank and MACC, together with LHDN to combat financial crime, particularly corruption, signifies our commitment to work together in this area. From the Bank’s perspective, this demonstrates our effort to instil integrity for and beyond our regulatees in the financial market. Integrity is taken very seriously at the Bank where we continually and consciously maintain the highest standards, given that we enforce these standards on our regulatees in our supervisory capacity. We proactively manage integrity hazards and corruption risks and tackle those risks pre-emptively. Corruption is not simply a crime on its own. Its consequences can be far-reaching in terms of economic losses and irreparable reputation damage. Thus, we must actively keep abreast of the management of integrity risks.
The stronger boost to consumption, in a context of earlier closing of the output gap and increased cost pressures, adjusts our inflation projection up. Core inflation will close the year slightly below 4 percent annually. Higher energy prices will continue to dominate the volatile component. Thus, after rising in the second half of the year, total annual CPI inflation at December 2021 will be 4.4 percent. In 2022 and 2023, as fiscal and monetary impulses normalize, inflation will converge to 3 percent and remain there until the end of the policy horizon, that is, the second quarter of 2023 (Figure 17). To sum up, the higher activity forecast for this year is largely explained by the increase in private consumption, responding to the many stimulus measures adopted after the last Report. A significant number of these measures reflect that the fiscal policy is considerably more expansionary than previously expected. The outlook for investment and exports, on the other hand, is more limited, with a tendency to decelerate in the former. Thus, a recovery scenario notoriously biased towards consumption is emerging, which, if maintained or deepened with more procyclical policies, could incubate larger macroeconomic imbalances, a risk that should be duly monitored. IV. Re-estimating the structural parameters of the Chilean economy  The structural parameters correspond to longer-term estimates of different economic variables: namely GDP growth, the neutral MPR, and the prices of selected commodities, which provide context to long-term projections and monetary policy formulation.

Today, in my personal judgement, it might be considered that the first criteria (with a headline inflation significantly above 2% since summer last year and expected to remain there for months ahead), and the third one (with underlying inflation around or above 2% by most definitions) are fulfilled. At this stage, according to our December forecasts, the remaining one (about inflation remaining at or above 2% for the rest of the projection horizon) is not met. This could possibly change in the next quarters. However, we should be mindful of the uncertainty surrounding our 3year inflation projections in the extraordinary context we are going through, especially when price pressures are originating from sector-specific supply constraints with moderate signs of contagion so far to wages. And there is one additional element, calendar based, introduced by the sequencing: any rate hike should only happen after date X, the end of the net asset purchases. We should not pre-empt this calendar: it is about the credibility of the sequencing, and also about some caution on the most fragile of our criteria – the medium-term forecastbased one. This brings me to a key reminder: the forward guidance never calls for an automatic decision, and always preserves our possible assessment. In our own wording, it is an “expectation”, and the Governing Council has to “see” and “judge”: even if and when the three criteria will be fulfilled, we could take into consideration exogenous or exceptional contingencies, including geopolitical ones.
Machinery and equipment posted negative y-o-y growth in the third and fourth quarters of 2013, while construction and other works decelerated significantly during the same period (figure 6). BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  This correction to investment growth owes to various factors. For one, there is the aforementioned investment cycle of mining and related sectors, plus the postponement of some investment plans. Although this was an expected development, its magnitude was unclear. Another factor is the low basis for comparison of the same months of 2012, which were swollen by unusual imports of transportation material, which affects the y-o-y variation of capital goods imports. There is also the downturn of expectations reflected in business confidence surveys and our business perception report Informe de Percepciones de Negocios. Lastly, there is the drop of public investment in real terms during the last quarter of the year, and the depreciation of the real exchange rate, which raises the costs of foreign capital goods. Accordingly, private growth forecasts for this year have been revised downward. Our March Economic Expectations Survey lowered GDP growth in 2014 from 4.1 percent in November to 3.7 percent in March. Thus, the baseline scenario of this Report has lowered the GDP growth estimate for 2014. The Board estimates that this year our economy will grow between 3 and 4 percent (3.75 to 4.75 percent in December), that is, less than last year and below trend.

Shkëlqim Cani: Review of the Albanian economy Statement by Dr Shkëlqim Cani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, for Euromoney Yearbooks, Global banking and financial policy review, Tirana, 9 August 2004. *  *  *  The Albanian economy experienced a recovered pulse of economic growth over the year 2003. Positive developments are marked in respect of consolidating the country’s macroeconomic stability, economic growth and a sound development of the financial system. A recovery in economic activity and 6% growth of Gross Domestic Product in real terms was proved by all sectors of the economy, but was particularly evident in the construction, transport and services sectors, which are the most dynamic sectors of Albanian economy. The year 2003 was characterised by a low inflation rate, within 2%-4% of the targeted range. The inflation rate as of December was 3.3%, meeting the Bank of Albania (BoA) target. Despite the various factors this low rate emerged from a diligent management of the domestic demand as an outcome of appropriate fiscal and monetary policies. BoA’s monetary policy has been a moderate one throughout 2003. Such a trend will continue during 2004 and was recently reflected by the reduction of the core interest rate in the economy. Since April 2003 the REPO rate has been lowered by 2.5%. The 6% REPO rate, decided on May 12, 2004, is the lowest ever in the Albanian economy. The policy aims to reduce borrowing costs in the economy and maintain price and financial stability.
•  To avoid possible issues related to a preferred creditor status, securities bought under the OMT will accept the same treatment (pari pasu) as purchases by private or other creditors, in accordance with the terms of such bonds. This ensures that any interventions via the OMT do not impinge on the status of private investors. The aim of the programme is to accompany countries and their sovereign to regain stable access to capital markets. •  The programme focuses mainly on the shorter end of the yield curve and in particular on sovereign bonds with a maturity between one and three years. Steering short-term market rates falls squarely into the realm of monetary policy. The interventions address disorderly market conditions and are aimed at reducing excessive market volatility. •  The Governing Council will monitor the conditions for interventions based on a large set of indicators and will assess their effectiveness to decide on the continuation of interventions. I am convinced that the new elements in sum make the OMT a much better programme than the SMP previously was. This new programme is a clear example of how far the ECB fulfils contemporaneously the role as a stability guardian and as crisis manager. By guarding the stability of the euro in the entire euro area and countering redenomination risks, the ECB plays a central role in managing expectations in the crisis. A question remains: What will be the role of central banks after the crisis?

The fiscal authorities have no choice but to come to terms with the need to bring about a better balance between taxes and spending and to not only bend the curve, but reverse the inexorable growth in federal debt accumulation. This is the stuff of the great negotiations taking place among the executive branch and the two houses of Congress. This is no small chore. The parties involved must stop the hemorrhaging without inducing cardiac arrest; they must solve the long-run debt and deficit problem without, in the short run, pushing the economy back into recession, creating still more unemployment. And they must not only confront their addiction to debt and spending beyond their means, but they must reorganize the tax system, redirect the money they collect and rewrite the regulations they create so as to be competitive in a world that wants to beat us at our own game. This is an essential point. It will not be enough to reach a deal on the debt ceiling or on partially reining in deficits. In the post-Cold War, post-Bamboo Curtain world, there are many governments and great swathes of people outside the United States that want to attract investment and improve their lot. We are being challenged as the place to invest job-creating capital. Our fiscal and regulatory authorities do not operate in a vacuum; we live in a globalized, interconnected world where money is free to go to wherever it earns the best return.