samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Muhammad bin Ibrahim: Payment card acceptance Keynote address by Mr Muhammad bin Ibrahim, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Payment System Forum and Exhibition 2014, Kuala Lumpur, 27 November 2014. *  *  *  I am glad to be here today in welcoming you to the Payment System Forum and Exhibition 2014, organised by Bank Negara Malaysia in collaboration with the National Cards Group (or NCG in short). This year’s forum and exhibition will centre on ‘Payment Card Acceptance’, an area in which Malaysia needs to make significant improvement, to reduce our dependency on cash and cheque usage and accelerate the country’s adoption of electronic payments (or e-payments). My remarks today will focus on 3 broad areas: •  Firstly, I will provide the context of where our position is in comparison with advanced economies in the use of debit cards, and the potential benefits that we could gain in migrating from cash to debit cards;  •  Secondly, I will highlight the reform measures that we are taking, which include enhancement to the existing infrastructure to facilitate greater adoption of e-payments; and  •  Lastly, I will address the key priorities in the area of security and risk management with the aim, to further strengthen consumer confidence in the use of online banking and e-payments. Malaysia should keep pace with the global shift in the adoption of debit cards Malaysia’s cash usage remains high.

One example is the interest rate fluctuations, which have shown up in the own homes item in the CPI. During 1996-97 in particular, the CPI was relatively far below not just the targeted rate but also the lower tolerance limit. To a fairly large extent, this was because the Riksbank lowered the interest rate markedly with a view to ensuring that the target would be met a little later on. In the period 1993-98 the Riksbank tried to explain how effects of this kind would be handled. But not everyone considered the policy was sufficiently clear. The Riksdag (Sweden’s parliament), for  BIS Review 98/2000  2  example, assessed the Riksbank’s performance solely in terms of the CPI outcome even though there had been long periods when monetary policy had focused on other indicators that exclude transitory effects. In the best of all possible worlds one would prefer to use an indicator of inflation that excludes all those effects one wants to disregard. Unfortunately, there is no such indicator that suits every situation. For example, a tax increase may, under certain circumstances, need to be excluded as a transitory effect. In other cases, however, tax increases should be taken into account when formulating policy because they are a part of the inflation process. Against this background, in 1999 the Riksbank declared that in connection with every monetary policy decision, any grounds that existed for modifying the policy’s target variable would be clarified.
It is worth noting that the Board of the Central Bank of Chile believes that the risk of an even weaker performance of the world economy is still latent and is more likely to occur than is a more optimistic scenario. A lasting recuperation of the developed world calls for a reduction in the current-account deficits accumulated before the crisis. Some advanced economies like the U.S. must reduce their trade imbalances, but their possibility of basing growth on their external sectors is limited. In the Eurozone, the rigidities associated to the common currency slow the exchange rate adjustment inside the region. In China, high savings and exchange rate interventions lock the parities’ adjustments. At the national level, third-quarter figures for output and demand continued to show strong dynamism, although with some deceleration compared with the first half (figure 5). In that quarter, GDP rose 7% annually, with a velocity of 8.1%. In aggregate, third-quarter output was in line with the baseline scenario we had foreseen in September, but with a different composition both on the output side and on the expenditures side. From the expenditures standpoint, it is worth mentioning the moderation of the durable components of demand – i.e., purchases of durable goods and investment in machinery & equipment – with respect to indicators for the first half. Investment, although at a slower pace than forecast in September, continued to expand during the third quarter, driven by imports of machinery & equipment. Meanwhile, non-durable private consumption outperformed expectations again.

