samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Given the elevated level of prices relative to earnings at the start of the decade and the further sharp increase in the middle of the decade, constraints on the availability of credit, both lender-imposed and regulatory, are likely to have held back activity. Building a sufficient deposit is one of the biggest constraints facing most first-time buyers. Only 19% of renters across the UK have sufficient savings to afford a 5% deposit on the median first-time property in their region. In London and the South and East, high house prices relative to earnings mean that potential first-time buyers have to save even larger deposits in order to be able to afford their mortgages. For regions outside London and the South and East, first-time buyers’ deposits are typically 48% of their incomes. In London and across regions in the South and East on average, this is 121% and 80% respectively. 13  Since June 2014, the FPC has recommended a limit of 15% on the proportion of new mortgages extended at or above 4.5 times a borrower’s income. Building on the FCA’s rules, the FPC has also recommended that lenders assess whether borrowers could meet their mortgage payments if their mortgage interest rate switched to the contractual reversion rate and increased by 3 percentage points. 14  The FPC published its most recent review of the housing tools in the December 2019 Financial Stability Report.

The upwards trend over this period generally was also driven by the secular decline in the long run equilibrium interest rate that we have seen over the past 30 years, and which makes higher levels of debt more sustainable2. By 2008, household mortgage debt relative to income had risen to 110% from 67% at the beginning of the decade and roughly four times its level in 1980. The debt service to income ratio remained relatively constant as the impact of higher levels of mortgage debt relative to income was offset by lower debt servicing costs. Access to credit was easy and the cost of credit was relatively low. By 2007, the spread on a 2 year fixed rate 90% Loan-To-Value (LTV) mortgage product over risk-free rates was just 0.4pp. And a large share of mortgage products advertised were available to relatively riskier borrowers, such as 90%+ LTV or to borrowers who had recently faced repayment difficulties. Over this period, the market was very active, with mortgage approvals averaging over 100,000 per month. In the financial crisis and ensuing recession, house prices dropped and the market effectively froze. Transactions fell from their peak of 150,000 in December 2006 to their trough of 52,000 in January 2009. And house prices contracted by over 15% in February 2009, from a peak growth rate of over 10% in June 20073. The housing recovery, as with the UK economic recovery in general, was slow and painful.
Philipp M Hildebrand: The EU economic recovery - why is it so slow? Speech by Dr Philipp M Hildebrand, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Brussels Economic Forum, Charlemagne, 21-22 April 2005. *  *  *  Introduction Let me begin by thanking the Commission and Klaus Regling in particular for inviting me to join this outstanding panel. As an EU outsider, it is a special privilege to join the Brussels Economic Forum. The question I was asked to address today - why is the EU economic recovery so slow – is crucial for many reasons. Let me highlight two. The asymmetric nature of the global growth dynamic during the last decade is a worrying development for the European Union. Together with Japan, Europe has failed to make a growth contribution commensurate with its share of the world economy. The U.S. economy has had to step in and assume the role of what some have referred to as a “global consumer of last resort”. One of the consequences of this dynamic is a potentially vulnerable world economy beset with historically unprecedented economic imbalances. How these imbalances will adjust over time is a complex question that goes beyond the topic of today’s panel.1 Suffice it to say, Europe will not be an island of prosperity in the hopefully unlikely event of a financial market crisis triggered by these imbalances.

Effective communication will enable all economic agents to better understand the reasons and the goal, and thus encourage their proper behavior for achieving the goals. Unclear or poor communication, in turn, may jeopardize the achievement of the underlying goals, since central banks do not directly influence the goals, but should influence the behavior of economic agents to achieve the goal. For example, the central bank cannot directly influence inflation, but through its measures – reducing the interest rate, or increasing liquidity in the economy – can stimulate banks to improve the financing terms, but also borrowers to increase demand, which will move the demand for goods and services in the desired direction and achieve the inflation target. Empirical research in the central banking community does confirm that, globally, the central bank communication is key to maintaining a low level or reducing inflation and in many cases even reducing instability in the real economy. Communication is an ongoing challenge for central banks. It is undisputed that effective central bank communication will always be marked by certain flexibility and adaptability, depending not only on the economic environment, but also on the public interest and trends in the communication and information networks and media, which, due to the development of technology and digitization, are changing, advancing and improving on a daily basis. The constant strengthening of transparency, that is, the promotion and development of communication with the public, including media, is a challenge for the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia.
Table 1 Main international scenario assumptions (yearly averages) 2009  2010 (f) Jun.10  2011 (f)  Sep.10  Jun.10  2012 (f)  Sep.10  Sep.10  World GDP at PPP (annual change, %)  -0,6  4,3  4,3  4,0  3,8  4,7  World GDP at market exchange rate (annual change, %)  -2,0  3,2  3,3  3,0  2,9  3,9  Trading partners' GDP (annual change, %)  -0,2  4,4  4,4  3,7  3,5  4,6  WTI oil price $  62  77  77  80  79  82  LME copper price $  234  300  320  270  290  290  Terms of trade (annual change, %)  4,1  14,3  15,0  -7,2  -4,3  0,5  External prices, in $ (annual change, %)  -6,2  3,4  4,6  3,3  2,3  4,7  (f) Forecast Source: Central Bank of Chile.

