samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The role of Government as shareholder of public NBFIs has been to implement a coherent shareholder strategy to bring these public financial institutions back to commercial viability through provision of financial support. The Government has indicated its intention to further capitalize these institutions for this purpose. 4.1.3  Citizen economic empowerment  The Government has also pushed the issue of “access” to the top of its financial policy agenda and is emphasizing on the need for financial inclusion for all citizens as evidenced by share floatation in favour of Zambian citizens in privatized state enterprises through the Citizens Economic Empowerment Act. 5.0  Sustainability of financial services  5.1  Regulatory framework  The BoZ is responsible for regulating and supervising banks and the specified NBFIs. This entails, among other aspects, ensuring that financial service providers (FSPs), as these institutions may generally be referred to, are adequately capitalized and have risk management systems appropriate for their size, nature of operations and level of complexity. Safe, strong and sound FSPs are vehicles for the provision of sustainable financial services as they better cope with external shocks. A significant part of the BoZ analysis involves reviewing key ratios from financial statements. The objectives of this ratio analysis are, among other things, to discern trends, identify key risk areas to focus on and to compare performance with competitors, industry average or standard. For instance the key ratios relating to banks’ performance in the recent past is shown in Table 3. 4  Zambia: Selected Economic Indicators, IMF 2008.

It was conducted by FinMark Trust of South Africa. BIS Review 99/2008  3  been undertaken, namely, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa at 5%, 1% and 8%, respectively. An important point to note for policymakers is the fact that the majority of those who had no access to financial services are the rural poor, with women more disadvantaged than men. Importantly, these are the very areas and categories of people for whom support has been prioritized in the Fifth National Development Plan (FNDP) and under the Citizens Empowerment Act (2006). The Government, working with the private sector and other key stakeholders, thus already has platform from which to address these challenges. During the first half of 2007, the Supply Side Study was undertaken as a follow up to the FinScope™2005 demand side survey. The Study revealed opportunities as well as challenges in addressing access to financial services and financial sector development in general. First, macroeconomic policy and financial sector regulation were no longer viewed as a problem, following the downward trend in inflation to single digits in 2006, the consolidation of the Government’s fiscal position, strong economic growth. Second, the enabling environment to facilitate the expansion in access to credit, i.e. developments in the payment system and the greater sharing of information in the financial markets through credit bureaux is also not yet a binding constraint.
As a result, very few prices are denominated in cryptoassets and not many large brick-and-mortar or online retailers accept bitcoin for example, although there are some exceptions [i.e. showroomprivé.com, France’s second largest flash sale web retailer, which has accepted bitcoins since 2014]. Second, as intermediaries in exchanges, crypto-assets are far less effective than a settlement asset with legal tender status, insofar as (i) their price volatility makes it hard to use them as a means of payment, (ii) they generate transaction fees that are far too high for simple retail transactions (for instance, the redemption fee on Tether is 3%), and (iii) they offer no guarantee of a refund in the event of fraud. 3/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  Third, the fact that they have no intrinsic value and that they offer no guarantee that they can be converted at par upon demand with commercial bank money or central bank money means that they cannot be used to create trustworthy stores of value. In addition, crypto-assets « front end » and « back-end » payment arrangements are  significantly exposed to risks of various nature, including legal, financial, operational and compliance risk with money laundering and terrorist financing, consumer and investor protection, which need to be seriously addressed if they are not to become the « weak links » in our payment systems, with the risk that they undermine the safety of the whole payment chain.

