samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
They must rely on banks to maintain reliable internal control functions, which not only verify the accuracy of transactions and operations but also take a broader view of the bank’s compliance with its own rules and policies as well as with external rules and policies. 3  BIS Review 66/2000  Supervision Traditional supervision was of the type, which you may call “checking the ledger”, that is verifying that all transactions are properly recorded and formally correct. To some extent this must remain, but the supervisor’s efforts in this sense can be reduced by applying modern statistical methods, eg for sampling, and by making sure that banks have adequate internal control systems. Instead, supervision should be risk-oriented and focus on those activities, which pose significant risks to the individual bank (differing from bank to bank). Risk-oriented supervision also implies stricter supervision for large banks and for banks taking larger risks than others. Supervisors should focus on evaluating and monitoring risk management systems, internal controls, corporate governance, and information systems. This calls for large supervisory resources and for more sophisticated skills: lawyers, but also economists, financial analysts, statisticians, mathematicians and accountants. If the law permits, which indeed it should, the supervisor could call on outside experts to assist. In order to be effective, supervision must in most cases be conducted on a consolidated basis, to include all parts of a financial conglomerate and even its non-financial affiliates.

I should also mention that Hong Kong is not alone in this culture campaign. In October last year, I was invited by President Bill Dudley of the New York Federal Reserve Bank to join him in a panel to discuss corporate culture. This was in fact the third annual conference on culture organised by the New York Fed. The key takeaway from the New York conference was that there is a growing momentum amongst key supervisors as well as large international financial 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  firms to encourage and nurture good corporate culture and ethical values in the industry. I should also add that, since my appointment to chair the Standing Committee on Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation of the Financial Stability Board in April this year, I have been pushing for closer international collaboration in promoting good corporate culture. The priority of this Committee in the next year or two is to place greater emphasis on three aspects of governance, namely, (i) addressing information gaps and due diligence in employment of individuals with a history of misconduct, or the so called “rolling bad apples” problem, (ii) responsibility mapping for senior managers of financial firms, and (iii) the use of governance framework and appropriate compensation system to address culture risk factors that drive misconduct. These priorities, when implemented, will go a long way in promoting the right kind of culture in the financial industry and in helping restore public confidence and trust in the financial firms.
First, the target the Bank of England is to pursue -- a low inflation target of 2½% -- is set by the government. In an open market economy, the conduct of an effective monetary policy is helped enormously if the authorities can be clear and open about the price stability objective they are pursuing; and in a democratic system, it is absolutely right that the elected government should set this critical strategic objective for the central bank to pursue. 5. Secondly, it is then the responsibility of the Bank of England to achieve this low inflation target, principally through management of interest rates. But this responsibility is to be conducted within a structured framework. Decisions on interest rates are taken by a Monetary Policy Committee in the Bank, consisting of nine members: five of these come from within the Bank -- the Governor, the two Deputy Governors and the two Executive Directors responsible for monetary policy; the other four are appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and are recognised experts in their field -- in fact, four economists of outstanding reputation. A representative of the Treasury attends the meetings and can contribute to the discussion, but has no vote. The Monetary Policy Committee meets monthly. It announces its decision each month as soon as its meeting concludes, and the minutes of its meetings are published within six weeks, including details of how each member voted. 6. A third important feature is that monetary policy is conducted with a high degree of transparency.