6  BIS Review 126/2010  Figure 3 IMACEC (1) (index, 2003=100)  Contribution to GDP growth (real annual change, percentage points)  135  135  130  130  125  125  120 115  120 115  07  08  09  25  25  20  20  15  15  10  10  5  5  0  0  -5  -5  -10  -10  -15  07  10  III  08  III  09  III  -15  10  GFCF Inventory change Government consumption Private consumption Net exports (2) GDP (1) Seasonally-adjusted series. (2) Goods and services exports minus goods and services imports. Source: Central Bank of Chile.
Can this persist in the long term? The ECB’s monetary policy will remain very accommodative until inflation is firmly on a path towards 2%. What other reasons are there, beyond the ECB’s decisions, for interest rates being so low? It is because growth is still weak. It is because our economies are less able than in the past to create growth. The ECB must take account of this environment and, to provide effective support to the recovery, we must set our key interest rates at very low or even negative levels. If the European economy regains the ability to sustainably create growth, interest rates will return to levels more favourable to savings. How do you account for the fact that economic growth has remained low in France in 2016? The pace of economic growth is accelerating throughout the euro area and the unemployment rate is falling, including in France, but at a slightly slower pace. The ECB’s monetary policy has made a strong contribution and the reforms implemented in each country have played a role. The countries that were severely affected by the financial crisis have had to undertake reforms. The reforms that they have implemented, particularly in the labour market, have been hard but are now bearing fruit. In Spain, for example, growth is set to be above 3% in 2016 and the unemployment rate is falling rapidly. France, which weathered the crisis better, faced less pressure to undertake reforms. Today growth in France is weaker and unemployment is higher.

Goh Chok Tong: Integration of Awqaf (Islamic endowment) in the Islamic financial sector Speech Mr Goh Chok Tong, Senior Minister of the Republic of Singapore and Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the opening ceremony of the Singapore International WAQF Conference 2007, Singapore, 6 March 2007. *  *  *  Excellencies and Distinguished Guests Ladies and Gentlemen A very good morning to all of you, and a very warm welcome to our guests from the Middle East and the region. I hope you will find time from your busy schedule of meetings to enjoy the sights, sounds and culinary delights of Singapore. For Singapore offers you a unique experience – we are traditional yet modern, Asian but cosmopolitan, geographically small but with a large global outlook. Singapore is indeed honoured to host this first international conference in the region on waqf. I congratulate the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS), the Islamic Research and Training Institute of the Islamic Development Bank Group and the Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation for taking the initiative to organise this event. We look forward to more such meetings. Asia and Middle East rediscovering each other Asia and the Middle East have had a long and fruitful history of exchanges. Links between our two regions are ancient. Long before Marco Polo travelled to China, Arab merchants were already doing business in Asia using overland and sea routes.
And third, the expansion of that work into the current international effort to develop and implement a single global code of conduct for the foreign exchange market and to enhance adherence to that code among all market participants. Work of the Financial Stability Board’s Foreign Exchange Benchmarks Group (FXBG) Given the global nature of the FX market, as well as the number of jurisdictions in which wrongdoing has been uncovered, efforts to strengthen the market must be global in nature as well. Recognizing this imperative, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system, established the Foreign Exchange Benchmarks Group (FXBG) in early 2014. The purpose of the FXBG was to review FX benchmarks and associated market practices, including potential misaligned incentives, and make recommendations for change. The FXBG, which consisted of representatives from more than twenty countries, engaged with a range of market participants to analyze the market structures and incentives as they related to trading around benchmark fixings. The group produced a series of recommendations to enhance the structures and behaviors around FX benchmark trading. I would like to focus on two particular aspects of these recommendations – first, changes to the WM/Reuters calculation 10 and second, changes aimed at strengthening market conduct. The FXBG report highlighted the dominant use of the WM/Reuters (WMR) 4 p.m. London fixings by many different sets of market participants, including some not otherwise active in the foreign exchange market.

