samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Improvements to risk management and to capital cushions are likely to have made the financial system more stable and more resilient. And macroeconomic policy has improved around the world. The increase in monetary policy credibility in a broad range of countries has produced lower rates of inflation and more stability in inflation expectations. Greater public confidence in monetary policy was critical to laying the foundation for the improvements in real economic performance, by providing a stable foundation for long-term investment decisions. In emerging markets, better monetary policy has been accompanied by more disciplined and conservative fiscal policy and a range of other policies that have reduced, though not eliminated, vulnerability to changes in confidence, capital flows and exchange rate movements. These factors are each fundamentally important, and they are, of course, interrelated. The policies that delivered better inflation outcomes, more openness and competition and stronger financial systems were critical to fostering an environment in which improvements in productivity and growth could occur. This expansion has also been notable for the financial conditions that have prevailed over the past several years. Long-term interest rates have remained relatively low in nominal and real terms. Equity and other asset prices have moved higher. Credit spreads have declined to quite low levels. Market participants report exceptionally high levels of liquidity. And volatility, both realized and expected, has remained low across many different types of financial assets, market and economies.

To paraphrase Lawrence Summers, it is not enough to explain that globalization is inevitable and that policies that look politically attractive as a response to economic anxiety will only hurt the economy as a whole. Nor is it a politically effective strategy to state simply that economic integration is a necessary and powerful force in raising average incomes, or that technological change may be more important than trade or immigration as an explanation for slower growth in real wages for many Americans. Raising the quality of education and exploring ways to improve the safety net are a necessary part of the solution to this challenge. But these reforms will have a long fuse and they may not yield the hoped-for increase in support. Trade does not appear to be more popular in countries with more generous safety nets, universal health care and highly subsidized higher education than it is today in the United States. The political challenges of sustaining support for global economic integration and fiscal sustainability will be more difficult in the United States because of what has happened to the distribution of income and economic insecurity.
Experience has shown, even in the advanced economies, that when inequality is high and a significant proportion of the population is excluded from the opportunity to participate meaningfully in income and wealth generation, instability follows. To ensure that rapid economic growth and transformation does not further widen the social divide and disenfranchise those who remain excluded from its benefits, access to high-quality, healthcare, social security and financial inclusion is now an important focus of the region. The contour of the global economy is fundamentally changing amidst mounting challenges and continued uncertainties. In this environment, Asia has become an important source of stability. While the region is affected by the ongoing economic and financial crisis originating from Europe and the United States, the Asian region continues to remain on a growth trajectory, although at a more modest level. Greater regional cohesiveness and cooperation, however, has enhanced Asia’s potential to address these new challenges that are confronting the region. The success of the region is not only in the interest of the Asian economies, but the world. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches

News conference  Berne, 16 June 2022 Thomas Jordan  Introductory remarks by Thomas Jordan Ladies and gentlemen It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Swiss National Bank’s news conference. In my remarks, I will begin by explaining our monetary policy decision and our assessment of the economic situation. After that, Fritz Zurbrügg will present the key messages from this year’s Financial Stability Report. Andréa Maechler will then comment on the situation on the financial markets and the implementation of monetary policy. We will – as ever – be pleased to take your questions afterwards. Monetary policy decision I will begin with our monetary policy decision. We have decided to tighten our monetary policy and to raise the SNB policy rate and the interest rate on sight deposits at the SNB by half a percentage point to −0.25%. In doing so, we are seeking to counter increased inflationary pressure. The tighter monetary policy is aimed at preventing inflation from spreading more broadly to goods and services in Switzerland. It cannot be ruled out that further increases in the SNB policy rate will be necessary in the foreseeable future to stabilise inflation in the range consistent with price stability over the medium term. To ensure appropriate monetary conditions, we are also willing to be active in the foreign exchange market as necessary. The SNB policy rate change applies from tomorrow, 17 June 2022.
One driving force is of course that the world around us is constantly changing – and often very quickly. Quite simply, there are new demands made on us from outside, which we must deal with as best we can. Developments during the financial crisis in recent months are a good example of this. There are also demands from outside regarding our interaction with the general public, with other public authorities and with you who work in the financial markets. It is important that we communicate and work together efficiently, both to ensure monetary policy functions smoothly and to safeguard financial stability. But the pressure for changes does not only come from outside. We are constantly working on developing our working methods. It may not always be apparent to those who do not work at the Riksbank, but there is a strong will among our employees to improve our ways of thinking and working. There is a positive driving force behind the changes we are implementing. I am convinced that this driving force has contributed to the fact that we now have much better working methods than before. Another positive driving force is the regular contacts we have with other central banks and with the academic world. 2  BIS Review 155/2008  The developments cover everything from new methods to our communication. Something that constitutes an example of both of these things is the forecast for the repo rate path that we now publish regularly.

