samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
They may seem like money market funds, but are capital market rules sufficient to ensure that reserve backing is really there behind these stablecoins? We don’t know. Stablecoins can potentially pose financial stability risks. For example, if there is a run on a significant issuer of a stablecoin, there could be contagion risks to financial markets should the reserve assets be rapidly liquidated. 2/8  BIS central bankers' speeches  MAS has been thinking deeply about these issues, even as we license crypto token players and encourage experimentation in this space. We have to approach the Chimaera with flexible regulatory chains which will allow us to harness its potential benefits but can be tightened quickly if the beast threatens to breathe fire. Central Bank Digital Currencies The history of privately issued money without public backing has not been inspiring. Will people put their faith in crypto tokens or stablecoins that are not backed by a central bank dedicated to protecting its value? At the same time, is there not a way to harness the potential benefits of distributed ledgers through some form of digital currency? Hence, the global surge in interest in central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs.A CBDC is the direct liability of and payment instrument issued by the central bank. What is MAS’ stance towards CBDCs? To answer that, let me distinguish between two types of CBDCs: • Wholesale CBDCs – which are restricted to use within the banking system and are akin to the reserves commercial banks place with the central bank today.

Willem F Duisenberg: Perspectives on EU enlargement Speech by Dr Willem F Duisenberg, President of the European Central Bank, on the occasion of receiving an honorary doctorate from IMADEC University, Vienna, 14 October 2002. *  *  *  Dear Klaus, Ladies and gentlemen, It is a great privilege for me to be awarded an honorary doctorate today by such a distinguished institution, IMADEC University, in Austria. It is also a great pleasure to hear the kind words of my colleague and friend, Governor Klaus Liebscher. When listening to Klaus Liebscher, who has indeed studied my curriculum vitae in great depth, Shakespeare's words came to my mind and I thought for a moment he had come to bury me, although he has actually come to praise me. I am afraid that this is the fate of anybody whose retirement comes within sight. Nothing but good should be said of the dead, they say. Considering that I am still alive, it is even more gratifying to hear nothing but good things about myself; perhaps with the exception of my addiction to tobacco - an addiction that Klaus and I happen to share. There is one thing I should like to emphasise in the laudation. As Klaus Liebscher has just said, my career has benefited from a “Summe von Zufälligkeiten” that I have been lucky enough to encounter throughout my professional life.
Another mistake made by many institutions, in an attempt to recover past levels of profitability, was to significantly increase their levels of leverage. The rating agencies also made mistakes, of almost scandalous proportions. They surprised investors by downgrading some securities from triple AAA to junk bond status overnight. In many countries, indeed, regulators and supervisors also made mistakes, failing to limit the perverse effects of the dynamics and incentives that I have just mentioned. The weak regulation to which some financial market participants were subject, an over-complacent view of financial innovation, which failed to identify those developments that had proven themselves incapable of contributing value to the economy, and the lax interpretation of the international accounting standards in relation to the need to consolidate off-balance-sheet vehicles like conduits and SIVs, are illustrative in this respect. Finally, central banks have not been free from mistakes either. The long period of low interest rates in the United States and, albeit with some differences, in Europe and in the rest of the world too, led financial institutions, firms and households to become very highly leveraged. Although this stimulated economic growth, it also allowed the large imbalances that are now so starkly revealed to build up. This world-wide expansionary policy, the risks of which were clearly signalled by the BIS, has probably been the most important factor contributing to the present crisis.

