samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
For the time being, they are not. My reasons for being relatively more optimist that our American colleagues are threefold:  3  The key idea of robust control is that policy-making should aim at minimizing the consequences of worst-case scenarios. Even if the required policy eventually appears sub-optimal considering ex post that the large-scale shocks have not materialized, a risk-management approach assesses that the associated cost of buying an insurance is small compared to the alternative. BIS Review 37/2008  3  -  First, a major financial disruption (involving the banking system) is less likely in the euro area than in the US. European banks are of course not immune from losses due to their exposure to the US subprime market or other markets that have frozen since the crisis burst out, but this exposure is on average significantly lower than that of their US counterparts and their model of universal banking allows them to mitigate the consequences of a crisis in one segment of their activity. -  Second, empirical evidence supports the view that the real macroeconomic consequences of protracted financial distress should be relatively less disruptive in the euro area. First of all, household indebtedness has remained relatively low by international standards in the euro area in general (and notably in France). Furthermore, available evidence points to a weak transmission of financial shocks to household consumption via the wealth channel. -  Finally, the short-term economic outlook is much more encouraging in the euro area than in the US.

Nordic Summit 2021 – 25 May 2021 Inflation and monetary policy in a post-Covid-19 world  Speech by François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Banque de France  Press contact: Mark Deen (mark.deen@banque‐france.fr), Déborah Guedj (deborah.guedj@banque‐ france.fr)  Page 1 sur 9 Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to be with you today. Denmark and the Nordics are among the most successful countries in Europe, and even worldwide: a unique mix of economic innovation, social cohesion, and environmental commitment. But today, in the country which is with its currency at the closest frontier of the euro area, you invite me to speak about “Inflation and monetary policy in a postCovid-19 world”. As of 2006, Olivier Blanchard said : “Monetary policy can pretend to be close to science if it can be conducted using simple and robust rules […] Monetary policy must be closer to art if it is frequently confronted to new, poorly anticipated and poorly understood, contingenciesi.” The current debate on monetary policy is a perfect illustration. While a few years and even a year ago everybody feared the disappearance of inflation, the world is now worried by its comeback. While a few months ago the emergency support in the face of the Covid crisis was the No.1 concern, we are now talking about exit and post-Covid world. This is precisely the title of the speech you invited me to give.
Fritz Zurbrügg: Monetary policy and financial markets – is a return to normal on the horizon? Speech by Mr Fritz Zurbrügg, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Money Market Event, Geneva, 21 November 2013. *  *  *  The speaker would like to thank Bettina Simioni for her valuable support in preparing this speech. I am also indebted to Marco Huwiler, Rita Kobel and Peter Kuster for their insightful comments. Ladies and gentlemen Welcome to the Money Market Event of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) in Geneva. It is a great pleasure for me to be able to address you here today for the second time. I am particularly delighted because I am able to talk to you today with a good deal more confidence than I could a year ago. The situation on the European financial markets has calmed perceptibly, and it is more than a year since the SNB has had to intervene in the foreign exchange market to defend the minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20 against the euro. But let us turn the clock back to 2012 for a moment. At that time, a great many market participants feared that the euro area would collapse. The upward pressure on the Swiss franc was immense. As a result, our willingness to defend the minimum exchange rate with all our resources was put to a severe test. In 2012, we purchased foreign currency for a value of almost CHF 190 billion.

