samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
–  First, security: the absence of any credit risk is an intrinsic quality of gold: gold offers full security as long as it is properly stowed in central banks’ vaults. 1  BIS Review 61/2000  –  Second, liquidity: in situations of political turmoil or high global inflation, gold’s liquidity is unchallenged. Certainly, in circumstances of orderly financial markets, gold is not the most liquid of assets (even though it is probably the most liquid of commodities). But its liquid quality becomes apparent and increases as uncertainty grows. In this regard, the absence of a return on gold can be viewed as the price of its “option component”: contrary to most other assets, gold prices go up when things go wrong. –  Third motivation for holding gold: diversification. Gold bears no interest coupon. If lent, the lending rate is relatively modest. Then there is usually a cost of carry for gold holdings. This is partially offset by the “option component” I mentioned before. But gold is also a very good diversification instrument. Indeed in the long run, the price of gold has shown a very low and even a negative correlation with the dollar (the first-ranking reserve currency) and with US Treasuries. So gold is very useful to build a diversified portfolio as it enables you to improve your risk/return profile. On the whole, I would say that gold is an asset of last resort par excellence and that recent market developments have in no way altered its intrinsic qualities.

Hervé Hannoun: The Banque de France’s view on gold and comments on the euro  Speech by Mr Hervé Hannoun, First Deputy Governor of the Banque de France, at a dinner organised by Goldman Sachs on the occasion of the Financial Times Gold Conference held on 26 June 2000. * * *  Introduction: silver and gold Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure and privilege for me to be speaking here in the Hôtel des Invalides in front of such a distinguished audience. The organisers gave you the opportunity to visit Napoléon’s tomb. So let me, as an introduction, highlight some historical facts, which may not be so far away from the topics I intend to discuss later. Two hundred years ago, the First Consul Napoléon Bonaparte created the Banque de France with himself as one of the shareholders. At the same time, Napoléon built a monetary regime based on a bimetal system (a combined gold and silver standard) that prevailed throughout the 19th century. At that time, many currencies in the world were based on a gold standard, while a few had a silver standard. France had defined the Germinal franc - which remained absolutely stable for almost 120 years - with respect to its weight in both silver and gold. One Germinal franc was equivalent to 5 grams of silver and to 322 milligrams of gold; the famous 20 franc coin, called the Napoléon, was issued at that time (with a weight of 6.45 grams).
The prices of goods we import are also affected at the consumer stage by conditions in Sweden, for instance, via transport costs, price mark-ups by wholesalers and retailers and also by the value of the krona. When the Riksbank raises the repo rate, total demand in the economy is dampened. This reduces the scope for price increases in all areas. And it is important that monetary policy focuses on keeping down the general price increases and that the inflation target is not redefined merely because some prices are rising more than others. Swedish households’ total purchasing power declines even when prices of imported products rise. So the risk of such price increases spreading to other prices and to wages will scarcely decline just because the inflation target is defined in terms of domestic prices. It is also important to distinguish between the measure of inflation to which our target applies and measures that are useful from time to time to analyse the driving forces behind inflation. The Riksbank often highlights the development of other measures to describe developments in inflation and explain the monetary policy strategy in a better way. For example, last autumn one measure that was useful was CPIX excluding energy. This could illustrate that we were assuming that energy prices would push up inflation temporarily but that the inflation trend would not be affected. But then is the CPI really the best measure for our inflation target?

On the contrary, a large cut in the repo rate would in the opinion of the Executive Board have a faster effect than a smaller cut together with a downward adjustment in the forecast for the interest rate. 6  BIS Review 2/2008  Uncertainty over what is around the corner Another difficulty that monetary policy faces is that there is particularly great uncertainty over future developments right now. Our decision in December that the repo rate needed to be cut substantially was, as I see it, relatively simple. But at the same time it was very difficult to assess economic developments over the coming years and thereby the future development of the repo rate path. Some of the difficulty lies in assessing the scope and effects of different fiscal policy stimulation packages abroad. However, the greatest difficulty lies in assessing how long the financial crisis will persist and what demands it will make on monetary policy. My assessment at the most recent meeting was that a cut of 1.75 percentage points and a repo rate around 2 per cent over the coming year was the closest we could come to a well-balanced monetary policy. But I considered the assessment to be very uncertain, particularly from 2010 onwards. Will the expected recovery in the economy manifest itself or will the downturn be more prolonged? We will probably all have to continue to wrestle with this question. The plan is that the next decision on the repo rate will be made next month.
In this context it is important to remember that relatively little development will take place in east Iceland this year and for most of next year. The effect will not begin to be felt to any extent until well into next year and the bulk of construction work will take place in 2005 and 2006. The main conclusion of the Bank’s analysis is that even though this will be the largest construction programme in the history of Iceland, it should be able to go through without disrupting the economy. However, this calls for cautious economic policy implementation. The Central Bank’s analysis shows that with a somewhat stronger exchange rate and higher interest rates than would otherwise have prevailed, and a tighter fiscal stance than would have been needed, inflation will remain inside the tolerance limits of the target, i.e. below 4%, and that this will prevent the economic instability that the construction programme in east Iceland would otherwise have caused. Exchange rate developments and the fiscal input will be major factors in determining how much interest rates will need to rise. However, neither an exchange rate adjustment nor fiscal measures can entirely replace monetary measures, since the change in exchange rate partly reflects expectations of a rise in Central Bank interest rates, beside which the scope of the east Iceland construction programme will simply be too great to be countered solely by cutting back public sector activity.

