samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In this particular case, I think the open nature of the EU economy sets very serious limits on the proposal’s potential impact on the collection of tax, since the same scope for avoiding tax would continue to exist outside the EU as it does at present; and it seems unlikely that countries outside the EU area would voluntarily follow the same policy. So I think there is a very real danger that legitimate business would relocate, not just outside London, but outside the EU, thus further undermining any economic rationale for the proposal. This does not mean that work should not continue to see whether there are amendments to the scheme that could satisfy the interests of all the parties involved. But the Bank continues to believe that it is important to avoid any scheme that would damage EU financial markets. Turning to equities, I expect to see growing emphasis on analysis and investment according to European sectors, not countries. Thus you would expect to see investment banks’ research departments focusing more on pan-European sectors, rather than dividing their teams on national lines. In many firms this is happening already. More generally, I think we can expect to see greater “equification” in continental Europe. In the UK, the equity market’s capitalisation is around 165% of GDP. Among the “ins” it is generally much lower: in Germany and Spain it is perhaps 35%, in France 40% and in Italy 25%. Only the Netherlands really stands out, at around 130%.

But even if there is substantial disintermediation, it does not mean that banks will cease to be dominant players. My point is just that as euro securities markets develop and deepen, more of the finance banks arrange will be off balance sheet. I’m inclined to think also that we will see further consolidation within the European (and indeed global) banking sectors, though I think that will not primarily be a function of the euro, and is something I will touch on in a minute. Now, all these developments offer opportunities for financial services firms globally. This is not a zero sum game. I expect to see financial centres within the euro zone growing in size over the next few years. But London will grow too, and I think it is significant that many of these potential developments depend on market practices and techniques pioneered in London. BIS Review 43/1999  4  I see London as the engine for growth and innovation in the European capital markets. This is not a narrow parochial point. As I have already emphasised, UK financial services are highly internationalised and many of the UK–based beneficiaries of this process are owned elsewhere – in the US, Europe, Asia and elsewhere. Nor does it reflect complacency.
Norges Bank will actively pursue profitable solutions in the best interest of all the parties concerned. Payments should become faster Norway’s efficient payment system is a competitive advantage for the Norwegian business sector. This is positive, but there is no room for complacency. Other countries are catching up and may be ahead of us in some areas, in particular in terms of real time payments and the infrastructure for mobile payments. We have a job to do here. The Norwegian banking industry has collectively developed a payment solution where money is immediately received by the payee, so-called instant payments. A common system offers several advantages: The solution is cost-efficient and ensures fast payment services for customers. All banks and their customers can use the solution and it is not owned by an individual private market participant. Yet, to date, few banks offer instant payment services. This may be due to technical factors, or because mobile apps need to be more user-friendly. It may also be that the competition among participants to promote their own solutions is ultimately an obstacle to an overall efficient infrastructure. Competition is best pursued in the area of customer interface. In our neighbouring countries Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom, the situation is different. There has been broad cooperation in the area of instant payments in those countries. Banks have been engaged in developing common solutions – not only in the development phase, but also in the application phase. In all these countries, instant payments are widely used.

Mr Bäckström discusses international financial stability Speech given by the Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, Mr Urban Bäckström1, at a seminar at the South African Reserve Bank in Pretoria on 9 August 1999. *  *  *  Introduction Financial stability is a topical subject in the light of events in the past decade – years that saw financial problems in a number of European countries as well as in Mexico and Asia, the devaluation of the rouble and suspended payments in Russia, considerable turbulence in western financial markets and financial unrest in Brazil. The crisis in the international financial system developed, to cite President Clinton, from being “just a few small glitches in the road” into “the worst financial crisis in fifty years”. The problem is that crises will always be intrinsically difficult to forecast. Recall that the scale of the Mexican crisis in 1994 was foreseen by very few. In South-East Asia the onset, duration and scope of the recession were all missed by the forecasting community. In the last spring, no one had anticipated the extent of the turmoil in financial markets that would be generated by the Russian devaluation and moratorium. The ways in which rising credit spreads led to losses by highly leveraged investors, liquidity shortages and the virtual drying-up of some markets were generally not foreseen. The track record shows that there are many things we do not understand and cannot predict.
MAS is involved in discussions at the Financial Stability Board, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and other fora to consider proposals to strengthen the regulatory framework. Let me highlight two key areas of focus: regulatory capital framework and liquidity risk management standards. The crisis occurred on the back of aggressive risk taking and leveraging. Risks had been under-estimated and in many cases, financial institutions were over-reliant on external credit ratings and on quantitative models. Risks were built up both on and off the balance sheets of banks. When these started to materialise, the de-leveraging effects and the steep fall in asset prices resulted in liquidity seizures in asset and funding markets. This caused major losses and writedowns of bank capital. In many cases, costly government intervention was needed to keep the financial institutions from failing. To improve the resilience of banks, global regulators have agreed to raise the levels and quality of bank capital. Additional capital for trading book and for securitisation risks will be needed. There are on-going discussions on establishing a framework for countercyclical capital buffers and raising the quality, consistency and transparency of the Tier 1 Capital base. Other supplementary tools to contain the riskiness of banks, such as a leverage ratio are also being developed. To address liquidity concerns, regulators are considering the introduction of a minimum global liquidity standard that includes a stressed liquidity coverage requirement underpinned by a longer term structural liquidity ratio.

