samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Eddie Yue: Investment in infrastructure is crucial to Asia’s growth Statement by Mr Eddie Yue, Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Head of the Delegation of Hong Kong, for the 46th Asian Development Bank Annual Meeting, Delhi, 4 May 2013. *  *  *  I would like to thank the Government of India for hosting the 46th Annual Meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). I wish to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Mr Haruhiko Kuroda for his excellent work in leading ADB for more than eight years. We welcome the appointment of Mr Takehiko Nakao as the new President of ADB, and look forward to continue working closely with the Bank under his leadership in furthering the development of the region. Global economic sentiment has improved since the beginning of this year. The announcement of further accommodative monetary easing by major advanced economies has reduced tail risks and stabilised financial markets. But while the accommodative monetary policy will help authorities buy time to solve the problem, it is by no means a substitute for medium-term fiscal consolidation and structural reforms that are required for the economy to regain competitiveness and return to a sustainable path. Looking ahead, economic adjustments and deleveraging in both the public and private sectors are set to continue in the advanced economies, and regional economies will increasingly have to look to themselves for new sources of growth.

These participants can in turn conduct peer-to-peer payments and redeem the CBDC for reserves at the issuing central bank. Project Dunbar in the Singapore Centre is a collaboration among MAS, the Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank Negara Malaysia, and the South African Reserve Bank. Built on two open-source distributed ledger platforms (i.e. Corda and Quorum), Project Dunbar focuses on international settlements using digital currencies issued by multiple central banks. Project Dunbar has successfully developed working prototypes that have successfully resolved challenges relating to access, governance, and jurisdictional boundaries. Project Dunbar is also focused on addressing the governance issues related to operating a multi-CBDC platform. For example: Security. How do we get multiple central banks to share a common platform and mitigate national security concerns associated with sharing critical infrastructure? Access. Who should participate in such a shared platform? Non-banks should be included because not everyone has a bank account. Regulation. How do we reconcile across different laws, regulations, guidelines and protocols that govern payments. The third pathway to solving the cross-border payments problem is through private sector led blockchain based payment networks. The use of distributed ledgers for cross-border settlement need not be confined to CBDCs. 4/8  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  Securely-backed stablecoins or tokenised bank deposits issued by private sector players can also be used to enable cheaper and faster cross-border payment and settlement.
But when a benign upturn originally driven by FDI in the energy-intensive sector turned into overheating, and fiscal and other demand levers pulled by the Government were either insufficiently used or pulling in the other direction, monetary policy was overburdened and the increased interest rate differential that resulted pulled in further capital and carry trade positions. Let me now turn to the banking part of the story. Before the collapse, the banking system had expanded very rapidly, growing in just five years from a combined balance sheet of less than 2 times GDP at the end of 2003 to 10 times GDP. Most of this expansion was cross-border, and a significant part of it was really off-border, having little to do with Iceland, as both financing and investment took place abroad. Around two-thirds of the balance sheet of the three cross-border banks was denominated in foreign currency. As is typical for banks, the FX part of the balance sheet had a significant maturity mismatch. However, there was no safety net of the type that we have in a national setting to back it up. This turned out to be the fatal flaw in the whole setup, although we now know that these banks were also undercapitalised, which might have done them in at a later stage. But so were several European banks that were considered solid at the time – and some of them are still around!