Philipp Hildebrand: Principles for sound compensation practices Summary of a speech by Mr Philipp Hildebrand, Vice-Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Economic Outlook 2009 (Unternehmer NW-Schweiz), Basel, 23 April 2009. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  Most financial institutions viewed compensation systems as being largely unrelated to risk management and risk governance prior to the crisis. Short-term profits were rewarded with generous bonuses with little regard to the longer-term risks taken on behalf of the firm to generate those profits. With hindsight, it should therefore be no surprise that these bonuses fueled the excessive risk-taking that has ultimately undermined the global financial system. It is important for the future stability of our financial system that compensation systems be viewed as an integral part of the risk management system in financial firms, and designed and governed with this in mind. The Financial Stability Board (previously the Financial Stability Forum) has drafted a set of sound compensation principles for large financial institutions with exactly this goal in mind. The Principles were endorsed by the G20 leaders at the London summit earlier this month and aim to be widely implemented by the 2009 remuneration round. BIS Review 50/2009  1
1  But it has not always been the case that we do not talk much about money itself. There have been times, times when the machinery of money itself has failed or when it has changed, that there has been debate, often long and bitter, about what money is and how it should work. th  The creation of the Bank of England itself, which caused much controversy, in the late 17 century, can be seen as ingenious marriage between the King’s fiscal needs and the economy’s need for a larger and a state authorised money supply using the new technology of ‘notes’ or claims drawn on banks. 2  The same period also saw a protracted debate about the debased state of the English coinage and how to fix the value of money, a debate involving John Locke among others and leading to a painful set of statutory and technological reforms carried out by Isaac Newton no less. The development of modern economies has been punctuated by debates about the nature and technology of money. 1  Milton Friedman made use of Mill’s characterisation of money as a machine when describing ‘what monetary policy can do’ in his seminal address to the American Economic Association in 1967. 2 In 17th century England, goldsmiths would take custody of their customers’ gold and issue a paper note in receipt.

The role of the physical forms of money, of the transaction systems, and of the legal and institutional frameworks is to make the social technology function as safely and efficiently as possible to serve societies’ needs. By the same token, if they are abused or deteriorate, as happened to the coinage in Newton’s day or the banking system in the US, in the great depression, the underlying social technology of money is harmed – it gets out of order and the damage can be very great. The money of the UK, Sterling, is implemented and supported by a range of technologies. Only about 3% of the money we use is directly issued by the state. That comprises the £ in notes and coins – effectively claims on the Bank of England (banknotes) and the Crown (coins). 7  There is another  £ of state issued money, but it is not in general circulation; it comprises the deposits that private banks hold in their (electronic) accounts at the Bank of England – the claims on the Bank of England that banks exchange to settle transactions with each other. 6  For instance, before the arrival of the Spanish colonist, the Incan economy functioned without a formal form of money. Instead, Incans were required to work a number of days per year on public projects and in return the state provided them with all they required in terms of food and materials, leading to little to no trade within the domestic economy.
[2] Current challenges are thus a salutary reminder of the importance of price stability as an anchor for wider economic stability, and a bulwark to sustaining people’s livelihoods, especially for those on lower pay and fixed incomes. Acting to achieve the MPC’s 2% inflation target is therefore now more important than ever. In today’s remarks, I will outline how I view the current economic situation and how I believe monetary policy needs to evolve to bring inflation back to target. I hope to offer an honest, clear and frank view about the challenges the MPC faces, and how we are dealing with them. Page 3  Chart 1: We expect inflation to rise further and then fall back  Chart 2: The MPC voted to increase Bank Rate to 1%  The May MPC decision As I am sure you all know, at its meeting at the start of this month, the MPC decided to raise Bank Rate by a further 25bp to 1%. [3] The Committee also judged that some degree of further tightening in monetary policy may still be appropriate in the coming months. In line with the majority, I supported the decision to raise rates by 25bp, but three of my colleagues voted to hike rates by a larger 50bp. Such split votes have been common in recent months. Page 4  Yet you shouldn’t interpret this as reflecting confusion or incoherence on the MPC.

