samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
This opens up the possibility of consolidated payments, of liquidity management in one location and of optimising the cash flow. The European Commission has stepped in with the Payment Services Directive which, among other changes, ensures that the full amount of a transaction is transmitted and that payments are executed more quickly, thus saving time and money. As the transition to SEPA had to speed up, the European Council adopted in February 2012 a new regulation establishing 1 February 2014 as the deadline for the migration to SEPA of credit transfers and direct debits made in euro. This means that users, including corporates, need to migrate too! SEPA is also about innovation; the project is active in innovative fields such as einvoicing and e-reconciliation within Europe, which can offer huge savings for corporates in the handling of payments. The ECB, in its role as a co-chair of the SEPA Council together with the European Commission, stands ready to pursue a dialogue with all stakeholders on these important matters. Conclusion Let me to bring my remarks today to a conclusion. In the last quarter of 2011 the euro area economy was facing increasing cross-countries heterogeneities and, overall, a clear risk of a credit crunch. The increasing pressures on banks’ funding and capital positions could have led to a scaling-back of banks’ lending activity to the private sector.

Since the banking system as whole cannot return to equilibrium (after the three-year LTROs, the supply of reserves is inelastic in the short term), this behaviour will put pressure on asset prices and (as soon as the economy reaches its full potential) on consumer prices as well, unless an appropriate monetary policy stance is taken. These effects and the speed at which they may materialise are difficult to quantify as cases of protracted periods of excess liquidity have been rare in the past. The experience of Japan does not suggest direct effects on inflation. In the United Sates and United Kingdom, there is also no clear-cut evidence so far of a pick-up in monetary and credit aggregates spurred by excess liquidity. However, it is fair to say that in case of a sustained and more robust recovery in economic activity, excess reserves may have a potential macroeconomic impact by allowing a build-up of significant asset price misalignments, or by distorting the banks’ incentive to supply funding to the economy. Moreover, in the face of asset market fragmentation, such asset price misalignments are more likely to build up in countries where banks have ample liquidity positions. There is nothing, however, in this reasoning that prevents the ECB from tackling these effects by increasing policy rates, whenever the Governing Council deems it necessary to do so. Our operational framework makes it possible to steer a whole range of money market  6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  rates in line with the desired monetary policy stance.
Finance has come a long way- from serving the basic societal needs to save and borrow at its infancy to its role today as the backbone of the global economy. In ancient days, kings and rulers look to astronomers, magicians and soothsayers to tell them about the future. The Greeks for example, consulted the Oracle at Delphi before embarking on major decisions. The world today is much wiser I hope, and we no longer believe that the future can be predicted with absolute certainty. What finance and technology can bring for the future of human kind is so exciting that it can go beyond containment. Yet if left on its own, the outcome can be perilous. Resisting them, however, is not an option. While we embrace them as they synthesise and evolve, we also need to shape and control them such that they would not lead us to face extreme financial market fragilities and devastation. In the words of Nassim Taleb, we need to make ourselves “antifragile” – not only able to withstand shocks, disruptions and volatility but able to position ourselves to take advantage of it. But I always like the quote by Peter Drucker, “The best way to predict the future, is to create it.”  5/5  BIS central bankers' speeches

Furthermore, cooperative efforts in promoting the practice of information sharing and capacity building will help strengthen competency of regional central banks to safeguard against external shocks and disturbances. Although the practice of information dissemination among the regional peers is nothing new, there is still room for improvement to facilitate a more structured approach and timely delivery. Ladies and gentlemen, these are just some food for thought to precede the more detailed discussions and lively debate to follow. I certainly look forward to hearing the views of Mr. Caruana, who has been among those at the centre of the challenges facing us. His perspectives will be valuable for our further discussions and deliberations. And we will learn more from Mr. Glenn Stevens, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia; Mr. Kiyohiko Nishimura, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Japan; and Mr. Heng Swee Keat, Managing Director of The Monetary Authority of Singapore, who will lead the discussions focusing on their respective country’s experiences. This will be in keeping with our tradition in learning from one another to further enhance SEANZA cooperation and promote greater stability in the region. In concluding my remarks, I would like to reiterate to you my warmest welcome, and may I also wish us all a successful and fruitful meeting, which would hopefully bring us on the right track towards weathering the storm in anticipation of sunnier days. Thank you. 2  BIS Review 120/2008
If I see inflation continuing to rise and, most importantly, inflationary expectations beginning to spread, I will be the first out of the box to advocate the removal of the substantial monetary accommodation now in place. I cannot think of anything more damaging to the welfare of hard-working Americans who have jobs, those who are unemployed and barely eking out a living, retirees who are earning minimum returns on their savings, or any consumer already stretched thin, than to have their purchasing power reduced by still higher inflation. Yet even though I am a central banker and am professionally disposed to being a worrywart, I am more optimistic about the economic outlook than the consensus. American businesses and workers have made very important improvements in their efficiency and competitiveness that will aid growth. If we can add to that a sound long-run budget deal, the recovery could gain even more strength. We are a resilient people. I know it is fashionable to think we have somehow been infected with an economic stasis with no way out, but as a Texan and an American, I am culturally unable to accept that view. During the Q&A that followed a recent speech of mine abroad – in New York – a questioner cited the sickly economic pace of the first quarter and then recited the consensus view that very weak growth will likely ensue for the rest of the year and beyond. In response, I cautioned that forecasting based on current trends can be very misleading.