We expect that to weigh heavily on demand. We judge the appropriate degree of monetary tightening taking that into account. What I reject is the argument that in our response to Covid the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee let demand get out of hand and thus stoked inflation. The facts simply do not support this. On the latest number, UK GDP in March was only 0.6% above its pre-Covid level, and it is substantially below the path it was expected to follow pre-Covid. What we do have is a very tight labour market. But that does not look like a story about rapid demand growth. The labour force has shrunk by around 1% since the onset of Covid. It looks much more like an impact from the supply of labour. The job of the Bank of England is to return inflation to target at a time when a very large headwind from external shocks, and an internal shock from a fall in the labour force, are reducing real incomes but risk leading to persistence in domestic wage and price setting, socalled second round effects. The Bank of England will, as always, take monetary policy decisions to ensure that the inflation target is met over the medium term. We have raised the official rate four times so far and have made clear that in order to bring inflation down to target we are prepared to do so again based on the assessment at each of our meetings.
Understanding this diversity is critical to better understanding the health of the labor market and the overall economy, and is important for informing policy. Now let’s turn to housing. Macroeconomists focus on aggregate residential construction as a measure of how the housing sector is contributing to overall economic growth. It is important to note, however, that housing market experiences vary substantially across individuals in ways not reflected in the aggregate construction data. For example, the type of housing units typically occupied by low-income households saw higher-than-average rent inflation from 2009 to 2011. Much of this difference appears to be due to contrasting ways that additions to the housing stock enter into different segments of the housing market. For households in the highest income quintile, new construction more than accounts for the net increase in housing  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  units, which in turn tends to hold down rent increases for these households. However, as one moves down the income distribution, new construction represents a smaller share of the net increase in housing units. For households in the lowest income quintile, additions to rental supply come more from units that with age have depreciated and are no longer rented by higher income households. These supply additions tend to have higher rents than existing units rented by low-income households, thus putting upward pressure on rental costs.

William C Dudley: Beyond the macroeconomy Remarks by Mr William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the Economic Press Briefing, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York City, 4 November 2015. *  *  *  Aysegul Sahin and Joseph Tracy assisted in preparing these remarks. Good afternoon and welcome once again to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Economic Press Briefing. I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak with you. Today I want to focus on how economic outcomes often differ substantially across different segments of the population. As always, what I have to say reflects my own views and not necessarily those of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) or the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve has a dual mandate of maximum employment and price stability. While these mandates are expressed at an aggregate national level, it is important for policymakers to understand how they impact different groups of individuals across the country. Consequently, in addition to monitoring macroeconomic conditions closely on a day-to-day basis, economists at the New York Fed have been doing a substantial amount of work to understand how economic experiences differ across individuals and regions. As highlighted by the Nobel Prize Committee’s recent recognition of Professor Angus Deaton’s work, analyzing individual outcomes is vital to fully understanding the workings of the macroeconomy. With that in mind, I want to talk about two important areas that impact household well-being: labor income and housing opportunities.
As discussed in a box in this Report, just adding up the above elements configured a medium-term scenario where inflationary pressures and inflation would exceed December expectations. A counterfactual forecast exercise that considers developments only up to February 26 yields that the foreseen growth range for this year would have been around one percentage point higher. Output gaps, besides starting at a smaller level than had been projected, would also close sooner, with corresponding effects on inflation. In the medium term, all these changes would have shaped a scenario where inflation would have risen to 3 percent or more over the course of this year, and would have approached the 3 percent target from above in a two year horizon. The response of monetary policy in this hypothetical scenario is unambiguous. The pace of monetary policy normalization would have been faster than the one foreseen in December’s Report. Indeed, it is likely that inflation convergence to the target would have been consistent with a higher level of the MPR beginning in midyear and throughout the policy horizon. It was in this context that the earthquake and tsunami hit. Their effects on the macroeconomy are relevant for the conduct of monetary policy. First, they caused a loss in capital stock that affected the economy’s productive capacity and therefore the evaluation of output gaps, inflationary pressures and the monetary policy reaction. Second, they are having an impact on output, demand and inflation in the very short term, mostly due to the disruption of retail and manufacturing activity.