Page 1  The economic situation and monetary policy − speech by Huw Pill Given at ACCA Cymru Wales  Page 2  Published on 20 May 2022  Huw Pill talks about what we’re doing to bring inflation down. And he gives his view on the outlook for the UK’s economy. Speech Good morning everyone. It is a great pleasure to speak here in Cardiff this morning. Thanks are due to: Lloyd Powell, Head of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) Cymru Wales, for the invitation to speak here today; to Steve Hicks and Ian Derrick – the Bank’s Agents in Wales – for organising a fantastic visit, of which this is one of the highlights; and of course to all of you for coming this morning at what I am sure are busy and challenging times. On Wednesday, we learnt that UK consumer price inflation currently stands at 9.0%. [1] The MPC forecasts that it will rise to double digits in the fourth quarter of this year. For a monetary policy maker charged with achieving an inflation target of 2%, this is obviously a very uncomfortable situation. But, of course, my discomfort as an MPC member in these circumstances is as nothing to the challenges facing those most directly exposed to the current cost of living crisis. These are difficult times for many people, especially for the less well off, who spend a higher proportion of their income on energy and food, where recent price rises have been most significant.
Given such diversity with global orientation, it is only fitting to label this programme as the ISRA Global Scholarship. Our aspiration is that this programme will continue to grow and makes a difference. We aspire that ISRA Global Scholars are acknowledged as potential game changers for the industry and a product of a highly rigorous selection process. Ideas to further contribute towards the industry’s transformation I would like to raise three issues for your consideration as alumni of the Shariah Scholarship 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  Award. First, continuously push and expand the frontiers of knowledge in whatever role you are in. As scholars, we know intimately the importance of knowledge and research. Research is where breakthrough thinking should originate, especially in the area of applied research that is solutiondriven and industry-related. But this will necessitate us to develop a greater understanding on the real issues facing the industry. It also necessitates us to learn other disciplines as well, just like the great scholars of yesteryears that venture into other areas of studies. They became very innovative because of the varied disciplines. Only then, are we able to develop practical and costeffective solutions. For example, most Islamic Finance industries around the globe are still domestically oriented and a majority of them still engage in consumer credit and simple form of banking products. If Islamic Finance were to expand we need to go beyond these domains.

Mario Draghi: The path to recovery and the ECB’s role Speech by Mr Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, at the Symposium on Financial Stability and the Role of Central Banks, organised by the Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt am Main, 27 February 2014. *  *  *  Summary The euro area has made considerable progress on its reform agenda, says ECB President Mario Draghi. Speaking at a conference organised by Germany’s Bundesbank in Frankfurt he emphasises that euro area governments have improved their fiscal positions despite recessionary headwinds and stressed euro area countries have become more competitive. “In parallel, the architecture of EMU has been strengthened in ways that many would have considered inconceivable two years ago”, says Mr Draghi. The move towards a banking union is crucial not only for the functioning of the financial system, but also for the conduct of monetary policy. Since the beginning of the crisis the ECB’s Governing Council has taken decisive steps to engineer a monetary policy stance that is commensurate with the subdued medium-term inflation outlook. But standard monetary policy in the form of rate cuts was not enough to ensure an appropriate monetary policy stance, because unwarranted fears of euro break-up impaired the monetary transmission, he says. Against this background the ECB announced Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT). Like all the ECB’s monetary policy measures, OMT served, says Mr Draghi, to ensure compliance with the bank’s price stability mandate.
The proposal on stricter amortisation regulations presented by Finansinspektionen (the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority) last week corresponds to an amortisation rate of 78 years during the first decades of a mortgage. Swedish housing investments have averaged approximately 3 per cent of GDP over the last ten years compared to almost 6 per cent in the euro area (European Commission 2014a). According to the European Commission (2014b) Sweden has the most strictly regulated rental market in the EU and moreover, because of low property taxes and generous interest-rate deductibility, the strongest tax incentives for owner-occupied housing. In recent years, over 70 per cent of new mortgage borrowers have chosen variable interest rates and only a few per cent have fixed their interest rates for more than five years. In many other countries, it is usual to fix interest rates for between 10 and 30 years. Much of this is described in more detail in Riksbank (2014a). 2  An important explanation of the high level of saving is collective pension saving, see Nilsson et al. (2014). BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Large debts and variable interest rates make the households vulnerable However, despite these and other mitigating arguments, I think it is clear that there are risks associated with the Swedish housing and mortgage markets. That the households have bloated balance sheets, with both large debts and large assets, makes them vulnerable to shocks.

