samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Helping to develop deep and liquid euro markets is arguably the main contribution that we in the UK can make to the success of the euro from the 'outside'. And in this sense, the UK has been making a positive and constructive contribution. Deep and liquid euro markets have become well established in London. They have replaced the previous, more segmented, markets in the old national currencies (like the Deutsche mark and the French franc). As a result, the European Union has begun to achieve one of its objectives in introducing a single currency in place of the old national currencies. The City is pioneering the changes in the euro markets The volatility in the euro exchange rate has diverted attention from the structural changes taking place in the euro markets. Yet these changes are of fundamental importance. They will affect all businesses using the euro - Japanese businesses as much as UK and euro area businesses. I would like briefly to mention five of these structural changes. It is of course important to recognise, as I do so, that while the euro has been the catalyst for these changes it is not the only cause. But in each case, the City of London has been playing a leading role as a centre of innovation and excellence. The first change is the growth of euro issuance - particularly in the private sector, as the financing needs of euro-area governments are limited by fiscal discipline and special influences, such as the proceeds of mobile phone auctions.

The FSA brings together within a single organisation responsibility for financial regulation to deal effectively with the oversight of increasingly complex and diverse financial groups. The Bank meanwhile retains responsibility for monitoring the stability of the financial system as a whole. This regulatory structure is designed to provide confidence in financial institutions and markets, whilst not stifling innovation and risk-taking. Indeed the new Financial Services and Markets Act balances the objectives of prudential supervision and consumer protection with an explicit objective of promoting efficiency and competition. •  London has flexible labour markets, and low levels of corporate and personal tax. The UK compares favourably with many other European countries in this regard and has been the beneficiary of high levels of overseas direct investment as a result. BIS Review 11/2001  1  •  English is the language of international finance. •  We are lucky enough in London to find ourselves in a convenient time-zone so that market firms can trade with Asia in the morning and New York in the afternoon. •  And finally, London has great attractions as a place to live! Like Japan, the UK has a long heritage, and a rich culture. The euro is an opportunity for the City, not a threat Since London is an international financial centre, the launch of the euro at the beginning of 1999 was a major event for the City, as well as for the euro area itself.
We must absolutely avoid the second round effects, namely that these price developments lead to futures increases of prices and wages and thereby prolong the period of high inflation and disanchor inflation expectations. Finally, as regards labour supply, further reforms in income tax and benefit systems would help to increase people’s incentives to work. Reducing disincentives to work, such as high marginal tax rates, high unemployment benefits, and encouraging people to work longer as it has been done in Spain, 8 can stimulate the labour supply and employment of all workers, but particularly those with a generally more tenuous attachment to the labour market, such as women and older workers. Furthermore, facilitating the use of flexible forms of work, such as part-time and temporary arrangements, may also contribute to the incorporation of certain segments (e.g. the young, females) into the labour market, hence increasing labour supply. 9 In this respect, the experience of some EU Member States is telling. For instance, Ireland and the Netherlands – both euro area countries – as well as Denmark, whose currency has been pegged to the euro within the ERM since the beginning – have achieved success in reducing unemployment and stimulating job creation, despite significantly different economic conditions. 10 In December 2007 the unemployment rate in these countries was close or below 4.5%, while their overall employment rate was well above the euro area average.

The historical process of European integration is moving forward steadily and will require all our efforts and commitment for years to come. I am personally convinced that Europe can meet the challenges I mentioned and I am therefore thoroughly optimistic for the future of Europe. Thank you very much for your attention. BIS Review 18/2008  7
Instead, we should pay close attention to a possible cumulative risks scenario, the likelihood of which has increased recently: an adverse loop of protectionist threats, unfavourable exchange rate movements, and abrupt financial markets corrections. Such a negative loop would tighten financial conditions, and deteriorate the growth outlook in the Eurozone. Our monetary policy stance would then have to be adapted, depending on the ultimate impact on inflation prospects. In any case, this cyclical expansion provides an appropriate timing for reforms, especially for those that may be costly in a downturn, such as reduction in public expenditures and labour market reforms. The growth and employment performances of other European countries [slide 9] in recent years show that implementing deep reforms can have large payoffs. In Spain, for instance, significant reforms were implemented between 2010 and 2012 to reduce the duality of the labour market, to increase labour flexibility for firms and to strengthen active labour market policies. There have been some short-term employment costs, but France would not have to face these costs in the current upturn thanks to the supportive medium prospects, and could enjoy major benefits from structural reforms. 2. This momentum is being harnessed to implement ambitious and consistent reforms. [slide 10] 2/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  However, to take advantage from these benefits, there is a need for consistent structural reforms.