Caleb M Fundanga: The effects of the crisis on Africa Remarks by Dr Caleb M Fundanga, Governor of the Bank of Zambia, at the African Economic Research Consortium Senior Policy Seminar (SPS XI), Lusaka, 6 April 2009. *  *  *  The Executive Director, African Economic Research Consortium; Government and Central Bank Officials present; Distinguished Participants; Members of the Africa Economic Research Consortium; Ladies and Gentlemen. It is with great joy and gratitude that I welcome you all to Zambia and to this seminar. I wish to extend a warm welcome to all the international participants. I hope you will have a good stay in our beautiful and friendly city of Lusaka. I feel particularly honoured and grateful to officiate at this important seminar organized by the Institution I am proud to be associated with, the Africa Economic Research Consortium (AERC). Chairperson, let me begin by thanking you and AERC for choosing Zambia to host this important seminar. I am aware that since its establishment in 1988, the AERC has played a pivotal role in developing and harnessing resources in Africa both informational and human capital. Research, workshops and seminars such as this one have helped to strengthen the capacity of undertaking policy–relevant research into the problems facing the management of economies in sub-Saharan Africa. It has, through these interventions, undoubtedly contributed to the positive strides African economies have scored in the last decade with regard to economic governance and development.
The fact that this would happen is something we have foreseen for a long time, although not that it would happen as soon and as quickly as it actually has. This has also led to the forecast for productivity for the whole of 2007 being lowered as early as June. But I did not see any reason to change the forecast for productivity for coming years; my assessment was still that productivity would recover. This was because I viewed the slowdown in productivity as temporary. But productivity is a factor that is difficult to assess – there is a risk that the slowdown will be prolonged and lead to stronger cost pressures. This was one of the risk factors we noted in the June Monetary Policy Report. The assessment in September was that food prices would contribute to higher inflationary pressures than we had previously anticipated. If we look at how inflation has developed in recent months, the forecasts from June have been relatively accurate. In August inflation was actually completely in line with the forecast, although it had been slightly higher earlier in the summer than we had forecast in June. The assessment we made in September was that economic activity in Sweden actually looked slightly stronger than we had anticipated in June and that cost pressures had risen. We therefore decided to raise the repo rate to 3.75 per cent. This could in itself also motivate a slightly higher interest rate path.

However, I should also underline the progress in institutional and legal framework, such as the introduction of the Public Fiscal Management and Control Law, the Public Procurement Law and the multi-year budgeting framework. Three year inflation targets that are compatible with the three-year budgeting practice are also one of the good examples of coordination between fiscal and monetary policies. Another pillar of better economic governance is financial stability. A stable and healthy financial system is the key to sustainable growth through allocating savings to the real sector  BIS Review 38/2008  3  in a country. Law defines financial stability as the auxiliary objective of the Central Bank of Turkey. Establishment of the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency, successful implementation of The Banking Sector Restructuring Program and the New Banking Law that brought the legal framework with best international practices were the milestones of legal and institutional reform in the financial sector. No need to say that the improved macroeconomic framework through successful monetary and fiscal policy implementations also contributed much to financial stability. Last but not least, I should say that there is also an effective cooperation among the Central Bank of Turkey, the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency, the Undersecretariat of Treasury, the Capital Markets Board and other public authorities and also with private sector representatives. The fourth and the final set of actions that has been undertaken towards better economic governance is structural reforms.
Hence MAS, as the statutory regulator, will be in a better position to aggregate and review different pools of information in the activities across exchanges and market sectors to anticipate possible risk and to investigate potential misconduct and market abuses. 33. Advancement in technology, particularly in the field of data analytics, has brought about enhanced surveillance techniques. In terms of capacity building, the MAS will enhance our analytics and thematic studies of big datasets to detect hitherto complex patterns, for potential market misconduct and abuses. 34. What all these mean, is that in each market, both the exchange and MAS will be looking out for potential risks, albeit based on different parameters. This will increase the robustness of the overall oversight of market activities. Robust enforcement and market discipline 35. These enhancements to our surveillance efforts will complement, in a significant way, our enforcement actions against market misconduct. The objective is on early detection as well as to support more expedient investigations and tough enforcement actions. This will also augment our toolkit to combat misdemeanors such as market manipulation and insider trading. 36. MAS has and will spare no effort to investigate any serious market misconduct and to take appropriate enforcement action. This is not always an easy task because investigations into market misconduct often involve complex and large scale relationships, which will necessitate considerable investigation resources. Market misconduct is often perpetrated by multiple parties, some of whom may be outside our jurisdiction.

