samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
All this, aside from shaping a very frail growth scenario in the zone, opens the door to new stress episodes in external financial markets. Although so far the international scenario has not been as negative as was expected, taking for granted that the slower global growth and tensions in external financial markets will not affect our economy is not wise thinking. Thus, while the inflation trajectory in Chile, the stronger growth in demand and output and changes in certain prices such as oil and fresh fruits & vegetables, have risen the risks for short-term inflation, the risks in the external scenario are still significant. Let me now describe the macroeconomic scenario assumed in our Monetary Policy Report. Macroeconomic scenario Relative to December, world growth shows no major change on aggregate, although its composition has changed and, certainly, so have the associated risks. In the United States, improved figures of job creation, manufacturing output and expectations reflect on upward revisions to forecasts for this year, partly offsetting the gloomier outlook for the Eurozone. A somewhat deeper recession is expected in the zone for this year, which, due to its commercial and financial links, reflects, albeit marginally, in revised growth projections elsewhere, especially in emerging Europe and Asia. With respect to December forecasts, trading partners’ growth is unchanged for 2012 and 2013. The baseline scenario also assumes that the oil price will remain high for longer than projected in December.

Source: Central Bank of Chile. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Figure 1  CPI inflation (*) (annual change, percent)  CPIX inflation (*) (annual change, percent)  10  10  10  10  8  8  8  8  6  6  6  6  4  4  4  4  2  2  2  2  0  0  0  0  -2  -2  -2  -2  -4  -4  -4  -4  07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14  07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14  Dec.11 Report  Mar.12 Report  (*) Gray area, as from the first quarter of 2012, shows forecast. Sources: Central Bank of Chile and National Statistics Institute (INE). Figure 2 MPR and expectations (percent) 9  9  8  8  7  7  6  6  5  5  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0 07  08  09  10  11  12  13  MPR  Forward,Sep.11 Sep.11Report Report Forward,  Forward, Forward IPoM Dec.11 diciembre Report 2011  Forward Mar.12 Forward, Mar.12Report Report  14  Source: Central Bank of Chile. BIS central bankers’ speeches  7
It is only when you have the right place to invest your money that you will have the incentive to use and hold the currency you gain from merchandise and services trade. In other words, RMB internationalisation could first be driven by the advancement of its function of store of value, which should in turn help promote greater usage of RMB as a unit of account and a means for payment and settlement for other purposes like trade. And Hong Kong is well positioned to help catalyse this process. 12. The question is “how”. We see three factors that are required to promote the use of RMB in capital market transactions in Hong Kong. These are liquidity, products and infrastructure. 13. First is liquidity, which has to be the most essential ingredient in developing markets. Without that, it would be hard for the market to conduct transactions smoothly and efficiently or to develop products. As I mentioned earlier, Hong Kong has the largest RMB deposit base among all offshore markets and the most active RMB FX market, and both have been growing steadily in the last few years, partly benefiting from the very strong growth in the turnover of the Stock and Bond Connect schemes. For example, the Stock Connect received an average daily turnover of RMB160 billion in the first eight months of this year, up 43% increase from last year. The Bond Connect received an average daily turnover of RMB26 billion during the same period, up 34% from last year.

The risks of this expectation not being fulfilled are not only and strictly in the economic sphere: legal security and political stability will be pivotal to the engine of recovery. Thank you. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5
Christian Noyer: The euro area perspectives Keynote speech by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, at the IIF (Institute of International Finance) 2013 Spring Membership Meeting, Paris, 26 June 2013. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, I am very pleased to have this opportunity to speak to such a distinguished audience and I thank the President for his invitation. In the light of the discussion you have just had on “The Future of Europe”, I wish to first give you an overview of the current economic and financial situation in the euro area and then discuss the major changes currently underway that are considerably strengthening our monetary union. 1. Overview of the current economic and financial situation in the euro area. Before I start this overview, I would like to quote a famous sentence by Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of Europe: “what matters is neither to be optimistic nor pessimistic, what matters is to be determined”. In other words, what the euro area needs is neither eurobashing nor celebration, but awareness and action. As you all know, overall growth in the euro area has been very weak for a few years. The most recent figure is a 0.2% contraction in GDP in the first quarter of 2013, following a decline of 0.6% in the fourth quarter of 2012. Output has thus declined for six consecutive quarters, with labour market conditions remaining very weak.

