samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The week of 12–18 March 2018 is internationally known as the Money Week. Initiated by Child and Youth Finance International, with the support of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and adopted by more than 23.000 organisations across the globe, the Money Week is an annual financial awareness campaign built to inspire children and young people to learn about money matters, livelihoods and entrepreneurship. The celebration of this Week aims at raising the awareness of the younger generation to be responsible future citizens and capable of making well-informed financial decisions Following the tradition from the previous years, the Bank of Albania, in cooperation with the Albanian Association of Banks, with the support of the Ministry of Education, Sports, and Youth, like many other institutions worldwide, will organize various activities to involve children and young people, teaching them how to manage money, to save money, to think financially, to understand the changes in the economic systems where they live, to earn income through entrepreneurship, and set the foundations for their future through financial literacy. In the light of these objectives, during the Week, a number of activities will be organised such as lectures, contests, and visits to commercial banks and the Museum, aimed at including as many students as possible. This year’s motto “Money: You reap what you sow” highlights the importance of money matters as a necessary means to achieve and maintain welfare.

The activities that will take place during this Week seek to draw the attention of the children and young people to the significance of personal finance and the impact of well-informed decisions on the personal success of each one of us individually, and of the whole society. 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  Like in any other educational activity of the Bank of Albania, beyond the message that we want to convey, we consider that the inspiration, originality and pro-active thinking are determinant elements for an effective comprehension of a complex, at the same time practical, topic such as finances. We may proudly say that all the submissions for the contests are characterised by these elements, thus demonstrating that, though challenging, the financial education of children and young people may be and is possible. Moreover, their work and commitment is an incentive to us to introduce more ambitious projects and expand this activity, geographically, each year. The contests for students from nine-year schools and high schools have been welcomed and the number of participants has been higher each year. This year, around 55 nine-year schools, 14 high schools, 8 universities and over 1000 pupils and students in 14 cities were involved. This success is also owed to the teachers and professors, whose passion has contributed to materialising all these efforts.
The United States regained strength in the second quarter, thanks to the good performance of private consumption and investment, and better expectations. In Latin America, the growth forecast has been lowered for this year and next in most countries, although with some heterogeneity. In China, government policies have managed to stabilize growth. Our baseline scenario assumes that our trading partners will grow an average 3.6 percent in 2014 and 2015, two tenths of a point less than foreseen in June (table 1). The baseline scenario assumes that the slowdown in the domestic economy will be more persistent than previously expected. Thus, as anticipated, the GDP growth forecast for this  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  year is adjusted to between 1.75 and 2.25 percent, below the June estimate. In 2015, consistently with the low basis of comparison and limited economic dynamism, we expect GDP to grow between 3.0 and 4.0 percent annually. The recovery, though moderate, is based on a greater monetary stimulus and lower market interest rates; stronger fiscal stimulus; increased trading partners’ growth; a real depreciation of the peso; and improved private expectations. As already noted, for this projection, the Board assumes that the medium-term growth of the Chilean economy is between 4 and 4.5 percent. The domestic demand growth forecast for 2014 has also been corrected downward, particularly for investment. This change responds to actual second-quarter indicators that fell short of the forecast, and to the Capital Goods Corporation’s investment projects that were revised downward in the last survey.

And I find it encouraging that Citi has been at the fore of this refocus on the basics of banking and finance. You’ve gone through a process of introspection in the last few years, because of the crisis and through the crisis, and you’ve come out stronger. Not just because of better capital and liquidity – although that’s obviously a pre-requisite for strength in the post-crisis era. But more fundamentally because you’re asking yourselves important questions about culture – questions about responsibility, and about the source of your profitability as an enterprise that intends to be around for a long time to come. So the story of Citi, and like the story of several other global institutions, is also about the recurring importance of certain basics. And the most important basics in banking have to be about serving your clients and growing with your clients, and about managing risks well. There’s a risk that we’re placing a too much importance in recent policy debates on the structure of banking. You read the headlines, you’ll find a continuing debate about how large banks should be, whether we should have narrow banks or universal banks, about the role of national banks and global banks, about the role of commercial banks versus investment banks and the rest of the shadow banking system. These are important questions of structure, but I think we risk an overemphasis on structure and an inadequate focus on the culture of banking and finance, and an inadequate emphasis on the need for active supervision.
1 Among other important tasks in coming years and decades, the government would need return from financial assets to provide for future pensioners. We can probably expect that productivity and real wages will continue to grow in parallel, and future pensioners would most likely want to take part in that welfare gain. This may imply that government expenditures will increase more than the overall growth in the economy, as the number of pensioners is growing fast and the demand for healthcare also will be higher. Although real wages increase, it will not be easy to raise the tax level. Thus, the government will need return from financial assets to finance the increased expenditure for pensioners. International capital markets have played a crucial role in allowing us to follow the strategy for extraction of petroleum. We drew heavily on borrowing opportunities abroad when the petroleum industry was being built up. We did the same in order to expand welfare schemes and to finance the countercyclical policy of the mid-1970s and the early 1990s. Over the last decade and a half, international capital markets have enabled us to convert national oil and gas resources into equities and bonds abroad in the Fund. The implementation of our investment strategy is dependent on free capital movements. I would like to remind the audience that only some twenty five to thirty years ago we had very rigorous capital restrictions ourselves.