BIS Review 76/2010  5
Accompanying that re-balancing would be a re-orientation of the structure of activity away from businesses that predominantly meet domestic needs towards those producing internationally tradable goods and services. The substantial depreciation of sterling – down around a quarter since August 2007 – should facilitate that re-balancing by making it more profitable to produce for export or to compete against imports. For example, relative unit labour costs in the United Kingdom are now more than 25% lower than before the crisis. The contribution of net exports to the recovery had – at least until the very latest GDP release – been somewhat disappointing. Net exports reduced growth by a total of 0.7 percentage points over the past four quarters, as import growth outstripped that of exports. As world output, weighted according to countries’ importance to UK trade, grew somewhat faster over that period than UK activity, the weakness in the UK’s net export performance cannot be attributed to a more rapid recovery here. Some of the weakness can perhaps be ascribed to strong import growth associated with the working out of the stock cycle, as inventories are relatively import intensive. But closer investigation suggests that the weakness has been especially concentrated in exports of financial services, no doubt in part reflecting the impact of the banking crisis. Foreigners’ demand for UK financial services may plausibly continue to be somewhat lower than before the crisis, so this weakness may persist.

After it became clear in August that Russia would not, in practice, be servicing its foreign debt, market participants became highly riskaverse. The unrest also spread to European financial markets and to Norway. Investors moved their funds to Germany, the US and Switzerland. The currencies of countries with less liquid and more volatile financial markets, such as Norway and Sweden, depreciated. The Norwegian krone depreciated from around 101 against the ECU index at the beginning of the year to 115 in October, the weakest rate since the objective of exchange rate stability against the ECU was adopted. Norges Bank responded to the sharp depreciation of the krone by raising its key rates in several steps through 1998. Following the last increase in interest rates on 25 August, the sight deposit rate stood at 8.00 per cent, 4.50 percentage points higher than at the beginning of 1998. Kjell Storvik stated a few days later that "The interest rate level which has now been established should, in addition to directly contributing to stabilising the krone exchange rate, dampen price expectations, which in turn implies that expectations of a further depreciation will gradually recede." During the autumn, it appeared that the effects of the depreciation of the krone on inflation would not be as great as assumed originally. First, the krone had depreciated less against an average of trading partners' currencies than against the ECU. Second, price inflation in the global economy fell. At the same time, it appeared that the turnaround in the real economy would be considerable.
If this discussion were to eventually conclude that it is appropriate to make certain changes within the areas I raise, then this would not have drastic consequences for the monetary policy framework as such. Rather, it would mean adjustments and improvements which could be accommodated well within the existing framework of flexible inflation targeting. Before I continue, I would like to underscore one important thing: the members of the Executive Board always give their own views in their speeches. The ideas I express here are therefore entirely my own. The issues I raise are issues we in the Executive Board have discussed off and on, but it is an ongoing discussion and we have not yet drawn any conclusions. What I say here should therefore not be interpreted as the Riksbank's official view on these issues. I would like to highlight two aspects of the monetary policy framework – the target variable and a potential interval, or band, surrounding the target. 3  In Canada, this work has been formalised in that the monetary policy framework is reviewed every five years. This results in an “Inflation-Control Agreement” between the Bank of Canada and the government. 4  The evaluation of Swedish monetary policy by Marvin Goodfriend and Mervyn King on behalf of the Committee of Finance (Riksdagen, 2014), which is assessing different areas of the monetary policy framework, will undoubtedly further stimulate the discussion. This evaluation will be presented in January.