In any case, the problem with the exchange rate choice was not the decision to let the rate adjust, but the decision to resist it and the role that played in magnifying the bubble, and thereby the subsequent damage from the fall. Given where we are today, and what we know about the relative merits of flexible and fixed exchange rate regimes, what is the likely evolution of the current monetary system going forward? A few concluding observations. First, I think it is unlikely that we will see a substantial move toward monetary integration involving the major emerging market economies, in Asia or in the Western Hemisphere. As the economist Peter  2  BIS Review 44/2007  Kenen writes in his latest book, it is difficult today to envisage a substantial reduction in national currencies though the emergence of large regional monetary unions where they do not already exist. Within Europe, we may yet see a further enlargement of the euro area. There may be other circumstances in which individual economies can derive benefit from a currency board system or from dollarization or euroization. Countries trying to emerge from a period of high inflation may in the future, as they have in the past, adopt a fixed exchange rate as a nominal external anchor for a disinflation strategy. These seem likely to be exceptions, however, to a general move toward more flexible exchange rate regimes.
The countercyclical capital buffer, which is currently activated in Switzerland, is an example of such a tool. In short: we have learned that system-wide financial crises can be very costly, and that we should focus on preventing rather than managing them. There is also a broad consensus that we require macroprudential tools to address systemic risk directly. One last question remains: why should central banks play an important role in implementing these tools? There are four main reasons. First, as lenders of last resort, central banks are the ultimate providers of liquidity to the economy in times of financial stress, and thus play an important role in managing crises. But these operations are not without risks, so that central banks have a particular stake in preventing such situations. To do that, they need the appropriate tools. Second, financial stability is a critical precondition for central banks’ ability to fulfil their primary mandate of ensuring price stability. Financial instability can distort prices directly, and it can impair the proper functioning of monetary policy transmission mechanisms. Third, macroprudential and monetary policy tools interact, in the sense that the use of one may have an effect on the use of the other – for example when low policy interest rates not only stimulate economic activity (as they should), but also translate into an excessive reach for higher yields in financial markets, thereby contributing to the build-up of systemic risk, which in turn justifies the tightening of a macroprudential tool.

Moreover, Credit Suisse and UBS have taken important organisational steps to improve their resolvability as part of their resolution planning. For instance, they have both set up Swiss  1  Final requirements refer to the requirements that will apply after expiry of all transitional provisions. In particular, they concern the qualitative requirements for going-concern capital. Page 1/3  Berne, 13 December 2018 Fritz Zurbrügg  News conference  subsidiaries that contain their systemically important functions, including, in particular, domestic deposit and lending business. To ensure an orderly resolution in a crisis, progress is still needed in three areas in particular. First, FINMA, as the competent authority, is currently in the process of drawing up resolution funding plans. These aim to ensure that a bank has sufficient liquidity to implement a resolution without recourse to state support. Second, it must be ensured that big banks’ lossabsorbing capacity is adequate, not only at group level, but also on a stand-alone basis at the level of the individual group entities. In this context, the Federal Council has announced that, during the first half of 2019, it will decide on the corresponding requirements for the highest operating unit of the big banks – i.e. the parent entity. Third, Credit Suisse and UBS must further reduce the financial and operational dependencies within the group. Domestically focused banks  I would now like to turn to the domestically focused banks. Here too, there has been little change since the Financial Stability Report was published in June.
However, while the hope that a depreciation of the franc will boost export opportunities is understandable, it is deceptive all the same. On the one hand, the exchange rate is only one of the factors determining export success. Exports do not only depend on price elasticity, but also on their income elasticity, i.e. the cyclical development abroad. On the other hand, as I have pointed out before, it is the real rather than the nominal exchange rate that matters for production  BIS Review 60/2002  5  decisions and trade flows. It is well known that monetary policy cannot manipulate the real exchange rate for any length of time. Expanding the domestic money supply until the Swiss franc was depreciated to the desired degree would inevitably lead to a massive rise in inflationary risks. As a consequence, the SNB would no longer be able to fulfil its mandate of ensuring price stability. In the long run, such a policy would result in the well-known costs of rising inflation without any compensating real benefits. Moreover, if the SNB tied the Swiss franc to the euro, as some calls from the industry and the unions have demanded, a first consequence would be the erosion of the "interest rate island". One can only begin to imagine what this would mean for the Swiss financial centre, the building and construction industry, or Swiss asset prices.