These foreign inflows were sufficient to cover the current account deficit and provided the premises for a stable exchange rate. During 2013, the gross foreign currency reserve hiked by about EUR 42.5 million, settling at EUR 2,015 million, sufficient to cover 4.6 months of imports and  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  170% of the short-term foreign debt. In spite of improvements, the balance of the external sector remains fragile. I would like to reiterate our appeal for taking the measures to boost the competitiveness of Albanian products and create a favourable climate to attract foreign investments. During 2013, the Government pursued an expansionary fiscal policy, providing a positive impulse to economic activity. In annual terms, budget expenditure increased 4.7%, whereas revenues fell 0.5%, from a year earlier. Government’s fiscal behaviour increased the budget deficit to ALL 65.4 billion, standing 42.7% higher than a year earlier. Last year’s fiscal expansion increased the public debt and public finance’s fragility, adding thus concerns over fiscal sustainability in the medium and long run. Considering the public debt as one of the biggest structural weaknesses of the Albanian economy, we have called for measures to be taken for ensuring the long-term soundness of public finances, and eventually welcomed such measures. In this context, we think that there is still much to be done, especially with regard to adopting a transparent and efficient fiscal rule. Financial markets were characterised by good liquidity conditions and low inflation risk premia.
To cite some examples, insolvency caused by a regulatory change, or by customer behaviour regarding the use of a specific pollutant technology, would be treated as credit risk; loss of image by a bank, associated with the financing of a specific pollutant economic activity, would be analysed as reputational or business risk; a significant loss in the market value of specific collateral or of a certain commodity, such as oil, would be considered market risk; and lastly, losses at a branch caused by flooding would be deemed operational risk. In any event, when measuring and quantifying these risks, we encounter methodological difficulties. Clearly, the horizon in which the effects of physical – and possibly transition – risks are observed may be far greater than that generally used for risk assessment in the inhouse models that banks use to measure credit risk, let alone market risk. The modelling of the environmental transition poses a difficulty in that it did not take place in the past; accordingly, this risk cannot be estimated and validated on the basis of past experience. Nonetheless, in our recent past there have been clear examples of other “transitions”, even though they cannot be classed as environmental ones. We can readily find examples of solvent, strong companies that have lost their leadership position, or even disappeared, in just a few short years, having been unable to adapt to technological change or changing consumer behaviour. In short, because they did not adapt to a change in the environment. I would highlight two points.

