samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The Banco de España, in accordance with its competence in the accounting regulation of Spanish credit institutions, decided to undertake a project to extend the use of IAS from consolidated financial statements to the individual, regulatory and prudential ones, thereby avoiding the cost and uncertainty of diverse accounting criteria. This initiative gave rise to the new accounting Circular 4/2004. Through this Circular, the Banco de España acknowledges and shares the benefits derived from the efforts to achieve greater accounting harmonisation, while pursuing, in its supervisory capacity, a legitimate interest in the quality of accounting standards and in their effective implementation. Also, since the process of approval and adoption of the new international standards was marked by its complexity and underwent certain timetable difficulties, the Banco de España’s new Circular was also intended to endow the process, as far as possible, with a greater degree of certainty. The complexity of the new accounting standards arises not only from the process referred to, but also basically from the modifications contained in them, since they involve notable changes in numerous matters that are very important in credit institution management and that impose new responsibilities on managers in the election of accounting policies. Although it is too early to make a detailed assessment of the introduction of the new accounting standards, which have only been in force for a few months, the initial evaluation by the Banco de España is positive, and the major efforts and work by financial institutions in this connection should be acknowledged.

The domestic risk factors stem largely from the very prolongation of a long, domestic demand-led expansionary phase, and can be grouped in two major areas. First, the losses in competitiveness that have built up in the earlier described setting of inflation differentials and very low productivity gains, which might ultimately check the generation of value added and job creation. And second, the increase in household debt that has accompanied the expansion of consumption and residential investment, which might constrain households’ spending capacity, particularly if developments in the housing markets were to prompt any uncertainty about the value of this sector’s wealth, which is strongly concentrated in real-estate assets. Although both areas of risk are inter-related, I shall deal with each separately. In respect of competitiveness, there are signs that the risks signalled by the Banco de España in the past have already begun to materialise. The significant restraint on growth exerted by external demand in the past year and the considerable widening of the Spanish economy’s external deficit point in this direction. Admittedly, these results partly reflect the influence of certain external factors, such as dearer oil and the appreciation of the euro, which have dampened the positive impact of the international recovery. Moreover, the deficit is also partly influenced by the cyclical divergences between Spain and the euro area.
As such, the total amount of European safe assets, defined as government bonds with a high credit rating (AA or higher) or privately-issued AAA products, is around $ trillion, half of its peak in 2009.2 By comparison, privately-held safe debt in the United States totals more than $ trillion. Thus, the scarcity of safe assets is particularly acute in the case of eurodenominated safe assets, which limits the diversification options of investors in the euro area's common currency, in particular, those of international reserve managers with a mandate to invest safely. The latter has two important consequences for the euro area. First, it precludes a more prominent international role for the euro, as investors need to take into account multiple sovereign risks and insolvency frameworks. Second, the demand for safe assets is entirely concentrated in a group of sovereigns. As a consequence, we face a form of “exorbitant divergence” in the euro area, as only some government bonds enjoy a high convenience yield stemming from their status as safe assets.3 A common safe asset would provide a single benchmark for every country in the euro area, allowing banks and companies to diversify their portfolios without triggering capital flights in the event of a crisis, and mitigating the “exorbitant divergence”. The introduction of a safe asset would also help to alleviate an unwarranted national bank - national sovereign nexus.

The focus groups suggested that people see the ability to “pay anywhere” as the most important feature of a new digital payment instrument. This emerged in all countries and age groups. Instant, easy, contactless payments, especially for person-to-person payments, were the second-most valued feature. Lastly, participants in the focus groups would like to see a solution that would allow instant person-to-person payments regardless of the platform used by the payers and payees. See Kantar Public (2022), Study on New Digital Payment Methods, March. 2. A digital economy is driven by network effects and digital money is a network good. This means that the more people hold and use the digital euro, the more attractive and valuable it would become to other users. This would, in turn, increase the potential number of people who may wish to adopt it as a regular means of payment. See Katz, M.L. and Shapiro, C. (1994), “Systems Competition and Network Effects”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 8, No 2, pp. 93-115; and Claessens, S., Dobos, G., Klingebiel, D. and Laeven, L. (2003), “The growing importance of networks in finance and its effects on competition”, in Nagurney, A. (ed. ), Innovations in financial and economic networks, Elgar, pp. 110135. 3. Legislative changes to the current regulatory framework for anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism would be needed to enable high levels of privacy beyond the baseline scenario for lower-risk digital euro payments – namely simplified due diligence for low-value online transactions and exemption of low-value proximity payments from monitoring.
However, one important condition for a successful reduction in money supply is that the SNB must have unrestricted control over its balance sheet. And in particular, it must, if necessary, be able to sell foreign currency for Swiss francs, in the same way as it has been able to make foreign currency purchases in recent years. We therefore must also firmly reject any ideas aimed at channelling our assets into a sovereign wealth fund, even though we may be highly sympathetic to the matters in question, such as securing pension provision. 10  Summary and outlook In conclusion, allow me to stress once again how valuable it is to have a dialogue on the core issue of sound money. In my remarks, I referred to the crucial importance of the three mainstays of a robust paper money system: a central bank mandate focused on price stability, the independence of the central bank in setting monetary policy, and solid state finances. As we have seen, sound money is always subject to latent threats. It is essential that we remain on our guard if we are to identify these threats in good time and ward them off. What are the biggest threats to sound money at present? In my view, there are two developments in particular that we need to be watchful of. On the one hand, any move to make central banks an instrument of state financing would undermine the second mainstay, namely central bank independence.

