samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
After the (temporary, alas) funeral, let me return to the three blessings. This word is a bit selfcentered, I confess, since I am referring to public policies, and each of them today raises questions: (I) regulation, (II) supervision, (III) resolution. Therefore, how could we revisit each of them? I. Regulation: a plea for an effective implementation Allegedly, if regulation had been more effective, it could have prevented the banking turmoil. For its critics, Basel III was too focused on liquidity and counterparty risks, and not enough on interest rate risk. Well- let me call into question those ideas. Such criticism is ironic: didn't anyone notice that the first blast of turbulence came from a bank not subject to the full set of Basel standards? While the Basel framework applies in its entirety to every single European bank – several thousands of them – , it applies to only 13 banks in the United States, leaving a myriad of regional but sometimes significant banks, including SVB, with much lighter requirements. According to our estimates, and in line with a study carried out by Yale University, SVB's short-term liquidity ratio (LCR) would have fallen short of the Basel requirement of 100%. Another point concerns the allegedly inadequate treatment of latent but not recognised losses in the current prudential framework. First off, we should all bear in mind that all liquid assets included in the LCR are factored in at their fair value. In addition, unrealised losses have to be disclosed in financial statements ensuring transparency.

François Villeroy de Galhau: Banking turmoil - three blessings and a funeral Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, at the Eurofi High-level Seminar 2023, Stockholm, 28 April 2023. *** Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to address you at this Eurofi seminar in Stockholm, and I would like to extend my warmest thanks to David Wright and Didier Cahen. This speech, as the two previous ones, seems like a perfect opportunity to take a first look at the lessons to be learnt from the banking turmoil of 2023. As I have the privilege to speak after my friends Pablo Hernández de Cos and Klaas Knot, my task is made simpler: they have already covered a lot of ground, and hence I will be able to speak still more freely, and to call my speech "Three blessings and a funeral". Let me start with the funeral, at least the one that we can welcome, but which, unfortunately, is not final. It should be the condemnation and the funeral of mismanagement. Indeed, blatant mismanagement of the risks and of the business model in some banks explains first and foremost the recent turmoil. As Pablo said in Washington, "jumping straight to discussions about the regulatory and supervisory implications of recent events is akin to forgiving banks for not fulfilling their primary responsibilities".1 To put it even more bluntly, when some people act like reckless drivers on the road, they are the ones who are guilty, not the police.
Norman T L Chan: New round of countercyclical prudential measures for property mortgage lending Address by Mr Norman T L Chan, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, to the media, Hong Kong, 14 September 2012. *  *  *  1. I am going to announce a new round of countercyclical prudential measures for property mortgage lending. 2. Since the introduction of the fourth round of tightening measures for property mortgage loans by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) in June 2011, the local property market quieted down somewhat – but for just about seven months. The property market began to heat up again in February 2012, with significant increase both in transaction volume and prices. Cumulative growth in property prices was as much as 13% compared with the beginning of this year. 3. The evolution of the property market cycle in Hong Kong is affected by many factors, including the external environment. With the third round of quantitative easing announced by the US Federal Reserve last night, there can be more capital inflows through the US banking system into the emerging markets. Moreover, Europe has earned some respite from its debt crisis following the announcement by the European Central Bank of its bond-buying programme and related judgment by Germany’s Constitutional Court. So the sentiment in financial markets is likely to stay calmer for a while. Against this background, the risk brought by the continued heating up of the Hong Kong property market on the banking sector will rise again.