Financial institutions are providing a range of retirement solutions. Insurers are selling products that encourage regular savings, in order to receive a steady stream of income during one's retirement years. According to Life Insurance Association, the number of such policies taken up last year in Singapore increased by about 50%. There are also unit trusts that provide a regular monthly dividend. MAS has issued the Singapore Savings Bonds, or SSB in short, to provide a flexible risk-free investment option for investors to diversify their portfolio for retirement. Last year, we doubled the individual limit for holding SSBs to $ due to the increased appetite for safe investments. Across Asia, the focus is shifting from pure wealth creation to wealth preservation and wealth bequest. Succession planning and intergenerational wealth transfer have moved up the agenda. A growing number of affluent families are consolidating their wealth through trusts and family offices, to optimise investment and legacy planning. Singapore is an ideal place for families to set up such structures. There is political and economic stability, a clear regulatory regime, a comprehensive network of tax treaties to avoid double taxation, and a robust ecosystem of professional services. The number of family offices in Singapore has increased four times between 2016 and 2018. We continue to see strong interest from families to set up in Singapore 4/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  MAS is working with the industry to strengthen Singapore’s value proposition as a centre of excellence for managing family wealth.
This is Statutory Instrument 32 now revised and re-named SI 55 on the Monitoring of Balance of Payments. Ladies and Gentlemen, as the name of the SI suggests, the aim is to “monitor” and not to “control”. There has been much public debate on this subject matter which seems to suggest a public misunderstanding of the intentions of the SI. Some quarters have gone so far as to link the issuance of SI 55 to the earlier issued SI33 as amended through SI78 (Currency Regulations) and concluded that Government is introducing exchange controls. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Managing Director, Distinguished invited Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to clarify that SI33 was issued with the primary intention of reinforcing the use of Kwacha, which legal tender, for all domestic transactions. This is in line with practice in most countries around the world. The SI has is no way intended to stifle business. The initial Monitoring of Balance of Payments regulations were initially issued under SI 32. When the Government issued SI 32, Bank of Zambia embarked on an exercise to seek the views of the financial system players, the business community and the public at large. Arising from these stakeholder engagements, it became clear that some of the provisions of SI 32 would impede the smooth flow of business. It was also evident that the timeframe within which stakeholders were supposed to prepare for the implementation of the SI was not adequate.

Michael Gondwe: Economic and financial sector developments in Zambia Speech by Dr Michael Gondwe, Governor of the Bank of Zambia, at the official launch of the Zambia National Commercial Bank Limited (Zanaco) Ndola West Branch, Ndola, 27 June 2013. *  *  *  The Managing Director, Zanaco Members of the Executive Management Team Members of the Press Distinguished invited Guests Ladies and Gentlemen Let me begin by tendering apologies on behalf of the Governor of the Bank of Zambia, Dr. Michael Gondwe who is not able to be with us this evening as he is attending to other commitments. He however requested that I represent him at this important occasion. It is therefore my honor and privilege to officiate at this important occasion to launch the new Ndola west Branch of Zambia National Commercial Bank Limited. I am told that the Branch was initially on Maina Soko Road opposite Barclays Bank and that the bank decided to move here because the place is bigger, which I believe will provide a better and spacious environment. Distinguished Guests, the Bank of Zambia is reliably informed that since the inception of the bank more than 37 years ago, Zanaco has grown its customer base to over 640,000 and has grown its network of branches and agencies to 64, in addition to the branch being launched today, 53 Zanaco Xpress offices and 26 Zanaco agents. The bank has also invested in more than 162 ATMs and 465 Merchant POS terminals.
Surveys and anecdotal information point to firms operating close to capacity, but profit margins have been squeezed in recent years, essentially by the rise in energy prices. There is some slack in the labour market. That is deliberately broad brush; the point is that it is common to both stories. On the Orthodox Story, in conditions of robust aggregate demand, firms operating close to capacity are likely take opportunities to restore their margins by raising prices, pushing upwards on CPI inflation. So the Orthodox Story commanded a policy response to prospective inflationary pressures from excess demand. Under the Alternative Story, the outlook for inflation may be quite different due to developments in the labour market, notably from inward migration. There might well be more slack in the labour market than allowed for in the Orthodox Story. And, most potently, if more workers were to be attracted in to the country as aggregate demand expands, the economy’s productive capacity would expand as well. In that case, it would probably be harder for firms to raise prices, although they may still be able to restore margins by bearing down on costs, especially labour costs. (That is in aggregate; we would probably see further increases in skill shortages and in the premium for highly skilled labour in the professions.) On the Alternative Story, the outlook for inflation is highly uncertain – and not necessarily weaker, although that may seem the most obvious implication.

