samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The role of Government as shareholder of public NBFIs has been to implement a coherent shareholder strategy to bring these public financial institutions back to commercial viability through provision of financial support. The Government has indicated its intention to further capitalize these institutions for this purpose. 4.1.3  Citizen economic empowerment  The Government has also pushed the issue of “access” to the top of its financial policy agenda and is emphasizing on the need for financial inclusion for all citizens as evidenced by share floatation in favour of Zambian citizens in privatized state enterprises through the Citizens Economic Empowerment Act. 5.0  Sustainability of financial services  5.1  Regulatory framework  The BoZ is responsible for regulating and supervising banks and the specified NBFIs. This entails, among other aspects, ensuring that financial service providers (FSPs), as these institutions may generally be referred to, are adequately capitalized and have risk management systems appropriate for their size, nature of operations and level of complexity. Safe, strong and sound FSPs are vehicles for the provision of sustainable financial services as they better cope with external shocks. A significant part of the BoZ analysis involves reviewing key ratios from financial statements. The objectives of this ratio analysis are, among other things, to discern trends, identify key risk areas to focus on and to compare performance with competitors, industry average or standard. For instance the key ratios relating to banks’ performance in the recent past is shown in Table 3. 4  Zambia: Selected Economic Indicators, IMF 2008.

In other words, Icelandic banks had only limited access to ECB liquidity (although there was some access through subsidiaries in Luxembourg), which proved fatal during the global run on crossborder liabilities of banks that immediately followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But there is always a silver lining. The lack of an adequate safety net and the absence of international or regional co-operation at the peak of the panic forced Iceland to adopt a radical solution in order to ring-fence the sovereign from the collapsing banks. These were private banks, and a bail-out by the Icelandic sovereign would have bankrupted the country. The banks were split overnight into domestic and international banks without disruption in the public’s access to banking services, and the international part went into resolution. The result was a drastic cut in the leverage ratio of the remaining banking system, from over 30 to around 5. Yes, Iceland had to introduce capital controls, which are still in place. But those controls did not take the form of limiting deposit withdrawals from banks, as was done in Cyprus, and current account transactions have been mostly unrestricted. History and further research will tell whether this cold turkey response turns out to be better than more gradual approaches that sometimes turn into “death by a thousand cuts”.
Mr. Yam discusses “Intervention true to guiding policy” Discussion by the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Mr. Joseph Yam, published in South China Morning Post on 24/8/98. The current debate revolving around government intervention in the stock and futures markets to deter currency manipulation brought a feeling of nostalgia to me. It made me recall the many debates on government intervention there were within the administration when Sir Philip Haddon-Cave was financial secretary. I was then, in the late 1970s, a young economist in the Economic Services Branch of the Government Secretariat, with little responsibility and a lot to learn. Those debates were, somehow, rather more healthy and more intellectual. There was certainly less mud being thrown around. But the contrast is understandable. Today, this is a controversial issue. There are interested parties airing their grievances through punchy and articulate expressions of their views on this philosophical issue of interventionism. This is also an issue in which, in a more politicised environment and at a time when the community is enduring the pain of economic adjustment, the politically minded see great political mileage. A government with the whole of the legislature arguably in opposition makes a vulnerable target. It is so easy to wave the banner of free markets and condemn any government intervention, and be seen to be righteous and knowledgeable; notwithstanding that the government concerned has been so successfully running the freest economy in the world.

