samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Our board representatives receive guidance from their home countries on important issues and statements in the board are coordinated among our countries in advance. In Sweden, the Riksbank has the main responsibility for contacts with Washington, but all issues are coordinated with the Government Offices where the Ministry of Finance is our contact. In certain cases, there is also consultation with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The Nordic and Baltic countries are small on the board - our combined voting power is just over 3.5% of that of the IMF as a whole. Our opportunities to pursue policies on the board are in having sensible points of view on the proposals that are on the agenda and, together with other countries, trying to influence proposals so that they move in the direction we want them to. To some extent, we have an advantage in appearing independent on the board, since we represent neither the most influential creditors within G7 nor the large group of debtor countries. This means that our statements sometimes have more weight than our voting powers indicate. Let me give three examples of issues where our countries have been actively involved in the IMF. The first concerns the transparency of the IMF. In Sweden, we are accustomed to authorities publishing their decisions and their way of dealing with items. Many international organisations on the other hand operate behind closed doors.

This means that we, together with the Ministry of Finance in the Government Offices, coordinate and conduct Swedish policy in this forum. This evening, I am intending to talk about globalisation - as an opportunity and a challenge. I am going to discuss what the International Monetary Fund is and the role that it has in an increasingly globalised world. To conclude, I will take up Sweden’s participation in the IMF, and what we can expect from the meetings in Prague next week. Globalisation and its benefits Before commenting on critical remarks often presented on globalisation, let me first begin by noting that prosperity in the world has improved dramatically during the past decades. Never before in history has the situation of so many people improved so much so quickly. Since the beginning of the 1980s, purchasing power per capita in the world has more than doubled. In the poor developing countries, this has meant that purchasing power correlated GDP per capita has increased by almost 350%. In the rich industrialised countries, the corresponding growth was 220%. In certain cases, developments have been particularly spectacular, not least in Asia. In 1975, six out of ten Asians lived in absolute poverty - under a dollar a day. Today, the figure is two out of ten. In China alone, the number of poor has fallen from 60 to just under 30% in less than twenty years. There are many factors that explain this development.
Should a crash occur, however, risk-taking incentives go into reverse gear. Their closeness to a disaster event causes drivers to move more slowly than might be justified by the underlying risk. The experience heuristic leads to an over-weighting of recent, severe, personal events. Risk appetite then switches from too high to too low relative to the true risk. The result is traffic congestion. Financial crashes and car crashes have common psychological roots. One of the causes of the crisis was an under-pricing of risk. That was rooted in disaster myopia – an under-estimation of risk during the so-called Great Moderation. Memories of financial disaster had faded, with the Great Depression in almost no-one’s experience sample. The upshot was an over-healthy appetite for risk-taking. The subsequent crash has turned these behaviours on their head. Memories of financial disaster are now fresh, as after the Great Depression, causing an over-estimation of the probability of a repeat disaster. In these situations, psychological scarring is likely to result in risk appetite and risk-taking being lower than reality might suggest. Risk will be over-priced. Today, the very disaster myopia that caused the crisis may be retarding the recovery. Disaster myopia may be more potent in the markets than on the motorways. Asset prices are guesses about the future. Faced with uncertainty about the future, market participants form these guesses using their own heuristics. One such heuristic is the “popular narrative” – a simple story that aims to make sense of reality.

Jaime Caruana: The New Basel Capital Accord: why we need it and where we're at Remarks by Mr Jaime Caruana, Governor of the Bank of Spain and Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, at the Fifth Meeting of the Asian Program of the Institute of International Finance, Beijing, 17 November 2003. *  *  *  I’d like to thank the Institute of International Finance and the Bank of China for hosting this discussion on the outlook for banking and finance in Asia. For many reasons, it seems especially appropriate to discuss this topic here in Beijing. The tremendous growth of China’s economy, its recent accession to the World Trade Organisation, and the wide scope of change that is occurring here has made China a reference for the world. I am very pleased to have this opportunity to discuss with you some of the efforts of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to promote financial systems better able to sustain growth and more resilient during periods of distress. It is an honour to address this forum, but I must confess that I have come to listen and to learn. The message I am consistently hearing is on the one hand one of strong support for the principles of the New Capital Accord and on the other a desire for the best standard for financial systems in each country. Too many examples have illustrated the economic costs and social unrest that weakly capitalised and poorly managed banks can inflict on an economy.
The Governing Council decided to leave the current value unchanged at an annual growth rate of 4½% for the broad aggregate M3, as the evidence continues to support the assumptions which have formed the basis of the derivation of the reference value since 1999, namely a trend potential output growth of 2-2½% per annum and a trend decline in M3 income velocity of ½-1% per annum in the euro area. When comparing current developments with the reference value, it is important to bear in mind that the assessment of monetary developments is essential for long-term trends in inflation and that the reference value is therefore to be seen as a medium-term concept. Short-term movements of M3 do not necessarily have implications for future price developments. Moreover, deviations of M3 from the reference value must be analysed in conjunction with other real and financial indicators in order to understand their implications for price stability. Turning to our current assessment on the outlook for price stability in the euro area, and starting with the first pillar, M3 growth remained high in the last quarter of 2002. The continued strength in monetary growth reflects an ongoing pronounced preference for liquidity in an environment of high financial, economic and geopolitical uncertainty. In addition, the low level of interest rates in the euro area makes the holding of liquid assets relatively attractive.