In an intriguing paper, Ken Rogoff has shown that output and inflation volatility have declined by considerably more over recent decades than the volatility of returns on a range of financial assets (Table 1).6 As Rogoff discusses, there could be a number of explanations. Financial markets might believe that the Great Stability will not last. Or it may be taking them a while to price in lower macroeconomic volatility. Or the beneficial effects of macroeconomic stability may be being offset by something else. In the third category, Rogoff discusses the possibility that, with the lower level of risk-free rates that have accompanied the Great Stability, a given change in the yield curve now has a bigger proportionate effect on asset prices. I am not sure this would be my own best bet. Common v. idiosyncratic volatility But first, some facts. In the case of equity markets, we need to separate the dominant common (or macro) component of index returns from that attributable to variability in the firm-specific (or idiosyncratic) component. Comparing the period from 1980 to 1992 with that since 1992, when inflation targeting was introduced in the UK, the common component – proxied by the average correlation between returns on pairs of equity index components – has fallen by around 25%7 (Chart 1). Forward-looking measures, derived from option prices, imply that these pairwise correlations are not expected to fall much further. All told, this seems consistent with some beneficial effect on asset volatility from the Great Stability, but with Rogoff’s puzzle intact.
Savers criticize the Central Bank for low interest rates whereas producers who fund their production activities from bank loans appreciate low interest regime. The Central Bank is also routinely criticized by various segments for its policy for managing the exchange rate. Ultimately, the Central Bank manages monetary policy to suit its mandate to secure the objectives it priorities, given the economic knowledge of the authorized officers and the Monetary Board Members. It is the monetary policy that determines how much money the Central Bank should print to facilitate the economy. Under the MLA, the Central Bank has the powers to print money by acquiring several kinds of assets. Those assets are provisional advances to Government, purchase of Government securities, purchase of foreign exchange and lending to banks. In conducting monetary policy, the Central Bank determines the annual growth of money desirable for the economy taking into consideration price inflation and production growth. In line with the desirable growth of money, the Central Bank maintains its asset growth to facilitate new money required. In the US and Euro area during the last six years, central banks have been expanding their assets many times to print money so that the economy is flooded with money to be invested in production and creating employment while keeping interest rates at rear zero levels. Third, regulation and supervision of banks and financial institutions Banking, finance and leasing businesses fall within the purview of the Central Bank under the MLA and relevant statutes.

Its soundness has, moreover, been appreciable in all its components. In the case of investment in construction, growth rates of over 5% have been observed. In this respect, residential investment, along with the non-residential building and civil engineering works segments, were particularly buoyant. In the case of housing, the latest available data suggest that this dynamism might run into 2007. Investment in equipment has not only remained the most dynamic component of demand, but it also moved on a rising path in the first half of the year. This facet of the current growth pattern is, perhaps, one of the most favourable points, since it may be interpreted as a renewed effort by Spanish firms to extend and modernise their productive apparatus at a time at which returns are high and the financial conditions for undertaking such spending are still attractive. Evidently, increased export activity and the improvement in the industrial sector in 2006, which I shall address hereafter, are very closely connected to the momentum of investment in equipment. The dynamism of exports is in fact one of the key features of the current economic situation, as it has served to raise the contribution of net external demand to GDP growth and offset the slight slowdown in national demand. The pick-up in goods exports has been driven by the forceful increase in world trade and by the take-off of economic activity in the euro area countries.
Investment horizons are usually so long that it would take many years to gather sufficient data for a statistically reliable test. Credit risk models have clearly improved banks' understanding of the risks they face, and are slowly being implemented into their own internal systems. But the main challenge here in the next few years will be to refine the operation of these models, and seek answers to some of the questions I have raised. This is a fascinating research agenda, and I have no doubt that academics will treat these questions as challenges rather than causes for despair! Ensuring adequate safeguards for the system as a whole That leads me to my final topic tonight - how, given our imperfect knowledge, we design a regulatory capital regime which adequately captures the full range of risks run by financial firms. There are, first, a number of important points which remain unresolved in the discussions on the new Basel Accord. One issue relates to the appropriate overall level of capital in the banking system. Overall capital, as with many regulatory issues, is at root a public policy choice about the balance between safety and economic efficiency. Higher capital requirements increase the costs of financial intermediation. Against this, the total pool of capital coming out of the new Accord must be large enough to protect the system against reasonable levels of risk. Second, we need to be sure that the new rules do not give rise to movements in bank capital which excessively reinforce cycles in the real economy.

