samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The downswing in the economies was very rapid and severe, as a number of factors combined: •  The countries’ competitiveness had been undermined by the large wage increases, at the same time as the strong demand in the domestic markets had led to a waning interest in production for export. •  “Bubbles” of overproduction and high prices, primarily in the property sector, led to a more or less complete stop in construction. •  The global crisis meant that demand for the countries’ export goods declined. •  The global crisis led to foreign investors being neither willing nor able to inject capital to the Baltic countries. At the same time, foreign depositors made large withdrawals from the banks. The crisis led to GDP in the Baltic countries falling by up to 20 per cent during 2009 alone, and budget deficits soared, as did the outflow of currency, which put pressure on the foreign currency reserves. Real wages fell, unemployment rose, property prices collapsed and the number of borrowers experiencing problems repaying their loans increased rapidly. However, the outcomes in the different countries differed somewhat from one another. How has the Riksbank assessed developments in the Baltic countries and what action has it taken? As many of the major Swedish banks have such large commitments in these countries, the Riksbank has long been closely following developments in the region.

During the Spanish flu pandemic, many people died from secondary bacterial infections which can now be treated more effectively. And we are economically in a much better position to deal with a shock of this nature. Why? The internet puts a whole range of technical options at our disposal that allow us to continue working. Our social security systems are much better. People will only stay at home if they continue to be paid when they get sick. At the same time, there is now more international division of labour than there was back then, so we feel the impact more strongly if supply chains break down. The economy is estimated to have contracted by 6% at the time of the Spanish flu. Is this 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  virus crisis economically less bad? No-one can say, but we will play our part in containing the economic consequences of this crisis. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches
That underlying activity - based upon expert and objective assessment of prospective profitability relative to potential risk, clearly can, in itself, make a significant difference to the productive capacity - the sustainable rate of growth - of the wider economy. In addition, of course, financial intermediaries provide essential banking, insurance and other services, without which the non-financial economy would find it impossible to function. Of course it is true that financial intermediaries are motivated by profit. Prospective profitability is the measure by which they decide how to direct resources to their most productive use, which is, as I say, their essential economic function. Moreover, they are for the most part lending, or investing, or advising on the investment of, funds which ultimately belong to others, and they have to aim to maximise the return on those funds in the interest of their customers, as well as on their own account, if they are to stay in business for the longer term. Recent international history is littered with instances in which misallocation of financial resources to non-productive investment, followed by disruption of the financial system, has resulted in massive economic and consequent social damage. It was a major factor, for example, behind the Asian crisis and its aftermath.

I imagine that, while we could no doubt argue about some of the details, all of us would accept that a genuine democratic process - based on universal suffrage and underpinned by transparency and accountability, and supported by freedom of speech, including freedom of the press, is a sine qua non. Within that framework, there is plenty of room for ongoing debate about the role of government, at different levels, in striking a balance between protecting the interests of society as a whole and of particular groups within society, on the one hand, and preserving individual freedoms on the other. In the economic field the debate can become polarised between those who favour free markets, in the interests of economic efficiency and growth, and those who favour government intervention, in the interests of social protection. In fact I don’t think I know many people actually involved in public policy issues who do not see general economic prosperity as the ultimate objective; and I don’t know many people either who do not recognise the need for government intervention to maintain at least the minimum standards necessary for the effective functioning of free markets. So the real debate it seems to me is a narrower one: it is about means rather than ends; and the real issues are typically about matters of degree rather than absolute matters of basic principle. Against that background let me talk first about overall economic policy - and its relevance to the issue of poverty.
Gross capital flows, however, are much larger: this may suggest that the economy’s degree of vulnerability is actually larger than currently accounted for. Should we therefore be concerned with large two way (gross) flows, as opposed to net flows, and the size of the much larger global balance sheet if counted in this way? Arguably, large gross capital flows and the flow of surplus capital from emerging markets to more developed markets may be a structural phenomenon, as mentioned earlier. The characteristics of developed financial markets, in terms of lesser financial frictions, better information and fewer borrowing constraints leading to better liquidity and lending, as well developed social welfare systems, are reflected in the persistent gap in savings compared to developing markets. In addition, financial integration has facilitated cross border arbitrage transactions, resulting in easier liquidity conditions globally. The implications and associated risks of this high level of global liquidity are different depending on whether the current state of affairs is a new equilibrium consistent with the conditions under globalization (e.g. case above), meaning that monetary policy should not try to counteract this phenomenon. However, if the current phenomenon is due to temporarily excessively accommodative monetary policy that would eventually translate into higher inflation, this would require eventual tightening and lead to the risk of capital reversals. But there are also compelling reasons to argue that risks have been better distributed, given financial innovation and various credit risk transfer mechanisms.

