samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
While the optimal supervisory structure of the EU is a topic that deserves a separate speech of its own, it may suffice to say that this supervisory review may be a very good occasion to consider the suitability of moving both supervision and resolution together into an even more European set-up. Likewise, there are already legislative proposals for a network of national EU deposit guarantee schemes, having the possibility to borrow from each other, if need be. I consider this as an ambitious plan which rightly mirrors the cross-border nature of our banks. In fact, such a mutually supportive structure of deposit insurance is not far removed from an EUlevel fund of funds, nor from an EU-level deposit guarantee scheme. Concluding words Let me conclude by saying that the seeds of an integrated EU resolution framework are already there today, but it is an open question whether the EU will have the audacity, and, in particular, the political will, to move towards that. I firmly believe that if we wish to preserve the benefits of integrated cross-border banks in Europe and globally we must built an European resolution regime that enhances market discipline by mitigating moral hazard, maintains stability by ensuring continuity of basic services of unwinding institutions, orderly allocates losses and protects taxpayers. To achieve this goal, we will have to make sure that our authorities speak a common language and that the thorny issue of public burden-sharing is replaced by private burdensharing as far as possible.

As for cooperation among authorities, the new resolution regime will take the form of a coordination framework. Accordingly, national authorities will ultimately maintain their discretion in the most important decisions, although they will be strongly encouraged to try to reach joint decisions on the ways to handle bank crises in resolution colleges. This is a realistic approach, already representing a major step forward. However, I think there may be a need for even more integration in the longer term. As an example, insolvency laws are addressed by neither the FSB standard nor the EU proposal – at least not its first phase of implementation – although they may well be important in practice. One also wonders whether there are other areas in which we could make progress. There were, and in fact continue to be, numerous proposals for the optimal European arrangement in the academic and policy sphere. Let me just mention three of them, which I find particularly inspiring. Most of you will be familiar with the influential arguments of Charles Goodhart and Dirk Schoenmaker, who have said that, as a form of coordination among national governments to handle cross-border bank crises, legally binding burden-sharing rules should be drawn up ex ante. Others, including David G. Mayes, have recommended adopting the prompt corrective action approach of the United States by designing a framework that would be based on stringent rules.
Financial industry as service providers, has started in the journey, however more efforts are needed Likewise, the journey to become disabled-friendly has been initiated by the financial industry whereby some of the premises of the financial institutions are equipped with the necessary infrastructure to comply with building by-laws such as providing appropriate ramps, designated OKU parking lots, OKU friendly elevators and so on. The banks also provided special care service counters and priority queue for their OKU customers. Maybank and Allianz are more forthcoming in the OKU agenda We also noted that a few financial institutions are ahead of the rest. Normally, we will not mention the name of specific institution but in this case, we would like to make an exception with the intention to motivate others. I would like to share the initiatives that have been taken by Maybank. Every year Maybank allocates a budget for certain number of branches to be designated as OKU friendly with proper ramps, auto doors, and ATMs with bigger space and lower height to cater for wheelchair-bound customers and designated counter for OKU customers. To date Maybank has 49 branches designated as OKU friendly. Maybank has also launched a programme called RISE (Reach Independence and Sustainable Entrepreneurship) providing guidance to the OKUs to expand business opportunities through structured mentoring programme and providing loan to grow business. As a result, the bank has assisted 280 OKUs to start their own businesses. From the insurance industry, Allianz Malaysia Bhd.

They contain Braille markings as well as tactile symbols to denote each denomination. In 2000, Bank Negara Malaysia presented 13,000 units of Ringgit cash test cards to the visually impaired which measured third series banknotes of all denominations. This year, the Bank will distribute 20,000 units of Ringgit cash test cards to the visually impaired. The Bank has made several improvements to the new cash test card design including to measure the fourth series banknotes and a coin channel to measure third series coins after obtaining feedback from the National Council for the Blind, the Malaysian Association for the Blind and Kementerian Pembangunan Wanita, Keluarga dan Masyarakat. In conjunction with this program, I would like to take this opportunity to launch the new cash test card. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5
However, the actual economic conditions, the state of policy variables and level of policy instruments represent tails events rather than normal behaviour. Therefore, our empiric understanding lies outside the set of solutions offered by models, which are built and tested in normal times. Above all, the biggest challenge is adopting a new philosophy and a new way of thinking into policy design and implementation. Central banks are perfect environments for these new ideas to emerge and develop. They bring together distinguished analysts and the research community with a demanding set of problems that need solutions. Its network is available to researchers while financial, technological, statistical and intellectual support for research is practically limitless. Moreover, the research community in central banks has the opportunity to directly influence policy design and implementation. This particular characteristic endows central bank researchers with the opportunity to implement their findings and practically test their conclusions in practice. In this respect your conclusions have far reaching impact on people’s welfare and economic outcome. Therefore, you have an immense responsibility to adopt the best practices of academic methods and writing and make your research available to scrupulous critique at the bank and outside it as well as for the research community. Always be reminded that when your research and analysis have potential effects on other people’s lives. I sincerely invite you to adopt this spirit of cooperation during the proceedings of this workshop, as you have always done in the previous workshops.