One sign of this is the historically high September figure for the 12-month increase in the number of bankruptcies world-wide among companies with a credit rating from Moody’s. According to Moody’s assessments, we can expect an increasing number of bankruptcies up to the end of March. This has been accompanied by appreciably higher borrowing rates for companies with a low rating, as well as a down-grading of more and more companies. The group of firms with the highest credit rating has shrunk to a proportion that is small and even lower than at the time of the latest major slowdown in the early 1990s, for example. In view of the increased financing costs for firms with a low credit rating, there is a risk of more bankruptcies in the future, with contagious effects among other firms and sectors. For firms with a higher credit rating, on the other hand, the generally lower level of interest rates implies if anything that financing costs have been reduced. So the risk of increased problems with credit should not be exaggerated, though it does look as though to some extent at least, the present fall in activity stems from the supply side. Above all, it appears to concern an overly rapid and abnormally high investment in the IT and telecom sectors.
This knowledge and network of relationships may be leveraged by central banks to better understand the policy context behind global central bank actions, as well as the operating environments and constraints faced by central bank colleagues around the world. The Federal Reserve’s dollar account services For the Federal Reserve, the dollar’s predominant international role confers on it an especially strong interest in providing safe and efficient account infrastructure for the reserve management and cross-border payment needs of the global official sector. 16 The Federal Reserve’s account infrastructure for foreign official institutions performs a utility-like function for those institutions wishing to access U.S. fixed income markets and correspondent banking services in order to execute core central banking and official functions in which the safety, confidentiality, and reliability of service provision is essential. Through the Central Bank and International Account Services area of the New York Fed, the Federal Reserve today offers banking and custody services in dollars to just under 180 foreign central banks and monetary authorities, approximately 18 international multilateral financial institutions, and a number of ministries of finance or national governments. The suite of services offered to these account holders is a basic package of dollar-denominated and gold services in three general areas: transfer and custody services for gold and fixed income securities; dollarbased payment services; and dollar-based cash management and investment services. Every day, New York Fed staff process on average hundreds of billions in transaction volumes on behalf of foreign official account holders.

With respect to the Federal  Reserve’s current dollar swap lines, for example, when a foreign central bank draws on its swap line with the Federal Reserve, the foreign central bank sells a specified amount of its currency to the Federal Reserve in exchange for dollars at the prevailing market exchange rate. The Federal Reserve holds the foreign currency in an account at the foreign central bank. The dollars that the Federal Reserve provides are deposited in an account that the foreign central bank maintains at the New York Fed. When the foreign central bank lends to institutions in its jurisdiction the dollars it obtains by drawing on its swap line, the dollars are transferred from the foreign central bank’s account at the Federal Reserve to the account of the bank that the borrowing institution uses to clear its dollar transactions. By using its account on the books of the Fed to receive swap proceeds and distribute them, rather than accounts at private-sector bank, the central bank avoids much of the risk of public identification of its borrowers and itself avoids the credit risk, and other risks (operational, reputational, etc.) of a private sector bank account. Moreover, the overall size and ramping up of potential liquidity operations can be virtually unlimited, subject only to the policy limitations set by the central bank counterparties themselves.
Andrew G Haldane: Why institutions matter (more than ever) Speech by Mr Andrew G Haldane, Executive Director, Financial Stability, Bank of England, given at the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) Annual Conference, School of Oriental and Africa Studies, London, 4 September 2013. *  *  *  It is a great pleasure to be speaking at this year’s CRESC annual conference. It is particularly poignant, in the week of Ronald Coase’s death, to be discussing “Why Institutions Matter”. This is belatedly becoming conventional economic wisdom. Yet I wish to argue not just that institutions matter, but that the forces shaping today’s great global systems mean they matter more today than ever previously. There are many forces shaping the evolution of the world’s systems – social systems, financial systems, economic systems. But two of the most potent and pressing are integration and information. Both have undergone a radical transformation over recent years, driven skyward by a combination of globalisation and technology. They have reached heights undreamt of a generation ago. Take integration. Cross-border flows of resources – people, goods and services, capital – have seen a remarkable upsurge over the past few decades. Chart 1 plots some measures of cross-border flows of goods, services and capital – the ratios of world trade and global external assets to world GDP. They exhibit broadly similar trends: rising in the early part of the 20th century, falling during the interwar years, before rising rapidly to the present day. They chart the ebb and flow of globalisation.

