samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Prior to the crisis, many banks typically borrowed fed funds in order to satisfy reserve requirements or obtain short-term  1  The effective fed funds rate is a measure of the prevailing rate in the market each day. This is calculated as a volume-weighted average of rates on trades arranged by major brokers, and is published by the New York Fed. See http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/omo/dmm/fedfundsdata.cfm. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  financing. In recent years, however, the Fed’s LSAPs have led to very high levels of reserve balances, and thus reduced the need for banks to borrow fed funds to meet reserve requirements and clear payments. 2 As a result, trading activity in the fed funds market today is smaller and the nature of that activity is different than it was prior to the crisis. 3 Nevertheless, a new Federal Reserve data collection that captures both brokered and bilateral transactions shows that trading activity in fed funds remains significant. 4 These data indicate that daily trading volumes are about $ billion and are relatively stable. Moreover, longer-term correlations between the fed funds rate and other money market rates remain robust. As a result, the fed funds rate continues to be a suitable measure of the marginal cost of funding for banks, and remains connected over medium-term horizons to other short-term interest rates that also matter for the transmission of monetary policy.

As was the case before the crisis and indicated in the June 2011 principles, the Committee intends to adjust the policy stance during normalization primarily through actions that directly influence the level of the fed funds rate and other short-term interest rates rather than through active management of the size or composition of the Fed’s securities holdings. Specifically, when economic conditions and the economic outlook warrant a less accommodative stance of monetary policy, the Committee will raise its target range for the fed funds rate. During normalization, the Committee intends to move the fed funds rate into the target range primarily by adjusting the rate of interest on excess reserve balances (IOER) that it pays. We expect changes in the IOER rate to have a significant influence on the fed  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  funds rate and other short-term interest rates. However, to help control the fed funds rate, the Committee also intends to use an ON RRP facility and other supplementary tools, as needed. The Committee will use an ON RRP facility only to the extent necessary, and will phase it out when it is no longer needed to help control the funds rate. With regard to the Fed’s balance sheet, the Committee intends to reduce securities holdings in a gradual and predictable manner, primarily by ceasing to reinvest repayments of principal on securities held in the SOMA.
Nevertheless, we tried to give clarity – and successfully, according to most. Being predictable, without being precommitted. Voltaire summed this up nicely as early as 1770: “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”vi In these promising but moving times beyond Covid, I aimed to give as much clarity as possible; clarity, not certainty, which is neither possible nor desirable. Thank you for your attention. Page 10 sur 9 i  Panel discussion, presented at “Monetary Policy: A Journey from Theory to Practice. An ECB colloquium held in honor of Otmar Issing, March 2006 ii See “Past and future of the ECB monetary policy”, V. Constâncio, Conference on “Central Banks in Historical Perspective”, Valletta, 4 May 2018, and “Inflation targeting”, L. Svensson, The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2008. iii Diev Pavel, Kalantzis Yannick, Lalliard Antoine, Mogliani Matteo, “Comment expliquer la faiblesse de l’inflation en zone euro depuis 2013 ?”, Le Bulletin de la Banque de France n°234 : article 7, April 2021. Comparison of the average of real and nominal 10Y rates on the period Jan‐Apr 2021, among EA, US, Japan, UK and Canada. iv Die Geldpolitik der EZB in der Corona‐Krise, Isabel Schnabel Webinar von Sven Giegold mit der Heinrich‐Böll‐ Stiftung, April 2021 v See “The ECB’s monetary policy in the pandemic: meeting the challenge”, speech by P. Lane, October 2020, and references therein. vi Letter to Frederick William, Prince of Prussia (28 November 1770).