At the same time, we introduced as a new element the principle of "representativeness", linked to the desire that at any moment in time the NCB governors exercising the voting right represent a reasonable share of the euro area as a whole. This desire to ensure "representativeness", by way of the differentiation among governors on the basis of the country ranking, should not be misunderstood as an attempt to re-introduce national elements into decision-making. On the contrary, the allocation of governors to groups is a purely auxiliary device, which is used exclusively to determine who votes when. For substantive decision-making – and that is what was crucial to us – the tried-and-tested principles of the Eurosystem constitution have been kept fully intact: the principle of ad personam participation of governors remains valid and the "one member, one vote" principle applies to all members exercising a voting right. All of this will ensure that, also in a future enlarged Governing Council, it is the force of arguments that counts in our deliberations and not which country an NCB governor comes from and whether this is a large or a small country. Finally, given that the sequencing of future euro area expansions is highly uncertain, the new voting system had to be sufficiently robust and able to accommodate up to 27 euro area Member States, so as to avoid having to change the rules every time a new Member State joins the euro area.
The Bank of Thailand also plans to improve convenience of the general public by standardising the width of all bank notes, and to introduce chemically treated paper to promote hygiene and lengthen the life span of the notes in circulation. BIS Review 6/2001  3  Ladies and gentlemen, The most important factor for preventing the recurrence of the financial crisis is to put in place a framework of financial institution supervision in which the business sectors and the public place confidence. From the first of January next year, the Bank of Thailand will introduce a new financial institution supervision framework which is risk-based supervision, focusing on the risk management system of the financial institutions. Under this new system, the responsibility of the supervisor in charge of each institution will be clearly set out in order to ensure direct accountability. Their work will be supplemented by on-site inspection, where the supervisor will work with internal supervisor (off-site) of the Bank of Thailand and external auditors of the financial institutions. In order to promote transparency and to ensure that the financial institutions being examined understand the purpose of the visit, a formal audit program will be sent out to inform the financial institutions prior to the visits. The annual bank supervisor’s on-site visit plan requires that each institution be visited at least once a year. The process of bank examination will be timelier.

As for Thailand’s international financial position, even though exports will not be as buoyant as this year due to a less favourable external environment and imports will continue to increase in line with the economic recovery, the current account will continue to record a surplus in the year 2001, though of a smaller amount. Although the Thai economy will continue to expand, there are a number of important issues to be taken into consideration:  The first issue: The US economic slowdown External risks will be increased as the US economy is expected to slow in the coming year. How much should we be concerned about this, given that the USA is a major industrial country and the major export market for Asian countries? The degree of Thailand’s exposure to the US market can be considered moderate, as exports to the US market constitutes about 21% of Thailand’s total exports. Major export goods include textiles, electrical appliances, electrical parts and integrated circuits. Over the years, the structure of Thai exports has diversified considerably in terms of both markets and goods, thus reducing over dependence on any particular market or goods. It is expected that this diversified structure and the enhanced price competitiveness will help cushion any adverse effects on Thai exports caused by the US economic slowdown. The second issue: Restoring public confidence Given that exports will slow down, economic recovery will have to rely more on domestic demand which in turn depends on the recovery of purchasing power.
I find it helpful to distinguish between two aspects of uncertainty, both of which are relevant to setting policy. First, the balance of risks around the central projection, and second the general level of uncertainty. The Committee regularly comments on the extent to which it believes the risks around the central projection are skewed – that is, tilted to the upside or the downside. And it has sometimes explained changes in interest rates by reference to changes in the balance of risk rather than changes in the central projection. In the latest Inflation Report, we commented that risks on our latest inflation forecasts were balanced, but those around the forecast for output were tilted to the downside. The width of the fan chart is an indication of the MPC’s level of uncertainty about the outlook. It’s significant that the MPC widened the GDP fan charts in November, and the CPI fan charts further out, and maintained these wider fans in February. Another way of presenting the same information is this bar chart (conditioned on market interest rates as in the February Inflation Report). This brings out the significant probabilities ascribed to outcomes which are some way away from the central projections. So, for example, there is a less than a one-in-three chance that GDP growth will be in the range containing the Committee’s central projection – between 2 and 3% – in two years’ time. We see a greater probability – around two-in-five – that growth will be somewhere below 2%.

