samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Nor is this just a question of learning about parameter values. That would yield an optimal state-contingent procedure for updating the monetary policy rule. It is that we are unwilling to commit now never to learn from future experience. So we would not want to embed any rule deeply into our decision-making structure, such as giving it the force of law or making it part of the constitution. Instead, we delegate the power of decision to an institution that will implement policy period by period exercising “constrained discretion”. The status and purpose of such institutions can be embedded into the law or constitution, which may increase the cost of reversing the delegated powers, but the optimal policy path should be open to change in response to learning. Since  7  4  As reported by Gore Vidal (2003). BIS Review 5/2004  we cannot hope to describe ex ante what it is we expect to learn, and since new ideas are unlikely to be uniformly recognised and instantly accepted, it may be sensible to delegate both the immediate policy decision and the process of learning to the same institution.8 An interesting example of seeking flexibility to allow for learning occurred during the writing of the US constitution. One draft clause specified that Congress should be allowed to “… emit bills on the credit of the United States”. There was a debate on a proposition to strike out the clause.

Muhammad Al-Jasser: Compliance and combating money laundering Speech by His Excellency Dr Muhammad Al-Jasser, Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), at the Symposium on Compliance and Anti-Money Laundering, Institute of Banking, Riyadh, 23–24 March 2010. *  *  *  In the name of Allah the Merciful, and blessings and peace be upon His Prophet and Messenger, Dear audience, I am pleased to welcome you to this symposium, which is organized by the Institute of Banking (IOB) and deals with two important and interrelated issues: compliance and combating money laundering. Decision-makers and legislators have paid increasing attention to the issue of compliance with regulations, criteria and guidelines because of its importance to financial institutions in achieving better performance, avoiding risks and enhancing their success. At the same time, compliance maintains the reputation and credibility of financial institutions and protects them against regulatory sanctions. It also protects the interests of shareholders and depositors. Compliance is a comprehensive and multifaceted responsibility, and achieving compliance is a duty that all employees in any financial institution have to undertake, each according to entrusted powers and tasks. Recognizing the importance of compliance, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, with the participation of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), approved and issued the paper pertaining to principles of compliance and its function at banks, in April 2005.
For retail use, the motivations in emerging economies are mainly to reduce cash in circulation, or promote electronic payments, foster financial inclusion, and reduce informality and tax evasion. On the other hand, the motivations for wholesale use are mainly efficiency and security. We could also mention cross-border payments as a motivation for either of the two categories as well. In terms of the benefits, I can mention the following: a. Some research indicates that DLT may enhance market efficiency. DLT registers based on real user identities can improve competition, price transparency and liquidity. b. Crisis management around the Zero Lower Bound. In a world of low real interest rates, the impact of unconventional monetary policies, such as QE, nominal GDP targeting and forward guidance, appears to be limited (Blanchard, Dell’Ariccia and Mauro, 2013, Gagnon and Sack, 2018). Fixing negative nominal interest rates in a flexible way could improve the Central Banks’ toolkit (Rogoff, 2019). However, there Page 6 of 11  Central Bank of Chile September 2019  are some drawbacks. The general public could interpret negative interest rates as a new tax and probably legislators would restrict it (Rogoff, 2019). Also, price and wage rigidity can persist, due to habitconsumption, market power, organizational inertia, information frictions. Continuing with the benefits: c. In a world with a widely used CBDC, commercial banks could be smaller/less systemic. CBDCs can give central banks more intervention tools and reduce the risk of runs (Kumhof and Noone, 2018).