Jean-Pierre Roth: Central bank communication policies and the challenges posed by the financial crisis Summary of a speech by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, at the presentation of the “BZ-Preis für Lokaljournalismus”, Berne, 27 November 2008. The complete speech can be found in French on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  The financial crisis has prompted a rekindling of press interest in central bank operations, following a long period in which monetary authorities scarcely attracted any media attention. Our communication policy has thus been faced with new challenges in recent months. Today, central banks operate with the market, rather than “against the market”, as in the past. Financial market participants are therefore able to foresee central bank actions. Since the early 2000s, our communication policy has focused on transparency, and our experience with this has been positive. Thus, transparency increases the effectiveness of monetary policy. Yet, in the recent financial turbulence, transparency in monetary policy operations also turned out to be a double-edged sword, as communication problems arose. Indeed, there is a risk that operations to provide extraordinary liquidity assistance will impair the reputation of the recipient organisations, and thereby destabilise the market. There are a number of possible solutions with which a balance can be achieved between transparency and stability. BIS Review 147/2008  1
The turbulence was initially transmitted to other international financial markets through sharp corrections in the credit quality of certain complex structured financial products which, at least apparently, were relatively concentrated in the financial systems of a number of developed economies. The Spanish economy is not one of them. Although I will pass quickly over this point, which I addressed in depth in my recent appearances before Congress and the Senate, I do wish to remind you of the safety buffer afforded by the Spanish financial system’s non-exposure to practices and products of this type and by the soundness of our credit institutions in terms of profitability, solvency and ample provisions. In the economies most directly affected, credit institutions active in originating and distributing these complex structured products have prompted tensions in the interbank markets in which the liquidity provided by central banks to the financial system is redistributed. The rapid response of the central banks, led by the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, prevented these tensions from acting as a channel through which the instability was further amplified. We must acknowledge, however, that there are still uncertainties hindering the normalisation of these markets and that dissipating them will require an additional effort by institutions to increase the transparency of their operations. The euro area stands ready to face these shocks from a solid position and, therefore, with significant resilience.

Credit risk derivatives constitute another financial innovation which has played an increasingly important role in the last years. It has contributed to avoiding credit institutions to be heavily impacted by the large credit defaults that have occured recently. Credit risk derivatives have also enabled banks to fine-tune the risk-return profile of their loan portfolios. From a macro point of view, credit risk derivatives are helping diversify and spread risk, under the assumption that buyers of risk will deliberately alter their own risk-return profile. But the ultimate risk remain and as a result, some sectors, such as insurance companies or pensions funds, which hitherto did not feel the direct pressure of a worsening in credit quality, may now find themselves directly impacted, had they sold such derivatives at an earlier stage. Against this background, and beyond the primary objective of achieving price stability over the medium-term, which part should central banks play to improve the functioning of financial markets and promote financial stability? Apart from their operational tasks –such as the management of money market liquidity and the monitoring of large value payment systems– central banks must endeavour unremittingly to create the conditions for the international economy to minimize misalignments in asset prices, excessive volatility, purely speculative phenomena and dangerous herding behaviour. This is the underlying message in central banks' repeated calls for prudence and caution. I would like now to address my third point, that is, the prospects of the European Union enlargement.