9. When introducing measures to tighten the underwriting criteria for mortgage loans, the HKMA has always strived to strike a balance to minimise the impact on end-users, particularly first-time homebuyers. Although we have already introduced five rounds of prudential measures on mortgage lending, we have sought to ensure that purchasers of residential properties at a value of $ million or below for self-occupied purpose would still be eligible for a maximum LTV ratio of 70%. In addition, purchasers who meet the eligibility requirements will be able to apply for mortgage loans of up to 90% LTV ratio under the mortgage insurance arrangements. According to figures provided by the Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation Limited, the value of properties involving mortgage loans with a 90% LTV ratio averages at around $ million. Therefore, I believe that the measures of the HKMA will have minimal impact on first-time homebuyers. 10. Changes in the property market cycle are affected by a host of internal and external factors, including land supply, interest rate movements, changes in household income as well as economic and financial market developments in Europe and the US. In view of the highly uncertain internal and external environments, the HKMA will continue to monitor the market situation closely and introduce appropriate measures in response to changes in the property market cycle to safeguard banking stability. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Where prices are concerned, 2004 was another year of stability despite the spectacular price rise of oil products. Inflation rose to 0.8% over the year as a whole, and peaked at 1.5% in November. The low inflation rate gave Swiss companies a further competitive advantage on the international marketplace. The dollar and the oil price as disruptive elements The foreign exchange and commodity markets experienced the most turbulence in 2004. The US dollar, which had been falling since 2001, accelerated towards the end of the year, when it hit a record low against the euro. Switzerland was affected in much the same way as the other European countries: the Swiss franc appreciated by about 7% against the US currency during the last three months of the year. This development has since improved somewhat. Despite the dollar's sharp drop over the last few months, its current exchange rate is still higher in real terms than it was in the mid-1990s. The current situation is particularly difficult, however, as a whole series of Asian currencies, including the Chinese renminbi, are pegged to the dollar. The greenback's fall has thus reinforced the competitiveness of numerous emerging markets versus the European economies. For us here in Switzerland it has been positive to note that the nose-diving dollar has not unleashed any speculation on the Swiss franc. The Swiss franc-euro exchange rate has remained remarkably stable at around CHF 1.55 per euro.

This year, CHF 885 million have been reserved for this purpose, and similar sums will have to be set aside in the future. The closing of our accounts for 2004 thus brings with it an extraordinary allocation of profit to the Confederation and the cantons. It is important to emphasise that – paradoxically – the distribution of the CHF 21.1 billion accruing from the gold sales does not actually make them any richer. Up to now, the public sector received the income earned on this capital: a sum of CHF 400 million will also be allocated to them from this source this year. As of the beginning of next year, this income will no longer be distributed. As a result, the Confederation and the cantons will gain in terms of capital, but will lose in terms of transfers of interest income. If they use the proceeds of the gold sales to repay their debts, the reduction in financing charges will correspond approximately to the reduction in the profits paid to them by the SNB. In net terms, there will be few – if any – additional funds available for new expenditures. It is therefore important that decision-makers at all levels maintain a rational approach. The COSA initiative The distribution of the gold sale proceeds will not put an end to the political debate about the distribution of the National Bank's profits.
In a partial analysis, where everything else remains unchanged within the economy, this is a correct conclusion. However, everything else is not the same. The real interest rate is determined internationally to a significant degree and is affected by several factors, including individual people’s evaluation of consumption today, compared with consumption later and the degree of their aversion to uncertainty. It is only if we assume that consumption today is valued as highly as consumption tomorrow and disregard the uncertainty, that the growth rate can be used as an approximation of what the neutral real interest rate should be. We are now seeing, at the same time as the higher growth, several other changes that affect the real interest rate, such as an ageing population. It is difficult to draw a clear conclusion on the total  BIS Review 93/2000  4  effect of all these changes on the real interest rate. This is one of the areas in which the Riksbank is working on improving its knowledge. Another discussion held in the trail of the new technology, deregulation and increasing competition is how the effects of the relative price changes on general price developments should be dealt with. The basic idea is that the Swedish price level is so high in relation to other countries that it needs to be adjusted downwards, so that Swedish citizens’ purchasing power will increase. This is the same as saying that the real exchange rate is undervalued, i.e.

Page 7/7  Currencies, money and digital tokens  Thomas J. Jordan Chairman of the Governing Board Swiss National Bank 30th anniversary of the WWZ and VBÖ University of Basel, 5 September 2019  Types of money in Switzerland Currency Issuer  Type Cash  state  Banknotes and coins  state  private  private  Book money  Digital token money  Sight deposits held at the SNB for financial market participants  Swiss franc tokens for financial market participants  Sight deposits held at the SNB for all households and companies  Swiss franc tokens for all households and companies  Bank deposits  Stable coins (value stable against Swiss franc) Stable coins (minimal fluctuations in value against official currencies, e.g. Libra)  private  Crypto tokens (e.g. Bitcoin) Existing types of money 05.09.2019  Potential types of money  Currencies, money and digital tokens | Thomas J. Jordan | © Swiss National Bank
The pre-announced monthly cycle of meetings, regular quarterly Inflation Report forecasts, and set briefing routines, were very much part of the package. The goal of these new arrangements was to make the system understandable and predictable to outsiders. After a sharp burst of activity in the late 1990s, the processes and procedures surrounding monetary policy have now settled down. We still use much the same internal processes and means of communicating with the outside world as we did a decade ago. But the outside world has not stood still, in at least two respects. First, over time the MPC has established a track record of actions and communications which people have, as intended, learnt to parse with great precision. There is a cottage industry in interpreting its every utterance, in the light of its past behaviour, in order to predict its next actions. Any deviation from past behaviour is assumed to be deliberate and considered. A topical example is the market reaction to the latest interest rate rise. The formal position has always been that the MPC may change rates at any one of its policy meetings. And in the early days of the Committee that’s pretty close to what happened. But since 2001, as a matter of fact, rates have been much more likely to change in the months when we publish a new quarterly Inflation Report. That was why the January rate rise caused such surprise even though commentators were fully expecting a rate rise to accompany the February Inflation Report.

