samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Some people – perhaps even some of you – may be sensing a different reality: financial crisis, economic crisis, unemployment – these are the keywords currently dominating the discussions on monetary union. How much does the reality have to do with the actual idea of the euro? Is the euro still a symbol of what holds Europe together? Or has it become a symbol of what divides Europe? The growing appeal of anti-euro and anti-Europe parties is a sign that we need to make the incalculable benefits of a single currency easier to understand for the people of the euro area. And we should encourage people to look at the full reality and not just one facet. The euro is a fundamental part of the single market. More than 300 million people in 19 countries make payments using the euro. It’s the world’s second most important currency. Over 20% of global currency reserves are held in euro. And despite all the euroscepticism, recent surveys 1 show that 70% of people in the euro area want the single currency. Obviously, in my view too, a united Europe with a single currency is the right idea; as Theo Waigel, former German Minister of Finance, once said, the euro is “ingenious”. And, for me, it’s about more than the economic advantages brought by a united Europe and a single currency. It’s also about a political reality. Not all the countries of Europe can live in “splendid isolation” – Europe’s voice in world affairs would fall silent.

If they materialize, they may reshape the macroeconomic outlook and, therefore, may alter the course of monetary policy. We have identified two types of risks in the external front facing the Chilean economy. Some of them may potentially have a material impact, yet are hard to quantify (such as political-economic uncertainty). Others risks have been mentioned for quite some time, but their likelihood have varied. Regarding the latter, the expected trajectories of fiscal and monetary policy in the U.S. may potentially generate upside or downside risks. China remains a source of concern although its authorities appear to have successfully managed a gradual deceleration without a major disruption thus far. These are probably risks for most economies of the world, but particularly for a small open economy, such as Chile. 16. On the domestic front, after several years of subdued growth, we cannot rule out that a more persistent phenomenon may be affecting the economy’s ability to grow, in which case it would be necessary to revise the public and private expenditure plans. Moreover, while the labor market has gradually adjusted without generating a significant increase in unemployment, it is possible that after several years of low growth, firms require larger personnel adjustments, especially if the expected growth recovery towards the end of the year stalls.
Adherence to international standards on AML/CFT, including the ability to trace funds back to the source and to positively identify the beneficiaries of the funds, are indeed vital. In Malaysia, electronic money is prescribed as a designated payment instrument in the Payment Systems Act 2003 (PSA) and the Act is under the purview of the Bank. As such, any person who wishes to issue electronic money would be required to obtain the prior approval of Bank Negara Malaysia and is subjected to the prudential requirements imposed by the Bank. In 2005, in line with the objective of reducing the use of cash in the domestic economy, we liberalised our policy by allowing non-banking institutions to issue electronic money. In 2008, the Bank issued the Guidelines on Electronic Money, which outlined the broad principles and minimum standards to be observed by electronic money issuers. As at end-March 2010, 26 issuers have been approved to issue electronic money comprising both card-based and network-based schemes. During the past five years, the use of electronic money recorded encouraging average annual growth of 21.5% and 24.9% in terms of volume and value respectively. With regard to the oversight of electronic money issuers, in particular the non-banking institutions, our objective is to ensure the safety and reliability of the issuers’ systems and operations. We acknowledge, nevertheless, that in this rapidly changing commercial and technological environment, it is becoming increasingly challenging for regulators to develop policies that are effective and appropriate to address the regulatory concerns while at the same time, promote innovation.

Digital convergence of telecommunications, computers, and the media is fast conjoining many new products and services to replace the old ones. For these reasons, inflexible and highly prescriptive regulations and rules may be inhibitive to innovation. In addition, with the entrance of more non-bank players in the payments industry, overseeing these players could be more challenging as a different regulatory approach may have to be adopted. Regulators would need to be conversant with the business dynamics and operational arrangements of these new players while, at the same time, these players have to adapt quickly to the regulators’ supervisory approach and requirements. The regulators’ dilemma in achieving a proportionate regulatory framework, in particular to promote the growth of electronic money, remains a challenge. This give rise to the need to balance trade-offs between impacting public confidence and promoting innovation and  BIS Review 69/2010  3  competition. Let’s take the example of the provision of a more lenient regulatory regime. While this would promote the entry of new players in the market, it may also lead to the payment systems being used for illicit purposes. Regulators may as well get the major stakeholders to understand this dilemma. By doing this, hopefully the regulators will be able to apply a more stringent regulatory regime to protect public interest, but at the same time do not unduly affect the viability and growth of electronic payments.
The labour supply Because labour force participation varies so much in different age groups, the future age structure is highly significant for the labour supply and thereby also for growth. The Nordic countries have generally high activity rates, around 87 per cent in the age group 25-54, compared with the other European countries. In the oldest age group, participation has decreased over the last 10 years. One reason for this is that the retirement age has fallen. In Sweden today, the actual age of retirement is 62 years. The only group in which there has been a rise in the labour supply in recent years is elderly women, since those that live to a higher age today are better educated than their predecessors. The proportion of elderly in the population is growing larger throughout Europe, and the Nordic countries are no exception. At present, 16 per cent of the European population are 65 years or older. This percentage is forecast to increase to 18 percent by 2010. If we look instead at the number of people over 80 years in Europe, this will double over the next 15 years. According to Statistics Sweden, the proportion of people in Sweden that are 65 years or older will rise from 17 per cent today to 23 per cent in 2050. Meanwhile, the economically active proportion of the population, those between 20 and 64 years, will decline from 59 per cent in 2002 to 54 per cent in 2050.