But we must be humble and thank those wanting to lecture us on free markets, if only for the purpose of keeping us on our toes. Hong Kong is changing and one would expect any dynamic city to be different after the passage of 20 years. But, surprise, surprise, the policy of positive non-interventionism has not changed. Many may have chosen to ignore or forget the true meaning of this policy, but not the administration of the HKSAR. Certainly, I have not forgotten it. And, having worked continuously and closely with five financial secretaries in succession, I can vouch for all of them in their firm adherence to this policy of positive non-interventionism. It applies also to the specific case of the current intervention in the stock and futures markets. As a firm believer in such a policy, I am responsible for conducting the intervention. The nostalgia has prompted me to take time off watching the markets to read some of the long-forgotten literature on positive non-interventionism. This gives me great pleasure, particularly when I see the rare sentences and, if I am more fortunate, paragraphs attributable to my drafting that survived the final texts. Yes, Sir Philip was a great financial secretary with a great mind. Even many of our critics hold him in high regard. I hope that in quoting him, our stance in the stock and futures market can be put into a context that our critics may be able better to appreciate.
In the case of banks, it is important that they rethink their sources of income: one response could be to diversify the range of services – both proprietary and via partnerships – that they offer to customers, and possibly change existing pricing policies, with fewer flat-rate prices and more pricing by use. The digital transition will also involve preparing for shifts in jobs and in skills, through dialogue with social partners. It will also require adopting an open approach, with the creation of partnerships with FinTechs and the scientific community. Finally, it will call for major IT investment to provide services that are increasingly aligned with customer needs, to reduce structural costs and improve regulatory compliance. IT systems will need to be – and this is the crux of the challenge – more secure so that they provide strong protection against cyber-risks, but at the same time more flexible and open to interconnectivity. In the case of insurers, the digital revolution is also starting with a complete overhaul of customer relationships and user habits. But it goes further than that. I’d just like to underline two topics that I think are essential. First, with the help of reinsurers, insurers need to be capable of meeting demand for coverage against cyber-risk, a concern that affects all companies – both small and large.

Times will become more demanding for the clusters of oil suppliers in Sørlandet, Nord-Jæren, Haugalandet and Stord and for manufacturing in Kongsberg, Grenland, Helgeland, Salten and Ofoten. 8  16  The historical figures are based on trend calculations. The figures for these years are therefore based on economic developments later in the 1990s. The degree of tightening may therefore also appear greater in retrospect. BIS Review 15/2010  Fortunately, manufacturing districts have shown the ability to adapt. Research shows that the degree of geographical and occupational mobility is high for the Norwegian labour force. Few people remain permanently outside the labour force after a period of restructuring. 9 But the communities are small and vulnerable and may disappear if the industry structure becomes too narrow. And as mentioned, the most important, perhaps the only, instrument available to the authorities in addressing this challenge is to restrain petroleum revenue spending in the Norwegian economy. The management of petroleum revenues It took a generation from the time the first oil field was discovered in the North Sea until the government began to set aside economic rent. The Government Petroleum Fund was established in 1990 and the first transfer to the wealth fund was made in 1996. Each year since that time, as a savings plan, the government has transferred a portion of current income from petroleum activities as deposits in the fund. Today, the value of the fund is around NOK 2.6 trillion, or slightly higher than annual GDP in Norway.
The low domestic inflation is due in large measure to the high productivity growth in the economy. Structural changes, too, such as the stiffening competition in the retail food sector, which has recently resulted in a drop in food prices, have played a part. The slack in resource use that has been evident in the economy for some time has of course also contributed to the low domestic inflation. We can also observe that the prices of imported goods have fallen in recent years. That is partly due to the krona’s appreciation and partly to low price increases for consumer goods in the international market. Increased imports from low-cost countries have also led to greater downward pressure on prices of imported consumer goods than we previously expected. Having looked back at these developments I now intend to look ahead and touch upon the assessment of the economic and inflation outlook that we presented in our latest Inflation Report in light of the information received since then. The current economic situation In the Inflation Report that was published in the middle of March we forecast that economic growth in both Sweden and abroad would remain high in the coming years. For Sweden we predicted a growth rate of roughly 3 per cent a year, which is higher than we deem sustainable in the long run.

In 2004, however, the krona did not appreciate to the same extent, but prices of imported goods continued to drop. To some extent this may reflect a lag in the pass-through of the krona’s appreciation but price developments for consumer goods in international markets have also been subdued during the recent economic slowdown. The weak imported inflation is also due in some measure to the fact that we have continually increased our share of imports from low-cost countries such as China and Poland. According to a first preliminary estimate by the Bank, this import switch to cheaper countries in general may have contributed to reducing the prices paid by Swedish importers by a couple of percentage points in 2004. This estimate is uncertain since in most cases there is no data available for how different trading-partner countries‘ export prices to individual recipient countries evolve, only their average export price. Nor is there data for our total imports from non-EU countries because all imports from these countries that reach Sweden via another EU country are registered in the statistics as imports from the EU. As a result, it is likely that this estimate does not measure the right price and probably underestimates the low-cost countries’ share of our total imports. So the effect of this import switch is probably somewhat understated. In the measure we currently use for international prices in our forecasting the concentration of low-cost countries is slightly smaller than that used in this estimate.
In their current state, they therefore cannot address issues of financial stability or the link between low interest rates and financial excesses. II. The recent financial crisis: are central banks the culprits? The recent financial crisis has thrown the positive pre-crisis perceptions of modern monetary policy into question. Indeed, many analysts now attribute a certain degree of responsibility for the financial crisis to central banks, in sharp contrast with the typically benevolent assessment of their contributions to the “Great Moderation”. Two main lines of argument support claims that central banks were contributed to the crisis, as Slide 2 illustrates. The first is that the precepts of the “inflation-targeting” paradigm were misapplied and that these policy errors have contributed to, or have directly caused, the crisis. The second is that the paradigm itself is deficient, or at least incomplete. Indeed, even when central banks conduct monetary policy optimally, according to the “inflation-targeting” mantra, it is a mistake for them not to recognise that a long period of low interest rates may encourage financial intermediaries to take increased risks with negative consequences for systemic stability. One clear proponent of the first argument is John B. Taylor. Taylor has argued that the Federal Reserve contributed to the crisis by setting interest rates too low prior to 2007.