These developments  7  4  Not only is liquidity both challenging to define and measure, but the impact of technological change on liquidity is difficult to isolate. On a number of dimensions, technological change appears to have improved both the efficiency of price formation and the ability to transact in size without significantly affecting market prices. But recent “flash” events in various markets – including rapid round-trips in prices on March 18, 2015, in the eurodollar currency pair and on October 15, 2014, in the U.S. Treasury cash and futures markets – have suggested the possibility that advancements in automated trading and changes in market structure may have improved liquidity in normal times but left markets prone to more frequent bouts of illiquidity during which price formation appears disconnected from fundamental information. Structural developments and the connection to liquidity and price discovery across markets warrant further study. See also recent comments by Lael Brainard, member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Recent Changes in the Resilience of Market Liquidity. http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard20150701a.htm. BIS central bankers’ speeches  have resulted in damage to the integrity of the global FX market – damage that will not easily be undone. The behaviors that triggered these criminal and regulatory actions illustrate that, for many, self-interest and the lure of near-term gains were put above the preservation of the market’s integrity and long-term sustainability.
Starting with the institutional limitations, the key innovation of the SSM is that it creates genuinely European supervision, by which I mean supervision on both core and peripheral banks. From November next year, every bank in Europe will be part of the same system. This puts supervisors in a better position to prevent boom-bust cycles caused by excessive cross-border lending – and if they fail to do so, there will be collective responsibility for that failure. In line with the subsidiarity principle, European supervision will involve centralised and decentralised elements. For the big significant banks (around 130), the ECB will be the direct responsible supervisor, but supervision will take place at both the European and national levels. We will integrate these levels by setting up Joint Supervisory Teams (JST) for each significant bank. Let me use the example of Santander to illustrate how this will work. For the parts of the banking group resident within the SSM, there will be a core supervisory team comprising of staff from both the ECB and the national competent authorities (NCAs) in the countries where Santander is active – that is 9 within the euro area. Within this team there will be a national coordinator for each country, drawn from the respective NCA, and an overall coordinator, who will be an ECB staff member. The national coordinators will manage the permanent experts working at the national level, while the ECB coordinator will ensure quality and take responsibility for output sent to the Supervisory Board.

For this reason, one of the most important lessons we can take from the crisis is the importance of building a genuine banking union. The crisis narrative Indeed, the importance of banking union is related with the role of the banking sector in the development of the European economic crisis. As you know, there are many explanations for the crisis: some observers like to focus on unsound fiscal policies and excessive sovereign debt; others on competitiveness losses engineered by uncontrolled unit labour costs; and others still see the crisis more as a traditional balance of payments crisis in a “fully fixed” exchange rate regime. But there is one narrative that connects these explanations and it is oldest narrative of the crisis. It states there was essentially nothing wrong with the initial design of EMU, and the crisis resulted mostly from the fact that several peripheral countries did not respect that design – in particular the fiscal rules of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). In this story, the root of the crisis lays mostly with fiscal indiscipline in an over-heating economy. This led to wage and price increases, which implied a loss of competitiveness, which in turn led to the balance of payment crises. This narrative is internally coherent, but in my view it exaggerates the role of fiscal policies as an initial cause of the crisis. To begin with, it does not seem that fiscal soundness, as measured by compliance with the SGP, is particularly correlated with later developments in the crisis.
But is that really true? I don’t think so. If we work together, we are still in control and we can still do things well. The history of the EU is a case in point. When European countries signed the Treaty of Rome 61 years ago, they chose to work together instead of working alone. Today more than ever, this choice is also a reaction to a changing world. Some of the current changes are beyond any single government’s control, and are better managed with the help of strong allies and good friends. The world of banking is no exception. Our financial systems have grown closer together and have become much more complex than they used to be. Large banking groups now cover many Member States. We have all benefited from this. But if we want this trend towards integration to continue, we must make sure it does not come at the cost of greater instability and more crises. We need rules that apply across borders just as banks operate across borders. And we need supervisors who have the power to see and act across borders. In short: we need to cooperate. And when I say cooperate, that’s what I mean. I know that some may think we have created a system in which the ECB and the Single Resolution Board hold all the power. I think otherwise. The banking union is very much a joint project. Just look at banking supervision. We at the ECB cannot act alone.

