samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
However, for surveillance to be relevant and gain traction, it is equally important that the IMF is sufficiently independent in its conduct of surveillance. To deliver credible messages, the Fund’s technical expertise has to be beyond any suspicion of political manipulation. Surveillance, in other words, has to be an exercise in objectivity. Only then can it also be an exercise in collaboration and contribute to a sounder and more resilient international monetary system. This being said, IMF surveillance and collaboration does not release national policy makers from their responsibilities. Keeping one’s own house in order is a prerequisite for an orderly global village. This is particularly true, though not exclusively, in the domain of fiscal policy. Fiscal responsibility is the paramount challenge of our age. Let me now turn to the second main Fund activity, financial support. The scope and nature of this activity has changed considerably over the past few years. Fund resources have been strongly supplemented, and the Fund’s lending toolkit has been made more flexible. But multilateral financing has not been the only instrument used in tackling the crisis. Regional facilities and central bank swap lines have also played a very important role. All these instruments have acted as complements, and not as substitutes, and together they have prevented a breakdown of the system. Looking into the future, the important question is whether it is necessary to proceed beyond the existing loose network of multilateral, regional and bilateral facilities towards a truly global financial safety net.

Can households pay for consumer goods with debit cards, cheques or credit cards, or do they have to carry significant amounts of cash with them? Can workers in urban areas transfer money to their rural families by simply sending an SMS, or do they have to carry it with them on a dangerous bus ride? Particularly in Africa, where distances are vast and security is often a concern, the availability of non-cash payment instruments can increase the returns to economic activity for businesses and households. Figure 3 shows that today, most economies in Africa are still strongly cash based. Both in sub-Saharan and northern Africa, more than one-third of funds available for immediate payments are in cash form. The notable exception is South Africa where the level of non-cash money is above 80%, and thus similar to that of Switzerland. Developments over the past 15 years show a promising picture for other countries on the continent as well. Since 1995, the share of non-cash money has increased from 50 to 60 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, and 55 to 65 percent in North Africa. This mirrors the increased availability of electronic payment instruments available to businesses, but also to households.
Commercial relations between Turkey and the Middle East have been increasing quite rapidly in the last few years, as well as cooperation and exchange of information and dialogue between public authorities. Global crisis made clear that especially our region is one of the high growth bases in the world, which in turn, constitutes a potential to grow tight commercial and financial relations. Recently, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria signed a joint declaration on Thursday to launch an initiative to form a free trade zone and a visa-free zone. These nations will also set up a joint cooperation council. Significant steps have been taken towards developing our commercial relations as witnessed by trade volumes between countries. On the heels of 2001 crisis, the trade volume of Turkey with the Middle East Region was just about USD 6 billion. It reached USD 43 billion just before the financial crisis and stood at USD 29 billion as of 2009. In the same period, the share of Middle East in Turkish trade volume climbed up by 5 percentage points to 12 percent, where as the share of European Union declined by 10 percentage points to 43 percent. Let me give you several country specific examples. Syrian-Turkish economic relations have strengthened rapidly in the past few years, particularly following the implementation of a free trade agreement between the two countries in 2007. All in all, trade volume between Syria and Turkey has doubled since 2006 and reached to 1.75 billion USD in 2009.