The success of the reforms will indeed hinge on perseverance – as no reform has a one-year pay-back – and on their overall consistency, as all reforms are in a close interaction. Let me start first with the interaction between the public debt, efficient public spending and the tax system. Although some progress has already been achieved, structural public finance reforms are still needed. Thanks to the strong economic growth in 2017, the headline deficit fell below the 3% threshold, reaching 2.6% of GDP, and finally complies with the Stability and Growth Pact deficit rule. A tax reform was voted last Fall, lowering the tax burden on companies and on capital: the corporate tax rate will gradually fall from 33% to 25% in 2022 and personal capital income will be taxed by a flat rate from 2018. And last week, the French government published its revised medium-term targets: the public deficit is projected to turn into a slight surplus by 2022, while the public debt-to-GDP ratio – which reached 97.0% of GDP in 2017 – would decline by almost 8 percentage points at the same 5-year horizon. This ambition is very welcome but the better-thanexpected results of 2017 should not make us complacent about the remaining challenges. Even with favourable cyclical conditions and persistently above-trend GDP growth forecasts, the success of the consolidation strategy will depend on capping public spending growth.
From the standpoint of a financial stability authority and a financial regulator, I have yet to be convinced that the risks inherent in finance can be effectively managed in this way. That scepticism is greater if the activity in question is the trading, lending, etc. of super volatile assets without intrinsic value. The robustness and resilience of the permission -less block chain has not been demonstrated at scale and over time. And some of the protocols themselves may carry risks – for example automatic liquidation of volatile collateral, no matter how rapid, does not remove the need for liquidity providers to avoid the amplification of fire sale dynamics. Moreover, it is not clear the extent to which these platforms are truly decentralised. Behind these protocols typically sit firms and stakeholders who derive revenue from their operations. Moreover it is often unclear who, in practice, controls the governance of the protocols. More generally, as with driverless cars, they are only as good as the rules, programmes and sensors which organise their operations. We would certainly need a great deal of assurance before such systems could be deployed at scale in finance. Against that background, the question – more pointed now, following the collapse of FTX - is whether we should bring the financial service activities and the entities that now populate the  Page 5  crypto world within the regulatory framework. And, if so, how?

Untangling exactly what happened at FTX will no doubt take a great deal of time, effort and investigation by the relevant authorities. For anyone interested in the scale of the challenge, I can only recommend a quick read of last week’s bankruptcy filing. But while we will not know in full how it happened for some time, there do appear to be some general themes that are very familiar to those who regulate and supervise conventional financial firms and financial instruments. The first are fundamental issues around how financial institutions should be organised, by which I mean their corporate structure, governance, internal controls and record keeping. Regardless of the financial service activity – be it banking, insurance, exchanges, clearing houses – regulation in the conventional financial sector imposes stringent/substantive requirements. Supervision aims to ensure that these are implemented. These requirements reflect the risks inherent in financial services – risks to the users, risks to other financial firms and risks more broadly to the financial system. Technology in and of itself does not change the need for transparency in corporate structures, governance, audit and systems and controls – for example to protect customers’ funds. In a similar vein, and to prevent conflicts of interest, regulation imposes requirements and  Page 3  constraints on the connections between a financial firm and its affiliates, while also requiring controllers to be fit and proper. In this respect, transparency in corporate structures and the relationships between them is the key foundation.
Input prices have fallen and companies can sell their products in new markets. But there are also costs. Norwegian businesses and jobs may lose in the competition. The challenge lies in moving idle resources to new business activities. This requires adaptability and a sound cost policy. The Norwegian economy is unique in being both a fully developed economy and a major oil exporter. Norway is the world’s third largest oil exporter. In the future, we will become an increasingly important exporter of natural gas. The petroleum sector accounts for 44 per cent of exports and 17 per cent of GDP. The present value of remaining petroleum reserves has been estimated at close to NOK 2 000 billion (present rate of net cash flow). The bulk of Norway’s petroleum wealth will be extracted over a period of 40 years, from 1990 to 2030. We are now in a phase where petroleum wealth is being converted from natural resources under the seabed to financial assets abroad. The Government Petroleum Fund was established in 1990 with a view to promoting an even distribution of wealth across generations. The intention behind the Petroleum Fund is that the cash flow from petroleum production should be channeled to the Fund and invested abroad. By doing so, changes in oil prices have little effect on the mainland economy. This chart illustrates how petroleum activity is separated from the mainland economy. 2  BIS Review 16/2004  Oil companies’ revenues are in foreign currency.