See Thirteen days in October: how central bank balance sheets can support monetary and financial stability − speech by Andrew Hauser 6. Market-based finance refers to the system of markets (eg equity and debt markets), non-bank financial institutions (including investment funds, hedge funds, pension funds and insurers) and infrastructure (such as central counterparties and payments providers) which, alongside banks, provide financial services to support the economy. See Assessing the resilience of market-based finance 7. See Financial Policy Summary and Record - March 2023 8. See Using leveraged liability-driven investment 9. A regulatory buffer is said to be usable if institutions are permitted to operate normally even if their regulatory ratios decline below it. See Emerging prudential lessons from the Covid stress - speech by Victoria Saporta 10. See Bank staff paper: LDI minimum resilience - recommendation and explainer 11. The 99.8th percentile of a 10-year look-back window of rolling five-day shocks. 12. This might be expressed as a 1-in-100 year (or 99.998th percentile) five-day shock. 13. See Looking through a glass onion: lessons from the 2022 LDI intervention − speech by Andrew Hauser 14. See Further guidance on enhancing resilience in Liability Driven Investment 15. See Using leveraged liability-driven investment 16. See Pension Schemes Act 2021  and Pension Schemes Act 2021  17. See Building financial market resilience: From diagnosis to prescription - speech by Jonathan Hall 18. See Investing in financial stability − speech by Sarah Breeden 19. Including, but not limited to, investment funds, hedge funds, pension funds and insurers.
For the next year, we are more optimistic, and in our projections we expect credit growth of up to 9 percent. In July, the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia made changes in the reserve requirement and also reduced the key interest rate to 3.25 percent, which is the historically lowest level. When do you expect the effects? We made some changes, so that we reduced the reserve requirement ratio for denar deposits and we increased that for the foreign currency deposits. Our goal is to stimulate denar saving at the expense of the saving in foreign currency, which in this way will become more expensive, while saving in denars will become cheaper. Shortly after that, we reduced the key interest rate to 3.25 percent, thus sending a signal to the banks that there is room for greater lending activity. Even that small amount of loans does not go to the companies, but mainly to the citizens. Why is that so and when will it change? In 2009, soon after the outbreak of the global economic crisis, banks here immediately stopped lending to households, while they continued to lend to companies. It allowed banks to clean the loan portfolio of the households, i.e. to eliminate the bad loans in the meantime. Therefore, now they have room to re-start lending to the households, and they are doing it. The process of cleaning the credit portfolios of the companies, however, was left out at that point, so it began more intensively last year, and continued this year.

