samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Taken together, these two sets of actions steadily raising the target range for the federal funds rate and steadily bringing down our securities holdings—should help bring demand closer to supply. In fact, even though we haven’t done either of these things yet, financial conditions have already responded based on the expectation of Fed action. For example, medium- and longerterm Treasury yields and fixed-rate mortgage rates have risen close to their December 2019 levels. Of course, our actions will be driven by the data and a determination to achieve our maximum employment and price stability goals. With these three factors working together to restore balance between supply and demand, I am confident we will achieve a sustained, strong economy and inflation at our 2 percent longer-run goal. For this year, I look forward to continued growth and receding inflation, both for the nation and North Jersey. Specifically, my forecast for the U.S. economy is for real GDP to grow a bit below 3 percent this year, for the unemployment rate to end the year around 3-1/2 percent, and 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  for PCE price inflationto drop back to around 3 percent, before falling further next year as supply issues continue to recede. Conclusion Since the onset of the pandemic two years ago, this has an extraordinary time for the economy and monetary policy.

While omicron was milder for many—and thankfully the wave subsided relatively quickly—it still caused terrible hardship for countless families. You can see the economic effects of the pandemic right here in New Jersey. What struck me this week as I met with New Jersey business, community, and political leaders was the different ways that COVID-19 affects local economies. Just a few miles from Jersey City, Port Newark and Port Elizabeth are humming with activity. But across the Turnpike, Newark Liberty International Airport has seen a big reduction in the number of flights and passengers relative to pre-pandemic trends. Likewise, the pandemic has led to empty office buildings and fewer travelers in New York City, which affects businesses here in New Jersey as well. Today I’m going to talk about how the economy has continued to recover despite the many disruptions and imbalances that COVID-19 has caused. I’ll also discuss the labor market and the rise in inflation. Then, I’ll describe how the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy is working to help restore balance and stability to the economy during these uncertain times. Economic Outlook Since it’s the Friday before a holiday weekend, I won’t test any of you on the functions of the Federal Reserve System. But I do want to take a moment to discuss the Fed’s dual mandate of promoting maximum employment and price stability. U.S. monetary policy is set by the FOMC, which is made up of the Board of Governors and five of the 12 presidents of the Federal Reserve Banks.
Mr. Bäckström discusses monetary policy and unemployment in Sweden Speech by the Governor of the Bank of Sweden, Mr. Urban Bäckström, before the Swedish Economics Association on 6/3/97. First a word of thanks for the invitation to this evening’s discussion. This is the third year in succession that your Association’s agenda has featured monetary policy. My first introductory talk, in 1995, was about the importance of low inflation and the background to and implications of focusing on price stability. Last year I took up matters to do with monetary policy’s construction and effects, as well as the considerations behind the monetary policy decisions in recent years. This evening I shall be elaborating on those discussions and then deal with monetary policy in the context of Sweden’s high unemployment. Economic developments in Sweden Following the deep recession in the Swedish economy in the early 1990s, we are now in the fourth year of economic expansion. Since 1994 production’s annual growth rate has averaged 2.8 per cent, which is considerably above the trend to which we have been accustomed in recent decades. In 1994 and 1995 the GDP growth rate averaged as much as 3.5 per cent. This increase was concentrated on the internationally oriented sector and industrial activity registered the fastest upswing in a long time. This led to capacity problems despite relatively high investment growth. The strong expansion was therefore not sustainable. Moreover, the credibility of economic policy was impaired by weak central government finance and an unfavourable history of inflation.

