samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Indeed, SARON never fell below the rates we set for the fine-tuning operations of first 0.35% and, 3 days later, 0.38%. Starting on the day of the monetary policy assessment, we also commenced auctions of term repos and SNB Bills. As you can see from Slide 12, we absorbed a sizeable volume of reserves via overnight repos in the first few days after the rate hike. During this initial period, the volume of overnight repo transactions peaked at around 36 billion Swiss francs. The market’s take-up of our term repos and SNB Bills auctions was very strong from the outset, and it continues to be strong. As shown on the slide, by the end of October, the combined stock of repo transactions and SNB Bills used to absorb excess reserves was close to 140 billion Swiss francs. The absorption of reserves was achieved in roughly equal parts by term repos and SNB Bills. We saw substantial demand for SNB Bills right from the very first auction, on 22 September, and demand has increased even further since then. At present, demand is concentrated in SNB Bills with the shortest term of 28 days. As one can see on Slide 13, as of the end of October, the total stock of outstanding SNB Bills stood at almost 70 billion Swiss francs. Of this, SNB Bills with 28-day terms accounted for around 50 billion Swiss francs, or roughly 70% of the total outstanding stock. SNB Bills, as money market debt register claims, are tradeable securities.

Page 6/10  indicated, the two distinct interest rates applied to reserves provide incentives for banks to trade their reserves. A money market rate that is compatible with the incentives of both borrowers and lenders must lie between these two interest rates. As shown on this slide, the demand curve is thus capped in the upper left segment by the upper remuneration rate and it is bounded in the lower right segment by the lower remuneration rate. Accordingly, SARON will lie in the corridor between 0% and 0.5%. With the transition to a positive policy rate, we no longer want SARON to be in the lower or middle part of the corridor. We want it to be close to the upper bound of the corridor, at 0.5%. This is because, in introducing our new approach to implementing monetary policy, we placed our policy rate at the upper bound of the corridor instead of keeping it at the lower bound as we had done in the negative policy rate environment. If the SNB were not to absorb reserves, the stock of excess reserves would still be sizeable. Because of the large supply of reserves in the interbank money market, SARON would be close to the lower bound of the corridor at around 0%, as shown on the slide.
Prasarn Trairatvorakul: Managing the economy at a crossroads Speech by Dr Prasarn Trairatvorakul, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT), Bangkok, 3 July 2014. *  *  *  Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my pleasure to be here once again, to address the oldest press club in Southeast Asia. I congratulate you for the outstanding works in Thailand over these years. Journalism is indeed a special profession, one whose status is sometimes hailed as “the fourth pillar of the state” alongside the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. Such privilege comes with a somber weight of commitment to accurate reporting and balanced viewpoints. These qualities are needed more than ever today, as there is much public demand to understand the implications of the recent political development. I will share with you today my early assessment from a policymaker’s standpoint, regarding the latest economic outlook and key challenges to public policy lying ahead. Current economic assessments First, let me give you a brief summary of where we are. The buildup of political tension late last year came at an unfortunate time for the economy. The economic activity was already hampered by weak domestic demand amid high household debt and a lackluster global economy. As the political uncertainties persisted, the repercussion on consumer and business confidence grew, denting private consumption and investment.

Jean-Pierre Roth: Rising oil prices – a challenge for monetary policy? Speech by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, Déjeuners de la Finance, Geneva, 2 November 2005. The complete speech can be found in French on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  Despite oil prices being at a historically high level, inflation has increased only slightly in recent quarters and growth appears to be robust. Are we to assume, therefore, that oil no longer plays an important role in today’s economic environment? What challenges does the current situation pose for monetary policy? For the first time, the steady rise in energy prices is not the result of a political boycott by oil-producing countries, but of an increase in energy demand, coming in particular from the newly industrialised countries in Asia. In other words, the rise in crude oil prices this time can be attributed to the strong growth in global economic activity. This does not mean, however, that the role of monetary policy has changed. Although core inflation currently appears to be under control in most countries, a persistent and continuous rise in energy costs could have an effect on all prices and wages in the long run, thereby jeopardising monetary stability. Notwithstanding the low level of inflation (excluding energy prices), it is vital that the monetary authorities maintain a forward-looking stance so as not to put their credibility on the line and to ensure long-term price stability. 1/1
Chart: Changing the regional allocation The investment strategy was further revised last year. The conclusion was a clear step towards a more globally diversified portfolio. From a considerable strategic overweight in  10  The fund’s risk-bearing capacity is also exploited through rebalancing, please see NBIM discussion note 1–2012: “Time-varying expected returns and investor heterogeneity: foundations for rebalancing”. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  European markets, a larger share of the fund will now be invested in the Americas and Asia. At the end of 2012, just short of 30 per cent of the fund was invested in US securities. A key role of the bond investments in the fund is to reduce short-term fluctuations in the fund’s value during periods of financial stress. One lesson of the financial crisis is that government bonds issued by countries with good debt-servicing capacity best fill this role. The new strategic benchmark for fixed income investments, which was adopted in 2012, clearly distinguishes between government bonds and corporate bonds. Government bonds comprise 70 percent of the bond portfolio. These bonds are now weighted according to the size of each country’s GDP rather than the size of its debt. The strategic index for fixed income investments has also been simplified by removing certain bond classes, such as mortgage-backed bonds. We have also significantly reduced the number of bonds in the fixed income portfolio. Several emerging market currencies were also added to our bond portfolio last year, among them the Mexican peso and South Korean won.