I reiterate you do not have to do this alone and isolated. International scientific collaboration allows for increased access to research resources and infrastructure. Teaming up with professionals with complementary skills, benefitting from knowledge generated beyond boundaries is a modern and effective endeavour. We hope this Workshop as well as other conferences and activities we are hosting throughout the year will contribute to this end. I wish you great success during the Workshop proceedings and in your everyday efforts. It is my hope that getting to know each other’s work will lay the foundations for further future cooperation. Thank you! BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
Manufacturing output rose around 1922 and annual growth in the following years up to 1929 averaged as much as 4 per cent. So what was the attitude to economic policy in those days? On the whole, the depression, with falling prices and rising unemployment, was seen as a necessary evil, a purgatory that would result in a spontaneous recovery to economic balance. As regards stabilisation policy in one form or another, the primary responsibility rested with the Riksbank. In practice, however, policy was passive and tardy. A look at the wholesale price index from 1913 to 1920 shows that the increase in Sweden was almost twice that in the United States, for example. In time, the interest rate was raised and the supply of credit was restricted. However, the tighter monetary stance was then retained even after activity had turned downwards. The reason was that the Riksbank tried to bring the Swedish krona back to its par value in 1913 in order to rejoin the gold standard. As a result, at the beginning of 1921 the interest rate was around 6 per cent at a time when prices were falling about 20 per cent. 1  Schön, L (2000), En modern svensk ekonomisk historia (A modern Swedish economic history), SNS Förlag, Stockholm. BIS Review 81/2001  1  Fiscal policy was based on other criteria than those of stabilisation policy.

Lars Heikensten: Stabilisation policy - experiences and challenges Speech by Mr Lars Heikensten, First Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at the Swedish Taxpayers Association, 80th anniversary, Stockholm International Fair, 4 October 2001. *  *  *  First of all, congratulations on your anniversary. For an 80-year-old you look relatively fresh. The organisation I represent first saw the light of day 333 years ago, though despite appearances I haven’t been there from the start. Today I shall be dwelling a good deal on the past to see what lessons we can draw from 80 years of stabilisation policy. Economic developments impose new policy requirements. Over the years, the instruments and objectives of economic policy have been put to the test and renewed in the light of experience. I shall be taking you on a conducted tour of the business cycles to see what they can teach us about the current situation. Strong belief in spontaneous recovery Let me start in 1921, the year in which Marcus Wallenberg Senior initiated what subsequently became the Swedish Taxpayers Association. That was in a period when both economic growth and inflation were fluctuating widely. Not counting wars and bad harvests, the crisis Sweden went through was the deepest in modern times. When trade picked up after World War One and demand grew, prices had risen sharply. The strong economic upswing led in time to overheating, with shortages of fuel, raw materials and labour.
These findings are based on evidence drawn from banking systems with a substantial presence of Islamic banking. Therefore, they are not strictly transposable to France. Nevertheless, precisely because France is a conventional environment, I would like now to conclude my speech with some remarks on conditions Islamic banks need to meet to ensure that their establishment in France offers sufficient safety for their customers and is compatible with the smooth functioning of the French banking system. This is primarily in Islamic banks’ own interest and is also in the interest of the banking system! Regarding licensing, the Credit Institutions and Investment Firms Committee (Comité des Etablissements de Crédit et des Entreprises d’Investissement – CECEI) will assess the same criteria as for any conventional bank: financial resources and suitability of the shareholders; integrity, qualifications and suitable experience of managers; level of own funds; business plan; capacity of the bank to achieve its development objectives and so on. Indeed, there is no specific criteria or requirement for Islamic banks in the French licensing framework. But beyond these standard licensing criteria, banking authorities need to ensure that Islamic banks will interact with their conventional environment in France as soundly as possible.