Theoretical models often assume the existence of a central bank reaction function. A well-known reaction function can be a powerful tool in stabilizing output and inflation because yield curves can adjust in anticipation of future policy in line with the evolving outlook for the economy. To return to my football theme, Mervyn King referred to this as the Maradona theory of interest rates. But credible reaction functions don’t fall from the sky and need to be earned by communicating and acting consistently through time. We are and will remain predictable for our stakeholders. Through its forward guidance, the Governing Council has also indicated its intention to move gradually and in accordance with the data. Faced with uncertainty about the strength of the transmission mechanism, we should be guided by pragmatism - the level of inflation relative to the medium-term objective and gradualism. The final C is for clarity. Central bankers should try to spell out what they will and won’t do as much as possible. On the first part, we were clear in Riga; on the second part, let me stress that we cannot fully compensate for the uncertainty created by other policy-makers; nor can we fully offset their effects. We have shown in the past few years that monetary policy is flexible, and we have been willing to use every instrument within our mandate to respond to too low inflation.
BIS Review 25/1997  -8-  As from the beginning of 1996 a one-week PRIBOR interest rate replaced bank reserves management as the operative target. The quantitative target has been replaced by an interest rate target with the aim to efficiently affect, on a daily basis, the interest rate level at the short end of the yield curve. This major change was facilitated by the gradual development of the money market and its cultivation by the CNB. The one-week PRIBOR rate is affected through sales of securities with a date specified in advance of their repurchase (repos) with one and two week maturities, for which a limited repo rate is announced. New challenge: monetary aggregates in a small open economy The monetary survey of the CNB indicates the structure of the money supply (M2) on the liabilities side (corresponding to the demand side) and its sources on the assets side (corresponding to the supply side). By comparing the assets and liabilities, one can reveal the different sources of the money supply. The main sources of money supply growth are particularly dependent on the specific conditions of each economy, reflecting mainly the proportion of the influence of domestic and foreign sources of growth.

True, some of them had to do with political change and policy uncertainty to the heart of the developed world, but on top of that, major empirical and theoretical puzzles are challenging central tenets of monetary policy. In particular, inflation appears not to be responding to monetary policy as expected in advanced economies. Despite record- low interest rates over many years and massive liquidity injections by central banks through asset purchase programs, inflation has not picked up as expected. Explaining the apparent unresponsiveness of inflation has become a theoretical and empirical challenge that has drawn great attention from academia and policymakers in the last couple of years. Inflation dynamics and the way they interact with other economic variables are, of course, crucially important to central banks that have price stability as their core mandate. Most of them currently deliver on this mandate under a forward inflation targeting framework, whereby the stance of monetary policy seeks to achieve convergence of forecasted inflation to the target over a medium-term horizon. This prevents central banks from having to respond to short-term price volatility, but if inflation does not respond to monetary impulses as predicted by models, policymaking may become a much more complex game. If price responses get delayed in a highly accommodative environment, financial imbalances may build up, fiscal discipline may be eroded and inflation risks may get underpriced by markets, exposing themselves to reversals with data surprises in the future.
Corporates which used to solely rely on external financing can now explore the additional option of internal funding through their CTC setup in Hong Kong. 21. And, the qualifying profits derived from corporate treasury activities and transactions conducted by qualifying CTCs will benefit from a half-rate concession. In other words, the applicable tax rate will be cut from the current 16.5% to 8.25%. Broadly speaking, the scope of this concession encompasses corporate finance, liquidity  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  management and risk management activities typically conducted by CTCs for their non-Hong Kong associated corporations. The concessionary tax rate at 8.25% will be among the most competitive in the region and can be obtained through simple election as part of a corporation’s tax filing process. In other words, no separate, complicated approval process will be involved. 22. And, I’m delighted to say the relevant bill to give effect to these changes is now with the Legislative Council and the Government hopes to have the bill passed by the middle of the year. Closing 23. Ladies and gentlemen, looking at today’s programme, I note that many of the themes I have mentioned will be addressed by treasury professionals in greater depth. I hope the upcoming sessions will inspire new ideas for treasury management, and I wish you all a very successful conference. Thank you. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5

Philipp M Hildebrand: Inside Europe, outside EMU - lessons and outlook Speech by Dr Philipp M Hildebrand, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the British Swiss Chamber of Commerce, Geneva, 23 April 2004. *  *  *  My long-standing personal attachments to the United Kingdom make it a special privilege to be here this morning to speak about Europe and its significance to our two countries. Geneva is one of Europe’s truly international cities and provides a fitting platform for a discussion on some of the salient characteristics about the relations of the United Kingdom and Switzerland toward Europe. The United Kingdom and Switzerland are both undeniably European nations. Nonetheless, they both firmly remain outside of the European Monetary Union (EMU). Institutionally, the links of the two countries with Europe differ, of course. The United Kingdom is in EU Europe while Switzerland is only in Europe, despite the fact that until the EU welcomes ten new Member States next week, we Swiss can be forgiven to think of ourselves as representing the “heart” of Europe. Culturally, our two countries are rooted in different European traditions: Anglo-Saxon on the one hand and Continental European on the other hand, notwithstanding the fact the historical roots of the Saxons are, of course, on the continent. During the remainder of my time with you today, I will sketch more fully a number of salient common features and differences between the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
Membership in the funds is mandatory and the funds are financed ex ante by fees from the member banks. These funds had a wider mandate than just paying out depositors at the closure of a failed bank. If liquidating the failed bank and paying out the depositors was considered a more costly alternative than recapitalizing the bank or providing guarantees or financial support to facilitate a take-over, the funds were free to do so. However, by the end of 1990, bank-owned funds had effectively depleted almost all of their capital and it became apparent that the larger banks might also face problems. To make sure that there would still be a safety net present, the government established the Government Bank Insurance Fund - or GBIF in early 1991. At the same time it was made clear that it was through this fund only that public money might be injected into failing banks. The central bank might provide liquidity support only once solvency was assured. The GBIF was given a specific grant by the Storting (parliament). The new fund could lend money to the banks’ own guarantee funds to enable them to recapitalize failing banks. Later, as the crisis escalated, the GBIF was permitted to recapitalize the banks directly. In both cases, strict conditions were attached.