European financial markets calmer thanks to monetary policy If you take a look at chart 1, you can follow the movements in both the euro/Swiss franc exchange rate and the average risk premium for the government bonds of five peripheral euro area countries (Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland). The risk premium is drawn on an inverted scale, in other words, a movement downwards signifies a higher risk. This chart serves as an illustrative example for two developments. On the one hand, it shows that uncertainty in the euro area has decreased greatly over the past twelve months. At the time of the last Money Market Event in Geneva, the risk premium was almost 1,200 basis points; it is now below 400. On the other hand, the chart illustrates the fact that the upward pressure on the Swiss franc has abated. Following a long period last year when the exchange rate stuck closely to the minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20, it moved away in January and, since May, has fluctuated within a relatively narrow range of CHF 1.22–1.26 per euro. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Here, the situation has calmed in two respects. In order to reduce the risk of the euro area collapsing, the European Central Bank (ECB) resorted to an unconventional measure in late summer 2012, the outright monetary transactions programme. Market participants were persuaded, and since then the risk premium for peripheral economies in Europe has declined steadily. What is remarkable is how persistent this trend has been.
Mr Bäckström reports on the significance of risk management  Speech given by Mr Urban Bäckström, Governor of Sveriges Riksbank and Chairman of the Board of Directors and President of the Bank for International Settlements, at the Risk Management Forum, organised by Ernst & Young, in Stockholm on 3 February 2000. *  *  *  First a word of thanks for the invitation to attend this forum and discuss future risk management. I shall be talking about the socioeconomic aspects of financial risks and what the authorities are doing in this field. Why is the financial sector so important? What makes the authorities so concerned about the financial sector? Why don’t they focus to the same extent on, say, the forest industries, car manufacturing or even on other service industries? The reason, of course, is that the financial sector - banks in particular - performs such special and central functions in a modern economy. It is not the case that parliaments, governments, supervisors and central banks around the world are particularly concerned about individual banks. What matters is the part that financial institutions play in sophisticated modern systems for credit and payments. Virtually every economic transaction involves a payment service of some kind; it can take the form of banknotes, payments on account or the provision of credit. It follows that if the facilities for payments by households and firms are seriously disrupted, the consequences for the real economy may be disastrous.

The National Bank started such activities in 2014 when it created foreign investment securities statistics, which was then supplemented with data on domestic securities. In addition, the crisis has shown that the risks can increase largely not only in the banking system, but also in shadow banking. Therefore, there is a need for upgrading the statistics with data not only for depository institutions, but also for all other financial institutions. Following these trends in 2012, we started with the preparation of the statistics of the most important non-bank financial institutions, which enabled us to 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  constantly monitor their activities and the potential risks. We recently fully complied this statistics with the latest IMF’s Guide on monetary and financial statistics. The second segment is the improvement of databases on cross-border financial systems. The consequences of the global crisis have clearly emphasized the risk of international financial integration, in particular the global connection of systemically important institutions. Such a context has had major consequences on the requirements for increasing the volume and structure of statistical data that will give a better picture of these global connections with a special emphasis on international investment position statistics, as well as more detailed portfolio investment and direct investment statistics. The National Bank already prepares all these surveys on a regular basis, although there is room for further improvement in the area of international position.
Jean-Pierre Roth: Review of the Swiss economy in 2006 and the outlook for 2007 Speech by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, at the General Meeting of Shareholders of the Swiss National Bank, Berne, 27 April 2007. *  *  *  Mr President of the Bank Council Dear shareholders Dear guests One hundred years ago the Swiss National Bank opened its counters and conducted its first transactions. Year for year, the Chairman of the Governing Board has had the privilege of outlining the economic situation to you and setting out the SNB policy approach. It is a great pleasure for me to continue this tradition today, and all the more so in view of the fact that the year 2006 was a particularly favourable one for our economy: Growth accelerated to reach a level higher than the longterm trend, while employment improved, bringing about a gradual reduction in unemployment. Meanwhile, the rise in prices remained restrained and distinctly below the level of 2% that we equate with price stability. Moreover, for the current year, the outlook for growth, employment and monetary stability remain very favourable. Vigorous foreign trade The healthy state of the Swiss economy has surprised many observers accustomed to the meagre results of the 1990s and nervous in the wake of the events of the early 2000s.

Since then, the SNB has had to learn to operate with floating, and to conduct an independent monetary policy. This has not always been easy, since the international environment has often been extremely instable with the result that the Swiss franc has, at times, been heavily overvalued. During the 1980s, a greater degree of monetary discipline emerged and the fight against inflation became gradually more widespread. However, the world monetary order only achieved a certain level of calm towards the end of the 1990s, when the European monetary integration project took form and monetary policies were geared towards the defence of price stability. ***** In sketching this rapid portrait of the hundred years of our history, we see how much circumstances have differed from one period to another. It is therefore fitting that we pay tribute to all of our predecessors who – often in difficult circumstances – gave of their best in order that the Swiss National Bank might fulfil its mandate. It was their prudent management of the country's business that sheltered us from the numerous monetary crises that battered so many other European states. It was they, too, whose determination made it possible for the SNB to conduct a monetary policy resolutely geared to stability. Our generation is deriving immense benefit from this heritage. Due to the courage and sacrifices of those who preceded us, we now reap the benefits of a prosperous economy and a healthy currency. Our gratitude also extends to the authorities and to the Swiss people.
This has been as a result of Government’s sound macroeconomic management and the critical contributions that various sectors of the economy have made, of which the insurance sector is a part. Let me once again thank you for inviting me to share my thoughts with you on the role that your noble profession plays in this economy. On our part as Bank of Zambia, we shall keep on facilitating the development of, among others, the insurance sector by continuing to improve macroeconomic conditions that are critical to the expansion of your businesses. In turn, it is expected that other sectors of the economy will benefit and contribute to accelerated economic growth and development that the country is craving so much for in order to reduce poverty. May I, at this juncture, point out that in order to facilitate your work, you may track some of the developments in our economy on the Bank of Zambia website, which you can visit on www.boz.zm. You can also contact us directly for any information you may require on the economy. I thank you for your attention. BIS Review 72/2006  3

