samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Jean-Claude Trichet: The international financial architecture Speech by Mr Jean-Claude Trichet, Governor of the Bank of France, to the Foreign Policy Association, New York, 30 September 2002. *  *  *  I am delighted to be here in this great city, speaking to this prestigious association. Let me start by paying tribute to the Foreign Policy Association and to its contribution to the international debate with immense experience. Let me also say how Banque de France feels very close to the New Yorkers one year after the tragic events of September 11. As the French daily “Le Monde” rightly emphasised: “We are all Americans”. I am just coming back from the international monetary and financial meetings which take place every year in Washington. I am lucidly and cautiously confident that we will overcome present difficulties. And in my view there is no room either for undue pessimism or for any kind of complacency. What has happened during the recent period of time? Some financial markets have experienced sharp corrections and several large corporate firms have failed or been confronted with significant difficulties; meanwhile, a few major emerging market economies have got into deep financial troubles. However, financial systems have been so far resilient and the economic recovery is underway, although more slowly than first anticipated.

The need for an enhanced framework for crisis prevention and management  I do not need to remind you of the long list of financial crises emerging market economies have gone through in the last two decades. Against this background, the international community must, on the one hand, enhance crisis prevention and, on the other hand, design and implement better procedures for crisis resolution. BIS Review 62/2002  3  2.1. Authorities must reflect, in conjunction with the financial industry, on building up a suitable system of surveillance and crisis prevention. The objective of strengthening crisis prevention is shared by the private sector and by official community given the magnitude of potential losses; indeed, in some cases, restructuring costs for banking crises have reached more than 40 % of GDP. Building on international standards and codes is instrumental in establishing an appropriate institutional, supervisory and regulatory framework in the financial sectors of all market economies. The value of international standards is now widely recognised, insofar as they contribute to spreading international best practices and codes of good conduct, very closely linked to the globalisation process and the expansion of international capital flows. Indeed, the conduct of sound national economic and financial policies stands for a primary protection against potential financial contagion. Much has already been achieved with the design of more than seventy internationally agreed norms.
If you represent a small business and would like to participate in our next poll, please pass your card to my colleagues, who are in the audience, or see me after the speech. To promote growth in our local communities, we publish extensive data and analysis on the local economy. We provide outreach initiatives, including workshops on access to global markets and to help small businesses learn about loan programs and sources of credit enhancements. We also run an annual video festival for local college and university students. In this program student teams produce videos that aim to help young adults make sound personal financial decisions. A panel of advertising and video professionals selects winning video productions for screening in local movie theaters. As you know, even regions as wealthy as ours have large pockets of poverty. So, we target some of our work specifically to low- and moderate-income groups. We have worked hard to help neighborhoods that face high foreclosure rates. This fall we hosted a conference on distressed residential real estate to share new expert analysis with senior policymakers and practitioners from across the nation. Later today, colleagues from our Research department will provide a press briefing on the housing outlook in our region as a whole. Next week, we will be holding a workshop so we can better understand the factors that are limiting the pass-through of lower yields on agency mortgage bonds into primary mortgage rates offered to borrowers.