As a statutory regulator, MAS will remain primarily responsible for the supervision of intermediaries who are our licensees in areas of capital and reserves, business conduct, antimoney laundering & counter terrorist financing (AML/CFT) and operational resilience. These are areas which have been stipulated in our regulations and notices, and are statutory obligations to be complied with. Starting from this year, MAS will no longer require exchanges to inspect their members in these areas as long as the entities are licensed by MAS. In other words, MAS will effectively be the “lead regulator” in these areas. 27. The need to form a separate SRO at this juncture for the purpose of member supervision is in our view, not compelling. It is unlikely to be an efficient model given the size of our market. In fact, it may require greater coordination since there will be more parties involved, namely MAS, the exchanges and yet another SRO. 28. The exchanges will remain responsible for areas affecting their respective market operations such as those relating to the priority of orders on a trading floor or risk management rules on margin requirements. In other words, these are business rules which members have to comply with, and may differ from exchange to exchange. Exchanges will need to supervise their members for compliance, in accordance with the risks these members pose to the markets or clearing houses, and undertake disciplinary proceedings for members who breach their rules. 29.
My first speech as Governor – in 2003 – was also in the Midlands. In it, I talked about the non-inflationary consistently expansionary – or “nice” – decade from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. I argued that the next decade was unlikely to be as nice because, and I quote, “when shocks, as they will, hit our economy it is almost inevitable that there will be somewhat greater volatility of both output and inflation than the remarkable stability to which we have become used in recent years”. I certainly did not anticipate the scale of the downturn in the world economy that followed the collapse of the banking system in 2008. But I did point to the need for a rebalancing of demand in the UK economy because, as I said then, “the strategy which the MPC has pursued in recent years – stimulating domestic demand to compensate for weak external demand in the face of a strong exchange rate – carries the risk that there could be a sharp correction to the level of consumer spending at some point in the future”. BIS Review 136/2010  1  The counterpart to strong consumption in the past was low saving. Having averaged close to 20% in the 1960s and 70s, gross national savings fell to just 12% of income in 2009 – the lowest since the War. This was all the more remarkable because one might have expected saving to increase as life expectancy rose.