An ethical approach is needed if we are to respect the spirit of the rules – and not just the letter of the law – and if we are to make informed decisions when clear rules are not available. In addition to financial institutions' in-house ethical practices, the financial sector must now also consider how society – NGOs, the media, fellow citizens included – perceive its activities from an ethical standpoint. Clearly, the 2007–09 crisis was partly created by an imbalance : too much trust had been placed in ethics, while the rules were insufficient. The weaknesses in the corporate culture of financial institutions were thrust into the spotlight; incentives to take risks were too powerful and governance was inappropriate. 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  Certain Anglo-Saxon expressions perfectly illustrate the period: "too big to fail" created a widespread moral hazard, "tick the box" encouraged overly lax self-regulation through a purely formal compliance with the rules... and in so doing, the "light touch" of the British FSA at the time clearly showed its limitations. Since then, I am happy to say that we have significantly tightened up the rules. With the CRD IV Capital Requirements Directive and Basel III for banks and, at least in Europe, Solvency II for insurers, quantitative requirements have been reinforced to ensure greater resilience, governance of financial institutions has been improved and compensation policies for bankers have been reined in a little. International regulation is our common good. It strengthens a sound financial system.
It also sends a clear message that one is not prepared to bear the interest rate pain. It is a demonstration of weakness and the lack of resolve in the defence of the currency. This was the case in 1992 when sterling departed from the ERM. This was also the case I believe in the troubled Asian economies when they intervened both in the forward market as well as the spot market. 37. The academics have, in this connection, further argued that the contingent liability arising from these derivatives can be contained by limiting the amount involved and possibly also by suitable pricing mechanisms for such derivatives. But the fact of the matter is that the limited supply of such derivatives would benefit only those with access to the product and that there will be irresistible political demands for supplying it to all - speculators, those with a genuine need to hedge and the man on the street. Where would this end? More likely in misery than greater confidence in the currency link. The pricing of the derivative product is also a tricky issue. If one allows the free market to price the product, by auction or by tender, chances are that the price would reflect the market interest rate differential between the Hong Kong dollar and the US dollar, which would defeat the original purpose of the product of trying to dampen the interest rate pain.

If alternatively the pricing of the product is administratively determined, thus involving a subsidy, then the difficulty is again to target equitably a group of beneficiaries entitled to the comfort afforded by that product. 38. We have, as part of our review, invited the IMF also to look at these schemes suggested by the academics. The response from the IMF confirmed our reservations. The best guarantee that the link will not be changed is for us to stick to our guns and not to invent fanciful derivatives which may have the political and psychological attraction of ourselves “putting money where the mouth is”, while really what it means is that the credibility of a simple, rule-based and well tried system could well be undermined to the detriment of Hong Kong. (b) Liquidity Adjustment Facility 39. Another area of controversy arising also from discussions with the academics concerns whether the HKMA should lend to banks at the end of the day through the LAF. They identified this practice as the HKMA playing the role as lender of last resort whereas it is merely a lender of convenience so that banks can settle interbank payments outstanding at the end of the day. The HKMA runs a real time interbank payment system in which each of the 180 licensed banks in Hong Kong maintains a clearing account with the HKMA to effect the settlement of interbank transactions.
For example, the 1-year forward rate, 9 years ahead has declined sharply over the past year, falling from around 5 percent in December 2013 to just under 3 percent currently. What can explain such a large shift in forward rates at such a long time horizon? Third, when U.S. monetary policy is normalized, how fast should we raise short-term interest rates? In other words, what is the appropriate path back to the long-run equilibrium real federal funds rate, shallow or steep? In my view, the paper reaches five major conclusions – conclusions that I find myself broadly in agreement with: •  There are many factors that influence the level of the equilibrium real short-term interest rate. Real potential GDP growth may be one factor, but the real equilibrium rate is also affected by financial conditions, uncertainty and risk aversion, financial market performance (e.g., bubbles and busts) and the degree of restraint exerted by the stringency of banking and financial market regulation. •  There is little evidence supporting the so-called “secular stagnation” view that the equilibrium real short-term rate will persistently remain near or below zero. •  The equilibrium real short-term rate is non-stationary. Thus, it will not necessarily revert back to some long-run average value. •  U.S. and global markets are integrated to a significant degree. As a result, the equilibrium real short-term rates both here and abroad will tend to move together.

We must, as part of the comprehensive suite of financial services that we offer to global investors and borrowers. Shariah-compliant financial instruments allow issuers to tap a new source of funds and liquidity. But the development of an Islamic financial services market does not just serve indigenous Muslim populations. Malaysia, for instance, has successfully launched global sukuk, or Islamic bonds, to tap liquidity from investors in both Asia and the Middle East. Other issuers of global sukuks have also stopped by Singapore on their road shows to tap Singapore’s investor pool. It may not be too long before we have a Singapore corporate issuing a sukuk to raise funds from global investors. We are also seeing already private fund managers in Asia and the Middle East working together. Recently, for instance, ARA Asset Management based in Singapore had worked in partnership with Dubai Islamic Bank to launch a $ 450 million Islamic Far Eastern Real Estate Fund with underlying assets located in Asia. Fourth and finally, we can do more to foster people-to-people interaction in the financial sector. For instance, Asian central banks including the Monetary Authority of Singapore have participated actively in Middle East finance and central banking seminars to share our perspectives on issues of mutual interest. Tomorrow there will be a seminar organised jointly by the Islamic Financial Services Board and Islamic Development Bank tomorrow in Kuala Lumpur on developing a 10-year master plan for the Islamic financial services industry globally.
Towards this goal, a series of wide ranging reforms and policies were implemented in order to improve the investment climate and to attract greater private sector participation in the economy as well as facilitating inflow of foreign direct investment into the country. In the last decade, significant progress has been made and the Kingdom has enacted and implemented forty-two new trade-related laws and regulations; nineteen of them were required for our WTO accession in 2005. The last and most important of these initiatives was the reform of the Judicial System. In addition, to stimulate economic activities and attract foreign investment, the rate of corporate taxation has been reduced from 45 percent to a flat 20 percent, and the requirements for minimum start-up capital were abolished. The negative list of investment was also revised and now allows foreign investment in vital sectors like insurance services, wholesale and retail trade, air and train transport, and communication services. The Government has set itself an objective to place Saudi Arabia amongst the world’s top ten most investor friendly economies by 2010 and, therefore, the opening up of new economic sectors to FDI is in line with the ongoing economic reforms with the aim of improving the Kingdom’s investment climate. The Kingdom’s efforts towards economic reforms in order to attract foreign investment have come to fruition.