It will depend on the circumstances, but always based on a rigorous and detailed analysis. Another good example of the interactions among the different macroprudential instruments is related to the surcharge on systemic entities (globally systemic or domestically systemic banks), which is the main capital tool to address the cross-sectional dimension of systemic risk. On top of how to calibrate this buffer, we need to study further how it interacts with the countercyclical capital buffer. This is especially important in countries where credit from systemic banks 4  Beyond the LTV Ratio: New Lessons from Spain. J.E. Galán and M. Lamas. Mimeo. 9/11  represents a high proportion of total credit and, in addition, when these banks have a significant international presence. On the one hand, the empirical evidence is quite unanimous in showing how higher levels of capital in the banking system as a whole reduce the probability of systemic crises occurring. Consequently, if systemic entities are the main determinants of how the credit cycle evolves and the buffer applied to them is sufficiently high, it would be reasonable to think that the probability of having a systemic crisis is smaller. Conceivably, then, the degree of activism necessary with the countercyclical capital buffer would be lower than in other jurisdictions in which the systemic banks are less relevant. However, even if the probability of a systemic crisis occurring is lower, this does not guarantee that its intensity diminishes, and this buffer was not designed to be released in these circumstances.
As a result, total outstanding ringgit bonds increased by 10.7% to RM363 billion, which is equivalent to 81% of the gross domestic product. The general market conditions have also remained favourable for both issuance and trading activities, given the low inflation and interest rate environment and the strengthening of economic fundamentals. The Islamic bond market has also experienced exceptional growth. In 2004 the market expanded by 13.4%. To further enhance market turnover, Bank Negara Malaysia announced in January this year the usage of repurchase agreements as a monetary policy instrument, introduced the Institutional Custodian Programme to enable borrowing and lending of securities, and provided a securities lending facility for principal dealers. The implementation of these measures are aimed at improving the price discovery process and increasing the efficiency of capital allocation within the financial system. To facilitate the further development of the Islamic bond market, the Government has also imposed tax neutrality between the treatment on Islamic and conventional capital market products. BIS Review 29/2005  1  It has been just one year since we allowed Multilateral Development Banks and Multinational Corporations to issue Ringgit denominated bonds in Malaysia, and we are now witnessing the third issuance of such bonds by a supranational. In that, I am pleased to welcome the IBRD's issuance of its 760 million Ringgit Wawasan Bonds in Malaysia. We are pleased to note that the World Bank has decided to make its inaugural issuance structured in compliance with the Shariah.

This would indeed contribute to further broaden and develop the Islamic domestic capital market. This Islamic securities issuance is the largest Ringgit issuance by a supranational to-date. In closing, I would like to thank the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development for the confidence it has placed in the Malaysian capital market. We look forward to see other issuances by non-resident issuers into the Ringgit capital market, thereby contributing towards broadening and deepening the market. Such issues will have far reaching advantages for the domestic bond market. Let me once again, congratulate the World Bank and the Joint Lead Managers CIMB and ABN AMRO, for a successful issuance of the IBRD bond debut in Malaysia. Thank you. 2  BIS Review 29/2005
This solvency level implies higher voluntary capital buffers than key regulatory requirements, albeit lower than those in other major European countries. The current macro-financial environment will heighten the financial vulnerability of households, firms and the public sector Clearly, the combination of inflationary pressures, tightening financial conditions and higher uncertainty will weigh on households’ consumption decisions and their residential investment. In the case of firms, these adverse factors may also reduce their productive investment and hiring expectations. In short, activity will face additional downward pressures. And these factors are also having significant effects on public sector financing, which I will turn to now. Again, it is important to underscore the private sector’s relatively benign financial position before the pandemic, thanks to households' and firms' considerable debt reduction since the global financial crisis. In fact, in March 2020 their debt as a proportion of GDP stood at 150.4%, slightly below the European average and down by 76 pp on the peak of June 2010. The outbreak of the pandemic and the measures adopted to mitigate its effects, such as the moratoria on financial obligations and the public loan guarantee scheme, underpinned and galvanised credit in 2020, putting that debt at 157.8% of GDP. However, the overall cumulative growth in the stock of loans has been moderate, with bank lending to the resident private sector in Spain increasing by 4.2% since 2019.