To deal with systemic risks, there is a lot of merit in investigating more what I would call “market options”. Financial innovation can bring an essential contribution to growth and prosperity. It can also create significant instability. To reap the benefits of innovation and reduce its risks, we need robust and resilient financial systems and infrastructures. In this respect, concentrating systemic risks in central clearing counterparties for the most important markets (interbank, derivatives) may bring us a long way in reducing them. Even in CCPs, counterparty risk never disappears. Clearing houses concentrate the risks and remain vulnerable to a default by a major participant. They should operate under appropriate  BIS Review 35/2010  3  oversight in order to ensure that they are properly capitalized; maintain robust risk management practices; and meet high standards of governance. They must also not be dependent on liquidity provision by other financial intermediaries, which means they should have access, at any time, to Central Bank liquidity. Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are a case in point. The market is very opaque and increasingly concentrated between a small numbers of institutions. Worldwide, five banks – one of which is based in Europe – account for half of the CDS market. Besides, leading CDS players trade primarily among themselves and the actual transfer of risk through CDS has become more limited. Concentration and interconnectedness have increased with financial crisis. They are sources of vulnerability, a risk for the liquidity of the market and a threat to efficient pricing.
Given the recent developments in fintech and the evolution of digital banking, we will shortly be consulting the industry and the fintech community on whether and if so how the Guide to Authorization of Virtual Banks promulgated in 2000 should be amended to suit the present day circumstances. (D)  Banking Made Easy  Another component of the new Smart Banking era is our “Banking Made Easy” initiative. We will set up a new task force within the HKMA and work with the banking industry to identify and, where appropriate, modify or streamline those regulatory requirements or processes that may hinder technological innovations. We will seek to clarify regulatory expectations, review our own guidance and rules to make them more user friendly, thereby facilitating innovations in products and services for better customer experience. Remote onboarding of customers and account maintenance are two such examples in which the use of new technology may lower operating costs and improve customer experience. We will also initiate legislative changes in our antimoney laundering laws and regulations so that a more risk-sensitive approach to remote customer onboarding can be undertaken. We and the Hong Kong Association of Banks are now studying how to use know-your-customer (KYC) utility to conduct customer due diligence processes more efficiently. The HKMA is also considering the introduction of multiple tiers of bank accounts so that the process required for opening accounts for the low risk banking services can be simplified.

FPS operates 24 x 7, which means that users can initiate or receive a payment or fund transfer any time throughout the year. It will be very user-friendly as mobile phone numbers or email addresses can be used for receiving HKD or RMB funds. Settlement between banks is real-time, and Hong Kong is one of the few jurisdictions achieving real-time settlement in a retail payment infrastructure. Both banks and SVFs can participate in FPS. This creates a retail payment ecosystem that facilitates money transfers among users of banks and SVFs. The full interconnectivity of all payment participants is, again, likely to be one of first in the world. In addition to FPS, the HKMA is leading a working group to work on a common QR code standard for retail payments. A common QR code standard will facilitate merchants, especially SMEs, in using one single QR code to accept different payment schemes. This would certainly help promote the wider use of mobile retail payments in Hong Kong. 3/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  (B)  Supervisory Sandbox 2.0  The HKMA will upgrade the existing Fintech Supervisory Sandbox to Sandbox 2.0. There will be three new features in this enhanced version. First, we will set up a Fintech Supervisory Chatroom that would engage the stakeholders at a much earlier stage of project development. The Chatroom will be manned by experts from our Fintech Facilitation Office and Banking Supervision Department.
Constantinos Herodotou: Financial literacy and education in Cyprus challenges, lessons from other countries and the way forward Welcome address by Mr Constantinos Herodotou, Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus, at the International Conference on "Financial Literacy and Education in Cyprus: Challenges, lessons from other countries and the way forward", Limassol, 10 March 2023. *** Your Excellency member of the Parliament Dr Mavrides, Your Excellency Deputy Minister to the President Ms Piki, Dear guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is with great pleasure that I welcome you today to the Central Bank of Cyprus International Conference on Financial Literacy and Financial Education in Cyprus. This Conference is a landmark event for our country. It marks the beginning of coordinated and collective efforts to implement the National Strategy for the promotion of financial literacy and education in Cyprus. The National Strategy was adopted by the Council of Ministers last June, following a proposal by the competent Committee, which was headed and coordinated by the Central Bank of Cyprus. This Conference, with its many distinguished participants, highlights the importance of financial literacy for the wellbeing of our citizens, but also for the collective welfare in Cyprus. The Benefits of Financial Literacy – a global perspective At its core, financial literacy refers to the ability of individuals to understand and manage their finances prudently and effectively. It is about the knowledge and skills but also the behaviour and attitudes necessary for the individual to make prudent and informed decisions about financial matters, such as saving, investing and borrowing.