Still, this is an important risk for inflation, particularly because of the potential propagation effects it might cause, and it calls for close monitoring and follow-up. The CPI will end this year with a variation of 2.8% (table 3). Going forward, the absorption of output gaps and increased food prices suggest that annual inflation will stay near the target until the end of the projection horizon, this time the fourth quarter of 2012. The path of normalization of the CPIX and the CPIX1 will be slower. They are forecast to converge to the target only towards the end of next year, to stay there for the remaining part of the projection horizon. Market inflation expectations, in line with this scenario, remain at 3% in the medium term. However, for the near future reduced inflation figures are foreseen (figure 9). In addition to the already mentioned assumptions about output gaps and higher prices of foods and commodities, imported inflationary pressures are assumed to be well contained. Also, nominal wages are expected to be adjusted in accordance with the economy’s stage of the business cycle and inflation dynamics. As I said last Tuesday in my visit to the full Senate, the Chilean peso has been gaining value against the dollar since our latest IPoM, although not as strongly as it did between June and  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  September.
Another factor promoting enhanced cross-border flows relates to the issue of recognising Shariah interpretations in the offerings of cross-border products. The current efforts have already resulted in greater harmonisation amongst jurisdictions on the specific Shariah practices relating to Islamic finance. In our pursuit to promote understanding, greater engagements and intellectual discourse among the Shariah scholars in the region have been fostered through regional Shariah Dialogues. These dialogues have been highly constructive. In this Conference, the deliberations on Shariah during the Specialised Workshops and the engagements between Shariah advisors, would continue this process to enhance greater appreciation and understanding of our respective Shariah practices. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The development of human capital in Islamic finance is another key thrust in our efforts to develop capacity in supporting cross-border Islamic finance business. The collaboration between Malaysia and Indonesia in promoting partnerships in Islamic finance education are already taking place to expand the pool of talent and technical expertise in Islamic finance. Strategic partnerships between the International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance (INCEIF) and 7 Indonesian universities have allowed for the exchange of academic resources for the offering of specialised programmes in Islamic finance. These crossfertilisation efforts are encouraging future collaboration between specialised training institutions from both countries which would certainly enrich the Islamic finance industry. Conclusion Izinkan saya untuk mengakhiri ucapan saya. Kewangan Islam kini telah berkembang pesat di serata dunia dan menjadi komponen yang semakin penting dalam sistem kewangan antarabangsa dan merupakan pengantaraan penting bagi transaksi rentas sempadan.

Bagi Malaysia dan Indonesia, kewangan Islam menyediakan peluang strategik untuk meningkatkan perkongsian bagi memperkembangkan lagi kewangan Islam dan seterusnya merangsang potensi pertumbuhan kita bersama. Berdasarkan hubungan yang kukuh antara Malaysia dan Indonesia, kerjasama dalam kewangan Islam juga mempunyai potensi untuk memacu integrasi ekonomi dan kewangan masing-masing dengan negara-negara membangun yang lain. Kewangan Islam akan menggalakkan jalinan padu untuk mengukuhkan lagi kepentingan bersama bagi mencapai kemajuan, kesejahteraan dan kemakmuran yang diingini. Let us take this opportunity to share the many possibilities that are before us. Sekian, terima kasih. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
That estimate becomes very substantially smaller if we make less conservative assumptions and allow for several offsetting impacts from banks holding more capital. Specifically: 1. Allowing for a partial offset because as a bank holds more equity capital, its equity becomes less risky, and therefore requires a lower return. (A Modigliani-Miller effect – which I will assume is not zero but only 30% as big as it would be under perfect markets)  2. Allowing for the value to the government of the extra tax revenue received as a result of banks having more equity capital which is less tax sheltered than is debt. 10  BIS Review 133/2010  3. Allowing for a somewhat lower use of bank funding for investment than in the baseline. 4. Allowing for a lower sensitivity of investment and the capital stock to a rise in the cost of funds to non-financial firms. Table 2 shows how rapidly the estimated long-run economic cost of requiring higher bank capital falls as we sequentially allow for each of these offsets. I conclude from this that the long-run costs of having banks hold more capital is likely to be small – plausibly it is negligible. If that is so then the benefits of having much more robust banks would far exceed its costs. If it is right that the benefits of raising capital requirements to much higher levels far outweigh their economic cost, how we did we get into a situation that bank capital was so low relative to total assets?