A wholesale CBDC may have several benefits  • Cross-border use of a CBDC may be explored as a more efficient alternative for remittances • Remittances using a structure of correspondent institutions are expensive and usually take time to settle. On the other hand, crypto-based alternative may be more efficient, but they are unregulated and have risks. • The cross-border use of CBDC would reap the benefits of crypto-based methods, without their risks. It certainly would require coordination between the central banks involved. On the other hand, some concerns have still not been fully addressed: a. Development and management costs of a CBDC, specially a retail CBDC that is available for a large number of people, can be substantial. Technical capacity is still not mature enough, and risks of cyberattacks are exacerbated. b. The level of anonymity that the CBDC should have is still a matter of discussion. In digital networks it can be easy to identify anonymous users due to their links to non-anonymous nodes, such as large companies. The public is already frightened by how much sensitive individual information is stored (NSA, Uber, Google, Facebook…), it is possible that a CBDC could create anonymity concerns. Page 8 of 11  Central Bank of Chile September 2019  c. Some of these concerns end up in a discussion about which is the optimum design features: anonymous or pseudo-anonymous? Interest bearing? Guaranteed convertibility of bank deposits into CBDCs?
The typical COVID-19 loan was small – around two-thirds of the loans had a limit of less than CHF 80,000. Analysis also suggests that the loan programme was well targeted. Participation in the loan programme is correlated with the exposure of firms to lockdown restrictions and with the geographical distribution of confirmed COVID-19 cases. 5 And, crucially, the loans reached younger and smaller firms, which are generally less likely to obtain outside financing during a crisis and are therefore more vulnerable. As you can see from Chart 6, almost 75% of all COVID-19 loans were taken out by firms with fewer than five employees. Because banks played an important role in disbursing COVID-19 loans, it was important that they were resilient during the crisis. Thanks in part to regulatory and  2 3 4 5  Smaller loans of up to CHF 500,000 are fully guaranteed by the Confederation, whereas loans that exceed CHF 500,000 are guaranteed by the Confederation to 85% of their value. The lending bank guarantees the remaining 15%. In addition to the federal COVID-19 loan programme, loan support programmes have been set up by individual cantons; joint programmes, such as the one offered for start-ups, have also been put in place. Cf. SNB’s Money Market Event of 5 November 2020, ‘Monetary policy implementation: How to steer interest rates in negative territory’. Lucas Marc Fuhrer, Marc-Antoine Ramelet and Jörn Tenhofen (2020), ‘Firms’ participation in the COVID-19 loan programme’, SNB Working Papers series, 2020-25.

This project aims to build a monitoring tool for central banks based on data-streaming technology, which will collect and process millions of messages per hour from multiple trading venues and visualise the results. The prototype is expected to be ready later this year. As you can see, digital innovation brings many new opportunities, and central banks – including the SNB – are positioning themselves to embrace innovation where warranted. But digital innovation also brings with it new sources of risk. Cyber risks The growing reliance on IT systems is increasing operational risks. At times during the pandemic, up to 80% of SNB staff have been working from home. As a result, the amount of digital communication has surged. The SNB’s IT infrastructure has coped very well, offering reliable remote access to our systems and communications. Nonetheless, this surge in the use of remote-access technologies and digital communication has increased exposure to cyber risk. All over the world, the financial sector in particular has been under increased attack from cyber criminals since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. 12  12  Iñaki Aldasoro, Jon Frost, Leonardo Gambacorta and David Whyte (2021), ‘COVID-19 and cyber risk in the financial sector’, BIS Bulletin No. 37. Page 9/10  Mitigating cyber risks and strengthening resilience is thus of particular importance in the financial sector. While responsibility for protecting against cyber risks lies with individual financial institutions, the SNB does contribute to the cybersecurity of the financial sector within the scope of its mandate.
The increase was concentrated in particular in the months of March, April and May. The ICO guarantee programme has played an important part in adding momentum to bank lending. As at 15 November, total funding granted under this programme amounted to € million (including the portion intended for the self-employed). Essentially, these funds have been provided to firms that faced greater funding difficulties, such as smaller firms and those most affected by the pandemic. In addition, the loans have been granted on highly favourable conditions, in terms of interest rates and maturities, thus improving the existing corporate debt maturity structure. Firms’ solvency risks  4  I will now move on to firms’ solvency risks. Lower turnover has a negative impact on firms’ revenues and reduces their ability to repay their debts. In addition, firms that record losses will see their capital decrease, while if they take on new debt to cover their liquidity needs their debt ratio will increase. In consequence, the composition of firms’ liabilities will ultimately weaken. The data available for 2020 already show a deterioration in the financial position of the business sector. The Central Balance Sheet Data Office Quarterly Survey (CBQ), which has data on some 900 – mainly large – companies, shows that during the first half of the year, the average return on assets of the sample of respondent companies fell to 2%, 2 pp below the figure recorded in the first half of 2019.