The key interest rate has been reduced by 5¼ percentage points and is now approximately the same as among our trading partners. The krone has depreciated over the past year, and is in line with the average for the 1990s. Monetary policy is expansionary. This is reflected in low after-tax real interest rates as shown in the chart. The low interest rate level has reduced household net interest expenses. This has increased household purchasing power considerably. Household demand will probably be the most important driving force in the Norwegian economy in the period ahead. Private consumption has a considerable impact on overall demand and activity and accounts for 60 per cent of mainland GDP. Low inflation and reduced interest expenses will support strong growth in household real income. Even with a moderate wage settlement, real income growth may reach about 5%. In addition, improved labour market conditions will strengthen job security and lead to expectations of higher income growth. Against the background of high real income growth, improved job security and expectations of continued low interest rates ahead, household consumption is expected to exhibit strong growth. Growth in private consumption is projected at 5¼% between 2003 and 2004. Given this path, consumption will grow at a pace that is broadly in line with real income, with little change in the saving ratio. After falling last year, house prices edged up in autumn. At the end of 2003, house price inflation was high.
03.03.2020  Challenges of population ageing from a central bank perspective Public Lecture at the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies (ICMB), Geneva Pablo Hernández de Cos Governor  Good afternoon. Let me start by thanking Professor Ugo Panizza for his invitation to participate in this public lecture organised by the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies. I cannot think of a better place to share some thoughts on population ageing and the challenges it poses, in particular from a central bank standpoint. In my talk I will first describe the process of demographic transformation the world is undergoing. Next, I will shed some light on the challenges that population ageing poses to macroeconomic developments and policies. Finally, I will focus on the implications of an ageing society for the financial system. The demographic transformation  In recent decades, countries around the globe have been experiencing population ageing, a phenomenon poised to transform the societies and the economies in which we live. Currently, according to the United Nations World Population Prospects, 1 in 11 people in the world is over 65, up from 1 in 20 people back in 1950. Indeed, thirty years hence, projections point to the percentage of people over 65 reaching 16% of the population, in other words 1 in 6 people. The figures are quite telling. Actually, the world demographic structure no longer resembles a population pyramid. Rather, it is turning into a slender tower.