6 In a nutshell that is why, over long periods of time and across wide ranges of countries, well-functioning finance has supported wealth-creation and well-being. The other, more obvious, way of capturing why finance matters is to see what happens when it goes wrong. Then it can quickly take large chunks out of the capital our societies have, over time and at great cost, painstakingly accumulated. That crumbling of capital, in its broadest sense, is the reason financial crises have been about as costly as any event societies have ever faced historically, war and revolution excepting. Capital, for these purposes, has more than one face. The collapse of capital during financial crises shows up, most obviously and immediately, in measures of financial capital (the values of bonds and shares) and physical capital (the accumulation of buildings, houses, plant and machinery). And because we assign monetary values to these concepts, and obsess about them in the media, these losses of capital are clear and visible. Yet it is another form of capital that may matter every bit as much to wealth and well-being in society – social capital. There is neither a standard definition, nor a simple means of measuring, social capital. In general, social capital refers to the relationships, trust and  3  Carney (2015). 4  For example, Levine (2005) and Beck (2012). There is also evidence finance fosters entrepreneurship (Guiso et al (2004)) and reduces poverty and inequality (Beck et al (2007).
Mr Bäckström gives his perspective on Sweden’s economy and looks at factors that contribute to long-term growth  Speech by Mr Urban Bäckström, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank and Chairman of the Board of Directors and President of the Bank for International Settlements, given at the University of Gothenburg on 27 October 1999. *  *  *  A current topic, in the United States and elsewhere, is whether structural changes have made it possible to achieve stronger economic growth than before without generating inflationary tendencies. The term – a new economy – has been coined for this phenomenon. The US economy’s new, improved performance is sometimes said to be due in part to the rapid advances in computer technology and telecommunications. Internet is a part of this. Progress in these fields has led to better and more efficient processes for production and distribution. This in turn has paved the way for stronger competition, higher productivity growth and thereby lower inflation. Consumers, moreover, are better informed than they used to be. Productivity growth in the United States does seem to have risen. The IMF, to mention one observer, considers that the potential growth rate – the annual growth that can be achieved without boosting inflation – has moved up from 2.25% to 2.75%. An even higher potential rate has been estimated by others. In Sweden, too, most things suggest that labour productivity has risen somewhat faster in the present decade than it did in the 1980s.

The number of surfers is measured by Sifo Research & Consulting; the figures for September this year show that almost 3.5 million people in Sweden surfed, which is not quite half of the population aged 12 to 79. Of these, as many as 2 million stated that they surfed on a daily basis. Another noteworthy figure is that in the age group 50 to 79 years, almost 20% are active users of the Internet. So the Internet is not something that only young people find attractive. Furthermore, Sweden is one of the absolute leaders in information technology (IT), both as regards Internet users and in broader terms such as the number of computers and mobile phones. In such surveys, the United States usually comes out top. The Internet makes it simple to obtain information, communicate with others and trade in goods and services. Price comparisons are already feasible and one can buy some goods and services, not least bank services. In these ways the Internet cuts distances, overcomes borders, contributes to a more competitive environment and enables consumers to be better informed. Everyone can get the information he or she needs, easily and painlessly, often dispensing with intermediaries. Besides affecting consumer behaviour, the Internet and information technology in general have consequences for production processes. In addition to more informed consumers, we have firms with a better oversight of production, material inputs, distribution processes and sales.
Page 3  To simplify, I will focus on three factors driving the monetary policy outlook: a common process of monetary policy ‘normalisation’ after the long period of exceptional support initiated in the face of the global financial crisis in 2007-08 and continued to a large extent through to the pandemic of 2020-21; the need for monetary policy to address the inflationary consequences of tight labour markets and strong firm pricing power in the US and the UK; and the challenges for monetary policy created by the significant adverse terms of trade shock to Europe – including the UK – which has followed from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, disruptions to natural gas and food supplies, and the resulting much higher level of European wholesale natural gas and food prices. As the simple schematic sets out, none of these challenges is unique to the UK. But – at least in the way I have described it – the UK is distinctive in facing all three of these challenges at the same time. In itself, this simultaneity creates its own challenges for monetary policy. In formulating its decisions, the MPC needs to layer the consequences of each of these driving factors on top of one another in coming to its final policy choice. The more layers involved, the more complex is that process – and its communication.