Financial literacy, the Cyprus perspective and the role of the Central Bank of Cyprus In December 2020, an ad-hoc Committee was established in Cyprus with the aim of formulating a National Strategy for the promotion of financial literacy and financial education in the country. The CBC has coordinated the work of the ad-hoc Committee, which consists of members from the CBC, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission and two academic experts from the two public universities in Cyprus. The Committee was also supported by a Secretariat from the CBC and external scientific collaborators, all of whom are here with us today. The formulation of the National Strategy drew heavily from the results of the CBC survey on financial literacy. A key finding of the survey was that the average financial knowledge score in Cyprus is below the minimum level considered by the OECD as sufficient for someone to be counted as financially literate. The results of the survey also indicate specific population groups, which are in greater need for financial education such as the young, the unemployed, women, low income and lower  2/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  education citizens, and individuals who did not take economics courses during secondary education. They also indicate specific domains where lack of financial knowledge is evident, namely, interest compounding and diversification.
There should be wider benefits from contracts based purely on the risk-free rate rather than embodying liquidity premia and credit-risk premia of various kinds. That is something for the industry. But better liquidity-insurance technology and better risk management will not abolish the credit cycle. Looking further ahead, the big question will be whether the authorities can tame the credit cycle without sacrificing the incentives to enterprise that are so important in a dynamic economy. The debate about the micro regulation of banks will need to take account of whether or not we can deliver that macroprudential objective. For too long, the debate has got sidetracked. Into whether we can rely on monetary policy “mopping up” after bubbles burst. Or into whether monetary policy could be used to control asset prices as well as doing its orthodox job of steering nominal trends in the economy, which I should say can include taking account of prospective risks of inflation volatility over the medium term. Ideas circulating already include minimum margin requirements or capital ratios that vary not only across firms but also through time as credit conditions change. We need calmly to explore whether there are also other possibilities. But let me make this absolutely clear: there are formidable obstacles to finding a solution. In the monetary sphere, a regime of floating exchange rates allows individual countries to pursue their own domestic monetary objectives.

Paul Tucker: Monetary policy and the financial system Remarks by Mr Paul Tucker, Executive Director and Member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, at the Institutional Money Market Funds Association Annual Dinner, London, 2 April 2008. *  *  *  Alongside many others, the money market fund industry has for months now been grappling with turmoil and fragility across financial markets. It continues to pose serious challenges for all of us, and so I shall use this evening to summarise briefly a few of the strands in my own thinking about monetary policy and the financial system. Monetary policy First, monetary policy. The tightening of credit conditions domestically and internationally makes it likely that aggregate demand will slow, with a risk that it will slow considerably. There is, in consequence, a meaningful downwards threat to inflation over the medium term. Usually, the MPC would respond by cutting Bank Rate sufficiently to offset more or less entirely what we judged, over time, to be the impact of the tighter financial conditions on the path of spending, so as to ensure that aggregate demand remained broadly in line with the economy’s productive capacity. But conditions do not favour such a “business as usual” approach to demand management. That is because, alongside those downside risks to inflation, there are also upside risks to inflation over the medium term – and I am stressing “medium term” – stemming from the rise in commodity prices and the decline in sterling’s exchange rate.
One positive indicator would be if firms identify and rectify individual misconduct cases quickly. Another would the absence of widespread conduct issues across firms. But we will want also to understand how the Code is affecting market functioning in a deeper sense. To this end, the GFXC plans to survey regularly market participants. This will enable us to track some of the less tangible indications of success, such how the Code is impacting and improving behaviours – transparency around pre-hedging for example – and how the Code is being embedded in the market through firms’ adherence expectations of their counterparties. An initial survey will be launched later this month, to give a benchmark against which subsequent survey results can be compared. I have no doubt of the commitment of many in the market to ensure success. What is needed now is to embed that attitude across the market as a whole and to ensure that our efforts so far translate into real improvements. Improved culture and attitudes regarding market conduct;  Improved confidence for end users that they are transacting at competitive prices;  And ultimately, a market that more effectively serves its economic purpose. So in closing I would ask again for your help in achieving that change. The success of the Code will depend above all else on the continued efforts of all involved in the market. Central bankers will remain deeply engaged, but to secure success we will be relying on the partnership with market participants that we have fostered.