To my mind, international financial centres cannot be located in such countries without some ex ante mechanism that at least partly insulates the domestic economy from the risks involved. In some sense, this is what Iceland did in the nick of time in early October 2008. Furthermore, in very small, open economies with their own currency, like Iceland, the international activities of domestic banks and FX risks on their balance sheets must be limited and regulated. In this context, we have been thinking about the prudential regime that must be in place in Iceland when we have lifted capital controls and Icelandic banks are again free to use their European passporting rights. We will have more stringent restrictions on permissible currency mismatches than in the past, also taking into account positions of unhedged households and companies, but more importantly, we will, through some combination of LCR- and NSFR-type ratios in foreign exchange, put strict limits on FX maturity mismatches. The combination of these and other measures will make it impossible for the banking system to attain the size and cross-border reach it had before the crisis. The big question is whether it will be deemed compatible with the EEA Agreement. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  More generally, I think the distinction between macroprudential measures and capital controls can be more complex than many make it out to be.
Amid an economic environment fraught with prolonged global uncertainties, it is important to contain negative spillovers into the Turkish economy. In terms of the fundamentals of the economy, the significant improvement in the current account balance over the past few years, reasonable growth rates in loans and a loan composition that supports price stability and financial stability all contributed to reducing economic fragilities. These developments were due to the tight monetary policy and the measures taken regarding financial stability as well as the sharp fall in commodity prices in the case of the current account balance. Moreover, the effective use of the measures presented in the August road map has alleviated the excessive fluctuations in exchange rates and loan rates. Our current tight monetary policy reduces the economy’s sensitivity to global shocks, thus supporting financial stability. We maintain the view that the tight monetary policy may be implemented within a narrower interest rate corridor, should the global volatility decline persistently or policy measures that would maintain and improve the gains in external balance and financial stability be implemented effectively. In 2015, the annual growth rate of loans extended to the non-financial sector, which decelerated partly due to our tight monetary policy stance, and the macroprudential measures introduced by the BRSA regarding consumer loans excluding mortgage, fell to 13.6 percent, adjusted for the effect of exchange rates.

The second point I wanted to make is that the conclusion of the exercise was preceded by a significant amount of front-loaded measures taken by the banks. Since July last year SSM banks have undertaken various measures to strengthen their balance sheets by more than € billion, including € billion of capital increases. These front-loaded measures are part of the overall successful outcome of the exercise. Some of the measures taken in 2013 had an impact on what could be detected by the exercise, and so reduced the results of the exercise accordingly. And some of the measures taken in 2014 count for the mitigation of the capital shortfalls that were found. Third point, the comprehensive assessment provides the ECB SSM with substantial information on the banks that will fall under its direct supervision and will help its efforts in creating a level playing field for supervision in the future. And fourth, the repairing of the banks’ balance sheets that will follow the results, and the resilience revealed by the vast majority of the banks in spite of the severity of the exercise, guarantee that the economic recovery will not be hampered by credit supply restrictions coming from the banking sector, provided that there is enough aggregate demand. I will now go through the slides. Let me underline the main results of the exercise. A total of € billion capital shortfalls were identified across 25 participating banks as a joint result of the AQR and the stress test.
The government net cash flow from taxes and direct ownership in oil companies is transferred directly to the Petroleum Fund. The return on the Petroleum Fund investments also adds to the capital. Of the total capital accumulated last year, NOK 59 billion was spent over the fiscal budget. The Petroleum Fund invests only in foreign markets. The Fund serves as a buffer against shocks. Changes in petroleum revenues are absorbed in the Fund - not in the domestic economy. The Petroleum Fund is owned by the government. At the end of 2003, the market value of the Petroleum Fund’s assets was NOK 845 billion as indicated by the dark blue bars. The Ministry of Finance has defined a clear mandate for Norges Bank’s management of the Petroleum Fund. Norges Bank shall seek to achieve an excess return in relation to a benchmark portfolio. The return on the Petroleum Fund was 0.59 percentage point higher than the return on the benchmark portfolio in 2003. This is the sixth consecutive year with an excess return. The return on the Government Petroleum Fund was 12.6 per cent in 2003. This is the Fund’s highest return ever. The solid result is due to a high rate of return on equity investments, at 22.8 per cent. The return on the fixed-income portfolio was 5.3 per cent. Since 1997, the average annual real return after management costs has been 3.7 per cent, measured in a common currency. The Ministry of Finance has set a benchmark index for the Petroleum Fund.