We’ve had a wild ride – first a housing boom of epic proportions, then a housing bust, a near-collapse of the financial system, and a terrible recession. Let’s go back to 2006, right before the recession hit. That marked the peak of an unprecedented run-up in U.S. home prices. But the bubble burst. Home prices plunged by over 30 percent nationwide, and even more in states such as Nevada, Arizona, and Florida. As the housing market went into a tailspin, about a quarter of borrowers found themselves owing more than their homes were worth. Delinquencies and foreclosures surged. With millions of mortgages going sour, financial institutions that had placed big bets on home loans posted massive losses. It was like an epidemic. No one knew which financial institutions were infected with toxic assets. Everyone was suspect. Financial institutions were afraid to lend money to anybody, including each other. That choked off the flow of funds that  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  financial institutions and businesses depend on for their day-to-day operations. The result was a worldwide financial crisis. If left unchecked, this kind of financial panic could have ushered in an economic cataclysm like the Great Depression, when 25 percent of the workforce was out of work. Why didn’t we plunge into the abyss? A key reason was that the Federal Reserve did what it was supposed to do. The Fed is the nation’s government-chartered central bank.
Profitability is an important component here - if the banks’ profitability is poor, it may drive them to invest in more risky projects in an attempt to regain profitability. What loan losses might the banks suffer in the future? By looking at the quality of the banks’ assets, we link the analysis of the banks to the analysis of the borrowers. Might the banks suffer liquidity problems? We study the banks’ financing capacity to obtain an impression of this. The final chapter contains an analysis of the financial infrastructure. This must function so efficiently that any problems arising within an individual financial institution or sub-market will not spread to other participants or markets. Nor should there be any problems in the infrastructure resulting from shocks to the systems themselves. Analysis of the infrastructure is made difficult by the fact that it also requires fairly detailed insight into how different computer systems are constructed - technological issues thus become more important here than in other areas. Each report concludes with one or more articles. These articles give us an opportunity for more in-depth analysis of various fields or for presenting the results of various studies. This is all done with the aim of increasing our knowledge and making us even better at analysing and overseeing the financial system. Although the standard layout of the report provides some form of framework for our analysis work, we are constantly developing our analyses. Conditions change, with new operators, risks and technological developments.

If this chain of payments is broken, for instance, if a bank suffers liquidity problems, there is a risk of contagion effects. In our planning work for managing an acute financial crisis, we work on the assumption that we will have between two and three hours to make decisions on possible liquidity support. It would be impossible to make these decisions so quickly if we did not already have well-founded knowledge of the various banks. The day-to-day oversight work is thus a necessary condition for assessing whether financial stability is threatened in the event of a crisis. Future challenges A lot has happened in the Riksbank’s work on financial stability. When we began our stability work in the mid-1990s we were almost pioneers. The work began with a handful of people working with a relatively narrow focus - to detect at an early stage any vulnerability in the banking system that could lead to a new bank crisis. As I mentioned earlier, stability work has gradually become more important to a growing number of countries. Reminders of the effects of financial crises have rained down on us in recent decades - Mexico 1994, Asia 1997-1998, Russia and LTCM 1998 and Argentina 2001. To mention but a few. Many central banks have these issues on the agenda as often as monetary policy issues. As I mentioned earlier, they also play an increasingly important role in many of the international contexts we participate in.
Per Jansson: Some aspects of the economic situation Speech by Mr Per Jansson, Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at Nordea, Stockholm, 13 March 2012. *  *  *  Today, I will talk about the assessment of the economic situation in Sweden and abroad that I and the majority of the members of the Executive Board made at the monetary policy meeting in February. At the same time, I would like to go into a little more detail about three aspects that were particularly important to my stance regarding the repo-rate decision. Two of these relate to the management of the European debt crisis and one to the risks posed to the Swedish economy by a low repo rate over an extended period of time. Those of you who have read the press release or the minutes from the monetary policy meeting in February know that I voted with the majority for a further repo-rate cut to the current level of 1.50 per cent. Our decision to cut the repo rate was mainly due to the weakening of the prospects for growth in Sweden, which in turn is a result of the impact of weaker economic development abroad. International outlook marked by the euro area’s debt crisis The fact that economic activity abroad has weakened recently primarily relates to developments in the euro area.