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.
Monetary policy cannot respond to temporary upswings in inflation that can be expected to subside quickly, as monetary policy acts with a time lag. Raising the interest rate to counteract temporary inflationary impulses could cause unnecessary costs. And here I mean costs in the form of production and employment falling too much. However, monetary policy should react to price impulses that would otherwise risk having lasting effects on inflation. As I have mentioned earlier, monetary policy both in Sweden and abroad is facing a severe challenge. On the one hand, the fact that oil and food prices have recently shown a rapid upturn, both in the world market and in Sweden, means that inflationary pressures have increased substantially. This implies that the interest rate should be raised. On the other hand, our most recent growth forecasts indicate that international growth will be weaker, or at least in the United States and the euro area. There is a risk that this will also subdue growth in the rest of the world. In addition, the upswing in oil and food prices risks further dampening world growth. Domestic demand is a strong driving force for growth in many developing countries and it may be weakened by the large rises in food prices. But US growth is also highly dependent on domestic consumption, which can be negatively affected by the high oil price. All of these factors would instead indicate that the interest rate should be cut. 2  International perspective, no. 15 2008, LRF, the Federation of Swedish Farmers.

Mr Ardian Fullani: Towards a solid, sound and efficient banking system in Albania Greeting address by Mr Ardian Fullani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the 5th anniversary ceremony of the privatisation of the National Commercial Bank, Tirana, 18 October 2005. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, Today I am honoured to see in this jubilee meeting how the National Commercial Bank has grown and consolidated and together with it the whole banking system in Albania. I am delighted to consider that after a long restructuring period the banking system is now taking its proper role in the economy, that of the provision of free funds to the growing needs of the Albanian business and consumer, improving at the same time the number and quality of services. For this reason, I am honoured to have the opportunity of taking the floor in this meeting, to address and discuss jointly with you some present and future issues, which, I estimate, are important for the further enhancement of the banking system contribution to the country’s economic development. Allow me to start discussing first about the work we are doing as Bank of Albania to create a favourable climate for the business and economy development. Monetary policy followed during the recent years in succession has targeted to further reduce money price in order to give aspiration to the economy, while we have been successful in keeping inflation under control.
Fiscal consolidation is expected to shave off a cumulative 2–2.5% points from GDP growth in the US, UK, and the Eurozone over the next three years. 11. Second, deleveraging by US households. Since the bursting of the credit bubble in 2008, US household debt has declined by 5% in absolute terms and 15% as a percentage of disposable incomes. More than two-thirds of the reduction in debt stock was due to default of mortgage and other consumer debt. It is hard to tell what is a sustainable level of household debt, but most estimates suggest that US households are just about a third to halfway through the deleveraging process. This means probably another 3–5 years of sub-par household consumption growth in the US. 12. Third, deleveraging by Eurozone banks. There are two factors at work here. One, the quality of Eurozone bank assets has come under pressure. Two, Eurozone banks are required to improve their capital adequacy positions so as to buffer against shocks. In particular, European banks are required to achieve a minimum core Tier 1 capital ratio of 9% by June this year. To the extent that banks cannot achieve the target capital ratios through retained earnings and capital raising, they will have to reduce their balance sheets. They can do this by selling assets or reducing lending. Both will have a dampening effect on economic activity. Given the global footprint of many Eurozone banks, the effects will be felt not just in Europe but elsewhere in the world.

Ravi Menon: Forces driving the global economic outlook Keynote address by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Investment Management Association of Singapore 13th Annual Conference, Singapore, 14 March 2012. *  *  *  Mr Lester Gray, Chairman of IMAS, Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. A. Fragile equilibrium  1. The world economy appears to have found a fragile equilibrium. There are weaknesses in key economies balanced by pockets of growth elsewhere. More notably, the worst fears of the last three months of 2011 have not materialised. The last six weeks in particular have shown signs that the global economy has avoided imminent disaster. 2. In the Eurozone, the threat of a major crisis has receded, at least for now.   A deal has been struck on the second Greek bailout package, allaying fears of a messy default situation.   The ECB’s two tranches of Long-Term Refinancing Operation, or LTRO, amounting to more than 1 trillion Euros, has provided Eurozone banks much needed liquidity to meet their funding needs.   The LTRO has also helped to compress sovereign yields significantly, particularly at the front end of the yield curve. 3. In the United States, the risk of a double dip recession has waned.   Employment data have surprised on the upside.   New orders for both manufacturing and non-manufacturing continue to indicate higher levels of activity for the next six months. 4.