It is easy to understand why lenders may find credit sensitive alternatives attractive in the short-term, but what is less clear is why non-financial borrowers who look to their financial service providers to help them manage their risks would want to see their cost of borrowing being driven by thin liquidity in CP and CD markets. And it is clear they don’t, in a survey of borrowers by the Alternative Reference Committee’s Nonfinancial Corporates Working Group in March this year, over 80% of respondents would prefer alternatives based on SOFR than on credit sensitive alternatives. [16] In fact if lenders looked past the short term benefits of substitutability they too would see that when  Descending safely: Life after Libor ‐ speech by Andrew Bailey | Bank of England  Page 5  the limited durability of these credit sensitive rates is combined with the need, and in some jurisdictions the requirement, to ensure there is access to robust fallbacks the sensible option is to make your primary rate selection the most robust you can. In the UK there is a clear consensus that credit sensitive rates are not required or wanted as part of sterling LIBOR transition and in my view this is sensible. Widespread use of RFRs will ensure we are using benchmarks that will remain transparent to users and embed rates that have long-term durability for the future. Conclusion The use of SOFR in US dollar markets is growing.
Although only a minority of households may be credit constrained they are probably sufficient  4  Young, G (1996), “The influence of financial intermediaries on the behaviour of the UK economy”, NIESR Occasional Paper No 50. 5  This is discussed in detail in the Bank’s memorandum to the House of Commons Treasury Committee’s inquiry into “The Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England: ten years on”, Quarterly Bulletin, 47(1), 2007Q1, 24- 38. 6  Credit Conditions Survey, http://externalboeweb/publications/other/monetary/creditconditions.htm  BIS Review 7/2008  3  in number to depress household spending somewhat, possibly reversing a little of the decline in the saving ratio seen since the early 1990s (Chart 9). In a similar way a tightening of corporate lending conditions will affect some companies’ investment. The Deloitte CFO survey taken in early December finds that 20% of firms expect the recent credit market events to have a negative impact on their capital spending in 2008. 7 This tightening of credit conditions would be exacerbated by any further weakening in the financial position of banks due to a slowdown in the wider economy. Slower growth and a rise in unemployment in particular would lead to higher loan defaults. There are signs that this is already happening in consumer lending in the US. Weakening property prices would reduce the amount that lenders could realise in the event of default.

Higher wage growth would have the opposite effect. Overall, moderate growth in household purchasing power is expected to result in lower consumption growth ahead. A gradual increase in the interest rate will probably curb activity in the housing market. Housing investment is expected to grow through this year, although less rapidly than last year. Housing investment growth will thereafter moderate further, and may be somewhat reduced towards the end of the projection period. House price inflation is expected to slow. Household indebtedness has increased in tandem with high activity in the housing market. Growth in household debt (C2) has abated somewhat in recent months, but remains at a high level. Higher interest rates and lower house price inflation will gradually reduce household debt growth in the next few years. Growth in credit to mainland enterprises has also shown a sharp increase over the past year, partly reflecting increased fixed investment. With prospects of continued high capacity utilisation in the Norwegian economy, solid profitability, ample liquidity and a high level of optimism among enterprises, strong growth in investment is expected again this year. As economic growth gradually slows, investment growth is also expected to moderate. Monetary policy assessments and strategy Monetary policy is oriented towards a gradual increase in the interest rate – in small, not too frequent steps – towards a more normal level.
Ladies and Gentlemen It is a continuing concern of all key stakeholders that provision of financial services in rural areas continues to be significantly lower than in urban areas. This has constrained the rural populace from access to savings products. This largely on account of poor infrastructure coupled with low literacy levels. As of June 2020, 39 out of the 116 districts in the country, did not have either bank branches or agents. It is from this backdrop that the Bank of Zambia, the Ministry of Finance and National Planning and the Ministry of Health, commenced an initiative to help accelerate rural financial inclusion in Districts by promoting the use of health facilities as general access  2/4  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  points for financial services. The General Access Point Inspection Report was presented during the dissemination workshop on 13 September 2022 and is available for detailed information. Ladies and Gentlemen The implementation of the National Strategy on Financial Education requires the united responsibility of the financial sector. This has been demonstrated by the Pensions and Insurance Authority, the Insurers Association of Zambia as well as Securities and Exchange Commission and the Capital Markets Association of Zambia who successfully launched the Insurance Week under the theme "Insurance-Solutions for a better tomorrow" and World Investor Week under the theme "Learn more about Investor resilience and sustainable finance" earlier this month. I am confident that the key messages disseminated during these events will contribute to raising the levels of financial literacy in the country.