It is impossible to determine with some degree of accuracy whether such a bubble, in the sense of a speculation-driven price increase, has indeed formed. Central bankers are not more ignorant than investors and traders, nor are they more intelligent or better informed when it comes to the valuation of companies. One might argue that a crash is not so much the result of exuberant cash flow expectations for individual companies but rather the consequence of a sudden increase in discount rates, causing a dramatic downward adjustment of all present values. The relevant discount factors are the combined result of time preference, risk preference, and the prevailing perception of uncertainty. History has taught us convincingly that time preference is a relatively stable factor. The problem, therefore, lies more in a sudden shift of risk preference and the perception of uncertainty. If these two determinants could be stabilised, much would be achieved already. This task, however, also presupposes some “superior knowledge” and “deeper insight” on the part of central banks relative to the market. Such assumptions are unrealistic. Moreover, central banks, with the instruments they have at their disposal, do not have the possibility to deflate a presumed bubble all on their own. Interest hikes would certainly be a possibility. In so doing, however, one would have to accept consequences in the real sector which could be completely counterproductive. Finally, if central banks were obligated to avoid stock market excesses, this would have extremely disastrous moral hazard implications.
Finally, Thailand is well positioned geographically to serve as a supply-chain hub for many industries, and stands to gain from the expanding set of opportunities created by a growing and more integrated Asian economy. Thailand’s underlying strength places us in a position to reap the substantial benefits from such regional expansion and integration. However, realizing these benefits will be a challenge and requires considerable adjustments. The key task is to ensure the necessary structural reforms to enhance Thailand’s international competitiveness. Factors of production will need to be relocated from sunset to sunrise sectors. The quality of our human capital should be continuously strengthened to handle broadened and more complex activities as well as competition. Logistics and basic infrastructure need to be upgraded to support increased flows of goods and services. Government policies, rules, regulations and the legal framework must be improved and updated to facilitate all of this. In a world with so much uncertainty, what is certain is that we cannot simply make-do with the status quo. Lifting our growth potential requires vigorous change and transformation in what we do and how we do it. Ladies and gentlemen, As the familiar French proverb – “Rome was not built in a day” goes; these structural challenges cannot possibly be addressed in the short-term. Successful implementation of this reform agenda requires a medium- to long-term perspective. The public sector will play a critical role in this. This brings me to the final part of my address, the BOT’s policy focus going forward.

This year, Thailand must stay focused on ensuring post-flood recovery and restoring confidence. The damage of the floods was severe. Economic activity contracted by 9 percent year-on-year in the final quarter of last year and the economy barely grew over the year as a whole. However, the impact of a one-time shock of this kind will likely be temporary and there is no doubt that Thailand will recover strongly. Indeed, notwithstanding some slight delays associated with the need to import machinery and the processing of insurance payouts, the recovery process is well under way. We expect that growth will rebound to 4.9 percent in 2012 (figure from MPC January Meeting), boosted mainly by post-flood spending of both the private and public sectors. In 2013, momentum is expected to pick up, resulting in an expansion of 5.6 percent. This optimistic outlook reflects key fundamental strengths in Thailand’s economy. First, Thailand’s human capital remains intact and strong, ready to support business expansion. Second, the corporate sector continues to enjoy healthy balance sheets from accumulated savings and profits. This strong financial position will enable future investment and restoration. Third, Thailand’s financial sector is well positioned to provide the financing necessary to facilitate the investment cycle. Although the new Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF) fee will detract from banks’ bottom line, the impact should be marginal and manageable.