The export share of the Swiss gross national product (GNP) amounts to approximately 42%, while the corresponding share is 29% in Germany and only 12% in the United States. Switzerland's major trading partners are the EU countries, which absorb 59% of Swiss exports. With regard to imports, the interdependence is even greater: 75% of Swiss imports come from the EU. Via foreign trade, the exchange rate exerts an influence on aggregate demand and, therefore, also on the price level in Switzerland. In addition, the exchange rate directly affects import prices. Therefore, exchange rate movements have been, and will be, closely monitored by the SNB. The rapid succession of interest rate cuts by the National Bank since 11 September 2001 was also an expression of concern about an exchange rate-triggered threat to the economy. Since price stability was not jeopardised, it was possible to considerably relax monetary policy. 4.3. Steering the exchange rate? Although the SNB takes account of the exchange rates when determining its monetary policy, it is sometimes called upon to do more than that. It is even requested to concentrate – at least temporarily – exclusively on the exchange rate. The underlying notion is that the National Bank could aim at a lower Swiss franc exchange rate and that exports would consequently pick up to the desired degree. Theoretically, it is possible to weaken the franc in nominal terms by conducting a highly expansionary monetary policy.
Banks subsequently extended the securitisation  1  I am very grateful to Pontus Aberg, Valia Rentzou and Isabel Von Koppen-Mertes for their valuable inputs and contributions, and to David Marqués for useful comments. 2  See ECB (2008), “Securitisation in the euro area”, Monthly Bulletin, February. BIS Review 68/2008  1  model to other forms of credit, such as consumer credit and student loans, that were historically regarded as highly illiquid. In Europe, the market for structured finance products has grown rapidly during the last 5-10 years, often at double-digit rates (See Chart 1). This development was maybe even more pronounced in the euro area compared with other regions due to several factors, including the introduction of the single currency, further financial market integration through the use of 3 credit derivatives and related financial instruments, and an innovative financial industry. Growth in structured finance products has also been fuelled by high demand from investors stemming from the search for yield and diversification opportunities. Securitisation has also been positively affected by the move towards a more market-based financial system. Increasing securitisation of lending-related assets, together with relentless financial innovation in credit markets, have led to the diffusion of a new business organisation – the “originate to distribute” model – among banks, particularly those of large size. There is certainly no need to explain to this audience how, under this new business model, the loans originated by banks are transformed into marketable asset-backed securities.

First, being capital costly, the ability to sustain a given level of credit supply with a lower volume of capital enables the banking sector to reduce the costs of financing for borrowers and favours financial development, which is ultimately associated with economic growth. Moreover, securitisation may be seen as representing a step towards more complete credit markets, thereby contributing to enhancing the efficiency of the economic system. 3  See ECB (2007), Structural Issues Report on “Corporate finance in the euro area”, May. 4  Funding liquidity refers to the ability of a bank to: (1) convert its assets into cash by disposing of them or borrowing against their value in order to meet expected and unexpected obligations, or (2) to issue liabilities in order to raise funds. 5  According to some tentative empirical evidence, increasing securitisation may diminish the impact of monetary policy impulses on banks’ loans supply via the so-called “bank lending channel”, although the effect of securitisation seems to depend on the economic cycle and bank risk (see Altunbas, Y., Gambacorta, L. and D. Marqués Ibáñez (2007), “Securitisation and the bank lending channel”, ECB Working Paper 838. 2  BIS Review 68/2008  In addition, the securitisation of loans in principle could reduce a secular source of vulnerability of the economies, by taking risk concentrations associated with loan portfolios away from the balance sheets of the banking sector and spreading them more broadly across other sectors.
Malaysia has an online bill payments model where merchants need to maintain multiple banking relationships in order to receive bill payments from customers who bank with different banks. Merchants, especially SMEs, find it difficult and costly to maintain multiple banking relationships. As a result, only about 1,000 merchants are currently registered to accept online bill payments via the individual banks’ proprietary bill payments system. Therefore, there is still tremendous potential for greater efficiency and cost savings through the consolidation and expansion of the online bill payments market in Malaysia. Enhancing the efficiency, accessibility and convenience of online bill payment via JomPAY JomPAY addresses the limitations of the current bank-centric model by establishing an open electronic bill payments platform which leverages on the combined infrastructure and network of the entire banking industry. With JomPAY, merchants only need to maintain a banking relationship with one bank, in order to receive bill payments from customers of all other banks. Likewise, customers only need to maintain an account with one bank in order to make bill payments to the entire network of merchants registered with JomPAY. The JomPAY model thus reduces duplication and facilitates the pooling of resources from the entire banking industry. This in turn will enable us to build a wider and more efficient network for online bill payments. Businesses should leverage on JomPAY to accept online bill payments from their customers. Handling cash and cheques is very costly.