Charles L Evans: The Fed’s dual mandate responsibilities – maintaining credibility during a time of immense economic challenges Speech by Charles L Evans, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, at the Michigan Council on Economic Education, Michigan Economic Dinner, Detroit, Michigan, 17 October 2011. *  *  *  The enormity of the problem In the summer of 2009, the U.S. economy began to emerge from its deepest recession since the 1930s. But today, more than two years later, conditions still aren’t much different from an economy actually in recession. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth was barely positive in the first half of 2011. The unemployment rate is 9.1 percent, much higher than anything we had experienced for decades before the recession. And job gains over the past several months have been barely enough to keep pace with the natural growth in the labor force, so we’ve made virtually no progress in closing the “jobs gap”. With unemployment having lingered for so long at rates around 9 percent, it is perhaps natural that some would begin to think that nothing more can be done to improve upon this situation. However, I don’t agree. Before seriously contemplating doing nothing, it is important to realize just how enormous this economic problem really is. To put this in perspective, consider that prior to the recession, most analysts thought the long-run trend growth rate of GDP was about 2-1/2 percent per year.
9  The required deepening of the banking union Allow me to end this address with a final reflection on the need to persevere with a European response to this crisis in the financial sphere as well. The response from the prudential authorities, accompanied by the monetary and fiscal policy measures adopted, has so far enabled the initial impact of the shock to be absorbed and prevented the materialisation of a systemic risk in the financial system that would have further exacerbated the crisis and made it more persistent. However, in the current context of uneven and uncertain recovery, we cannot rule out the possibility that the economic impact of the pandemic and the persistence of these effects may be greater than expected. In this sense, in the banking sphere, the response to the possible materialisation of these risks can only be at the European level, given the commitment to the banking union. In this response, the completion of the banking union with the approval of a fully mutualised European deposit insurance scheme would make a decisive contribution to ensuring financial stability in the euro area, both over the coming months and in the medium term. Further deepening of the capital markets union project would also be essential. Moreover, priority must be given to analysing how appropriate the European resolution and winding-up regulations are for a hypothetical systemic crisis, and the possible role of asset management companies in the event of severe impairment of European financial institutions’ balance sheets.

It should be recognised, however, that the use of buffers may be hindered if banks are afraid that reaching certain capital ratios would be penalised by the financial markets, raising their cost of financing and, thus, their solvency levels. This market stigma effect may lead banks to avoid using capital buffers, which, according to the above-mentioned analysis, would have a negative impact on the economy. One way of trying to alleviate this problem has been through the forceful monetary and fiscal policy measures applied during the crisis, which have enabled the financing costs of European banks to remain very low. The use of these capital buffers by banks may also be hindered if there are doubts regarding the process of capital buffer rebuilding after the crisis. The difficulty would be if banks were required to rebuild their buffers at a time when the capacity to generate profit was modest or the market was not receptive, as the fall of the banking sector on global stock markets demonstrates. To ease this problem, the authorities have made it clear that banks will have sufficient time to restore compliance with capital requirements and that the process will not start before the main effects of the pandemic have been dispelled. An additional issue that hinders banks’ use of capital buffers is that, under current regulations, if their capital levels fall below certain thresholds, preventive measures, such as a ban on paying dividends and the suspension of interest payments on AT1 and T2 instruments, are activated.
William C Dudley: What the euro crisis means for taxpayers and the US economy Testimony by Mr William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, before the Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, US House of Representatives, Washington DC, 15 December 2011. * I. *  *  Introduction  Chairman McHenry, Ranking Member Quigley, other members of the Subcommittee, it is an honor to testify before you today to discuss the economic and fiscal challenges facing Europe and the potential implications for the United States. My name is Bill Dudley, and I am president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Let me preface these remarks by stating that the views expressed in my written and oral testimony are solely my own and do not represent official views of the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) or any other part of the Federal Reserve System. Additionally, because I am precluded by law from discussing confidential supervisory information, I will not be able to speak to the financial condition or regulatory treatment or rating of any individual financial institution. The Federal Reserve seeks to promote financial stability in order to enable U.S. businesses and households to maintain their access to credit and to ensure sustained economic growth.