Together, these two studies suggest that a drop of between 9 and 10 percentage points of real GDP in the US and between 11.5 and 20.0 percentage points in the UK would have been necessary to totally erase the two countries real estate bubbles. These results highlight the unfavourable tradeoff between financial stability and output growth when “leaning against the wind” is the only instrument available to address the former. They also strongly suggest that, even if central banks had optimally followed the “inflation-targeting” principles (or the “Taylor rule”) ahead of the crisis, the higher interest rates that would have resulted would not have been sufficient to prevent the emergence of a bubble and the ensuing financial crisis. IV. How might systemic risk be reduced? The unfavourable trade-off I have just highlighted provides a powerful incentive to explore the potential of alternative instruments. This is where “macro-prudential tools” come into play. These tools focus on directly addressing the vulnerabilities to which the financial system as a whole is exposed. Their strength is that they target the problem directly at the root. Slide 7 summarizes the two main dimensions of systemic risk: the “structural” dimension, which covers the possible risks associated with individual institutions whose failure would endanger the entire system; the “cyclical” dimension refers to systemic risks which are not directly linked to an individual institution, but which stem from financial institutions’ collective responses to business or financial fluctuations and adverse shocks. “Structural tools” strive to reduce the impact of institutional failure by strengthening individual institutions.
These two levels are so important that they have been given special “star status” in the monetary policy literature: The long-term real interest rate is normally called 𝒓𝒓∗ (”r-star”) and the long-term sustainable level of resource utilisation is known as the 𝒚𝒚∗ (“y star”). 5 I will llustrate why these two long-term levels play such an important role by using a so-called monetary policy rule. A monetary policy rule describes a suitable level for the policy rate based on a few factors. No central bank relies on one such rule in the actual policy rate decisions, but such a rule can function as a good benchmark for the policy rate. Different monetary policy rules are also used extensively in the academic literature, as they have been proved to describe the development of the policy rate relatively well, in particular under normal economic conditions. 6 One common monetary policy rule is the so-called Taylor rule. 7 There are different variations on this, but most often one uses a version that can be described with the following mathematical equation,  5 See, for instance, Powell (2018) and Tenreyro (2019). 6 See Jonsson and Katinic (2017) who show how well a monetary policy rule can describe the Swedish policy rate  since the inflation target was introduced. 7 See Taylor (1993).

One way of doing it is to calculate the average expected future real interest rate, which provides a benchmark if nothing else. Figure 12 shows how an estimate of the Swedish long-term real interest rate has moved since the mid-1990s until now. 20 According to this estimate, it was around 1.5–2 per cent in the middle of the 1990s. Since then, it has shown a downward trend to around −1 per cent. This downturn is primarily due to a trend decline in international interest rates. Figure 12 also shows that the long-term real interest rate has fallen in large and important economies such as the euro area, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Swedish long-term real interest rate followed the level of the euro area fairly closely until the financial crisis in 2008–2009, after which it has been a little higher. There are several reason why international real interest rates have shown a falling trend. At an overall level the willingness to save has increased more than the willingness to invest, which has meant that the long-term real interest rate has fallen. The former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pointed to the increasing saving in China and other Asian countries as one reason for the global increase in savings, partly because of deficiencies in the social insurances systems in the rapidly-growing countries.
Try the following: •  key elements of model design;  •  significant assumptions and expert judgements;  •  key sensitivities; and  •  significant limitations and uncertainty in the model. To restate, the challenge is to reduce complexity to simplicity, so that Board members feel that they understand: •  where is the model expected to work well;  •  in what circumstances is it likely to break down;  •  is the overall model output credible;  •  what “moves the dial” in terms of key assumptions or judgements; and  •  are those assumptions and judgements reasonable? Non-Executives should be put in a position to possess a general understanding of the model and meet these expectations without detailed technical knowledge. That’s the job of the Executive, to explain complexity, provide good Management Information (to serve up the needle, to continue the saying) and enable challenge and thus accountability. If NonExecutives do not feel that they can meet these expectations, they should demand the time and support to enable them to do so, rather than head off for the haystack. I want to conclude by putting this into a broader context of governance. I am sympathetic to the view that the demands on Non-Executives have risen to the point where it is time to stand back and take stock and find ways to improve the approach.