While we don't believe that resource utilisation will exert any pressure on prices and wages so soon, increasing demands for restraint will be placed on labour market organisations as economic activity gains impetus. Concluding remarks The main problem that I have discussed has been the implications of an ageing population for the Nordic countries and the resultant imbalance between the supporters and the supported. The problem is aggravated further by the fact that it will become difficult to maintain high taxes as a result of globalisation. So the great challenge facing the Nordic welfare states in the future is a combination of two processes that are both important and difficult to influence. BIS Review 46/2003  5  The demographic changes will entail a loss in tax receipts due to fewer people in work while expenditure on pensions and healthcare will rise. At the same time, globalisation and openness has made it easier to transfer money abroad or to live and work in other countries. Our tax bases have in other words become more mobile, which reduces the scope for high-tax policies. In Sweden we have taken certain preparatory measures, including a reformed pension system to enable the public finances to bear the costs of an increasing number of retirers. In this respect, Sweden has been a leading country from a European perspective. We have also consolidated our public finances thanks to our surplus target. This has laid firmer foundations to meet future demands. The question is whether it is enough.
When there is confidence that the inflation target will be attained, high wage growth creates expectations of a tight monetary policy and relatively high interest rates. High returns make it attractive to take krone positions. Increased demand for our currency boosts the international value of the Norwegian krone. If wage growth slows , and we can be confident that it will remain low for the next few years, the interest rate differential against other countries can be narrowed. This will normally lead to the krone depreciating. Over the last thirty years, manufacturing has been scaled back in waves, and particularly sharply in the period 1977 to 1987. In the years leading up to the periods of contraction, profitability weakened in the manufacturing sector. It can take time before such a deterioration translates into lower output and  BIS Review 49/2002  11  employment. But when the turnaround hits, it tends to hit fast and hard. It now appears that a new period of downscaling is under way. Several factors point to this: first, a trend analysis indicates that manufacturing employment will be reduced in the period ahead, partly because petroleum investment is expected to decline and productivity growth in manufacturing to be somewhat higher than in other industries. Second, manufacturing costs have increased sharply since 1998 as a consequence of high wage growth. Up to the summer of 2000, this cost increase was to some extent offset by a weaker krone. The appreciation of the krone has revealed and exacerbated the deterioration in cost competitiveness.

We do not have the instruments for fine-tuning the exchange rate. In Norges Bank’s submission of 27 March 2001 to the Ministry of Finance on the new guidelines for economic policy, we indicated that when monetary policy is aimed at low and stable inflation, this is the best contribution monetary policy can make to stability in the krone exchange rate over time. The interest rate affects price inflation through a number of channels, including the krone exchange rate. A stronger krone curbs inflation. If we take steps to counteract an appreciation of the krone when there are pressures in the economy, we reduce the possibility of keeping inflation at bay and there is a greater risk of pronounced fluctuations in the economy. Maintaining stability in the internal value of the krone must thus take precedence. As long as other countries pursue a policy of low and stable  BIS Review 49/2002  7  inflation, stability in the international value of the krone is dependent on low and stable inflation in Norway The implementation of monetary policy is delegated to Norges Bank. This implies that Norges Bank sets the interest rate on the basis of our understanding of the regulation, as indicated in the Bank’s submission to the Ministry of Finance in March last year. Our interpretation places emphasis on the Government’s rationale behind the regulation, on the objective as formulated in the first paragraph and on our knowledge about the relationships between the interest rate, the krone exchange rate, output, employment and inflation.
But now that we have passed the worst phase of that crisis, a reassessment of policy is needed. I have been arguing for some time that we should be gradually removing some of the monetary stimulus provided in the depths of the recession by raising interest rates to reflect the improvement in the economy at home and abroad and to counter the rather worrying tendency of inflation to run significantly above the 2% target set by the government. In recent months, however, there have been concerns about the sustainability of the UK economic recovery which might seem to weaken this case for higher interest rates. The GDP data for the final quarter of last year were disappointing, even allowing for the impact of the snow, and there are worries about the impact of fiscal tightening as it begins to have an impact through public spending restraint and higher VAT. There are also concerns about volatility on the international scene, with political instability in the Middle East and North Africa and the effects of the earthquake and tsunami on Japan, the world’s third largest economy. In today’s speech I want to discuss the growth of the UK economy over the current recovery and how it should be reflected in the MPC’s decisions on monetary policy.