In addition, financial advisers may be perceived to be more independent than tied agents, which will be important as consumers become more discerning. As a relatively new channel in most of Asia, the primary focus is to establish public confidence through raising professional and ethical standards of financial advisers. This is a key focus under the LIFE Framework for Malaysia. In addition, the Bank will reduce paid-up capital requirements for financial advisors to encourage new entrants. Previously consisting mainly of tele-marketing and direct mailing, direct distribution is today considered an important channel by most insurers, in view of the new possibilities enabled by the high levels of internet penetration and proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Social media has become a vital platform for business to engage with consumers and build their brand as well as being a rich data source in its own right on today’s fast moving consumer trends. The availability of instantaneous information has tipped the balance of power in favour of consumers. One such innovation is the aggregator, which has seen an increase in utilisation of 44% and 50% for motor and home insurance respectively in just a short period from July 2012 to April 2013 16 according to a report on the insurance market in Asia-Pacific. In Malaysia, the high levels of internet banking and mobile  11  25th Pacific Insurance Conference 2011- Plenary Session 1 – Bancassurance and Its Impact on Consumers and the Insurance Industry. 12  BNM IFAS System. 13  BNM TOSS System.
In addition, the historic debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), as well as the increased budget support from our cooperating partners, further strengthened the external position. Preliminary information indicates that the country’s external debt position of US $ billion as at end-2004 fell to US $ million at endDecember 2006. The foreign exchange market, in 2006, was characterised by a general depreciation of the Kwacha against major currencies. In order to moderate exchange rate volatility, the Bank implemented a number of measures, including purchasing and selling foreign exchange. What is your assessment of the financial sector? In the banking sector, there have been no bank failures in the recent past, reflecting stability in the financial system. To consolidate this stability, in 2006, Bank of Zambia undertook a number of measures, which included increasing the minimum primary paid-up capital for banks and non-bank financial institutions. What is the economic outlook for the year 2007 and the long-term vision of the Government? The Government, on its part, has shown commitment to continuing the economic reform programme. To this end, measures are being taken to ensure that the macroeconomic gains attained so far will be consolidated in 2007. Accordingly the Government is targeting real GDP growth of 7.0% and inflation of 5.0%. Pursuit of these objectives is within the context of the long-term development objectives, well articulated in the national long term Vision, 2030.

Caleb M Fundanga: Bank of Zambia’s Information Dissemination Programme Speech by Dr Caleb M Fundanga, Governor of the Bank of Zambia, on the launch of the Bank of Zambia Information Dissemination Programme, Lusaka, 28 May 2007. *  *  *  Governor, kindly give brief introductory remarks On behalf of the Bank of Zambia Board, management and staff, and indeed on my own behalf, I wish to sincerely thank the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) for this opportunity to launch the Bank of Zambia Information Dissemination Programme. This programme is part of our comprehensive strategy to inform the general public and all our stakeholders on the role of Bank of Zambia in the economy. What is the primary role of the Bank of Zambia? Just to remind the listeners, the Bank of Zambia’s primary role is to formulate and implement monetary and supervisory policies that will ensure price and financial system stability. Our vision, in this regard, is to become a World Class central bank. What is your general assessment of the recent performance of the Zambian economy? In the past few years, the Zambian economy has performed relatively well, recording positive real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, with inflation and interest rates coming down. Specifically, what have been the developments in output? During the period 2001-2005, growth in real GDP averaged 5.0% per annum. More recently, in 2006, it is estimated that the economy grew by close to 6%, marking the eighth consecutive year of positive real growth in output.
2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  As long as the North Sea generates revenues, the value of the fund will rise, laying the basis for a sustainable rise in petroleum revenue spending. 7 Institutional challenges Oil converted into money entails institutional challenges. A crucial question that arose when we discovered oil was whether we had the discipline to refrain from spending all the money at once. In 1983, the Committee on the Future of Petroleum Activity was chaired by former central bank governor Hermod Skånland. He was of the view that it would not be possible to set aside a share of the oil revenues in a fund: “In the light of the prevailing attitudes among both politicians and the wider population, it is difficult to imagine that hundreds of billions will be invested in foreign assets while there are domestic needs that have not been met (...).” 8 For Skånland the solution was simple. If the political system did not manage to set aside the revenues, the oil taps had to be opened very slowly. Wealth management could be carried out by portioning exploration sites in the North Sea. Oil that had not been discovered would burn a hole in the pockets of politicians to a lesser extent than money flowing into the state coffers. Skånland’s scepticism was well founded. Future oil revenues were used as an argument for allowing the central government to run a budget deficit.