Consequently, Malaysia’s cheque usage had fallen from 6.6 per capita in 2013 to 5.8 per capita in 2014. This is indeed an encouraging development. 1  Australia, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway. 2  Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  To reduce the country’s reliance on cash usage, the Bank has issued the Payment Card Reform Framework (Framework) which took effect in stages beginning 2 January 2015. The Framework aims to ensure that the cost of accepting payment cards is fair and reasonable, whilst creating an enabling environment for the wider acceptance of payment cards, especially by smaller merchants. Over the next six years till 2020, together with the banking industry we plan to expand the payment card acceptance network from about 240,000 terminals to 800,000 terminals and further accelerate the use of debit cards. These measures, if implemented successfully, will lessen the need for cash payments. While this target seems ambitious, we can achieve this milestone with collective efforts by all. Cash and cheques are still the main modes for bill payments in Malaysia Whilst efforts are being made to facilitate the wider acceptance of payment cards, bill payments in Malaysia are still predominantly made with either cash or cheques. In Malaysia, bill payments made via electronic channels 3 are still relatively low at 2.4 transactions per capita 4 in 2014 compared to more than 10 transactions per capita 5 in countries with successful electronic bill payment platforms such as Australia.
The risk-reducing benefits of these innovations, for individual institutions and for the system as a whole, are substantial, but these benefits are to some extent qualified by the limits of our knowledge of how they will perform in conditions of stress. The uncertainty and challenge posed by these developments are complicated by the confidence engendered by the stability and resilience of the U.S. economy over the past decade. Until very recently, we have seen an unusual dynamic in financial markets, in which low realized volatility in macroeconomic outcomes, low realized credit losses and low uncertainty about future inflation and interest rates have worked together to bring risk premia down across many asset prices. There is a self-reinforcing character to this pattern, with past stability seemingly increasing confidence in future stability, and this dynamic itself can magnify the risk of a more damaging reversal. These are all good reasons to pay careful attention to the strength of the financial system today. We have a strong interest in ensuring that the largest institutions in our financial system, and the system as a whole, are able to function reasonably effectively, even in the face of a more turbulent economic and financial environment. Capital is critical to this objective, and our current Basel I regulatory framework for capital is not up to the challenge. We have a very important global effort underway to improve the regulatory regime for capital, by tying it more closely to the actual risk profile of financial institutions.

Benoît Cœuré: Interview in Corriere della Sera Interview with Mr Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, in Corriere della Sera, conducted by Mr Danilo Taino on 7 March 2019 and published on 11 March 2019. * * *  At its meeting on Thursday, 7 March, the ECB decided to add to the monetary stimulus already in place. What happened? Did the extent of the economic slowdown in the euro area take you by surprise? The slowdown didn’t come as a surprise. Economic activity was exceptionally strong in 2017, thanks to global economic conditions. We knew that euro area growth would adjust towards its potential rate. The slowdown has been stronger than expected and started sooner, which motivated the decisions we took. But those decisions don’t represent a turnaround in our policy; they have been carefully calibrated to this diagnosis. We are adjusting to the new reality rather than reversing our course; we don’t see signs of a recession at present. The ECB staff projections have been revised. They previously envisaged that growth would be consistently above potential, which would have pushed inflation towards our objective of lower but close to 2%, whereas they now foresee that actual output will be initially equal to or below potential output, which means it will take longer for inflation to reach 2%. In the event of external shocks, could the ECB go back to buying bonds on the market? We don’t see the need.