Thus, not every stage in the development of the crisis will be recapitulated, or every step and detail in its resolution. Nor have I tried to reflect every nuance in the public debate, in the reports from parliamentary commissions and in research papers on the subject3. The views I put forward are my own and have been deliberately sharpened to promote discussion. The most important characteristics of the resolution of the Norwegian crisis can be summarized as follows: •  The banks’ own collective guarantee funds handled the problems in the banking sector before the crisis became systemic. •  No blanket guarantee for the banks’ debts was provided by the government. •  No regulatory forebearance. •  No liquidity support to banks whose solvency was in doubt. •  A clear and transparent division of responsibility between the political authorities, the supervisory authority and the central bank was established early on. •  Government support was contingent on strict requirements being met, e.g. existing shareholders accepting a write-down to cover losses to the extent possible. •  No micro-management of the banks. •  Measures taken to prevent supported banks exploiting the situation vis-à-vis non-supported banks. •  No asset management companies or “bad banks”. I shall comment on each of these issues, but before doing this let me briefly mention the background for the crisis:  1  Source: Sandal (2004). 2  Source: Kane and Klingebiel (2002) and Norges Bank.
In such circumstances, it would be extremely penalizing to give up the possibility of real exchange rate adjustments. This shows that there is no single model of monetary cooperation which could be duplicated around the world. It is up to each group of countries to find their own sustainable path to economic integration. Will monetary union evolve towards closer political union? As you well know, these are difficult times for European political integration. The Treaty creating a Constitution for Europe was not ratified by two founding members of the European Community. As a consequence, the future of political integration is fraught with uncertainties. These raise several important questions for the future. Has the process of political integration stalled or just paused? What is the appropriate institutional framework for an enlarged Europe? These are questions best left for the historians and political scientists to answer. But one question is essential: can monetary union progress and survive without a full fledged political union? Can we – to quote, Otmar Issing, my former colleague in the ECB's Executive Board – have "a currency without a state"? For me, like for Otmar Issing, the answer is clear: yes, we can. From the start, the European project has ventured into unchartered territory. We have created an institutional framework without any historical precedent and model. This is especially true for monetary policy,  BIS Review 43/2007  3  where we have transferred the decision making powers to a supra national entity.

As a consequence, the euro is becoming extremely attractive, as a vehicle, a transaction, an investment and a reserve currency. As you may know, as central bankers, we remain neutral as far as the internationalisation of the euro is concerned. We are neither encouraging, nor discouraging the process. But, as a citizen, I cannot help and feel proud of having one the two main currencies in the world. Long term prospects Looking into the future, I would like to try and answer four questions: is monetary integration sustainable in the long run? What are the prospects for the enlargement of the euro area? Can the euro serve as a model for other regions in the world? And finally, is monetary union going to lead to further political integration in Europe? Solidity of the euro area I am aware that there still is, on this side of the Atlantic, a lot of skepticism about the future for the euro. Four years ago, one of your leading academics, (Martin Feldstein) wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs arguing that monetary union would reignite conflicts and war in Europe. This is, of course, the extreme form of a basic argument: that there are too many divergences between European states for them to withstand the pressures of monetary unification. Put in simple economic terms, it boils down to the argument that the euro is not an optimum currency area. In my view, this is less and less true.