Following this process, the Commission bancaire will take a formal decision as to whether or not to authorise the institutions in question to adopt the advanced approaches of Basel II on 1 January 2008. For institutions with foreign entities, this authorisation is granted, where appropriate, following an exchange of information with the host supervisors, i.e. where the institutions’ subsidiaries are established. While many counties, such as France, have entered into the effective implementation phase of Basel II, the recent financial turmoil has once again drawn attention to this framework, leading some observers to call into question its overall rationale. This turmoil has new characteristics as it is a credit crisis in a market environment with particular implications concerning contagion channels. Risk transfer operations, in particular securitisation, and the interaction between funding liquidity and market liquidity risks have played new or at any rate greater roles than before. I am nevertheless convinced that the reform of the capital adequacy ratio rightly remains a crucial element in the regulatory response to the problems facing us today. I would now like to explain why I am convinced of this. 2. The current financial turmoil confirms the need to concretely implement Basel II. This turmoil may very legitimately raise questions about several of the major provisions of Basel II, such as the use of rating agencies or the internal approaches developed by banks to assess credit risk.
Therefore, the IOB has worked on developing two programs, namely, •  Personal Financial Planning Program. •  Wealth Management Program. These two programs have been designed according to the latest international scientific standards. They have been designed after the model of capabilities required in a successful and professional financial planner and wealth manager. A number of members of the training staff in the Institute of Banking have participated in this process, and experts have also been hired from prestigious universities and educational institutions outside the Kingdom. As a result of this model, more than ten programs in financial planning and four programs in wealth management have been carried out. The programs have been commended by Saudi banks. Dear Attendance, Management of investment operations requires specialists enjoying necessary knowledge, required skills, and professional conduct. The role of a financial advisor has gained more importance, and it should be practiced by qualified professionals who care, in the first place, for the interests of their customers who have put their confidence in them, and they should comply with the application of the policies of the supervisory authorities and financial institutions to which they belong. The importance of transparency and responsibility increases with the increase in investment awareness and competition among financial institutions. Here arises the evident need to develop standards and ethics of the profession and to implement such standards in a very professional and scientific integrity. Dear Graduates, The responsibility entrusted to you must be borne with professional enthusiasm and competence.

Hamad Al-Sayari: Financial planning and wealth management in Saudi Arabia Speech by His Excellency Hamad Al-Sayari, Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, on the occasion of the graduation of the 7th and 8th Batches of the Financial Planning Program and the 2nd and 3rd Batches of the Wealth Management Program, Riyadh, 17 January 2007. *  *  *  Dear Audience, I am really glad on this blessed day to be with you in this happy occasion to celebrate the graduation of the 7th and 8th Batches of the Personal Financial Planning Program, and the 2nd and 3rd batches of the Wealth Management Program. In pursuance of its key role in developing the banking and financial sector, SAMA has been very keen to develop human resources in all financial and banking specializations. To this end, SAMA has made many initiatives. It has instructed the IOB to conduct a comprehensive study on the investment sector to determine the professional and educational criteria that must be satisfied by personnel involved in the various areas of investment. The findings of the study have showed that all staff working in investment and financial intermediation should have certain basic knowledge and skills in these fields. To meet these needs, the IOB designed scientific subjects and standardized tests on the basics of investment and stock trading. Moreover, the findings have indicated that banks’ customers are in need of persons specialized in offering financial advisory services.
Bank capital is inherently somewhat procyclical. In an economic downturn, banks will increase provisions and tighten loan standards. In some  BIS Review 83/2001  3  circumstances, this could reduce the supply of credit, intensifying the decline in activity. But the introduction of a regime in which regulatory capital is linked to ratings could amplify that effect to the extent that those ratings themselves deteriorate rapidly in a downturn. There are various ways round these problems of procyclicality, but they will need to be resolved before the new Accord can be finalised. I have talked a lot about the structure of public regulation. But it is also important to remember the powerful role that effective market discipline can play in maintaining financial stability. Both the new Accord, and a number of other, broader international initiatives, put substantial emphasis on improving the disclosure of information by financial firms. Disclosure of an appropriate kind should help the market distinguish clearly between well-managed and adequately capitalised banks on the one hand, and their less sound counterparts on the other. This should act as a spur to the weaker firms to improve their performance. Disclosure should also help to reduce uncertainties, which may mitigate the tendency of financial markets to lurch into periodic self-fulfilling crises. It is certainly arguable that greater, and earlier, disclosure of the exposures of Long-Term Capital Management, for example, could have avoided the problems seen in world financial markets following its collapse in the autumn of 1998.