The financial crisis and the housing bust created headwinds to the recovery in part through adverse impacts on the mechanisms of monetary policy transmission. The topic of today’s workshop is important for understanding how to gauge and potentially improve the transmission of monetary policy to the household sector. It is important that we correctly identify and to the greatest extent possible quantify the forces that have been acting on the primary-secondary spread. This requires bringing a broad range of informed perspectives to the table, perspectives that many of you have. For this workshop to succeed, we need for you to be as open, frank and precise in your discussions today as possible. President Rosengren and I thank you for your participation in this effort and we look forward to the key findings from the workshop. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
(6,7) Today, a Taylor rule usually expresses the policy rate as a function of the inflation rate and its deviation from the desired inflation rate, the output gap expressed as the logarithm of real GDP and the logarithm of its deviation from potential GDP, as well as the real interest rate. Image 9: Taylor rule for monetary policy  (  ) (  )  it =πt +rt* +βπ πt −π* +βY Yt −Y  This type of rule is one of many supplementary tools that most central banks currently use in their monetary policy analysis, although these do not replace other, more in-depth analyses and qualitative assessments. Should it not be possible to use similar simple rules to attain a more balanced credit growth in the economy and a more stable financial sector? Here it ought to be possible to combine supervisory regulations with macro factors into a simple rule to subdue fluctuations and make the banks more resilient. The cost of the banks’ lending is partly dependent on the market’s capital adequacy requirements, which in turn depend on the requirements of the regulatory regime. The principle is that the banks must maintain an amount of equity capital in their balance sheets that is in proportion to the amount of risky assets, primarily in the form of  4  In the same year Knut Wicksell published a book on the subject, Geldzins und Güterpreise (Gustaf Fischers publishing company, Jena 1898; translated in 1936 Interest and Prices, MacMillan, London).

Despite the rise in oil prices, the Norwegian krone has been fairly weak since 2014. A weak krone has a positive influence on exporting companies. At the same time, prices for imported goods and services increase. A weaker krone therefore leads to higher inflation. Measured by the import-weighted exchange rate index (I-44), the krone appreciated somewhat in the period to autumn 2018, but depreciated again towards year-end. The depreciation coincided with a fall in oil prices and heightened uncertainty in global financial markets. Chart: Growth mainland Norway Growth in the Norwegian economy has been solid since autumn 2016. At the same time, labour market conditions have improved considerably. The number of employed has increased by more than 100 000, and unemployment has declined. Solid global growth, higher oil prices and low interest rates have contributed to lifting growth. The enterprises in Norges Bank’s Regional Network reported rising output growth through 2018, particularly for oil service providers thanks to the rebound in petroleum investment on the Norwegian shelf following several years of decline. There was also a pick-up in exports from oil service companies. Chart: Employment as a share of the population After some years of solid growth, spare capacity has gradually diminished. At the end of 2018, capacity utilisation appeared to be close to what we regard as a normal level. Employment also appears to have returned to a more normal level.
But the share coming from commercial banks and direct equity investments from private creditors will decrease more than was expected, which means that capital flows will be smaller. I do not wish to review the origins of the East Asian crisis in detail, but it shows us that it is the structural weakness of domestic financial systems and the growing foreign perception of that weakness that triggers a crisis in an economy. Like the Mexican peso crisis, the East Asian crisis was a classic “self-fulfilling prophecy” panic initiated by Jeffrey Sachs. It is widely recognized that both the Mexican crisis and the crisis in the East Asian countries stemmed from incorrect macroeconomic policies and structural imbalances. Exchange rate policies in particular, combined with irresponsible fiscal policies, put enormous strain on the balance of payments. Weak domestic financial systems and rapid expansion of domestic credit, combined with pegged exchange rate regimes, deepen the economies’ dependence on short-term external borrowing. But it is a distinctive feature of the East Asian crisis that it is based more on the private sector than were the public sector crises seen during the 1970s and 1980s. The solutions found for the public-sector-based crises of those years were simpler. Programs supported by the IMF, and much less government borrowing from international institutions, were the main elements in the solution of those crises. The private-sector-based crises of today are more complicated and harder to understand.