The non-oil sector exports were valued at about $ billion in 2006 and constituted almost 6.0 percent of total GDP and 13.2 percent of non-oil GDP. During 2006, the national economy continued its remarkable growth for the fourth consecutive year, especially in the non-oil sector which grew by 6.2 percent following its growth rate of 5.2 percent in 2005. The non-oil industrial sector was the fastest growing sector of the economy recording a robust growth of 10.1 percent during the preceding year. The sector has continued its robust growth during the current year. Due to higher economic growth and receipt of higher than anticipated revenues, the fiscal position of the government has improved substantially in recent years. The budget surpluses since 2003 have enabled the government to reduce its domestic debt sharply and increase its expenditure on infrastructure and social sectors. The ratio of domestic debt to GDP has declined from 82 percent in 2003 to 27.9 percent in 2006 which was reflected positively on our public finance and macroeconomic stability. These trends are likely to continue against the oil revenue cushion and fiscal discipline along with continuous expansion of the economy. The foregoing policy initiatives, combined with the recent budgetary surpluses have enabled us to launch a number of key development projects that are designed to develop the county's physical and social infrastructure, especially spending on education and training, diversifying the economy, creating jobs and enhancing growth prospects.
Mr. Chairman, as you are aware, Zambia’s economy has continued to grow underpinned by growth in various sectors including Agriculture which has recorded significant increase in output of maize in 2009 and 2010. It is also worth noting that a large portion of the Zambian population depends on agriculture for its livelihood, yet lending to agriculture has been limited. The challenge, therefore, is to devise financial products that meet the requirements  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  of the rural and pre-dominantly agricultural areas while at the same time devising means of “ring fencing” the financial institutions from risks associated with agricultural lending. However, I am pleased that the improved performance in the agricultural as well as other sectors of the economy is expected to continue, which will invariably translate into higher incomes in Zambia. Potentially, the scope for savings both in the formal and informal sectors is expected to improve; hence, products such as the one CETZAM is launching today are likely to capture this potential. Furthermore, I am reliably informed that the “Tusunge” Savings Product offers a cheaper option of funding for CETZAM which undoubtedly should trigger a reduction in the cost of credit. The product has a minimum deposit balance of K20,000, unlimited withdrawals, no withdrawal charges and an interest rate of 6 percent per annum. The product is specifically targeted at the informal sector and SMEs.

Third, and this is the trickiest of the three, is when individuals consciously tap on these cognitive biases to their own advantage. The rise of the asset management industry is one example, where asset managers’ herd behaviour may be looked at as perfectly rational. An IMF researcher referred to such situations as “rational bubble-riding”, whereby financial benchmarking and the short-term nature of performance appraisals imposed on asset managers, lead them to consciously ride on bubbles, despite believing that the prices are unjustified by fundamentals. Investors may be incentivised to herd, preferring to succeed or fail together to prevent reputational damage. As John Maynard Keynes famously said, “It is better for reputation to fail conventionally, than to succeed unconventionally”. Whether these cognitive biases are unconsciously wired in us or consciously being tapped on, we ought to recognise the power of perception. Edward de Bono aptly pointed out that “perception is real, even if it is not reality.” In reality, a few of these misperceptions result in tangible consequences that influence the ringgit exchange rate level. Let me cite five instances of misperceptions that have been making its rounds in the market: First, the perception that the ringgit is driven by oil prices. This was derived from fact that Malaysia is one of South East Asia’s net exporters of oil and gas. Petronas is also one of the world’s largest producers of LNG.