Perhaps the most controversial frameworks took the form of commitments to meet targets for the growth in the money supply. These were meant to act as rules, which would tie the hands of politicians, but they proved ineffective, not least because the underlying economic relationships broke down. There were also periods – notably the 1970s – when there was no discernible monetary policy framework at all; when monetary policy was in eclipse and Governments relied on incomes polices to control inflation. These, too, were a dismal failure. 1  Inflation has averaged 2.5% since 1997, with a standard deviation of 0.8%. In the two decades to 1992, it averaged 9.6%, with a standard deviation of some 5.6%. Over the past decade, output has grown steadily, averaging 2.8%, with a standard deviation of 0.7%, compared with an average of 2% and a standard deviation of 2.5% over the seventies and eighties. BIS Review 20/2007  1  All these frameworks suffered from one of two basic problems. They either lacked credibility, or they lacked sufficient flexibility for policy-makers to respond intelligently to events. So it is little surprise that they were associated with two decades of poor macroeconomic performance.
But the attitude of international businesses and investors outside Euroland to the euro will be coloured, to a degree, by perceptions of its likely volatility, and in that sense the start has not been as auspicious as one might have wished. Prospects and opportunities But I suspect that those of us living a long way from Euroland tend to underestimate the impact which the euro is having in terms of cost savings and risk reduction in cross-border trade, although we may see and feel something of the side effects in terms of heightened competition and usage of the euro in world business. At the same time, as I tried to elaborate earlier, the euro has the potential to become a force in global financial markets. As that happens, we in Hong Kong hope to play our part. Indeed, we believe we are excellently placed to be involved in the expansion of usage of the euro in international financial markets. As a central banker I must repeat that I hope and expect that the ECB will be a staunch guardian of monetary discipline. This certainly does not mean that we can make accurate predictions about the exchange rate or interest rates, but it is likely to mean that the euro should in due course consolidate itself as a leading world currency in trade and finance, not least in this part of the world. Meanwhile, the unified currency provides Euroland with the opportunity to strengthen its collective economy, albeit an opportunity which has to be worked upon.

Minouche Shafik: Treading carefully Speech by Ms Minouche Shafik, Deputy Governor for Markets and Banking of the Bank of England, at the Institute of Directors, London, 14 December 2015. *  *  *  I would especially like to thank Grellan McGrath for his help with the analysis and evidence in this speech. Comments from Alex Haberis, Andrew Hauser, Gareth Ramsay, Jon Relleen, Matt Waldron, Martin Weale and James Talbot are also gratefully acknowledged. Introduction In what is likely a first for a monetary policymaker, I would like to begin my speech today with a chart of the depth of tread on car tyres – as measured by the busiest tyre fitting station in the UK whom I recently visited in the South East. Generally speaking, the deeper the grooves are on a tyre, the better is its grip, performance and safety. When the recession hit in 2008, people began to delay replacing their tyres, implicitly accepting a deterioration in quality in the hope of saving on costs (Chart 1). What is surprising, however, is that although we are now into the seventh year of the recovery, the frequency with which drivers replace their tyres has not returned to pre-crisis levels. This illustrates quite nicely that although the economy is thankfully returning to normal, we cannot blithely assume that relationships which held in the past will automatically revert.
The bar on professional competence demanded of talent in the industry has also been raised  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  significantly and is also changing in its emphasis, with the ability to form sound judgments becoming a more important requirement of talent. New political and regulatory pressures are being brought directly to bear on talent management strategies, for example arising from compensation reforms and greater regulatory scrutiny of new hires at the top levels of management. There has also been a growing focus on the role of talent in regaining confidence in the financial sector, in terms of the ethical standards and values embraced and demonstrated by the workforce in the financial industry, and the strength and integrity of its leadership. The financial sector has historically been and remains highly productive in relative terms. In Malaysia for example, the financial sector has had the highest total-factor productivity growth over the recent decade relative to other sectors of the economy. Employment in the financial sector has also been growing annually with a large proportion of the growth being in the higher skilled segment. This accounts for the higher level of wages in the financial sector at about RM36,000 annually, compared to the national average of RM21,700 annually for the economy. Financial services employees are also generally educated to a higher level, with more institutions requiring post-graduate or professional qualifications, in addition to the relevant work experience, for holding key and senior-level positions within the industry.