As already announced, the remaining denominations in the series will be issued at half-yearly or yearly intervals, with the next one being the 10-franc note. The appearance, design elements and other information relating to this denomination will be communicated on 11 October 2017, and issuance will begin a week later, on 18 October. I’d like to thank everyone who helped prepare the ground for the successful launch of the new 20-franc note – as well as those involved at all other stages of the process – for their hard work. Page 3/3
Ladies and gentlemen, Despite our progress, we should not settle for what we have achieved thus far. Much more can be done and need to be done to improve the sustainability of the Thai society as a number of challenges remain. Some of which leave us to question our collective actions as a society on how we allow these challenges to get out of hand. Allow me to highlight four challenges in particular: First, despite a more broad-based economic growth and a number of government policies targeting low income households, 2/6  Thailand remains among the world’s most unequal countries in terms of wealth, with the richest one percent owning more than half of total household wealth2. Meanwhile, low financial literacy and high household debt level continue to hamper the ability of individuals to pursue new opportunities and secure long-term financial security. These have curbed individual’s chance to improve her socio-economic status in the long-run. Essentially, widening wealth and income inequality is a major contributor to the fragility of the Thai society and is frequently used as an excuse to draw public support for a number of costly and unsustainable populist policies. Second, our labor productivity growth is moderating and should be emphasized. As an aging society with declining labor force, enhancing productivity is critical for the Thai economy to maintain growth. And yet a number of public policies have focused on creating short-term stimulus rather than on encouraging the necessary adjustments to address long-term productivity issue.

•  For inflation to go down, back to our definition of price stability it is essential that we do not have prices and labour costs spiralling taking into account the present level of inflation and giving rise to what we call “second round effects”. All decision-makers whether private or public, including entrepreneurs and social partners should have that in mind all over the euro area. 4  BIS Review 6/2008  •  Decisions of augmentation of prices and costs that would depart from this recommendation would do nothing but contributing to higher inflation, diminishing purchasing power in the medium run, diminishing competitiveness and therefore hampering durably the job creation process which is presently a major success of the euro area. I thank you for your attention. BIS Review 6/2008  5
Demands on supervisory authorities and central banks have therefore increased in recent decades – demands that they monitor, oversee and regulate, when necessary. For monetary policy, the changes in the financial markets have had an effect that has received less attention, as they have affected the channels and markets through which monetary policy measures act. A Swedish example, to which I will return, is the emergence of the market for corporate bonds. These days, one-third of companies’ loan financing takes place on this market, and the functioning of this market has therefore come to affect how changes in the repo rate spread to the interest rates that companies are facing de facto. 2 See, for example, Lundvall (2020) for a summary, as well as the references provided there. See also Andersen et al. (2020). 3 See Andersson et al. (2020), Lundvall (2020) and Ingves (2019). 3 [13]  The same target for monetary policy but the way there looks different The environment in which the Riksbank acts has thus changed in a way that affects monetary policy on several levels. And our way of thinking about monetary policy, what it is and how it should be conducted, has also changed along with our environment. The objective of monetary policy is unchanged and remains price stability, often more concretely defined in terms of stabilising inflation around 2 per cent.