Some of the more idealistic aspirations for Bretton Woods – such as the creation of an international central bank and new currency – were never likely to be adopted and look impossible absent a world government. But an arbiter of the international monetary system can play a more limited role – not so much the referee brandishing the yellow and red cards of the football pitch, more the cricket umpire warning the players not to attack each other verbally and making it clear publicly when they believe the players are not abiding with the spirit of the game. Invoking the MCC’s “spirit of cricket”, when a country knows that a policy such as an exchange rate regime requires modification, the player should walk. Indeed, the players might in time come to realise that most games benefit when played according to a clear and agreed set of rules. So although it is not an international central bank, and the SDR is not a currency, the IMF still has a role to play. Given that most systemically important countries allow their exchange rates to float, the Fund cannot have an independent remit for global monetary stability. Hence, the Fund’s role should be to support national policy makers by providing expert analysis about external risks to their domestic monetary policy objectives. National policies which appear sustainable in terms of countries’ own objectives may interact and, through the resulting balance sheet effects, create risks to those same countries further ahead.
Its final form will be a joint declaration by the Government and the Central Bank, like that dating from 2001. The discourse will therefore continue. In this context, I would like to thank the Confederation of Icelandic Employers for having this topic on its agenda today and for giving me the opportunity to express my views on the subject. But we must keep one thing in mind. The new framework will be better than the one we had before the crisis, but it will not be a panacea. Monetary policy is limited in terms of what it can deliver in the long run, and it will continue to be implemented under conditions of uncertainty in a constantly changing world. Under most circumstances, however, it should be able to provide us with medium-term price stability, and that is no small achievement. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5

With interest rates set at low levels, financial repression curtailed domestic resource mobilization thus making the economy dependent on foreign savings as reflected in huge foreign debt at the time.   Low interest rates provided an incentive for fiscal indiscipline as the government obtained almost zero-interest-denominated resources to finance its deficit. In the state-owned banking sector, poor lending decisions (often politically influenced) and low repayment rates ultimately led to large budgetary bailouts.   In the face of high inflation rates and fixed nominal interest rate, real interest rates remained negative for the larger part of the period, leading to low domestic savings and other forms of capital flight. A growing awareness of these economic costs led to financial “liberalization” as the dominant policy paradigm. Zambia embraced financial-sector liberalization policy prescription and embarked on a fairly ambitious reform program. This program entailed a variety of measures including the liberalization of interest rates; the establishing of the freedom and the procedures for entry into and orderly exit from the financial sector; the reduction of commercial banks’ reserves and liquidity requirements; the elimination of credit allocation directives; the elimination of preferential credit at concessional interest rates; the liberalization of the exchange rate; and the removal of controls on the current and capital accounts of the balance of payments. Due to liberalisation, the banking environment in Zambia has become competitive as banks compete for the share of the customer deposits and good quality credit. Prior to 2005, the banking industry’s balance sheet was largely concentrated in Government Securities.
See Mundell, R. (2002), “The Birth of Coinage”, Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series, No 0102–08, Columbia University, New York, February. 3 In ancient Rome, the first form of sovereign money (called “Asse di Bronzo”) was introduced by the King Servius  Tullius in the sixth century BC. See Forzoni, A. (2003), “Le origini della moneta a Roma: la scelta del bronzo e il valore fiduciario dell’asse”, in Milano, L. and Parise, N. (eds. ), “Il regolamento degli scambi nell’antichità”, Laterza, Bari. The “Asse di Bronzo” was a coin made in bronze weighing one “libbra” (one pound). See De Bonis, R. and Vangelisti, M., (2019), “Moneta. Dai buoi di Omero ai Bitcoin”, Il Mulino, Bologna. 4 See Cipolla, C.M. (2001), “Le avventure della lira”, Il Mulino, Bologna. 5 Marco Polo, Il Milione, capitolo 95. 6 Public consultation on a digital euro. 7 Harari Y.N. (2014), “Sapiens. A Brief History of Humankind”, Vintage Books, London, page 201. 8 Privacy-enhancing techniques and auditability are discussed in the fourth phase of Project Stella, see ECB and  Bank of Japan (2020), “Balancing confidentiality and auditability in a distributed ledger environment”, Project Stella, February. Similarly, anonymity vouchers are discussed in ECB (2019), “ Exploring anonymity in central bank digital currencies”, In Focus, No 4, December. 9 Anderton, R., Jarvis, V., Labhard, V., Morgan, J., Petroulakis, F. and Vivian, L. (2020), “ Virtually everywhere:  digitalisation and the euro area and EU economies”, Occasional Paper Series, No 244, ECB, Frankfurt am Main, June.