However, there are many types of shock where there is no conflict between stable nominal developments and stable developments in the real economy. For example, a sharp decline in overall demand may give rise to a deflationary recession. In such a situation, an expansionary monetary policy may contribute to both nominal and real economic stability. Whether disturbances arise on the supply side or the demand side, it should be possible to use the interest rate to influence economic developments. The interest rate is an instrument, rather than a target variable. A passive monetary policy will lead to both price and exchange rate instability and to greater fluctuations in production and employment. However, an active monetary policy does not imply attempting to fine-tune economic developments. We must be mindful of the uncertainty associated with economic developments and the effects of monetary policy. Normally, interest rate changes should be made gradually to allow us to acquire more information, for example about the effects of previous interest rate changes. 2  BIS Review 7/2001  Uncertainty and credibility According to Norges Bank's mandate, monetary policy is to be aimed at maintaining a stable krone exchange rate against European currencies, based on the range of the exchange rate maintained since the krone was floated on 10 December 1992. In the event of significant changes in the exchange rate, monetary policy instruments will be oriented with a view to returning the exchange rate over time to its initial range.
Along with the reduced fiscal stimulus in 2012, they resulted in a weak aggregate demand and low economic growth during the first three quarters of the year. Despite the negative impact on economic growth rate, the financial and macroeconomic stability resulted stable. In spite of demand volatility and supply concerns, inflation resulted low and in check, reflecting, inter alia, good anchoring of public expectations around the 3% target. Fiscal balance sustainability, Albania’s improved external position, and sound real-sector and financial-sector balances in the economy further strengthened Albania’s economic and financial stability over this period. Average annual consumer price inflation resulted 2.7% in the third quarter of the year, increasing gradually along the year. Added contribution of prices for unprocessed food and non-food consumer goods mostly created this quarter’s annual inflation rate. On the other hand, prices of other basket items were stable and slightly volatile. The economic and monetary analyses confirm the presence of weak demand-induced inflationary pressures. Developments in the real sector of the economy conditioned the controlled price rise of domestic products. These tendencies have been reflected in the downward trend of core inflation and low non-traded inflation of the consumer price index basket. Consumer price performance continued to reflect the low pressures from other cost elements. In particular, import prices were low and given the relative exchange-rate stability, they transmitted low pressures from imported inflation. Following the economic contraction in the first quarter, Albanian economy fell by 2.0% y-o-y, in the second quarter.

In particular, additional costs required by banks to anchor the new credit remain tight, in response to the perceived uncertainty and their reacting mechanism for credit risk reduction. Against the backdrop of slow current and expected economic developments, aggregate demand and inflation, the monetary policy deepened its stimulating nature in the third quarter. As at end-July, the key rate was lowered by 0.25 percentage points, down to its historical minimum of 4.0%. This was the fifth key rate lowering since September 2011. Parallel to that, the Bank of Albania continued to supply the banking system with the required liquidity through its variable liquidity-providing operations. *** Future outlook suggests that inflationary pressures remain low. Our analyses and projections conclude that the economic activity will remain below potential, exerting pressures on the downside inflation. At the same time, the supply generated pressures appear contained. Based on current performance of inflation-determining factors and their future outlook, after 12 months inflation is expected to fluctuate around 1.2% – 3.4%, with a probability of 90%. The expected inflation and economic outlook imply the maintaining of a stimulating monetary policy for the period ahead. The Bank of Albania remains heedful to future developments and new information, and stands ready to intervene timely and duly to meet its legal mission. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3