To address these issues, the Basel Committee has proposed a new Accord which would allow firms to use externally or internally generated credit risk ratings to differentiate more precisely between different risks. There would also be a significant expansion in the recognition of collateral, credit derivatives and guarantees as means of reducing overall risks. These proposals are currently under discussion by central banks, regulators and market practitioners. Given our financial stability responsibilities, the Bank of England has been closely involved in this process. A team led by Patricia Jackson at the Bank has been providing technical and policy support to the Basel Committee, and we hope to have an agreement in the course of next year. The new Accord does not, however, go to the point of recognising VaR-type models for measuring credit risk on portfolios as whole. At present, these models are not judged to be sufficiently robust to form the basis of a regulatory regime. A central issue is the sheer lack of information. Many types of loan have no publicly visible price, so the models lack a large and reliable data base. The behaviour of loans under different scenarios, and the correlations between different assets - both key inputs to any VaR model - have in many cases to be assumed rather than measured. And testing the ex post performance of the models is difficult. Where credit instruments lack market prices, model predictions can only be compared to data in the event of defaults, which are relatively rare.
More recently, the Government announced its Growth Plan a few weeks ago. As with any fiscal package, this plan embodies a variety of demand, supply and market impacts that are relevant for the macroeconomic outlook. We will need to assess all these elements and the interactions among them within our November forecast. At this stage, I would simply make two preliminary observations. On my reading, these fiscal announcements will, on balance, provide a further stimulus to demand relative to supply over the medium-term, monetary policy relevant horizon. This will add to the inflationary pressure coming from the EPG. And, the volatile market dynamics that followed the announcement of the Growth Plan underline the need to bolster the credibility of the wider institutional framework, in line with my earlier remarks. Second (and fittingly), second-round effects. As I have already mentioned, it is crucial that we prevent higher current headline inflation from becoming embedded in inflation expectations and price and wage setting behaviour, a risk intensified by the current tightness of the labour market. Heading off this risk will prevent the current energy pricedriven overshoot of the inflation target from becoming more persistent and requiring a more painful monetary policy response down the road. 6/8  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  As I have already said, the EPG helps somewhat in this regard. But, at least in my view, it remains too early to declare victory on this front.

In taking this action, the Bank has sought to prevent the emergence of a self-sustaining vicious spiral of collateral calls, forced sales and disappearing liquidity from emerging in a core segment of the financial markets. Restoring market functioning helps reduce any risks from contagion to credit conditions for UK households and businesses. Such actions preserve the effective transmission of monetary policy. But crucially they are not monetary policy actions in themselves. Were monetary policy to be re-oriented towards serving financial stability ends, not only would it be less effective in addressing dysfunction than more temporary and targeted interventions in specific dis-orderly market segments, but it would also be distracted from its central task of maintaining price stability and returning inflation to the 2% target. At the time of writing, this distinction between monetary policy actions and actions taken by the Bank to support financial stability has been recognised and priced by market participants. 4/8  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  In the face of a substantial re-pricing of financial assets a few weeks ago, markets originally anticipated that Bank Rate – the active instrument of monetary policy in the eyes of the MPC – might be changed at an ad hoc meeting outside the regular schedule of MPC decisions.
One perspective, which we refer to as the “economic analysis”, is grounded on the belief that price developments over the short to medium term are largely influenced by the interplay of supply and demand in the goods, services and factor markets. As a means of cross-checking, we have equipped ourselves with another perspective, which we refer to as the “monetary analysis” and that is grounded on the belief that medium to long-run price developments can be attributed to the growth rate of the stock of money. Each of these “pillars” is, in turn, characterised by a rich and comprehensive analysis of a large amount of data. For example, within the “economic analysis” we monitor the developments in prices and unit costs, overall output, aggregate demand and its components, government finance accounts, capital and labour market conditions, exchange rates, financial markets, balance sheets of households and firms, etc. The ECB’s “economic analysis” has been significantly extended and enriched over time. This is largely thanks to the progress made in the production of euro area general economic and financial statistics and in the analytical processing of such information. As mentioned above, the inaugural publication of integrated financial and non-financial quarterly accounts for the euro area, hopefully in 2006, will be another milestone. The ECB and the national central banks use a variety of models for macroeconomic analysis and forecasting.