Today, support for the single currency stands at record high levels.15 To be successful, a digital euro would also have to enjoy strong support from the public. It would be a digital symbol of progress and integration in Europe. And it would support the international role of the euro. Issuing a digital euro would be relevant for almost everything the ECB does. And it would affect our society as a whole. This is why we are seeking, through the public consultation we are launching today, an intense and open dialogue on our recent report with citizens and other stakeholders. Together with European institutions and authorities, in primis the European Parliament, we will 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  discuss the framework that would be necessary to introduce a digital euro. As co-legislators and representatives of European citizens, you will have a fundamental role to play in the process. I therefore very much look forward to our first exchange today. 1 ECB (2020), Report on a digital euro, Frankfurt am Main. 2 “Sometime in the first millennium BC, coinage was invented probably in Asia Minor, and it rapidly spread  throughout in the Mediterranean area….Wherever Greeks settled coinage followed. In the span of hardly a century the innovation had become established around the Aegean area, Sicily, southern Italy, southern France, Spain…. We know that by the end of the sixth century BC most of the city-states in the Greek world had their own coins…”.
13  That’s one reason why the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee has commissioned an in-depth review of how the use of derivatives in the non-bank financial system may be shaping the dynamics of markets. 14  12  Investors who base decisions on value-at-risk (‘VaR’) and assess those risks using market measures can be guided into thinking their portfolio is safer. In some cases, this general behaviour is an explicit investment strategy: some investment funds explicitly try to keep the implied volatility of their portfolio at a fixed level. 13 See the market monitor of the Office of Financial Research for the second quarter of 2017: ‘The volatility paradox: tranquil markets may harbour hidden risks’. 12  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  12  We need to keep pace. And investors should too. Accidents can be avoided if driving speeds are based on the road conditions ahead rather than the price of insurance. ii) Liquidity mismatch in corporate bond markets The second development raising questions about market resilience is actually a combination of two changes in recent years. First, market-makers (‘dealers’) have become less active in their market making. This matters because they play an important role in warehousing bonds between the time a seller wants to sell and the point at which a willing buyer can be found. Our research suggests that, in response to asset sales by bond funds, dealers are less willing to see their inventories of corporate bonds increase.