Urban Bäckström: Some reflections on financial and monetary stability  Speech by Mr Urban Bäckström, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank and Chairman of the Board of Directors and President of the Bank for International Settlements, at a seminar in Bangkok hosted by the Bank of Thailand, on 24 August 2000. *  *  *  Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to thank my dear colleague, Governor Sonakul at the Bank of Thailand, for the invitation to visit Bangkok and for the opportunity to address this distinguished audience this evening. In recent years, significant progress has been made in putting the global economy on a path towards sustainable growth. The world economy entered the year 2000 in considerably better shape than many of us would have expected just a year ago. And after recovering to near its long-term average in 1999, global growth is forecast to go on accelerating in 2000. It is especially noteworthy that performance has improved in almost every region of the world. Southeast Asia, Russia and Brazil have all rebounded from their recent crises more strongly than expected. Many of the world’s poorest countries, including some in Africa, are posting respectable growth rates. The US economy is enjoying its longest recorded expansion ever. Growth in continental Europe is picking up - especially in the larger economies where growth had been relatively weak. And there are signs of an incipient recovery in Japan.
Most part of this increase is expected to be the outcome of the foreign currency purchase from the Bank of Albania. Table 8. The difference as to trimesters of the gross foreign currency reserve of the Bank of Albania. (USD million) December 2003  T1  T2  T3  T4  December 2004  973.8  0  15  20  10  1018.8  The remaining part of Lek 1.7 billion is expected to come from the increase of the commercial banks reserves at the Bank of Albania. Net foreign currency assets of commercial banks will increase by Lek 1.5 billion, or 2.2 percent. The NFCA increase of commercial banks is forecasted to be at a low level, despite the annual increase by Lek 17.7 billion of deposits in foreign currency. From this sum, nearly Lek 14.5 billion are expected to be used in financing the private sector borrowing, while the remaining part will raise the commercial banks reserves at the Bank of Albania. 3.2.2  Credit to the government  During 2004, the internal borrowing of the government in covering the budget deficit is forecasted to be Lek 22.6 billion, while privatization is expected to cover nearly Lek 2.8 billion. Participation from  3  Borrowing from the Bank of Albania is presented in a positive sign; investment of free funds by the Bank of Albania is presented in negative.

During this period, a new credit of Lek  BIS Review 8/2004  1  70.6 billion (USD 660 million) was extended to the economy, or 45 percent more than the same period in the previous year. Based on the developments noticed during the first ten months, on the current developments of the banking system liquidity, etc., it could be summarized that monetary developments of 2003 will be a greater contribution to the consolidation of the overall macroeconomic equilibrium of the country. In order to have a clearer view of the expected economic situation by end of 2003, following is given a table showing the general indicators of the country’s economic development, including here the monetary ones as well.
However, buoyant market liquidity could also reflect excessive risk appetite, indicating that liquidity risk could be under-priced, as well as high leverage. To the extent that high risk appetite is an important determinant of market liquidity, the current favourable liquidity conditions could suddenly, and unexpectedly, fade away, if there were a loss of confidence or an abrupt and lasting increase in risk aversion. This could expose several underlying vulnerabilities in the financial system on which I will elaborate later on. Global financial institutions Turning to global financial institutions, with the exception of the fact that the hedge fund industry has grown further in size, all other backward-looking indicators suggest that potential risks to financial stability posed by hedge funds have not changed materially since the December 2006 FSR. However, market risks posed by hedge funds remain. They arise largely from information which suggests that over-capacity, and indeed over-crowding, could be taking place in the sector after a simultaneous increase in the number of funds and a reduction of profitable trading opportunities over the last couple of years. On the one hand, as illustrated in the chart on the left of slide 7, average hedge fund returns have been on a downward trend since the early 1990s. This trend could point to overcapacity and to a consequent lowering of the amount of profitable investment opportunities available, although other explanations are also possible.

BIS Review 39/2003  1  It is important to mention here the close interplay between rigidities in capital, labour and product markets, which can strengthen one another. These interdependencies mean that structural reforms in any one of these markets will have an impact on the functioning of the others. It must be emphasised therefore that only a comprehensive reform programme can create the necessary conditions for stronger economic dynamism. The need for structural reforms tends to become most urgent and evident to policy-makers during economic downturns. But don't forget that structural reforms do not provide short-term solutions to economic problems. Although they can have positive short-term confidence effects, it normally takes time for their benefits to unfold. Hence I cannot emphasise enough the need to speed up the pace of structural reforms in capital, labour and product markets. Structural reforms in various regions of the world Let me now turn to the issue of future challenges with respect to microeconomic policies and structural reforms in particular economic areas. I shall start with structural reforms in the euro area, and then move on to say a few words about structural reform in the EU Neighbouring Regions, the United States, Latin America and, finally, East Asia. Euro area Economic activity in the euro area remained subdued in the first half of 2003. However, there is increasing reason to expect that it will recover gradually in the second half of 2003 and strengthen further in 2004.