But to my mind, the absence of a well thought-out position, with clear principles and rules, does not do away with moral hazard problems. They are still present under the surface. Ultimately it will be the tax-payer who stands to lose if actions are not well-prepared and policy is not coherent. This is our experience and I know it is also the view of, for instance, my Finnish and Thai colleagues. The strategy adopted by the Swedish authorities almost a decade ago worked relatively well. But in the absence of clear examples from other crisis management, it was arrived at by improvisation without any rules to rely on. The fact that the result was so satisfactory and the crisis could be resolved so quickly was presumably in large measure a consequence of the profound economic crisis generating a willingness to cooperate, both among politicians and in society in general. 1  BIS Review 85/2000  However, you cannot relay on that kind of spirit of cooperation, which means that a clear structure must have been established for managing acute problems. There has to be a clear division of labour between the competent authorities. The authorities concerned must have thought about the different situations than can arise and how to cope with them. In a draft legislation that was presented recently, a specific procedure, called public administration, is proposed for the reconstruction and winding up of banks. This should provide a credible way of managing problem banks that could jeopardise the entire system.
As an example, Panel 4 shows a time series 8 / 15  BIS central bankers' speeches  of the expected level of the federal funds rate at the end of 2017 for dealers and for buy-side firms; these two track each other closely. 22 On the other hand, both the dealers and buy-side community responses exhibit substantial dispersion around these medians. One explanation for the adverse reactions to Federal Reserve communications in the spring of 2013 is that the marginal investor is not the same as the median respondent to our surveys. Looking past the survey, I think there are a few key factors that differ between now and 2013 that might explain why the market reaction has been so much calmer this time. The macroeconomic environment is markedly better. Market participants have a better sense for the FOMC’s approach to increasing the federal funds rate, and there is much greater clarity on the respective roles of the balance sheet and the overnight policy rate. The normalization plan is more clearly gradual and predictable. And the balance sheet news this time around may just not have been all that surprising. I’ll talk briefly about each of these. One important difference between now and 2013 is that the labor market is very healthy, with unemployment close to levels most associate with full employment.

Under this, we are changing the education system to lighten the curriculum, encourage creativity, risk-taking and a spirit of life-long learning among our young. Second, we are setting up a $ billion venture fund to coinvest with the private sector in startups, whether by local entrepreneurs or foreign talent attracted to Singapore. Third, we are improving the physical infrastructure for start-ups, such as technology park facilities. And finally, we are reviewing existing laws and regulations, for example those governing taxation of stock options. A fourth area of change is the liberalisation of the financial sector. Our goal is to make Singapore a leading financial centre in our time zone, linked to other major financial centres of the world. Over the last two years, we have progressively shifted our philosophy on financial regulation to a lighter, more market oriented approach. We have given fund management companies greater access to domestic funds, including personal savings in the compulsory pensions scheme, and the government’s reserves hitherto managed by GIC and MAS. We are promoting the debt market, demutualising and merging the stock and futures exchanges, bringing corporate governance up to date, and introducing risk-focussed supervision and inspection of financial institutions. We are also allowing more foreign competition in the domestic banking sector. We have just issued new banking licences to foreign banks. Keener competition will mean better banking services and stronger local banks that can hold their own in a rapidly changing industry. While pursuing major economic priorities, we have not neglected to strengthen our social cohesion.
Survey responses show the mean value for the repo-rate expectations of money market participants in February 2015. “MPR” refers to the Riksbank’s forecast for the repo rate in its monetary policy reports. Sources: Statistics Sweden and TNS Sifo Prospera  But Chart 4 also shows that the repo rate has so far turned out to be much lower than the interest rate forecasts. The bonds have therefore risen in value and the funding of the bond purchases seems to become cheaper than expected, something which, at least in the short term, has led to higher profits than expected for the Riksbank. This is 11 An alternative measure of the future repo rate is provided by the market’s pricing of certain derivatives. This  pricing suggested that the repo rate would increase more slowly than in the Riksbank’s forecast, but the bond purchases would realise losses also according to these market-based expectations. 6 [12]  reflected in, for example, the forecast for the Riksbank’s dividend-qualifying profit in 2015 and 2016. 12 At the end of 2014, a total loss of just over SEK 10 billion was expected for those two years. 13 In March 2015, when bond purchases had begun on a small scale, the expected loss had risen to almost SEK 14 billion. The latest forecast, from October this year, has the benefit of hindsight and indicates that the outcome will instead be a profit of almost SEK 13 billion.