Thus, a weakening of Western exports to the emerging markets is being accompanied by a gradual increase in Western imports from these countries. For overall growth in the OECD area, however, the aggregate real economic effects are probably not all that large. So what about the effects transmitted by financial markets in the West? A falling stock exchange reduces the value of households’ share portfolios, which may influence the propensity to consume. It also increases the cost of capital procurement, which may likewise affect demand via a weaker propensity to invest. The recent global fall in share prices - more or less wiping out the increase in the past two years or so - should be seen in the light of the strong upward trend that share prices have followed in the 1990s. In Sweden the OMX Index is still around 300 per cent above the low in the autumn of 1992. In the United States the Dow Jones Index is about 200 per cent higher than at the beginning of 1991. This provides a perspective for the impact of falling share prices on international growth. It should also be borne in mind that the US economy is more sensitive than Europe to a falling stock exchange. When it comes to confidence, it is more difficult both to quantify and to arrive at more definite conclusions about consequences of the crisis.
An interesting – and delicate – question is whether it is possible to expand the coordination monetary and fiscal policies during deep downturns. Under the present fiscal policy framework, the budget regulations for fiscal policy are one possible obstacle. The regulations were set up to ensure a responsible fiscal policy and avoid a constantly increasing national debt. But perhaps we should have a discussion on how these rules should be applied in a deep  14 There has also been an academic discussion of a more fundamental interaction between fiscal and monetary policy, known as the fiscal theory of the price level; see Leeper (1991) and Sims (2017). 15 See Ubide (2020) for a discussion of the interaction between fiscal policy and monetary policy. 16 [25]  downturn and consider whether the scope for discretionary fiscal policy could be linked to the limitations of monetary policy. A mild form of coordination could take place in the form of the Riksbank publishing alternative scenarios in its Monetary Policy Report stating that monetary policy is limited and that, if fiscal policy were to become more expansionary, this would not lead to higher interest rates but only to inflation closer to the target. A stronger form could involve the Riksbank informing the Ministry of Finance that monetary policy needs the assistance of a more expansionary fiscal policy if the inflation target is to be met.

The update of our Market Intelligence Charter and the UK Money Markets Code, published today, will embed diverse outreach into our working practices and help make diversity within financial markets a core standard of best practice. The Charter sets out our aims and ambitions of talking to a diverse range of contacts and affirms our commitment to open engagement, with an emphasis on challenge and diversity of thought.9 The updated Code, which the FCA have recently again recognised as an industry standard, puts the expectation to promote and develop a diverse team upfront, alongside other core principles of best practice, highlighting the benefits of accessing a wider range of skills and thinking. 10 This approach is also being in embedded in our outward-facing markets committees. We currently have two main committees: the Money Markets Committee and the FX Joint Standing Committee. We have been working with members from both committees to diversify their membership for some time now: including working to ensure women in senior roles are represented; and that the committees see a wider range of presenters at different stages of the career. This is yielding results: specifically, female representation – which is one aspect of diversity that has been historically lacking on many senior-level committees – is now approaching half on the UK Money Markets Committee, and has climbed to around a third for the FX Joint Standing Committee in the past 18 months. These changes were driven by the Bank but importantly with the full support of the external members.
2 [9]  that there have not been excessive monopoly gains and inefficiencies on the payment market, which otherwise tends to gravitate towards monopoly. 5 The e-krona can fulfil the same function as cash has traditionally held An e-krona would mean that the functions of cash would remain, even in a digital future. On the other hand, if the Riksbank does not offer a new, modern, viable alternative, this means that we will be giving up a tradition and functionality that has worked well for 350 years. Over the years, it has been the state’s role to standardise and guarantee all money in society. The basic condition for the ekrona is that it, like cash, will be broadly available to all members of society. It must work with the existing systems and be exchangeable one-to-one for cash or money in private bank accounts. At present, many private solutions on the market function so that services are offered that at the same time tie up customers into specific systems or to specific suppliers. Ultimately, this can lead to poorer competition and innovation. The advantage of central bank money is that there is no commercial enterprise behind it and it is therefore always fungible (freely exchangeable). It is not only the Riksbank that considers it worth analysing the possibility of issuing central bank money in a new form to continue fulfilling their traditional role in a digital future; there are similar projects in several other countries.

Improvements to risk management and to capital cushions are likely to have made the financial system more stable and more resilient. And macroeconomic policy has improved around the world. The increase in monetary policy credibility in a broad range of countries has produced lower rates of inflation and more stability in inflation expectations. Greater public confidence in monetary policy was critical to laying the foundation for the improvements in real economic performance, by providing a stable foundation for long-term investment decisions. In emerging markets, better monetary policy has been accompanied by more disciplined and conservative fiscal policy and a range of other policies that have reduced, though not eliminated, vulnerability to changes in confidence, capital flows and exchange rate movements. These factors are each fundamentally important, and they are, of course, interrelated. The policies that delivered better inflation outcomes, more openness and competition and stronger financial systems were critical to fostering an environment in which improvements in productivity and growth could occur. This expansion has also been notable for the financial conditions that have prevailed over the past several years. Long-term interest rates have remained relatively low in nominal and real terms. Equity and other asset prices have moved higher. Credit spreads have declined to quite low levels. Market participants report exceptionally high levels of liquidity. And volatility, both realized and expected, has remained low across many different types of financial assets, market and economies.
16  BIS Review 143/2009  Figure 35: Inflation and Output Gap Forecasts* (Percent) Output Çık tı A çGap ığı  Forecast Tahm in A Range* ralığı*  End-year Inflation Targets  Uncertainty Band for 2009  2009 iç in B elirs iz lik A ralığı  Y ıl S onu E nflas y on Hedefleri  13 11  Control Horizon Kontrol Uf ku  9 7  Yüzde  5 3 1 -1 -3 -5 -7 -9 2  3 2009  4  1  2  3  2010  4  1  2 2011  3  4  1  2  3  2012  * Indicates a confidence interval of 70 percent  While better than expected outcomes in food prices necessitated a downward revision in food inflation for end-2009, this effect was offset for the medium term by the upward revision of the assumptions for global economic activity and oil prices, and therefore, there has not been a major change in our forecasts for 2010 and 2011. The revised forecasts indicate that the output gap will not close soon, supporting disinflation even when policy rates are kept at low levels for an extended period. It is worthy to note that the sharp fall in inflation in the first half of 2009 created significant base effects. This would, ceteris paribus, lead to volatility and some mild increases in annual inflation rates until mid2010 (Figure 35).