4  Let me highlight some avenues of research that I consider relevant in this context. First, the well-known equity-efficiency trade-off of taxation has given rise to a fruitful literature on the mechanisms driving the behavioural response of taxpayers and the size of such reactions. 5  While the initial focus of this literature relied on labour supply responses , some recent contributions have emphasised the 6  importance of accounting for additional mechanisms, such as tax avoidance or rent-seeking activities by top earners. For example, one such contribution finds that the incentive to bargain for more compensation in an environment of low top tax rates drives the bulk of the behavioural reaction of  4  See “Taxation. Stuck in the past”, The Economist, 11th August 2018. In this regard, it is worth noting that the early empirical literature found a very large elasticity of taxable income with respect to the marginal net-of-tax rate, while the subsequent research, part of it based on non-US experiences, has lowered this number to around 0.05 and 0.4; see Saez, E., J. Slemrod, and S. H. Giertz (2012): “The elasticity of taxable income with respect to marginal tax rates: A critical review,” Journal of Economic Literature, 50 (1), pp. 3-50; and Kleven, H. J., and E. A. Schultz (2014): “Estimating taxable income responses using Danish tax reforms”, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy,6 (4), pp.
Domestic demand, on the other hand, was growing strongly, so strongly in fact that we faced the danger of overheating in the economy as a whole despite the dampening effect of the appreciation on domestic costs and prices and despite the restraining effect on aggregate demand of the prospective worsening of the external trade balance. That was the background to the tightening of monetary policy from the middle of 1997 designed to moderate the pace of overall demand growth. We were of course well aware of the pressures on the internationally exposed sectors, and we made full allowance for the twin effects of the strong exchange rate on the price level and on aggregate demand in making our projections of future inflation. But if we had held off from tightening policy to moderate the pace of the overall expansion at that stage – in order to try to protect the exposed sectors – the chances were that inflation would have accelerated, and that we would then eventually have had to bring the economy as a whole to an abrupt standstill in order to bring inflation back under control. That would not have helped anybody. By the late summer of last year these conflicting pressures in the economy appeared to be beginning to ease. Domestic demand growth was indeed moderating – as it needed to do; and the exaggerated strength of sterling’s exchange rate was diminishing as the approach of the introduction of the euro appeared to generate increased confidence in the new currency.

Mr George offers an overview of the UK economy Speech by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mr E A J George, at a dinner hosted by Birmingham City 2000 in Birmingham, England, on 18 May 1999. Thank you, Mr Chairman. I am delighted to have been invited to speak at this Birmingham City 2000 Dinner on the evening before the first ever meeting of the Court of Directors of the Bank of England at one of our Regional Agencies. We have decided to hold Court meetings periodically outside London for two reasons. First, we want to emphasise that we are the central bank for the whole of the United Kingdom and that we are very sensitive to that responsibility. Secondly, we want to draw attention to the existence of our twelve existing regional agencies (and, as we announced on Monday, we will shortly be opening a further agency in Northern Ireland) and to the important role which they play in informing the monetary policy process in particular of real-world conditions on the ground in industry and commerce in every part of the United Kingdom. Our Agent here in the West Midlands, John Beverly, is well known to many of you. He will be moving on, to the South West, in the autumn to be replaced by another John! John Bartlett who is at present a Deputy Chief Cashier.
Openness, clarity and communication This brings me on to the final point that I intend to take up today with regard to the Riksbank’s strategy: openness and communication. Openness and clarity are important when justifying our monetary policy decisions so that confidence in price stability can in the long term be combined with flexible inflation targeting. It is also a necessary condition for retaining the legitimacy of our activities and our independence 7 . Moreover, it contributes to greater efficiency and quality in our internal analyses. Openness was therefore given high priority right from the start when the new monetary policy framework was introduced, and it is no coincidence that the Riksbank is usually ranked high in international comparisons of monetary policy transparency in central banks 8 . Let me mention some concrete measures we have taken to increase openness. Three times a year the Riksbank publishes Inflation Reports which include the analytical base for the interest rate decision made at those points in time 9 . Moreover, after each monetary policy decision a press release is published, giving the motives for the decision made, and a press conference is organised. The discussion at the monetary policy meetings is reported in separate minutes published approximately two weeks after each meeting. The minutes contain the arguments put forward and show whether any reservations were made against the interest rate decision. The Governor of the Riksbank appears before the parliament’s Committee on Finance twice a year for a discussion of the monetary policy conducted.

We have chosen a two-year horizon for monetary policy because this is considered to give sufficient scope in most cases to ensure acceptable developments in the real economy. However, the exact rate at which inflation should be brought back on target within this horizon will of course depend on the shocks the economy has suffered 4 . Sometimes the deviations from target can be so large that there is reason to allow inflation to return to target beyond the normal two-year horizon. In these cases, we shall explain this clearly in connection with our decisions. These thoughts on how to take into account developments in the real economy are of course not unique to the Riksbank. Although the formal guidelines may vary slightly from country to country, I believe it is correct to say that all central banks with an inflation target conduct flexible inflation targeting, that is, they give some consideration to real economic activity. In other words, we are not "inflation nutters” to borrow Mervyn King’s famous expression. Our aim is not in all situations to bring inflation back on target as quickly as possible and at any cost. At the same time, flexibility is part of the strategy that has gradually changed during the period with an inflation target. This is only natural as this type of flexible application of monetary policy assumes that there is considerable confidence in the inflation target – confidence that must first be won.