Following the deepening of the global financial crisis, we focused on policies to contain the adverse effects of the crisis on economic activity and financial stability, while also overseeing price stability. Accordingly, our Bank slashed policy rates and kept them at low levels for quite some time in addition to deploying supportive liquidity measures. 38. In view of the normalization in money and credit markets amid waning effects of the global crisis on financial markets, we announced our exit strategy on April 14, 2010, which encompasses the withdrawal of crisis measures and the normalization process of the monetary policy. Unlike other emerging economies, Turkey entered the global crisis with a strong and well-regulated banking system as well as a flexible and efficient liquidity management tailored to previous crisis experience. Hence, our balance sheet deteriorated only slightly due to anti-crisis measures and we were not forced to adopt radical measures during the crisis. Thus, our exit strategy was simple compared to those of many other central banks. 39. As part of the exit strategy and also considering the favorable developments in credit markets and the recovery in economic activity, the CBRT started to withdraw the temporary liquidity measures introduced during the crisis. Hence, the excess liquidity provided to the market was gradually drained in tandem with the normalization process. Moreover, as the first step of the technical rate adjustment process, the 1-week repo rate was adopted as the key policy rate in May. 40.
Thus, the aim of maintaining the inflation target is not just about low and stable inflation being a good thing in itself, it also provides a means of ensuring that the policy rate can be used as a monetary policy tool. It is worth noting that this has implications for the argument that the central bank should not bother with inflation at all, but should focus on other things, such as solely balancing economic activity or dampening financial cycles. Doing this effectively requires using the interest rate and to use the interest rate we must have some average inflation. It may also be worth noting that there is an international debate that emphasises that as the neutral interest rate is historically low, even an inflation target of 2 per cent provides too little scope for monetary policy. The target, it is argued, should therefore be higher.9 I do not intend to bring up this debate now, but focus on  7 It is worth noting that it is not only the policy rate that is limited by a lower bound, the same applies to long-  term interest rates. Quantitative easing, which aims to lower longer-term interest rates thus also becomes less effective in an environment with very low inflation, see Gagnon and Collins (2019). 8 See, for example, Broadbent (2015). 9 See, for example, Blanchard, Dell’Ariccia, and Mauro (2013), Ball (2014), Krugman (2014), Rosengren (2015) and Gagnon and Collins (2019).

When a financial system becomes impaired, there can be dire consequences for economic activity and the ability of central banks to achieve their macroeconomic objectives. Hélène’s work highlights an important global dimension to financial cycles, showing that gross capital flows, asset prices and credit often move in a synchronized way across countries as perceptions of risk change. As we now know all too well, the global financial crisis dramatically underscored the fact that instability in the U.S. financial system and those of other advanced economies imposed extraordinarily high costs on the entire global economy. Making the global financial system more resilient and less procyclical has been a key focus of policymakers since the financial crisis, and most countries have made substantial progress on this front. This is evident in stronger capital and liquidity buffers for banks, lower reliance on wholesale short-term funding, reforms of over-the-counter derivatives markets, and the development of resolution and recovery regimes for banks and key financial market infrastructures, among other efforts. Nonetheless, we must continue to work on these issues. In particular, the U.S. financial system—the epicenter of the crisis—has been considerably strengthened. Here, I would highlight additional reforms such as the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) regime, which imposes annual capital stress tests on systemically important banks; tri-party repo reform; and money market mutual fund reform. Policymakers globally have also made good progress on strengthening supervisory oversight, and are making headway—albeit more slowly—in developing effective macroprudential frameworks and toolkits. But, more work remains to be done in several areas.