John C Williams: Healthy workforce, healthy economy Remarks (via videoconference) by Mr John C Williams, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at Combating Food Insecurity: What’s Working – and What’s Scalable?, 30 November 2021. * * * As prepared for delivery Good morning, and welcome. We are pleased that so many of you have joined us today for this important discussion about food insecurity. It is not lost on me that we are holding this event just five days after Thanksgiving, a holiday that is largely centered around food—the turkey, the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, the pumpkin pie. For some of us, the big concern coming out of the weekend was whether we had eaten too much. But for far too many, the much bigger concern is that they and their families did not—and still do not—have enough to eat. That’s what brings us here today. Our mission at the New York Fed is to make the economy stronger and the financial system more stable for all. But we can’t have a healthy economy without a healthy workforce. And that is why health—along with household financial well-being and climate change—is a focal point for our Community Development team. Before I continue, I must give the standard Fed disclaimer that the views I express are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Open Market Committee or anyone else in the Federal Reserve System. Food insecurity has long been a systemic problem.
And, fourth, the dollar started to appreciate only once expectations about asset purchases in the euro area gained a strong tailwind during the second half of 2014. Here the temporal coincidence is striking. The moment the ECB announced its credit easing programme in June 2014, which many observers considered to be a harbinger of sovereign bond purchases, and moved rates into negative territory, the dollar started to appreciate significantly against the euro. In less than two and a half months, the euro lost nearly 10% in value. Net euro short positions jumped to close to record highs in the space of a few weeks. In other words, only the prospect of sovereign bond purchases by the ECB seems to have led to a reappraisal by market participants of future domestic and foreign demand for US Treasuries.10 Empirical analysis on the direction of international spillovers in bond markets corroborates this view. On slide 4 you can see that ECB researchers, using the Diebold-Yilmaz methodology, find that spillovers from the euro area to the United States spiked sharply in mid-2014.11 According to 5 / 11  BIS central bankers' speeches  this methodology, euro area spillovers accounted for more than half of the variance in US Treasuries in the second half of 2014. Put differently, in the presence of asset purchase programmes, the portfolio rebalancing channel, rather than the signalling channel, might ultimately rise to become the dominant driver of exchange rates, at least temporarily.

This should have caused the US dollar to appreciate, at least on the basis of past behaviour. The dollar defied upward pressure, however. It continued to depreciate persistently, despite the marked widening in future expected interest rates. One reason why this might have been the case is that the signalling and the portfolio rebalancing channels of asset purchases might have worked in opposite directions. In imperfect markets, investors may give different weights to conflicting information. What I mean by this is that, despite expectations of a significant increase in policy rates, the Federal Reserve’s very gradual slowdown of its pace of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities purchases – which caught many investors on the wrong foot after the “taper tantrum” – possibly fuelled expectations that long-term rates, and hence also foreign demand for USdenominated interest-bearing assets, would remain contained for a considerable period. This interpretation is consistent with at least four observations: first, term premia on US bonds fell notably after the Federal Reserve started tapering in December 2013, pointing to a correction of the sharp uptick in term premia after the “taper tantrum”.9 Second, investors did not expect the US dollar to appreciate. CFTC data show that they continued to hold net short speculative positions in the US dollar well into 2014. Third, capital inflows into the US Treasury market did indeed decelerate somewhat during the first half of 2014, validating earlier expectations.