Rubin also points out that the president was able, by showing a clear respect for the Federal Reserve's independence, to increase his own credibility and build-up confidence in economic policy in the United States and in the functioning of the financial markets. This is a view I can sympathise with. The question is then how we in Sweden should act to ensure that confidence in our total economic policy is as great as possible. Essentially, this of course means doing the right things. In our case, ensuring price stability in accordance with our own definition. However, I believe that the ways in which the authorities responsible for fiscal policy and monetary policy cooperate can also play a role here. In this aspect I can see clear advantages in the interplay between government and central bank in the United States and the United Kingdom. Maintaining mutual respect for one another's tasks, they have a close cooperation to conduct an overall policy that will benefit their country as much as possible. This is a desirable form of cooperation, particularly for small countries and I believe that we in Sweden have come a long way towards this since the mid-1990s. It would be a negative development if the pattern were broken and we instead slipped into a form of interplay similar to that in continental Europe, where national finance ministers blame their problems on the ECB and where sharp words are regularly aimed in the opposite direction. Thank you.
Project Orchid released its first report earlier this week, which identified four promising areas for application of programmable or purpose-bound money in Singapore. incorporating purpose bound money to the existing government voucher system, to streamline settlement processing – Govtech and DBS Bank are piloting this; commercial vouchers which can be used at specified outlets – Temasek, Fazz Financial, and Grab are testing this; government pay-outs to recipients who do not have a bank account – OCBC Bank and CPF Board will be conducting a trial; and disbursing grants to training providers automatically when specified conditions are met, without the need for manual verification – UOB Bank and SkillsFuture Singapore will be testing this using smart contracts. MAS and the industry will further sharpen our capabilities in programmable money. 6/11  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  We will improve the user experience, strengthen security and privacy, and increase accessibility to broader segments of the population. GROWING LIKE WOOD - TOKENISED ASSETS (PROJECT GUARDIAN) The fourth desired outcome is tokenised assets. While cryptocurrencies have been the rage among the media and public, astute industry players know that the real innovation with vast potential is tokenisation. Tokenisation involves using a software programme to represent the ownership rights over any item of value as a digital token or asset. When deployed on distributed ledgers that are secured by encryption, digital assets are referred to as crypto assets. When they are used as a medium of exchange, people call them cryptocurrencies.

Since 2000, and especially in recent months, the picture has changed. The mines have opted for another strategy and have cut back on price hedging. This strategy change can be partly attributed to more positive expectations regarding the gold price. As a result of the central bank agreement on gold sales, producers no longer fear large-scale sales by the central banks. Moreover, it seems that producers have recently become more upbeat in their assessment of private investment demand. It is interesting, in this respect, that gold producers' hedging activity tends to accelerate market trends. When they expect price decreases, prices do in fact decrease faster as a result of hedging, and when they expect price rises, prices do rise faster owing to the decrease in hedging. Such strategy changes, which are always due to changed market expectations, have to be reckoned with in future as well. •  Reviving private investment demand in the industrialised countries has also contributed to giving the gold price a boost. This phenomenon has been particularly pronounced in Japan, but Europe and the United States have also seen gold demand booming. Economic imponderables, concern over the financial health of some companies, heightened political tension in different parts of the world, the terror attacks of September 2001 and concomitantly subdued stock markets have caused investors to increase their holdings of the  BIS Review 39/2002  1  yellow metal. It seems as if gold is, for the time being, once again assuming its role of a safe haven investment.