In a 2009 report on the crisis, the OECD observed that “corporate governance routines did not serve their purpose to safeguard against excessive risk taking”. A crucial shortcoming in many cases was the corporate culture within financial institutions. It is therefore no surprise that “weaknesses in risk culture are often considered a root cause of the global financial crisis”. We all know too well how loans were systematically sold to people who were clearly unable to repay. Lenders operated on a legal, but ethically questionable, originate-to-distribute business model – this saw the risks associated with sub-prime mortgages being repackaged and sold off to unsuspecting third parties. Another sobering example of the link between culture and crisis comes from a finding of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in the United States on Lehman Brothers. The Chief Risk Officer was stripped of her role after raising red flags on risks, in the face of intense competition from other investment banks. As we all know, the bank went on taking much more risk that it could reasonably manage – and the rest, is history. While the global financial crisis has inspired much conversation about ethics and culture, these issues are by no means new. Throughout the 2000s, an estimated 45 million payment protection insurance (PPI) policies worth around £ billion were widely mis-sold to customers in the UK. Many people did not even know that they were buying a PPI policy.
It seems reasonable to conclude, however, that an evaluation of the Riksbank’s policy for inflation must recognise that a part of the changes in the rate of inflation stems from transitory effects occasioned by the Riksbank’s own measures. 3. The current assessment The March inflation report I should now like to turn to the outlook for inflation in the coming years. In order to provide as open and clear a picture as possible of how the Riksbank analyses the future prospect for inflation and approaches the construction of monetary policy, we present reports on this four times a year. In the latest report, published this March, it was considered that the GDP growth rates for 1997 and 1978 would be 2 and 3 per cent, respectively. It was also foreseen that no appreciable capacity restrictions should arise in these years. With an unchanged monetary stance and given that households and firms continue to count on inflation remaining low, underlying domestic inflation (the CPI change excluding transitory effects on inflation) one to two years ahead was judged to be between 1.5 and 2 per cent. In that the transitory effects will be dropping out of the 12-month change figures, however, registered inflation will move up by degrees in 1997 and 1998. In March we counted on the annual rate of inflation in 1997 being around 0.5 per cent, which would still be clearly below the inflation target. We also envisaged that in 1998 inflation would be somewhat below 2 per cent.

* * * All in all, today there is no reason to revise the overall picture of the economy and inflation that was presented in the March inflation report. The tendencies to date seem to broadly confirm the assessments there. Various forward indicators suggest that the Swedish economy is again entering a period of increased growth. At the same time, most things point to price increases remaining low this year and next, which is the period we can assess at present. The repo rate was lowered most recently last December. Since then we have frequently declared that the monetary stance is well balanced. This still applies. BIS Review 56/1997
In fact, results of a survey conducted at the ECB show that households that assess government policies as adequate have lower uncertainty about their future income. 1/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  The second source is uncertainty about how the economy will change in response to COVID-19. It is becoming increasingly clear that the crisis will restructure our economies in fundamental ways. In the manufacturing sector, we are likely to see a push to make supply chains more resilient, which will likely lead to a greater focus on “proximity”, i.e. on-shoring of production and reinforcing of strategic value chains. In the services sectors, by contrast, the pandemic is likely to shift the economy towards more “distancing” via more digitalisation. We are already seeing this transition accelerate as retail trade gravitates towards e-commerce, services that we previously thought were “non-tradeable” start being traded online, and more remote working becomes possible. As the workplace changes profoundly, it will take time for the new equilibrium in the economy to appear. Some sectors will grow and create more jobs as their reach increases – think of communication or education and training, for example. But other sectors could undergo significant changes if, say, people no longer need to commute into work to the same extent, or to make as many business trips or attend as many conferences where they consume hospitality services. This rebalancing should lead to higher investment in intangible capital, but part of the capital stock related to tangibles could be superseded.