We already did the same successfully under the SMP, which has now come to an end. Barely a year after the announcement of OMTs, the positive effects are obvious, and this development has certainly also been enabled by the reform efforts as a whole. First, banks and firms regained access to the capital market. Second, the spread between the yields on Spanish and German ten-year government bonds fell from more than 6 percentage points in July 2012 to just under 3 percentage points in May 2013. At the same time, the premium on Italian bond yields was halved, down from more than 5 percentage points. One further sign of the normalisation of developments – one that is important for German savers – is the fact that yields on German government bonds increased by around one-quarter of a percentage point over the same period. Third, TARGET balances – which are an important indicator of fragmentation within the euro area – have declined noticeably. They are down by € billion – around 25% – compared with their peak in 2012, so they are now back at the level observed at the end of 2011. In conclusion, we can see that the announcement of OMTs significantly contributed to the stabilisation of the situation. Firms, banks and households throughout the euro area benefited from this measure. Destructive extreme scenarios were ruled out and the damaged transmission mechanism was, to a certain extent, repaired.
Let’s take it slowly, and grant our insurers a little respite so they can assimilate the regulations and prepare, to the best of their abilities, for the future requirements. This extra time would also be useful for the IASB, to allow it to take full account of the concerns of Europe in the current low rate environment. *** My conclusion aims to be a conviction, one that I hope you will share: we are waging these battles collectively for the benefit of the insurance industry, which is a key player in the economy. We are also waging them to protect policyholders, who are one of the ACPR’s core responsibilities. And we are waging them to prepare for the future and to be able to make the massive investments that will be necessary. Beyond the issue of low rates, therefore, insurance has an essential role to play in this world which, more than just being “short-term”, is also undergoing major upheavals. A climate upheaval, first and foremost, and I welcome EIOPA’s “sustainable finance” group, cochaired by the ACPR, which will also modify Solvency II to take better account of climate-related risks in the governance and management of insurers’ risks. Second, a digital upheaval, which is completely transforming your activities and raising crucial questions about the protection of policyholders’ data, and about the rising threat of cyber risk and how to insure against it. Yes, this world really needs insurance. Thank you for your commitment and your attention. i  Paul Valéry, Mauvaises pensées et autres, 1942.

With increased access to cheap labour in the extended global economy, labour market competition in Norway will intensify, initially for jobs that do not require highly-qualified labour, but eventually encompassing these jobs as well. Since India, China, Brazil, Indonesia and many other emerging economies are investing substantially in education, the supply of qualified labour will increase ahead. It remains to be seen whether the combination of low unemployment and a low wage share is sustainable. It partly depends on whether the positive supply-side conditions persist. There is probably symmetry here. First: Should Norway’s terms of trade deteriorate, productivity growth slacken and foreign workers return to their home country, the wage share will increase, profits fall and unemployment will rise. Second: If enterprises, in their search for the best qualified candidates, go so far as to bid up wages, profits may fall and unemployment edge up. Developments ahead will also depend on how wage-earners react. If the wage share has fallen solely because of sluggishness in the wage formation process, both the wage share and unemployment may increase. BIS Review 107/2007  3  Structural changes in the global economy will affect the Norwegian economy. Monetary policy in Norway cannot influence these developments, but the effect of these structural changes must be taken into account in interest-rate setting. In the November 2005 Inflation Report, Norges Bank published its own forecast for the interest rate for the first time. The aim is to enhance the predictability of monetary policy.
Based on supervisory information from firms, currently around 25% of annuities are backed by such illiquid assets but firms have plans for that proportion to increase to 40% by 2020. This trend is welcome and may have wider economic benefits. As supervisors, we will be checking that firms have the risk management capabilities to hold and monitor such assets, and value them properly. Especially where firms are using internal ratings for these illiquid assets, we are also currently consulting on a supervisory approach intended to ensure that any Matching Adjustment benefit being taken is appropriate. 5  I now want to make a few points on the PRA’s implementation of Solvency II, which I believe has been robust but proportionate, in line with our statutory objectives. The first thing to say is that Solvency II is largely a so-called ‘maximum harmonising’ EU regulation. The PRA cannot set capital requirements that exceed the requirements of Solvency II. Unlike banking regulation, Solvency II does not allow supervisors routinely to set additional capital requirements or buffers akin to those applied under Pillar 2 for banks to reflect our judgement about risks specific to a firm – for example, based on stress testing. 6  Partly because we cannot simply require firms to top up capital if we think a model is too aggressive, we take an intrusive approach to model approval. We have to be sure that the models are up to scratch before we can allow firms to use them to determine their capital requirements.

The architectural concept of Sasana Kijang is also inspired from our earliest form of currency that was used in the third century and which denotes a harmony of simplicity and class. And the facade design of the building is derived from the geometric patterns of the traditional Malaysian songket fabric which is woven with intricate gold and silver threads which creates a strong bond, thus giving the fabric its strength and elegance. This is similar to the Central Banking community that is interlinked through our similar objectives and bonded through collaboration and strategic alliances. Other features of the building is the extensive use of glass which allows for the greater use of natural light. The building also features a range of green technologies as part of our commitment and responsibility to the environment. Finally, another important part of Sasana Kijang is the Bank Negara Malaysia Currency and Economics Museum and the Art Gallery that will be opened to the public. These collections that have been built since the earliest days of our Bank over a period of more than five  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  decades aim to foster greater understanding on the history of our currencies and of our economy and financial system, and also represents our support to contemporary art in Malaysia and thus contribute towards preserving the heritage of our country. Allow me now to invite Yang Amat Berhormat, Dato’ Sri Mohd. Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak to deliver his address and to officially launch Sasana Kijang.