There were too few left in the business sector to bear the welfare state. The resource curse also increases rent-seeking at the expense of value creation, as the economist Trygve Haavelmo noted. Many countries that have experienced a windfall of wealth have been victims of this curse. The state of Alaska has chosen its own institutional solution to avoid rent-seeking among special-interest groups. Once the real value of Alaska’s oil fund, the Alaska Permanent Fund, is secured, dividends are distributed to the owners. Each resident receives an annual cheque that can be spent as desired 13, providing a strong incentive to protect the capital in the fund. 14 The choice of building up a sovereign wealth fund must also be seen in connection with the state’s substantial pension obligations under Norway’s National Insurance Scheme. For the Norwegian state it would not have made sense to choose a solution like the Alaska fund without also addressing the issue of pension obligations. 11  See for example the obituary “Gunter Sachs”, in The Telegraph, 9 May 2011: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/obituaries/8503379/Gunter-Sachs.html  12  Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner (1995): “Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth”, NBER Working Paper 5398. 13  See for example the Alaska Permanent Fund website: http://www.apfc.org/home/Content/dividend/dividend.cfm  14  This would be comparable to using the return on the fund as tax relief.
BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  Chart 6 Serial optimism on earnings (a) FTSE All-share 2012 2015 2018E  (b) S&P 500  2013 2016E  2014 2017E  2012 2015 2018E  EPS  2013 2016E  2014 2017E  360  EPS 160 150  320 140 280  130 120  240 110 100  200 2011  2012  2013  2014  2015  2011  2016  2012  2013  2014  2015  2016  (c) Eurostoxx 2012 2014 2016E 2018E  2013 2015 2017E  EPS 32 30 28 26 24 22 20  2011  2012  2013  2014  2015  2016  Source: Datastream. Charts show different vintages of earnings per share (EPS) forecasts for major equity indices, by year. We have seen the consequences of these effects in financial markets for some time. How are these dynamics manifest today? First, there has been serial disappointment in corporate earnings (Chart 6). The failure of past relationships to reassert, especially rates of productivity growth, has embedded a growing sense of uncertainty in markets about the fundamentals upon which future prosperity will be built. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Second, the equity risk premium has risen sharply (Charts 7 and 8). Low earnings growth can account for some of this.13 But so does higher risk aversion as investors seek the safety of bonds partly as a hedge against extremes.

The relationship between growth and inflation is a question that has occupied us at the Riksbank in recent years. Our inflation forecasts, as well as those of other observers, have almost consistently been above the outcome. The difficulty lies, however, in determining to what extent the lower outcome is attributable to transitory factors rather than to more fundamental behavioural changes in the Swedish economy. In the simplest type of model, inflation is explained in terms of resource utilisation (however measured) and expected inflation. One reason why the analysis of the relation between growth and inflation is complex is that the actual level of total resource utilisation is so difficult to assess. One approach involves estimating the long-term level of potential output and use the difference between this and actual production (the output gap) for conclusions about the relationship with trend inflation. In recent years the Riksbank, along with other observers, has revised its assessment of potential growth. We believe an improvement in the productivity trend has helped to raise the potential growth rate so that this is now somewhat 5  BIS Review 111/1999  above 2%. We have also altered our assessment of unutilised resources; the largest revision was made during 1996, partly in the light of new information and better estimation methods. The Riksbank’s assessment of resource utilisation is appraised continuously as new information is obtained about, for example, shortages in various sectors, prices and wage formation.
Each option has its pros and cons. Let me start with floating. At first blush the idea of allowing the exchange rate to take the strain, as a kind of buffer, insulating the domestic economy from shocks emanating abroad appears very attractive. Unfortunately it does not necessarily work like that. A floating exchange rate may move erratically in response to market news, causing unwarranted movements in the real exchange rate. That, of course, may be an important influence on domestic costs and prices; it may affect the relative competitiveness of domestically and foreign-produced goods and services leading to changes in the net external trade position, affecting aggregate demand in the domestic economy. So the insulation provided by a floating exchange rate may prove to be more apparent than real. The UK has been floating since 1992. For some years we experienced very little tension between our domestic and external policy needs. But then, from the autumn of 1996 we saw a sudden appreciation of some 20-25% in our Effective Exchange Rate against the core European currencies, and seemingly, largely related to uncertainties about the future characteristics of the European single currency. Whatever the reason the strengthening of the exchange rate had a dampening effect on the domestic price level, and a subsequent deterioration of our trade balance (accentuated over the past year or so by the global economic slowdown) reduced aggregate demand in the economy. Monetary policy accordingly needed to be less restrictive than would otherwise have been appropriate to offset these effects on domestic demand.