Also, the direct exposures of U.S. banks to the countries in Europe that are facing the most intense fiscal challenges are actually quite modest. The bad news is that the exposures of the U.S. banks climb quite sharply when one also considers the exposures to the core European countries and to the overall European banking system. This means that if the crisis were to broaden further and intensify, this could put greater pressure on U.S. banks’ capital and liquidity buffers. Third, if the European situation were to deteriorate further, financial markets would likely become more stressed. This could tighten the availability of credit to U.S. households and businesses. It could also cause equity prices to fall and this would have a negative impact on Americans’ pension and 401(k) holdings. This tightening of financial conditions would damage the U.S. recovery and result in slower output growth and less job creation. At a time that U.S. unemployment is very high, this is a particularly unacceptable outcome. In the extreme, U.S. financial markets could become so impaired that this would dry up the flow of credit to households and businesses. III. U.S. dollar swaps  In terms of what actions the official sector in the United States has taken or could take with regard to Europe, I wish to emphasize that any and all such actions pursued by the Federal Reserve are motivated by the mandates Congress has given to the Federal Reserve to promote price stability and maximum sustainable employment here in the United States.
If other countries with stable governments offer more attractive tax and regulatory environments, capital that would otherwise go to creating jobs in the U.S.A. will migrate abroad, just as intra-U.S. investment is migrating to Texas. Thus, even if one were to somehow have 100 percent certainty about the future course of Federal Reserve policy and be completely comfortable with it, without greater clarity about the future course of fiscal and regulatory policy and whether that policy will be competitive in a globalized world, job-creating investment in the U.S. will remain restrained and our great economic potential will remain unrealized. I pull no punches here: We have been thrown way off course by congresses populated by generations of Democrats and Republicans who failed the nation by not budgeting ways to cover the costs of their munificent spending with adequate revenue streams. The thrust of the political debate is now – and must continue to be – how to right the listing fiscal ship and put it back on a course that encourages job formation and gets the economy steaming again toward ever-greater prosperity. No amount of monetary accommodation can substitute for the need for responsible hands to take ahold of the fiscal helm. Indeed, if we at the Fed were to abandon our wits and seek to do so by inflating away the debts and unfunded liabilities of Congress, we would only become accomplices to scuttling the economy. I was in Mexico last week.

Manufacturing – which accounts for approximately 8 percent of total Texas employment – added over 27,000 jobs. All told, the private sector in Texas expanded by 266,400 jobs in 2011, while the public sector contracted by 54,800, due primarily to layoffs of schoolteachers. In sum, Texas payrolls grew 2 percent, significantly above the national rate of 1.3 percent. This performance is not unique to last year. As you can see from this graph of nonagricultural employment growth by Federal Reserve district going back to January 1990, the Eleventh District has outperformed the nation on the job front for over two decades. Note the slope of the top line, which depicts job growth in the Eleventh District compared with each of the other districts and, importantly, relative to employment growth for the U.S. as a whole – denoted by the black line, the seventh one down. As was pointed out in high relief by the media when a certain Texas governor was briefly in the hunt for his party’s presidential nomination, we do have some serious deficiencies in the Lone Star State. We have a very large number of people earning minimum wage; we have an unemployment rate that, while trending downward, is still too high, abetted by continued inflows of job seekers from less-promising sections of the country.
Despite these positive effects, the presence of foreign banks in the country instigates improvements in the institutional framework, by pushing the application of international accounting, reporting and supervision standards, which does not only help the commercial banks’ decision-making process but also the central bank’s. Therefore, the FDIs are expected not only to promote the production activity in the country, but also to have a direct and indirect impact on the Albanian financial system. Foreign production companies will directly need financial transfers and services (channel payrolls through the ATMs, POS), which will be executed through the domestic financial system. The international companies investing in the country will make use of commercial banks’ funding sources in order to prevent exchange rate and interest rate risk. There have been many property-related developments in the Albanian banking system. Since its establishment, the domination of state-owned banks has been reducing and today, foreign commercial banks’ assets account for over 90 per cent of the banking system. The increase in the number of foreign banks in the system has been also favoured by the fact that such investments have not been penalized in Albania; the requirements for establishing a bank are similar for both domestic and foreign-owned banks. 2  BIS Review 102/2007  The current ownership is diverse; there are foreign investors from Austria, Italy, Greece, USA, Turkey, Germany, Bulgaria, Malaysia and some Arab countries.