Denny H Kalyalya: High performance leadership Opening speech by Dr Denny H Kalyalya, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Zambia, at the Opening of the High Performance Leadership Workshop, Lusaka, 9 August 2010. *  *  *    Chairperson    Workshop facilitators from MCA International    Directors and Assistant Directors    Other Participants    Ladies and gentlemen  On behalf of Bank of Zambia Senior Management and indeed on my own behalf, I wish to welcome you all to this important workshop, on High Performance Leadership, organized by our Human Resources Department in conjunction with MCA International. I commend the Human Resources Department for taking the initiative to organise this workshop, which is intended to facilitate exchange of information and views on appropriate leadership attributes to help us enhance our performance as leaders in our respective positions. Ladies and gentlemen, as you are aware, our key role as a central bank is to deliver low and stable prices and maintain financial system stability. In spite of the global economic downturn, our country is enjoying relative economic stability, with good prospects for the future following the recent and on-going significant economic transformation of our economy. Due to implementation of appropriate macroeconomic policies: i. The country has registered positive real GDP growth for the past 10 years and over the last five years, real GDP growth rate has averaged 6% annually;  ii. Inflation and exchange rates developments have also been favourable.
In the case of trust structures, this would include an assessment of whether: (i)  adequate information on beneficial ownership of the trust is being collected;  (ii)  such information is available to law enforcement authorities; and  (iii)  regulated entities, such as trust companies and banks, are doing their part in complying with the relevant AML/CFT regulations to collect beneficial ownership information. Singapore’s approach to increased transparency on Beneficial Ownership 14. Let me now share with you Singapore’s position on increased transparency on beneficial ownership. 15. We believe that increased transparency on beneficial ownership is consistent with continued strong growth in the trust industry. Conversely, Singapore’s reputation as a dynamic trust centre could easily be tainted by just one or two incidents where proceeds derived from illicit activities are found to be linked to trust companies or trusts in Singapore because of inadequate due diligence. 16. There are several ways to enhance transparency of beneficial ownership for trusts. Singapore’s approach has been to strike a balance between protecting the legitimate need for confidentiality, while ensuring that this protection is not abused for illegitimate purposes. This is consistent with our approach taken with regard to tax crimes. Let me elaborate. 17. Besides the current framework we have put in place for the regulation of trust companies, MAS also regularly reviews our AML/CFT regime. We issued in July 2014 a public consultation on proposed amendments to the MAS Notice on AML/CFT for Financial Institutions.

During the past four years, we have conducted stress-testing, both top-down and bottom-up by requiring local banks to do the same, for risk management and capital planning purposes. Currently, stress-testing has become an integral part of our supervisory process. From the experience so far, we find stress-testing to be an extremely useful process and dialogue for identifying potential weaknesses of banks in a forward-looking manner, as well as in alerting bank management to take the necessary corrective actions. As a result of the macro-prudential framework implemented and the emphasis of supervision that has been placed on improving risk management of banks, Thai financial institutions, so far, have remained resilient to impact of the global financial turmoil. I believe this is a common experience here in SEACEN. Ladies and gentlemen. Looking ahead, once the global economic and financial system recovers, many important issues will require answers on how to move forward from the point of view of regulatory guidance. On this, the key issues that will be most relevant to our region in my view will include: first, large capital inflows and their implications for risk management capacity of the financial system; second, the issue of procyclicality and how to deal with it effectively in the context of bank regulation and supervision, and third, managing the cross-border spillover effects that potentially can be a source of systemic risk. First, on the issue of capital flows.