It was basically assumed that all saving and lending took place in the form of a certain kind of bond and it was also the interest rate on this that the central bank could directly steer. This might not be such a bad simplification if the financial markets were relatively frictionless and various actors on the financial markets were easily able to make deals with each other. In such a world, interest rates with longer maturities would depend, to a great extent, on expectations of the policy rate in the future. It also assumes that the information needed by households and companies to take decisions is free and evenly spread (which is to say information is not asymmetric). ...and that the view of the financial markets was oversimplified Precisely this assumption that the financial markets were frictionless was one reason why it was difficult to understand the driving forces behind the global financial crisis of 2007–2009, as well as which measures the central banks should take and, for example, to discuss asset purchases as a further monetary policy instrument. 5 When the central banks nevertheless started to purchase assets on a large scale in conjunction with the financial crisis, this was done as it was an old, tried and tested measure – that is, not anything particularly unconventional. There were still enough people in central banking who remembered how monetary policy was conducted ‘in the old days’. 6 Older theories from the 1960s (portfolio balance theories, for example) went through a renaissance.
First, the job functions and roles in MAS’ annual manpower survey and the new Employment Outlook Survey are mapped to those in the skills framework, so that we not only know what jobs are in demand, but also what skills to build to help move people into these jobs. Second, IBF’s accreditation of training programmes and certification of professionals are based on the skills framework, and so are its training pathways for reskilling and upskilling. https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/speeches/2020/gearing-up-for-new-and-evolving-jobs-in-financial-services  16/18  04/12/2020  "Gearing up for New and Evolving Jobs in Financial Services" - Remarks by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authorit…  Third, employers in the financial sector have started to adopt the skills framework in their training roadmaps. This is important. As an industry, we must move towards skills-based rather than qualification-based hiring and career development. Fast forward to 2020, and the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated upskilling eﬀorts. Training participation has increased 65% to reach close to 31,000 during the April to September 2020 period, compared to the same period last year. Besides training to deepen your skills, I encourage you to seek IBF Certification, an industry endorsed mark of quality for finance professionals in Singapore. https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/speeches/2020/gearing-up-for-new-and-evolving-jobs-in-financial-services  17/18  04/12/2020  "Gearing up for New and Evolving Jobs in Financial Services" - Remarks by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authorit…  MAS will extend our enhanced training support measures for another 6 months to June 2021.

These include: the extension of IBF’s 5% course fee credit, which when stacked with the enhanced training subsidies under IBF, will bring the total course fee support to 95%; and the extension of the Training Allowance Grant of $ per training hour for companysponsored trainees. IBF will expand the list of courses eligible under the Financial Training Scheme to include deep-technology courses and certifications for a time-limited period. I urge all financial institutions and fintech firms to continue to tap on the enhanced training support measures to help your workers upskill and acquire new capabilities to stay employed. CONCLUSION Let me close now. Growing timber is a long-term commitment. So is the jobs and skills eﬀort - creating job opportunities, fostering job readiness, and supporting job retention. The eﬀorts take time to bear fruit. But with persistence and an enterprising spirit, we will create a lush forest: a world-class financial sector workforce ready for the future. © 2020, Government of Singapore. https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/speeches/2020/gearing-up-for-new-and-evolving-jobs-in-financial-services  18/18
This is particularly relevant when it comes to similar financial products that can be packaged as an insurance product, a banking product or a securities product as same business can be undertaken by either a bank, investment bank or an insurance company. A key implementation issue is how to delineate the double gearing and how to make available capital to deal with risks of both insurance and securities products. As far as the EU is concerned, the financial conglomerates directive has already been issued and they are expected to comply with them. USA’s umbrella supervisory provisions are included in the Graham Leach – Bliley Act. In Sri Lanka, we still have not come to terms in dealing with a consolidated or a group-wide financial conglomerate. X. Proper definition of capital  How do you identify new capital instruments such as hybrid capital and perpetual debentures? Should it be Tier I or Tier II? One needs to be cautious here as hybrid capital can disappear given its derivative nature. Currently, there is a wide disparity between the Basel II preparation processes in Europe, USA and Asia. The issue of treating hybrid capital is significant as many Asian banks are moving towards synthetic securitization in producing hybrid capital and exposing their portfolios to credit risks, especially when equity participation has been synthetically securitized.