Fiscal policies might play a bigger stabilisation role without neglecting the constraints associated with current high debt levels and the implications of demographic changes for the public budget. In both cases, structural policies to expand productivity growth will ease the difficulties associated with the fulfilment by both monetary and fiscal authorities of their stabilisation functions. Macroprudential policies can also be used as additional macroeconomic stabilisation mechanisms, in addition to their role in guaranteeing financial stability. And all of this will have to be achieved while keeping a close eye on financial developments and innovations that will have to meet new demands, mainly to do with the insurance of the longevity risk in an ageing, lowinterest-rate world. 16
As chart 1 shows, in Switzerland inflation remained low in the early post-crisis years, due in particular to the fall in energy prices and strong appreciation of the Swiss franc in the aftermath of the euro area debt crisis. Today, thanks in part to the monetary policy measures taken by the SNB to combat the strong appreciation of the Swiss franc, inflation for imported goods and services has returned to positive territory (cf. red bars). Furthermore, the price of oil is trending upwards. And finally, the consumer price index in Switzerland has been rising again since the beginning of 2017 and currently stands at 1.1% year-on-year. Nonetheless, inflation for domestic goods and services remains moderate despite robust economic momentum and a steadily improving labour market (cf. blue bars). Besides these factors, monetary policymakers may increasingly find themselves grappling with another issue: digitalisation and its impact on the level and dynamics of prices. 1 Digitalisation is affecting almost all sectors of the economy, but its effects are particularly pronounced in retail. In Switzerland, retail trade via online platforms has been experiencing double-digit growth for some years now, while traditional retail has been declining. Last year, online trade already accounted for some 8.5% of all Swiss retail trade. 2 Digitalisation can affect price developments in a variety of ways. On the one hand, the increased competition and greater transparency for consumers that online trade enables may erode the pricing power of traditional retailers. This phenomenon, sometimes called the ‘Amazon effect’, 3 can lower inflation, at least temporarily.

Under the auspices of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision of the BIS, a wide-ranging set of reforms has been introduced progressively, including the recent finalization of the Basel III reforms.11 Tighter regulation of international banks must be complemented by effective supervision, and much progress has been made in improving home/host supervisory cooperation. In a local context, cross-border supervisory coordination has taken on increased importance as Brazilian banks have expanded internationally in recent years. Still, greater clarity around how large global banks will be resolved is required if we are to successfully end “too big to fail.” Finally, it is increasingly clear to me that we also need to develop a better shared understanding of the proper role of exchange rate policies and reserve accumulation in a healthy and fair global trading system. To be sure, in a world of volatile capital flows, experience has shown that having adequate reserve cushions has helped many emerging market economies ward off costly instability. Indeed, Brazil’s large stock of foreign exchange reserves has been a key pillar of stability through turbulent periods. But, reserves are a relatively expensive form of insurance, and excessive reserve accumulation can undermine global adjustment, shift burdens onto trading partners, and erode political support for continued trade openness.
The chart also shows the price of imports and an indicator of underlying domestic inflation, UNDINHX. As you will see, we believed inflation would move up gradually in the wake of rising activity. This would be countered by low, even falling, import prices in connection with a stronger exchange rate, lower oil prices and generally strong global competition. Even our inflation forecast was evidently on the high side, at least to date. It is perhaps even more noteworthy that underlying domestic inflation has turned out to be appreciably lower. This is something that observers of the Swedish economy cannot ignore, particularly as the past decade has provided so many surprises of this sort, though not as dramatic. The main point to consider is, of course, how permanent the changes are likely to be. To what extent should we abandon earlier relationships and commit ourselves to a continuation of the relationships that have applied in recent years? 1  BIS Review 107/2000  Why has inflation been low? The first thing to note is that this development has not been confined to Sweden. Inflation in many other countries has also been unexpectedly low. There, too, the reasons for this are not entirely clear. Some pieces of the puzzle have been identified but not enough to make up a clear picture. As decision-makers, however, we cannot simply shrug our shoulders and say we don’t know.

If inflation is expected to be above the 2% target during this time horizon, the interest rate is normally raised and vice versa. This rule was formulated with a view to making policy more intelligible, to ourselves as well as to others. We also believed a rule of this kind would serve as a structure for decision-making and help to enhance confidence in monetary policy. In my opinion, the rule has served these purposes. It has contributed, not least, to a more structured discussion of monetary policy issues and thereby to a deeper understanding of the choices we have to make. Have we observed our rule? Judging from this chart, I would say we have (Chart 2). The chart shows the repo rate in practice together with the path indicated by the Riksbank’s inflation assessments. You will see that we have followed our forecasts fairly closely and thus adhered to our rule of action. Deviations have occurred, mainly in the early years with the inflation target; I believe they were largely connected with concern about the exchange rate.