Expectations of a global recovery have boosted stock markets over the last year. The Norwegian stock market index, OBX, has increased more than US, German and Japanese stock market indexes. Oil prices and other commodity prices are also high. Normally, higher growth expectations are accompanied by higher interest rate expectations. This has not been the case lately. On the contrary, market expectations have fallen. The red line shows that in October last year, the market expected that the economic recovery would lead to higher interest rates. The green and yellow line shows the fall in expectations, and that the market now expects interest rates to remain low for a period ahead. The reason behind the change in expectations is the absence of inflationary pressures. In Norway, inflation is low. In February, annual core inflation fell to minus 0.1 per cent. It is particularly prices for imported consumer goods - the yellow line in the chart - that have fallen sharply. But prices for goods and services produced in Norway have also declined. Increased competition and productivity growth have probably contributed to low inflation. Higher productivity growth is a global trend and in particular in the US the phenomenon has been the subject of lively debate. The current economic recovery has in fact been labelled the “jobless recovery”, an indication that companies can increase production without new recruitment.
For our guidance to be reliable, we need to be as clear, credible and consistent as possible. We cannot be clear like a train timetable but more like how a captain sets a course and adapts to the wind and the waves. So our sequence of steps for policy normalisation is very predictable: First, we halved our net asset purchases to 15 billion this month and will very probably end them in December; 1/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  Second, we set down a guide post with our long-dated forward guidance: we will maintain interest rates at current levels until at least through the summer of 2019; And third, we will retain our stock of assets for as long as necessary to maintain favourable liquidity conditions and an ample degree of monetary accommodation. Let me insist on this: the end of the net asset purchases will not be the end of our monetary stimulus, far from it. Moreover, this sequence doesn’t depend on the fiscal uncertainties that can appear in member states. The Governing Council is clear about the fact that there is no fiscal dominance in the euro area and no influence of any national fiscal policy on our common monetary policy. In addition, our past consistency forges our credibility for the future. Since March 2016, we took decisions on the evolution of our net asset purchases at intervals of approximately 9 months.

Muhammad bin Ibrahim: Beyond borders – bridging new horizons in Asia Pacific Speech by Mr Muhammad bin Ibrahim, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the 5th Malaysia Insurance Summit “Beyond Borders: Bridging New Horizons in Asia Pacific”, Kuala Lumpur, 7 October 2015. *  *  *  I am delighted to join you today at the 2015 Malaysia Insurance Summit themed “Beyond Borders: Bridging New Horizons in Asia Pacific”. I understand that this is the fifth year the Malaysian Insurance Institute has organised this event which brings together insurance and takaful professionals from around the region and beyond to discuss key developments in the industry. Prospects of the Asia Pacific region The world is undergoing rapid structural changes amidst a rapidly evolving Asia Pacific as an important centre of growth. The International Monetary Fund has projected a growth of 5.6 per cent for the Asia and Pacific region in 2015 and 5.5 per cent in 2016, with the region expected to remain the global growth leader over the medium term. Growth is primarily driven by domestic demand of Asia’s 4.3 billion inhabitants who account for 60 per cent of the world’s population. The region is also expected to be the strong driver of world insurance growth, with its share of the global insurance market likely to rise to 40 per cent in the next five years.
Page 2/6  Berne, 12 December 2019 Thomas Jordan  News conference  The external value of the Swiss franc has remained stable since the monetary policy assessment in September. There has also been scarcely any change in the trade-weighted exchange rate over 2019 as a whole, although it initially declined before appreciating again in the summer. The Swiss franc thus remains highly valued, and the situation on the foreign exchange market is still fragile. Short-term interest rates are close to the SNB policy rate. The long-term Swiss franc rates reached new lows in the summer, and have recovered only slightly since. This pattern reflects global interest rate movements. The yield on 10-year Swiss Confederation bonds currently stands at –0.5%, compared with –0.2% at the beginning of the year. The long-term interest rates in the euro area and the US have declined even more strongly. All in all, the low interest rate environment around the world has become more entrenched over the course of 2019. Finally, inflation expectations have declined slightly in Switzerland by comparison with the start of the year. However, they remain within the range of 0% to 2% that the SNB equates with price stability. Five years of negative interest  Ladies and gentlemen, the SNB introduced the negative interest rate five years ago. Hardly anyone thought then that it would still be in place at the end of 2019. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to set out for you why we are convinced that negative interest remains necessary today.