Mr. Erçel speaks on lessons for Turkish policy-makers from the East Asian crisis Address by the Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, Mr. Gazi Erçel, at the Euromoney Conference: Investing In The Future, in Istanbul, on 3/6/98. It is a pleasure to address you at this new Euromoney Conference being held in Turkey. I wish to thank Euromoney and its staff for arranging this conference, which has helped us reach a better understanding of the Turkish economy and the macroeconomic policies pursued by the authorities. I would like to speak today about “Lessons from the East Asian crisis for Turkish policy-makers”. The financial crisis in the East Asian countries has had strong effects on the economies of the world, on industrial and emerging market countries alike. Some of these effects have made themselves felt very quickly, while others will not run their course for another two or three years. I may say that these effects are strong but not dangerous. One area of particular concern is capital flows to emerging market economies, which may increase spreads and bring about a capital market retrenchment. According to a study conducted by the Institute of International Finance, net private capital flows to major emerging market economies have slowed only slightly below their 1997 level of $ billion, but are well below their 1996 level of $ billion.
Indeed, leaving aside the case of Lehman Brothers, which was not a commercial bank but an investment bank without retail depositors, and the most particular case of Cyprus in 2013, I know of no other instance during the crisis that began in 2008 of the authorities of a country having adopted a bank winding-up solution that entailed losses for depositors. 9/14  The strategy chosen sustained the viability of the banks that received aid, maintaining their regulatory capital and the continuity of their core functions, and thereby protecting their depositors. As Table 2.8 in the Report (p. 137) shows, at end-2011, the aid assigned to banks had already risen to € billion € billion of which were in the form of public aid through the FROB, and the rest comprising private funds through the DGS). This aid enabled the banks that received it to sustain deposits, totalling around € billion, around one-third of credit institutions’ total deposits, of which over € billion were guaranteed. As regards the second scenario, the strategy of an early public bail-out for a significant portion of the system of credit institutions, which was at the time colloquially known as the “manguerazo” (liquidity dousing), was a means opted for in 2008-2009, with various formats, by countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. However, in those years in Spain, private solutions prevailed, with liquidity support measures in 2008 and, from 2009, with injections by the FROB, mainly through preference debt instruments, i.e. hybrid debt (not capital) instruments.

We therefore explicitly look at many  2  BIS Review 40/2002  other indicators and analyses in the context of our two-pillar strategy, and we do not try to hide the complexity of monetary policy-making behind the production of a single Governing Council forecast. The projections reflect the expert judgement of Eurosystem staff and we prefer to keep this distinct from the judgement of the Governing Council regarding the overall assessment of the risks to price stability. Therefore, our decision to clearly separate the production of the projections from the analysis of the Governing Council is fully transparent as it honestly reflects the decision-making process within the ECB. As regards communication, we have always taken an approach that ensures a high level of transparency and clarity of our message. Our monthly press conferences are key in this respect. The timeliness and detail of our communication is without comparison. At the same time, we have not changed our view regarding the publication of minutes. We fear that, given the multi-country context in which the Governing Council works, published minutes - or a procedure in which dissenting views of Council members are published (even without mentioning names) - could lead to undue pressure on national central bank governors to deviate from a euro area perspective. This cannot be in the interest of the euro area, no more than if the Governing Council were to end its approach of speaking with one voice.
2  The ABX indices are baskets of 20 credit default swaps that provide insurance against default losses on securities of a given rating and vintage of issuance that are backed by home equity loans.

John Gieve: The impact of the financial market disruption on the UK economy Speech by Sir John Gieve, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, to the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, London, 17 January 2008. *  *  *  Introduction These are testing times for the MPC. The latest official figures for growth confirm the strength of the economy in Q3 with above trend growth in domestic demand and a growing current account deficit. But the evidence from surveys and other timely indicators is that growth is slowing quite sharply now, in part because of the rises in interest rates last year. That in itself might justify a progressive shift in policy – from restrictive to a more neutral stance. And the case for easing has been greatly strengthened by the disruption in global credit markets and in our own banking system which brings a risk of a deeper downturn. However we have also seen a big rise in the world prices of oil and food. That is being amplified in the UK by a fall in sterling and is now coming through in our food, petrol, gas and electricity prices. These are likely to raise our inflation rate well above target in the coming months at a time when short term inflation expectations remain uncomfortably high. This combination of upside and downside risks complicates our task of keeping inflation on track to meet the 2% target.
Where an account servicing payment service provider chooses to use a dedicated interface allowing access (API), it should provide a fallback mechanism that will allow the providers of the new types of services to use the customer interface of the relevant account servicing payment service provider in case of problems with the dedicated interface. The Regulation provides the possibility for the competent authorities responsible for implementing Directive (EU) 2015/23662, such as the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB), to exempt an account servicing payment service provider from the obligation to set up and run such a fallback mechanism on its dedicated interface (API) if the conditions of the Regulation, relating to availability and service level, publication of data, performance of stress-tests, design and testing facility of the interface, its wide usage, as well as problem resolution, are complied with. In the interest of clarity regarding interpretation of the conditions for exemption, the European Banking Authority (EBA) has adopted Guidelines on the conditions to benefit from an exemption from the contingency mechanism under Article 33 (6) of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389, which the BNB will follow. According to the requirements of the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389 in deciding to grant a particular account servicing payment service provider an exemption from the obligation to set up a contingency mechanism, the respective competent authority (e.g. BNB) shall consult EBA in order to ensure that the conditions are consistently applied.