04.10.2022  The situation of Spanish banks in the new macro-financial environment* V Foro Banca/elEconomista Pablo Hernández de Cos Governor  *lEnglish translation from the original in Spanish. *  Good morning. Allow me to begin by thanking El Economista for inviting me to participate, once again, in this banking forum, which represents an excellent opportunity to discuss the present situation of the banking industry and the implications of the current macro-financial environment. Our societies have been hit by several global events (the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) in quick succession, generating a highly complex macro-financial environment in which the risks of a global cyclical downturn have been magnified by persistently high global inflation, the tightening of financing conditions stemming from the widespread normalisation of monetary policy and the heightened uncertainty prompted by a broad-based downward revision of growth forecasts. The question of how the banking industry could be affected by this complex setting is an important one. The starting point: a banking industry with lower non-performing loan ratios and profitability above cost of capital To answer that question, I should first emphasise that the Spanish banking sector started out from a relatively favourable position. Allow me to illustrate this point with a few figures. First, the quality of banks’ balance sheets continued to improve through to 2022 Q2. Nonperforming lending to the resident private sector fell by 12.4% in 2022 Q2, seeing the pace of correction return to pre-COVID-19 levels after easing to rates of 5% following the pandemic.
The New York Fed keeps track of credit conditions in the region – including the average debt carried per person and whether they are  1  Regional Indexes of Coincident Economic Indicators  2  See, for additional discussion of this topic, William Dudley. 2011. “Job Creation in the Region.” Remarks at the Quarterly Regional Economic Press Briefing, New York City. August 12. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  current with their payments – using the special consumer credit panel we developed. The report for the second quarter of this year was just released on Monday.3 Families in New Jersey are reducing their debt levels. As of the second quarter of this year, for those people with a credit report, average debt per person was about $ down from $ three years ago. But the crisis has taken its toll. Delinquency rates on the debt are high: 7.4 percent of all debt in the state is seriously delinquent, roughly the same rate as the nation. The comparable figure for the state just three years ago was 4.1 percent, so, like the nation, households in the state still appear to have a considerable way to go before they reach more comfortable debt levels. While there have been indications that home prices in the area have been firming in the past few months, the mortgage crisis continues to take a toll on New Jersey homeowners.

Bank on Newark is a private/public partnership developed to bring unbanked populations into the financial mainstream by providing assistance in establishing bank accounts and receiving financial education. The New York Fed serves as an advisor and data monitor for Bank on Newark and its sister program, Bank on Manhattan, as well. This fall, we will launch our Financial Awareness Video Competition in Newark and Essex County in partnership with the City of Newark. The goal of this video competition is to promote financial awareness in the Greater Newark community. The video competition invites university- and college-level students to produce original videos that encourage young adults to practice sound personal financial decisionmaking. We have successfully launched similar video competitions in Puerto Rico and New York City. Last year’s videos were judged by a panel of professional film makers and leading advertising agencies. The winning videos ran for two weeks as “shorts” in major movie theaters in Manhattan and Queens. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  I thank the Newark Regional Business Partnership, PNC Bank and NJ PAC for inviting me here to speak to you today. I would also like to thank the SGA Group PC for sponsoring this breakfast.
Irma Rosenberg: The current monetary policy situation Speech by Ms Irma Rosenberg, Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at Handelsbanken, Stockholm, 29 January 2004. *  *  *  Thank you for the invitation to come here and speak about monetary policy. In recent months there have been many comments on what the Riksbank should decide with regard to the repo rate at the next monetary policy meeting on 5 February. We at the Riksbank have nothing against discussions on monetary policy arising. On the contrary, we find it useful as it forces us to sharpen our arguments and our reasoning and to work on improving our methods of analysis. However, to avoid any misunderstandings, it is important for us to inform others of how we work. I shall therefore begin with some general words on the Riksbank’s inflation target and monetary policy strategy before going into the current situation. The Riksbank’s objectives and working methods Our monetary policy objective is to maintain price stability, which the Riksbank has defined as an increase in the consumer price index of 2 per cent a year with a tolerated deviation interval of +/1 percentage point. When the inflation target was first introduced, it was rather controversial and many regarded it as unrealistic. Now there is general support for the inflation target and we have a good record of target fulfilment. There is also considerable confidence in the inflation target, judging from households’ and firms’ expectations of the future inflation rate.

Developments in the public sector were unexpectedly strong at the beginning of the year, which counteracted the fact that developments in the private sector were weaker than we had expected. The strained economic situation in the public sector indicates that employment there will develop weakly during 2004, while the economic upturn is still not expected to be reflected in any increase in the number of employees in the private sector. The fact that the labour market to some extent lags behind production development in the business sector is a normal part of the economic cycle, but developments in employment in the private sector have so far been slightly weaker than we had expected. Monetary policy can only marginally influence the weak labour market situation in the coming months. However, the situation in the labour market is a central factor in the assessment of demand and thus  2  BIS Review 7/2004  for long-term assessments of inflation. Labour market developments can influence future inflation in several different ways. If the demand for labour remains weak during a longer period and unemployment soars, there is a risk that this will have negative repercussions on household consumption and thus on demand. Households have become more pessimistic during the autumn, both with regard to unemployment and with regard to their private finances. So far we have seen no signs that household demand is about to slacken, but this was a factor we included in the risk assessment in the December Inflation Report.