But frequent fiscal policy changes - to tax rates or expenditure programs – can generate micro-economic uncertainties so that short-run macro-economic stabilisation is normally left primarily to monetary policy. It is important nevertheless that the two arms of policy pull in the same general direction to avoid unwanted sectoral or related regional distortions. In a totally closed economy therefore the objective of macro-economic stabilisation and the respective roles of fiscal and monetary policy would be reasonably clear. But none of us – very fortunately in any wider context – actually lives in a closed economy. We are all vulnerable to external shocks to varying degrees, including of course, increasingly, shocks resulting from international capital flows. Free trade and open capital markets do, as I noted earlier, bring huge benefits in terms of supply-side improvements from which we all, potentially, stand to gain. But there is no doubt that economic globalisation can at times massively complicate our national efforts at macro-economic stabilisation and it is this problem which I should like to address in the rest of my remarks. A key issue is how far we can protect our internal macro-economic stability through our choice of exchange rate regime. My short answer to that question – from the UK’s experience – is that there is, sadly, no ideal solution! BIS Review 54/1999  2  The effective options range from floating, through some form of adjustable peg, to a quasifixed exchange rate by way of a currency board or, ultimately, full monetary union.
One of these reports is the IMF’s Executive Board’s assessment report of the Kingdom’s economic developments which indicated that the Saudi economy was prepared to encounter the global financial crisis due to its adoption of sound supervisory and regulatory frameworks and the prudent and macroeconomic policies followed over the preceding years. The Board commended the Kingdom for taking strong measures and increasing expenditure and for good management of the monetary policy. The Fund appraised the Kingdom’s efforts for maintaining the soundness of the banking system, improving the climate of credit and the positive economic outlook in general. It also supported the Kingdom’s plans for resuming expenditure at sustainable levels and the government’s effort aiming at slowing the growth of domestic consumption of oil products. BIS Review 128/2010  1  Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, In pursuance of the government’s keenness to avoid the repercussions of the global financial crisis, the Supreme Economic Council held a meeting, chaired by your Majesty, on 16 Shawwal 1428H (16 October 2008) to discuss the global financial crisis and the way to curb its potential effects on the national economy and it called for taking a number of actions to face it.

Such challenges have all been the preoccupation of your majesty, and you have been constantly urging the authorities concerned to overcome them. The most prominent of those challenges are the following: First: employment of the Saudi youth, which constitutes one of the major challenges facing the national economy. In spite of the good achievements made in the preceding period, estimates indicate that unemployment among Saudis amounted to about 9.6 percent in 2009. Given the rate of population growth and structure, it is important to continue intensifying current efforts to increase investment to develop the human capital with the active participation of the private and public sectors. Efforts should be intensified for Saudizing the jobs in the private sector, and obstacles hindering this process should be considered and eliminated. The percentage of Saudization fit for the nature of each activity and sector needs to be determined, and work should be made to activate the procedures and regulations that respect productivity and safeguard the rights of workers and employers alike. Second: good utilization of economic resources of our country, most notably oil and gas that represent the most important elements of the economic development of the Kingdom. Figures indicate that the rates of domestic consumption of the Kingdom’s oil and gas are growing at high rates, recording an average growth of 5.9 percent during the past five years. This is a high growth rate compared to the population growth and the size of GDP, which calls for investigating the reasons for such an increase and rationalizing it.
Importantly, it improves the decisions they make, nationally and locally, governments and citizens. Weather is by no means a unique example. Micro-level data, digital twins and massive-scale simulations are being used to better understand all manner of other systems at all manner of resolutions – from the sub-atomic scale when seeking the Higgs-Boson, to the global scale when modelling flows across oceans, the world wide web and galaxies. All have benefitted from drawing on mass micro-level data, crowd-  sourced, centrally-stitched, micro-to-macro. Until recently, fewer such high-resolution data existed when it came to tracking flows of goods and services, people and money through our economy. That is changing. These data increasingly exist in companies, whose management systems capture activity in close to real time. They exist through now-ubiquitous  sensor, camera and satellite technology. And they exist in governments, local and central, in the form of administrative data on people, goods and money flows. Increasingly, these data are being put to use to understand the economy.40 In the UK, the Office for National Statistics recently started publishing a range of high frequency economic indicators, based on such sources as administrative data on VAT returns and geospatial data on traffic flows. The Bank has made increasing use of these sorts of data in its own real-time assessment of the economy. Let me give a couple of examples. One topic attracting attention recently has been the economic consequences of a disruptive Brexit.

These relatively stable ratios, however, conceal some differences in the ways individual institutions have lowered their leverage ratios. Most of them have increased their Tier 1 capital, while many have also reduced their assets. Overall, the shock-absorbing capacities of euro area LCBGs improved substantially during 2009 and in the first quarter of 2010. Even those institutions with the lowest capital ratios managed to enhance their buffers to levels well in excess of minimum regulatory requirements. At the same time, the capital buffers in some segments of the euro area banking sector may not have improved as quickly as has been the case for the LCBGs and will require further strengthening. Conditions in euro area LCBG funding markets have also tended to improve for much of the past six months, although the recent rise in sovereign credit risks has led to a setback for longerterm debt financing costs. As shown in the right-side of Chart 5, the most important driver of euro area LCBGs’ net income throughout 2009 and in the first quarter of 2010 continued to be net interest income. By the first quarter of this year, around two-thirds of the total net income of the LCBGs was generated from this source, while, before the crisis, around half of the total came from net interest income.