The last few decades saw probably the most rapid industrialization since the industrial revolution occurring in ASEAN. ASEAN became renowned for exports of consumer products of great values. We are now hubs for automobile and electronics production. Another noteworthy development in recent times also includes trade expansion among ASEAN nations. Intra-ASEAN trade used to represent only about 12 percent of its overall trade in 1993, but today, that figure has increased to around 25 percent. Moreover, this trend is set to accelerate, resulting in trade expansion both within ASEAN itself, and between ASEAN and the rest of the world. Ladies and Gentlemen, Today, the importance of ASEAN in the global economy cannot be denied. Size-wise, ASEAN population amounts to 565 million with growing middle class population, which means stronger demand for consumer products and financial services. Looking forward, for ASEAN growth to continue and able to avoid disruptive crises, the economic and financial infrastructure that underpins our economic activities must be strong. This brings me to the role of financial policy and strategy to enhance ASEAN strengths. For ASEAN to be strong, a necessary condition is that its financial system must be deep and wide. And its financial institutions must function as intermediaries to allocate funds effectively and efficiently. In the past, ASEAN relied on external source of funding, mainly from developed countries. At present, however, new polar source of funding has shifted towards Asia as well as ASEAN. Having well-developed financial system would enable ASEAN to better recycle its surplus capital among its members.
But the experience of credit risk during the Asian crisis shows that they are all too easily forgotten. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to issue this reminder. BIS Review 53/1999  6

After five years of independent conduct of monetary policy, the Banque de France has earned a high degree of confidence, as witnessed by the solidity of the franc and the relative level of French longterm interest rates. The Bank is proud to have been able to transmit this confidence to the euro, along with other central banks forming the core of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Nineteen ninety eight was a successful year for European integration: the remarkable convergence of European economies enabled the historic decision by heads of state and government to commit eleven countries to the road to the euro. The date of 4 January 1999 marked a first technical success in the changeover from national currencies to the euro. The major challenge now facing the euro area as a whole is to permanently guarantee good economic and financial performances. It is no longer a question of victoriously overcoming an obstacle, but of efficiently managing the monetary, fiscal and structural areas over the long term. This is naturally indispensable in order to ensure cohesion, stability, prosperity and consequently a reduction in unemployment in the euro area, i.e. in an area with 291 million inhabitants. And this is also a contribution necessary for the stability and prosperity of the world economy, within which Europe will play a central role, like the United States.
All three suffered a severe set-back at the time of the global financial crisis: peak-to-trough, GDP fell by 6%, employment by 2%  2  “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income” (Kuznets (1934)). 3  Bank of England (2012). BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  and wealth by 11%. These are significant falls. They are confirmation, if it were needed, that the UK entered a deep recession – indeed, a “Great Recession” – between 2008 and 2009. 4 Since 2009, however, all three measures have begun to recover: GDP has risen by around 14%, employment by around 8.5% and wealth by around 35%. These are strong recoveries. Indeed, all three measures now exceed their pre-crisis peaks: GDP is 7% higher, employment 6% higher and wealth over 30% higher than in 2008. When economists refer to the UK’s “recovery”, these are the metrics they typically use to keep score: incomes, jobs and wealth have all “recovered” their crisis-related losses. So why has that recovery not been felt, at least by some? One explanation may simply be that this time’s recovery is slower than those in the past. At a corresponding stage of recovery after the UK recessions of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, GDP was 6%, 19% and 18% higher respectively than today (Chart 2). Even after the Great Depression of the 1930s, GDP was 16% higher.

The Bank can set only one interest rate – the interest rate on Bank of England money. This interest rate affects every region, every sector, every company and every individual that uses Bank money. In practice, this means pretty much everyone in the UK. In other words, monetary policy affects the fortunes of the whole of the UK economy and it does so equally. The Bank cannot set a different interest rate for the steel and the shipping industries, for Port Talbot and Portstewart, for Wales and West Lothian. If monetary policy is singular, does that imply it should be set in a way which is single-minded? In other words, should monetary policy focus only on the economy-wide picture, taking no account of developments across different sectors or regions, income and age ranges, savers and borrowers? My answer to that, quite different, question is a resounding no. That is for four distinct reasons. First, we know that official data on the economy are noisy and mis-measured. They also often fail to capture fully some areas of economic activity – for example, sectors of the economy that are either rising rapidly (such as the digital economy) or contributions that fall outside of the National Accounts framework (such as volunteering). Forming a picture of the whole economy from official statistics is rather like doing a jigsaw puzzle with half of the pieces missing and the other half slightly water-damaged.