Caleb M Fundanga: Innovation for leadership excellency Remarks by Dr Caleb M Fundanga, Governor of the Bank of Zambia, at the Eastern and Southern African Management Institute (ESAMI) launch of MBA Alumni Zambia Chapter, Lusaka, 12 February 2010. *  *  *  The Eastern and Southern African Management Institute (ESAMI) Director General, Prof. Bonnard Mwape; The President, ESAMI MBA Alumni Zambia Chapter, Mr. Christopher Mulenga; The Ecobank Zambia Limited Managing Director, Mrs Charity Lumpa; ESAMI Alumni; Distinguished Invited Guests; Members of the Press; Ladies and Gentlemen. It is a great pleasure for me to officiate at the launch of the ESAMI MBA Alumni Zambia Chapter. I wish to take this opportunity to welcome Prof. Bonnard Mwape and other ESAMI staff that have travelled from Arusha to come and witness this important occasion. I am particularly delighted to be part of this launch because my first interaction with the ESAMI MBA alumni members was during the recent summer school event held in Arusha, Tanzania, where I was invited to present a paper on “The Effects of the Global Economic Crisis on Zambia”. Indeed my memories of that lively interaction are still very fresh and that is why I graciously accepted to officiate at this function when I received the invitation from the President of the association. Ladies and Gentlemen allow me to congratulate the President and his team for this excellent initiative of bringing together individuals with a common academic background under the Alumni umbrella.
He said this: “Where once the poor were commonly seen as passive victims, microfinance recognizes that poor people are remarkable reservoirs of energy and knowledge. And while the lack of financial services is a sign of poverty, today it is also understood as an untapped opportunity to create markets, bring people in from the margins and give them the tools with which to help themselves.” I believe we will continue to see massive changes in rapid bursts. In the process, the goal should be to help as many people as we can emerge stronger and more productive members of the human ecosystem. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches

With today’s interest rate increase, we are also raising the interest rate on sight deposits above the threshold. For domestic banks, this threshold is calculated on the basis of their minimum reserve requirements. 1 By remunerating sight deposits above the threshold now at 0.5%, we ensure that our tighter monetary policy will continue to be passed through efficiently to interest rates in the money market overall. 1  Further information is available in the Instruction sheet governing interest on sight deposits. Page 1/2  Berne, 15 December 2022 Andréa M. Maechler  News conference  Page 2/2
6 7  6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  expected to be gradual and, even once spare capacity had been absorbed, the appropriate level of Bank Rate was expected to be materially below the pre-crisis average of 5%. Out of that guidance came the phrase ‘limited and gradual’, so often repeated it has now become part of the monetary policy furniture. Importantly, it is widely recognised by UK households and businesses whose expectations of rate increases have remained well anchored as the recovery has progressed (Charts 3b and 3c) as well as by financial markets (Chart 3a). Similar guidance was subsequently adopted by the FOMC and ECB. 8  Chart 3: Households and businesses have consistently expected increases in interest rates to be gradual and limited a) Historic UK Bank Rate tightening cycles Cumulative change, percentage points 2.0 1.8 1.6  September 1994  September 1999  November 2003  October 2006  1.4 1.2 1.0  August 2006  0.8 0.6 May 2018 Inflation Report market interest rate path  November 2017  0.4 0.2 0.0  Months since first increase in Bank Rate Sources: Bank of England, Bloomberg Finance L.P. and Bank calculations. Notes: Tightening cycles since the start of inflation targeting in 1992. Tightening cycles are shown up to when interest rates reached their highest level before they were next reduced. The curve is estimated using instantaneous forward overnight index swap rates in the 15 working days to 2 May 2018.

Mr Bergo looks at the impact of the euro on the economies of non-member states Speech by the Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Norway, Mr Jarle Bergo, to the Scottish Norwegian Business Forum, in Edinburgh, Scotland on 3/2/99. At the beginning of this year we witnessed the implementation of the greatest monetary reform of the century: the launch of the euro and the final stage of EMU. Norway watches this great experiment from the outside, but we are not uninfluenced by it. On the contrary, it constitutes an important change in the environment of our policy-making, especially with respect to monetary policy. In addition, there are important questions concerning the use of the euro by Norwegian economic agents and possible implications for the Norwegian business sector, particularly the banking and financial industry. I shall try to address these issues. My basic proposition will be that in most respects the euro does not give rise to fundamentally new challenges, but almost certainly accentuates some that are already present. The euro and Norwegian monetary policy Monetary policy in Norway has been oriented towards maintaining exchange-rate stability for almost the entire post-war period. When the Bretton Woods system collapsed in the early 1970s, Norway joined the European “Snake”. However, when the European Monetary System was set up in 1979 Norway chose a link to a trade-weighted basket of currencies.