Bond prices are stretched as investors seem to have become less concerned about their safety. The picture in the UK bond market has an added nuance. Equity prices for UK-focussed companies have underperformed international equity markets as investors have factored in perceived lower, and downside risks to, future growth. 7  And yet, sterling corporate bond markets are stretched like other bond markets. 8  To get a better read on how stretched, we need to account for the lengthening over time in the average duration of sterling corporate bonds and the fall in the average credit rating (which other things equal should raise risk premia). When we do that, we see that the joint compensation investors are demanding for interest rate and credit risk is… …zero. There is an inconsistency. If investors are confident in risk-free rates remaining low because they see downside risks to the economy, it seems odd that that they should at the same time be demanding less, rather than more, compensation for credit risk. There’s more than a flavour of interest rate cake having and credit risk cake eating. The picture in parts of the UK commercial property market is similar. At the UK-wide level, commercial property prices rest on persistently low interest rates but at the same time, they’re factoring in typical rental growth prospects and degree of uncertainty around them. 7  UK government bond yields have also fallen relative to other sovereigns.
Second, there is the question of the relative weight of exchange rate stability, as is emphasised in the Stand-By Arrangement with the IMF, and forward-looking monetary policy, which aims to anchor inflation expectations and attain the inflation target while combating the slack in the economy. The third complicating factor is the interplay between monetary policy and plans to lift restrictions on capital outflows. But before I turn to these questions, I would like to discuss the current outlook and future prospects for the Icelandic economy. I believe we are at economic crossroads, as we have taken considerable strides towards stability, whereas robust recovery has been elusive. First, let us consider the signs of stability. External imbalances have vanished. The staggering current account deficit from the upswing years has turned into a sizeable underlying surplus, which excludes interest that has been accrued by the estates of the failed banks but will only be paid in part. The underlying current account surplus supports the exchange rate, but the capital controls do so as well. The króna stopped falling in mid-2009 and has needed no support from foreign exchange market intervention since early November 2009. So far in 2010, the króna has appreciated by over 12% in trade-weighted terms. Since the end of August, the Central Bank has actually been leaning in the other direction and has bought about 3 b.kr. worth of foreign currency.

In order to achieve nominal stability, monetary policy must provide a nominal anchor. Since the Second World War, there have been several monetary policy reforms in Norway. In the period between 1972 and 1986, monetary policy was to a limited extent focused on stabilising the rise in prices. During this period, inflation was high and variable. Consumer prices in Norway rose almost twice as much as in Germany. At the same time, the value of the Norwegian krone against the German mark was almost halved, contributing to high imported inflation. From the mid-1980s, during and after the credit bubble and the cost shock, it was recognised that a substantial revision of economic policy would be necessary and that the problems created by inflation had to be taken seriously. From 1986 to 1992, Norway operated a fixed exchange rate regime. The fixed exchange rate was the anchor for inflation in Norway. The difference between inflation in Norway and Germany narrowed substantially. Deteriorating competitiveness due to high wage growth would no longer be remedied by means of devaluations. Substantial emphasis was placed on the importance of wage formation for developments in employment. Only when wage growth dropped below the level of our trading partners did unemployment begin to fall and the manufacturing sector began to pick up. Thus, the fixed exchange rate policy was not introduced in order to strengthen the internationally exposed business sector. On the contrary, it was a breach in the approach whereby monetary policy and frequent devaluations had been used to shelter these sectors.
Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Overview of scenario thinking and planning Official remarks by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia and Chairman of the International Centre for Leadership in Finance (ICLIF) Board of Directors, at the ICLIF's Seminar on “Overview of Scenario Thinking and Planning”, Kuala Lumpur, 5 October 2006. *  *  *  I am very pleased to welcome you this morning to ICLIF's Scenario Thinking and Planning Seminar. There has been growing interest amongst corporations and policy makers in the usefulness of scenario thinking and planning as a strategic tool. In the current environment that is rapidly changing and highly uncertain with new risks emerging, we need to be better positioned to be prepared for the future. Scenario thinking and planning may offer a solution to managing such situations. Good scenarios have been used most productively by many multinationals to challenge perceived business expectations. Scenario analysis and planning have also been extensively used by policymakers to ensure a state of readiness to respond to sudden or significant changes in the environment. Scenario analysis and planning is particularly relevant to the financial services sector in which the pace of change has accelerated exponentially in this recent decade. Unpredictable shifts in the environment have also heightened the uncertainty and increased the unpredictability of the future. Thinking about the possibilities and probabilities thus becomes relevant. Scenario analysis and planning offers a solution.

3  Third quarter 2011, the latest period for which data are available. 4  The federal public balance is roughly equivalent, though not identical, to the federal budget deficit; the overall public balance numbers provided here include state and local government. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  that countries with significant trade surpluses will need to reorient their economies over time toward increasing domestic demand and running smaller trade surpluses. To sum up, the United States faces substantial fiscal challenges in the years ahead. And, in one important respect–net interest expense–these challenges may be more daunting than fully appreciated currently. In particular, the interest bill on the growing federal debt burden has been temporarily restrained by the low level of interest rates and high level of remittances from the Federal Reserve to the Treasury. In addition, while significant fiscal adjustments must take place, it is important to recognize that such efforts will necessitate offsetting shifts in private domestic spending and production both here and abroad. Finding ways for these adjustments to occur smoothly is an important challenge for economic policy. Thank you for your kind attention. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  10  BIS central bankers’ speeches