This revision takes into account the recent developments in global commodity prices. 6  BIS Review 91/2009  Monetary policy In October last year, in light of the weak economic environment and easing inflationary pressures, MAS shifted to a 0% appreciation of the $ policy band. This was followed by a re-centring of the policy band to the prevailing level of the $ in April 2009, while keeping the 0% appreciation path. At this juncture, notwithstanding the sharp rebound in the economy in Q2 2009, growth remains below trend and inflationary pressures continue to be muted. We assess that the current policy stance remains appropriate to support the economic recovery and ensure medium-term price stability, which in turn underpins confidence in the Singapore dollar. Our next monetary policy review will take place as scheduled in October. Conclusion Going forward, it will be important for central banks and regulators around the world to remain vigilant and to continue addressing financial system risks as the markets remain fragile and uncertainty remains. Singapore is not insulated from pressures in other parts of the world. We need to understand the changes and anticipate how they would affect us in order to take the right actions. MAS will continue to build on our key pillars of having sound financial institutions, ensuring well functioning markets and maintaining confidence of investors. Building on such strong fundamentals and adapting to new challenges, we can ensure we emerge stronger. Thank you. BIS Review 91/2009  7
Page 10 of 19  Figure 3 Step-by-step Plan (1)  Mobilty by macrozones (2)  (population by stage, percent)  (population by stage, percent)  100  100 20  20  80  80  0  0  60  60 -20  -20  40  40 -40  -40  20  20 -60  -60  0 0 28-Jul. 28-Sep. 28-Nov. Initial opening Preparing Transition Quarantine Advanced opening  -80  -80 Feb.  Apr. Jun. Aug.  Oct.  North (3)  Center (4)  South (5)  Metropolitan  (1) Considers announcements and information up to 7 December 2020. (2) Considers information up to 1 January 2020. Average of the categories stores and leisure, supermarkets and pharmacies, transport stations and workplaces. (3) Includes the Arica-Parinacota, Tarapacá, Antofagasta, Atacama, and Coquimbo regions. (4) Includes the Valparaíso, O'Higgins, Maule, Biobío, and Ñuble regions. (5) Includes the Araucanía, Los Ríos, Los Lagos, Aysén, and Magallanes regions. Aysén is omitted between 17 August and 16 September due to lack of data. Sources: Central Bank of Chile using data from the Chilean Ministry of Health and the Covid-19 Community Mobility Report, Google. Figure 4 Imacec index by sectors (annual change, percent)  20  20 Wholesale & retail trade  10  Production of other goods (*)  Services 0  10 0  Manufacturing -10  -10  -20  -20  -30 Jan.19  -30 Jul.19  Jan.20  (*) Agriculture-forestry, Fishery, EGW and waste management, and Construction.

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.
Mr. George discusses the prospects for the euro and the attitude towards the single currency in the United Kingdom Speech by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mr. E.A.J. George, given to the Financial Forum of West Flanders in Bruges on 21/10/98. Britain in Europe It’s a great pleasure to be here in the beautiful city of Bruges, and I am honored to have this opportunity to address the Financial Forum here in West Flanders. Mr. Chairman, in just 50 business days’ time - on 1st January next year - eleven European countries will take the long-awaited, truly historic, step of merging their national currencies into a single “euro”. The United Kingdom will not be among them, but we have a vital interest in the euro’s success. I should like to explain to you this evening Britain’s attitude to the euro, and then say something about the prospects for the new single currency as an element of stability in today’s turbulent global financial and economic environment. Let me make clear at the outset that, of course, I recognise that monetary union is fundamentally a political issue. It necessarily involves some deliberate further pooling of national sovereignty over important issues of public policy - monetary policy and overall fiscal policy - just as the single market involved the pooling of sovereignty over aspects of trade and competition policy and so on. As a central banker I have nothing to say about the politics of monetary union.

The first school, usually identified with Professor Paul Krugman of MIT, is best summarized by the two fashionable phrases “crony capitalism” and “Asian values.” The emphasis here is on inept domestic policies, inefficient resource allocation to politically connected individuals, unrealistic speculation - particularly in real estate - and imprudent public spending, all fuelled by over-borrowing, poor bank supervision, extreme moral hazard, and a hubristic attitude generated by several years of fast growth. The trends were unsustainable, and the Nemesis came with a loud and very messy bursting of bubbles throughout the region. Asia’s downfall, says Professor Krugman, “was a punishment for Asian sins, even if the punishment was disproportionate to the crimes.” The second school, led by Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard, sees the crisis in less moralistic terms. The turmoil, he says, was a classic financial panic: a run on the banks and mass capital flight exacerbated by the maturity mismatch of many Asian banks and the currency mismatch of many Asian borrowers. This was accompanied by speculative attacks on currencies and the collapse of asset values. While this approach stresses the fragility of many of the banking systems in the region, it maintains that the Asian economies were in relatively healthy shape according to the usual indicators, and that the magnitude of the crisis far exceeded the faults and errors of individual jurisdictions. Both the Sachs and the Krugman schools have much in common. But their logic points in different directions.