The Commission’s recovery fund proposal is clearly a key building block in delivering on this goal. But the European level cannot be expected to do it alone. Crucially, the recovery fund will only reach its full potential if it is firmly rooted in structural reforms conceived and implemented at the national level. We will get a “bigger bang” for each euro spent if countries conduct the structural reforms they need at the same time. As an illustration, ECB research shows that in the event of a common shock hitting all euro area countries – of the type we have just seen – those with less efficient economic structures can on average suffer up to twice the output loss of a country that is at the frontier of institutional parameters.7 The Country Specific Recommendations identify further helpful reforms. In Italy’s case, I understand that these recommendations call for, among other things, investing in digital infrastructure for education and training, promoting renewable energy production, developing ebusiness models and modernising public administration. Such reforms – designed and owned by you – are indispensable to capitalise on this moment. 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  Conclusion I therefore encourage you, as policymakers, not to let this crisis go to waste. My institution, the ECB, will play its part within its mandate. But it is for you to prove to citizens that our societies will emerge from this transformation stronger and greener.
The banks then have to borrow from the Riksbank at an interest rate normally close to the repo rate; this occurs by means of “fine tuning” transactions on the part of the Riksbank. As long as the Swedish banks feel sufficient confidence in one another and the banks have adequate collateral to borrow from the Riksbank, the banks will encounter no difficulties in obtaining refinancing. Refinancing can then normally occur at the repo rate or at a rate close to the repo rate. So do the banks have sufficient confidence in one another, or is there any possible cause to reconsider the size of credit lines because of uncertainty about the year 2000? I can see no reason for any such revisions. For one thing, solvency in the Swedish banks is high. The Riksbank publishes stability reports twice a year in which we analyse the Swedish banking system. In our judgement, the financial  1  Nationalencyklopedin (The Swedish National Encyclopaedia). BIS Review 97/1999  2  strength of the banking system and its capacity to resist disruptions is good. Furthermore, the reports of the Financial Supervisory Authority make a “second opinion” available on the progress of preparations for the year 2000. The Financial Supervisory Authority will publish its next report on 1 October. One further question is whether the banks possess adequate collateral to finance increased borrowing requirements from the Riksbank.

I shall therefore explain and inform you, as far as possible, how the Riksbank will manage the supply of liquidity. I shall also give my opinion of the risk of liquidity problems actually arising in practice. In Sweden, all major payments between accounts are managed within the RIX payment system which links together the Riksbank and all major credit institutions. A bank that has a payments deficit always has the option of financing this deficit by borrowing from the Riksbank against collateral at the Riksbank’s lending rate. Similarly, a bank that has a surplus always has the right to invest it at the Riksbank at the Riksbank’s deposit rate. These rates at present stand at 4.25% and 2.75% respectively. However, a bank that has surplus liquidity always gains by lending it to a bank that has a deficit via the market for lending between banks, the interbank market. The bank that lends its surplus funds then receives a higher rate of interest than the Riksbank’s deposit rate, while at the same time the bank that borrows money pays a lower rate of interest than the Riksbank’s lending rate. Loans on the interbank market occur within the framework of set credit lines so that here no collateral is required. If the financial system as a whole has a liquidity deficit with respect to the Riksbank – as a result of the banks ordering banknotes from us – the deficits and surpluses cannot be settled on the interbank market.
If we look beyond uncertainties, we have also received positive news; in particular, recovery is underway in Europe. As you may know, a meeting of the ECB Governing Council will be held in three days, so I have to respect a silent period and I will not speak on monetary policy matters. But I can emphasize that, in response to weak inflation and heightened uncertainties, the Eurosystem, of which the Banque de France is a member, has acted decisively. In addition, several European countries have implemented structural reforms since the onset of the crisis and, at the same time, the EU and the euro area have taken significant steps to enhance economic and financial integration and stability. All these efforts have strengthened the euro area’s resilience as shown by limited reactions to Brexit or the US elections or by the unaffected, steady recovery in the euro area. 1/ Changes in economic conditions [Slide 2] In Europe, economic recovery is underway. Europe is continuing to recover, at 1.7% in 2016, and is expected to carry on recovering in 2017. Euro area growth is robust since it is supported by domestic demand, i.e. household consumption and corporate investment. New more detailed euro area growth and inflation projections will be published on 8 December. It is particularly important to note that labour market conditions are improving and unemployment is receding. In the euro area, on the past 4 years, the unemployment rate has dropped from 13% to 9.8% last October and is at its lowest level in four years.

François Villeroy challenges  de  Galhau:  Recent European  economic  Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, at the Paris Europlace International Financial Forum, Tokyo, 5 December 2016. * * * Accompanying slides. Thank you for your invitation. I am very pleased to be here in Tokyo for the first time as a Governor. France and Japan have a lot in common. Both our countries have a long history and culture, a long-term vision and a strong private-public partnership. And Bank of Japan and Banque de France have developed a rich and fruitful relationship. Let me thank Governor Kuroda for his enlightening comments on digital innovation and FinTechs, which Banque de France clearly supports. I will focus for my part on European economic challenges. In 2016, the world in general, and Europe in particular, has experienced a period of high uncertainty: uncertainties relating to our security, with the threat of terrorist attacks; political uncertainties, with “Brexit” and, more recently, Mr Trump’s victory in the United States; as well as economic uncertainties, including oil prices or Chinese growth, and high market volatility at the beginning of the year. The referendum in Italy yesterday may be deemed as another source of uncertainty. However it cannot be compared to the British referendum: Italian people have been called to the polls to vote on an internal constitutional matter, and not about Italy’s long-standing EU membership. We will nevertheless look closely at its consequences.