Now let us now turn briefly to the possible financial relationship between the Albanian banking system and the production foreign investments flow. Undoubtedly, the positive influence foreign direct investments have on economic growth depends largely on their recipient countries’ circumstances. It requires a substantial level of financial system development as a crucial precondition. A developed financial system improves the efficiency in allocating the resources and it further enhances the country’s capacity to absorb the FDI. The entry of new investors will orient the concentration of market segments to large-size businesses. Their impact, along with the lending capacity of our banking market, are believed to be the crucial proof for their success in Albania. In more concrete terms, the circumstances in Albania are such that there is an asymmetrical distribution of total assets between banks in the market. The reference is only to banks, since in terms of total assets, the banking system shares more than 90 per cent. Other non-bank financial institutions play a more insignificant role than the commercial banks. As far as the latter is concerned, there are many qualitative banks in the market, whose presence is an attractive factor for absorbing the FDI. On the other hand, the concentration of assets and banking loans in a few commercial banks bears the risk of creating an oligopolistic environment where only a few banks establish the terms for new loans. Such a situation would increase the investment cost in the public and private sector and in households, as well.
What is clear is that a very large number of households in Hong Kong (over a hundred thousand mortgagors at the end of June) have, as a result of this collapse fallen into negative equity. The low interest rate environment has, thankfully, mitigated the problem somewhat. The more stable employment prospects that we hope will come with economic recovery should, for many, help dispel the terrible spectre of negative equity combined with unemployment, which has probably caused as much anxiety in our community as SARS, and over a longer period of time. Quite apart from its effects on individuals and families, negative equity has broader economic implications. It has an enervating effect on spending. And it adds to the pressures on the banking system, although it should be added that the delinquency ratio on mortgages continues to be very low. This is, I think, attributable partly to the fortitude with which homeowners in negative equity have borne the problem, and partly to the willingness of most banks to restructure loans in cases of difficulty. The community and the banking sector have coped with this problem extremely well. It is to be hoped that stabilisation in property prices will help to contain and gradually reduce negative equity. Nevertheless, the problem is likely to be with us for some time to come. The role of the HKMA The question arises of what is the role of a central bank - or, more specifically, of a central banking institution like the HKMA - in an environment such as this.

In this context, the ECB and the 3 Level 3 Committees, predecessors of the ESAs, are proceeding in a dialogue on issues of common interest. V.  Concluding remarks  Let me conclude. The ESRB will have a challenging task considering the high level of expectations about its impact as well as the difficulties surrounding the area of financial stability which I mentioned earlier. The success of the ESRB will also depend on the commitment of all stakeholders to contribute effectively to its mission. The ECB, on its part, is fully committed to ensure all the necessary support to allow the ESRB to fulfil the important responsibilities assigned to it by the Member States. The ECB is committed to continue to invest on its analytical capabilities so as to enhance risk surveillance processes and produce high quality risk assessments with a view to inform ESRB decisions. It is also committed to devote efforts to develop a coherent macroprudential policy framework, thereby contributing to the efforts being done at the global level in this domain, also well reflected in this conference. Having said this, let me recall that the most important contribution that a central bank can provide to the maintenance of financial stability is to preserve price stability. Maintaining price stability has been, and will continue to be, the primary mandate of the European Central Bank, and it will not be affected at all by the assignment of new responsibilities in the macroprudential area. BIS Review 125/2010  5
Second key area: thoroughly reviewing the incentive schemes for cross-border investments, notably by promoting further convergence of tax and regulatory regimes. Third area: expanding the supply of financial intermediation services, be it in the form of new savings products – more long-term and risk-oriented – or new market initiatives in green bonds or private placement for instance. Fourth area: making sure that vital financial activities and risks for European economies are properly controlled. This requires in particular relocating certain activities in the European Union, such as euro-denominated clearing activities that are systemically important for the euro area. The second reform at the European level is a macroeconomic ambition: a better euro area policy-mix. This would help offset the short-term pain of national structural reforms before achieving the long-term gains. Let me be crystal-clear: we should not abandon the existing rules that apply to each Member State, including the Stability and Growth Pact: rules are necessary, but they are not sufficient. What we currently lack is a common direction, despite the progress brought by the European Semester method. A proper euro area policy-mix requires a collective economic strategy, whereby Member States “seal a deal” involving each country. Let us aim, until the end of 2017, for an obvious progress: growth and employment will be stronger in Europe if we combine more structural reforms where they are needed – in France and Italy for instance –, and more fiscal or wage support in countries with room for manoeuvre – for example, Germany and the Netherlands.

And I will continue to speak on this topic to convince more people of its importance. I hope that this persistence will one day show results, whereby our country’s leaders and administrators truly understand the need to change their way of thinking. I firmly believe that this dream is truly within our reach. Thank you for your attention. BIS Review 43/2006  5
9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  9

Retail activity, which was buoyant in May, fell back in June partly due to poor weather conditions. In aggregate, activity was up over the last two months. The construction and civil engineering sector1 recovered in the second quarter of 1997 primarily as a result of seasonal factors. Employment levels held steady in industry, except for the automobile sector, where there was a further contraction, and the building, retail and market services sectors. Wherever possible, companies sought to enhance workforce flexibility via temporary staff and overtime, in order to cope with fluctuating demand and organize themselves for the summer vacation period. __________________ 1  Unadjusted data. BIS Review 70/1997