Recently, inflation has been high and volatile. It is currently above our 2% target. And the aim of the MPC is to bring it down. But as demand rebalances, we should expect some volatility in inflation as well as in the path of output. During 2008, CPI inflation rose to a peak of 5.2%, fell to a low of 1.1% in 2009, before increasing again to stand at 3.1% now. Those movements have mainly reflected changes in VAT, volatile energy prices and pass-through from the past exchange rate depreciation. Together they have pushed up on measured inflation. Though uncomfortable, it is not surprising that inflation has been more volatile than during the nice decade. In 1998, before he joined the Bank, Charlie Bean estimated that the normal variation in the economy would lead inflation to be more than 1 percentage point away from target for around 40% of the time. And in the past three years, inflation has been more than 1 percentage point away from target in 17 months, or 47% of the time. Yet that was a period  BIS Review 136/2010  3  of extraordinary volatility in the economy and at the same time we managed to absorb a 25% fall in sterling’s effective exchange rate, something that historically would have created far more serious inflationary problems. The key question is whether the current inflation rate signals that inflation will persist above target.
Svein Gjedrem: Globalisation and monetary policy in Norway Address by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of the Central Bank of Norway, at the Nordic CFO Seminar, Stockholm, 10 May 2006. The address is based on the assessments presented at Norges Bank’s press conference following the Executive Board’s monetary policy meeting on 26 April, Inflation Report 1/06 and on previous speeches. Please note that the text below may differ slightly from the actual presentation. The  Charts in pdf-format can be found on the Norges Bank’s website. *  *  *  Thank you Madame Chair, Let me first say that I am glad of this opportunity to address you on the issue of globalisation and monetary policy in Norway. Effects of increased globalisation The term globalisation can mean different things to different people, but today I refer to the growing interdependence of national economies as reflected in greater and freer flows of goods, services, capital and even labour across national borders. The globalisation process has accelerated over the last 15 years through increased trade liberalisation, political changes, technological advances, and a sharp reduction in transaction costs. As illustrated in this chart, cross-border flows of goods and capital are growing at a markedly faster pace than world production. These developments present challenges to monetary policy. Financial imbalances have been building up internationally as a result of a strong rise in cross-border capital flows and foreign asset ownership. In Norway, we are facing a significantly changed terms-of-trade pattern.

One important feature of the current globalisation wave is the integration of China, India and other emerging economies into the world trade system. This development has been strongest in China, whose share of world exports is growing rapidly. The countries within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have also increased their exports markedly since the early 1990s. India is at the starting-line. Many of these economies have large labour forces that offer their services at very low wages, and these labour resources are available to companies that compete on world markets. Low labour costs and more efficient transport and communication attract labour-intensive production. Production of goods and services is being transferred from high-cost countries to countries like Estonia, Latvia, Poland, China and India. This shift in the international division of labour is now influencing real wage growth in industrialised countries. The risk that a business will have to wind up operations or move abroad is dampening cost pressures, as bargaining power is being transferred from workers to employers. In a number of European countries, wage growth is also being influenced by increased labour inflows from the EU accession states. As Scandinavian consumers, we are benefiting from falling prices for many imported goods. Lower import prices are also ascribable to a shift in our imports towards a higher share of imports from lowcost countries. The change in clothing prices in Norway may serve as an illustration.
With the improved access of consumers and businesses to financial products and services, consumer education on financial matters is an important priority for the Central Bank. Consistent with the belief of the importance of instilling financial awareness at an early age, Bank Negara Malaysia introduced a pocket money book to inculcate smart financial management habits  4  BIS Review 64/2004  among students in 1996. The programme also included Household Account Books to assist families in the management of household income, savings and investments. This was distributed to cover a wider group, including women, teachers and workers. Following this, in 1997 together with the Education Ministry, the Central Bank embarked on a School Adoption Programme. Through this programme, more than 7000 schools have been adopted by banking institutions to play a leading role in educating school children on basic financial knowledge. In October this year, an online interactive version of the Pocket Money Book to be used in the School Adoption Programme was launched. The Central Bank of Malaysia has also laid out a blueprint known as the Financial Sector Master Plan that charts the development of the Malaysian financial system over a ten year period commencing in 2001. A key component of that plan is the 10-year Consumer Education Programme for the banking and insurance sectors. This programme is known as BankingInfo and InsuranceInfo, and was launched in 2003.

The most outstanding development of the past several months has been the attenuation of some of the  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  inflationary risks then identified. International commodity prices ceased to increase and the propagation of specific price shocks has been limited. This and monetary policy decisions have collaborated to ease fears of a further inflationary acceleration that we felt in March. Accordingly, private inflation expectations show a decline in the last two months, although some remain above the target (figure 2). First-quarter data showed a fast expansion of domestic output and demand, exceeding March’s expectations. Partial indicators for the second quarter reflect an economy that continues to grow strongly but shows some recent moderation. Worth noting is the strong dynamism of private consumption and, to a lesser extent, the machinery and equipment component of investment. Consumption evolves in line with fundamentals, particularly the increase in household income, given that both employment and wages continue on the rise. Financial conditions are still favorable. The baseline scenario assumes that GDP will grow this year between 6 percent and 7 percent. This range is higher than foreseen in March, consistently with the upward bias then identified. This higher growth forecast is based on actual first-quarter figures that exceeded estimates. For the rest of the year, the pace of expansion of demand will moderate as forecast in March. In particular, the speed of growth in the GDP of sectors other than natural resources will quickly approach the trend rate, which is still estimated at five percent.