In addition, in cases pursuant to Article 17 of Regulation (EU) 2018/389 regarding corporate payment processes and protocols, a payment service provider will have to submit to the BNB an audit report performed by auditors with expertise in IT security and payments. The audit report should certify that those processes or payment protocols guarantee at least equivalent levels of security to those provided for strong customer authentication as per Article 100 of the Law on Payments Services and Payment Systems. The provider must notify the BNB of any change in the application of exemptions from strong customer authentication. In addition to these requirements, payment service providers applying the exemptions should perform the monitoring, as stated in Article 21 of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389, and make the results available to BNB upon request. Charges on Cross-border Payments in Euro and Currency Conversion Charges Regulation (EU) 2019/5183 introduces the requirement for payment service providers in non-euro area Member States to levy equal charges for cross-border payments in euro and for corresponding national payments of the same value in the national currency of the respective Member State. Such a legal requirement has existed so far only in respect to equal charges for national and cross-border payments in euro. The requirement for equal charges will become mandatory for payment service providers as of 15 December, 2019.
Improved communication also would have played a key role in this achievement. It must be noted that the neighbouring economies struggled with double digit inflation during some parts of the same period. For example, India was unable to tame inflation until 2014. One might argue that international commodity prices were in our favour. However, this was not always true, as global crude oil prices remained, on average, above US dollars 100 per barrel during the period from February 2011 to September 2014. Inflation Targeting as an Alternative: Lessons from Other Countries Therefore, without a formal announcement, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, similar to many other central banks in the world, has moved to a monetary policy framework governed by expectations and credibility, rather than by monetary aggregates or exchange rates. In the global economy, such a monetary policy framework that emphasised the role of expectations and credibility existed, and it was known as “inflation targeting” that I briefly referred to at the beginning. First adopted by New Zealand in 1990, inflation targeting was chosen as the monetary policy framework in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Sweden in quick succession. Encouraged by the success of inflation targeting, a number of other advanced economies as well as emerging market economies adopted this framework thereafter. These countries used inflation targeting either to bring down inflation from stubbornly high levels or to maintain inflation at low and stable levels on a sustained basis.

The Central Bank also introduced a Monetary Policy Consultative Committee (MPCC) comprising academics, professionals and private sector representatives, enabling the Central Bank to obtain views of the private sector to be used in the monetary policy formulation process. In addition, the Central Bank started to enunciate its monetary  13  and financial policies for a medium-term horizon though a Road Map, which was unveiled at the beginning of each year. 105 Consecutive Months of Single Digit Inflation In spite of these modifications to the framework of conducting monetary policy over time, Sri Lanka continued to suffer from double digit inflation until 2009 as a combined outcome of high budget deficits and loose fiscal policy, reactive rather than proactive monetary policy, frequent domestic supply disruptions and international commodity price shocks. In June 2008, inflation increased to 28.2 per cent, the highest level of inflation since 1980s. In order to manage this situation within the monetary targeting framework, the Central Bank used strict quantitative monetary targets with increased policy interest rates while also imposing restrictions on access to the Central Bank reverse repurchase facility. In a display of validity of monetary targeting, the Central Bank was able to bring down inflation from the peak to near zero levels within a 12-month period. It was the sharpest disinflation the country has experienced in the history of Sri Lanka, but it must also be noted that the weak global commodity prices also contributed to this decline to some extent.