At the Riksbank we are working continuously on, for instance, improving our analyses and forecasting methods to provide the best possible basis for making decisions. Our decision to publish inflation forecasts based on market expectations in the March Inflation Report was an example of this. One can assume that the Ministry of Finance conducts equivalent development work. I believe that an even deeper discussion of what is entailed in the considerations made between inflation targeting and the real economy can be a good thing. During the first years of inflation targeting, the Riksbank sometimes sounded like an “inflation nutter”. However, this stance was abandoned after a few years and since then we have communicated that we also take into consideration financial and real factors. A decision by the Executive Board of the Riksbank in 1999 clarifies our views on these issues. However, we can probably become even better at analysing and explaining the considerations we have to make when conducting a flexible inflation-targeting policy. The Executive Board has held several speeches on this theme over the past year and the aim is to publish some form of joint document on this subject in the near future. BIS Review 39/2005  3  With regard to fiscal policy, it has a stimulating effect on the economy primarily through what are known as the automatic stabilisers, i.e. through systems for taxes and expenditure, which are very extensive in Sweden, being designed to allow some “automatic” adjustment to cyclical developments.
The Bank is attuned to the ‘proportionality problem’ – we understand the need to balance the costs of operating in a complex regulatory environment with the benefits of having a diverse and competitive banking sector, as my colleague, Sam Woods, set out in his speech on the PRA’s ‘strong and simple’ approach to regulation.9 Indeed as someone who is both a member of the Prudential Regulation Committee and who has operational responsibilities of my own, I see both sides of this trade-off in action. As the Resolution Authority, our aim is to ensure firms can fail in an orderly way, whatever their size. To deliver that, we seek to ensure our policy requirements are proportionate and appropriate for the UK banking system: proportionate to the impact of failure, and appropriate to the institutions they are applied to. Readiness to execute an orderly resolution is an inherently flexible concept; to be effective it must be capable of adapting to wider circumstances as they evolve. In recognition of this, we undertake public consultations for our policies and have sought to provide more detail on our policy expectations as the resolution regime develops, and review the efficacy of our existing requirements to meet the objectives of the resolution regime, including supporting financial stability and protecting public funds. This allows us to listen to and understand different stakeholders’ experiences and perspectives; particularly important given that resolution is a relatively new part of the regulatory regime.

But we would, in my view, have had a much better chance of a more orderly, less damaging correction of an overleveraged banking system.” 5 Available here. 3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  3  The FSB highlighted that greater transparency would support the credibility of reforms already made, and that it would continue to encourage appropriate levels of disclosures on resolvability from authorities. The Bank led the way on efforts to increase transparency in the publication of its Approach to Resolution in 2014.6 A credible and transparent resolution regime is in firms’ interests, further increasing the resilience of the UK banking system by reducing systemic risk and giving the public and investors confidence that any failure, should it occur, will be orderly. To somewhat quantify this benefit: in December 2019 the Financial Policy Committee (FPC), of which I am a member, reaffirmed its 2015 judgement that effective resolution arrangements reduce the appropriate level of Tier 1 capital requirements by about 5 percentage points for the UK banking system.7  The benefit is quantifiable in market pricing too. The hidden subsidies given to the largest banks have been reduced; estimates of the value of these implicit subsidies to UK bank shareholders fell from c. £ in 2010 to less than c. £ at end-2016. This was also corroborated in the FSB Consultation Report, which noted that the funding cost advantages enjoyed by SIBs are negatively correlated with the degree to which resolution reforms have been implemented.