The infrastructure that an e-krona would require could also be open to private agents willing to offer payment services linked to the e-krona. The Riksbank would cooperate with the market, both payment suppliers and fintech companies, when offering an e-krona to the general public. In this way, an e-krona system could also provide a platform that promotes competition and innovation. E-krona is a possibility Almost three months ago, the Riksbank published a first interim report which contains much of what I have talked about today. There is also a general description of how an e-krona might look. It should be available to all, banks, public authorities, companies and households. It should be possible to use it in real time, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. It should be possible to use off-line, which means it could be used even where there is no access to a mobile network, for instance. Perhaps it could contain some element of anonymity, and perhaps it could be designed so that even groups who currently find digitalisation difficult to handle can easily use the e-krona. These are our initial thoughts and the reason why we published the report before we have thought it all through is that we want to have a dialogue with the market and other interested parties, as it is such a complex issue. The dialogues have now been initiated. We have already identified a number of questions that require further analysis.
The level of Chinese investment pouring into the country has also significantly increased while the Chinese community in the country has continued to grow following the rising number of Chinese investments in Zambia. The level of interactions between Zambian businesses and those from China has therefore significantly increased. However, the obvious and notable obstacle to the smooth conduct of business transactions and interactions between the people of our two countries has been the language barrier. Many a time, communication between our people has been through the use of interpreters. BIS Review 175/2010  1  Reliance on interpreters can be very inconveniencing, ineffective and costly. This barrier can be overcome by learning the Chinese language. It is against this background that the Bank has taken keen interest in launching this MoU. The principal objectives of the MoU are to: a)  establish a framework in which the Chinese International School can facilitate capacity building in learning the Chinese language among BOZ employees;  b)  promote multi-cultural awareness and appreciation of a diversity of languages necessary for Bank staff to transact effectively and efficiently in social and professional fora which require the usage of Chinese; and  c)  enhance opportunities for bi-and or multilateral co-operation between the Bank and relevant Chinese-speaking authorities and stakeholders.

In case of remote payments, such as Internet payments, an additional requirement has been introduced for the so-called dynamic linking. It requires linking each transaction to a specific amount and a particular payee by sending one-time code messages by the payment service providers. The forthcoming review of the PSD 2 will provide a comprehensive assessment of the strong customer authentication impact on the level of payment fraud. New requirements are considered in order to reduce ‘social engineering’ and ‘phishing’ types of fraud, including a requirement to 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  match the payee’s name in the payment order with that of the account holder. Special emphasis will be placed on the prevention of instant payment fraud. Electronic identification and certificatebased solutions are explored as means of strong customer authentication. Recently, a special focus has been placed on re-defining and strengthening the oversight of the wider payment ecosystem. Specific steps in this aspect have been taken by the ECB with the draft of a single Eurosystem oversight framework for electronic payment instruments, schemes and arrangements (PISA framework), published last year. PISA framework aims to cover not only the traditional payment schemes and instruments (e.g. payment cards), but also innovative instruments, such as digital payment tokens backed by assets (e.g. stablecoins). Last September the European Commission published a Proposal for a Regulation on Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA), which is currently under discussion.
This dynamic suggests scope for a strong recovery in which falls in unemployment are much more limited than usual. Potential growth in the UK could also be pro-cyclical but for different reasons. In Britain, the employment rate has fallen only a third as much as in the US (Chart 6). The flipside of that strength has been exceptionally weak productivity growth (Chart 7). Will UK productivity growth pick up alongside demand? The fundamentals are promising. Given the flexibility of its labour market, the continued openness of the economy and the credibility of macro policy, it is hard to think of any reason why there should have been a persistent deterioration in the rate of potential growth in Britain. This hypothesis holds particularly now that the UK financial system is beginning to function more effectively. Until recently, the weakness of the banking system limited the reallocation of capital and labour from less to more productive activities. Indeed, whereas half of all productivity growth at the economy-wide level in the years prior to 2008 occurred through this channel, reallocation appears to have made no contribution to productivity growth in recent years.5 There are other reasons to think that growth itself should bring a supply side improvement. As the economy recovers, investment should pick up and part-time workers should shift into more productive full-time work. With the sharp fall in real wages during the recession (Chart 8), employees effectively priced themselves into low-productivity work at a time of weak demand.

BIS central bankers’ speeches  0 2000  2004  2008  2012  UK Unemployment Rate US Unemployment Rate  Source: ONS, BLS  7  Chart 5:  Chart 6:  US participation rate falling, UK rate rising  US employment rate has fallen by more than UK rate  %  %  68  67 66 65 64 63 62 61 60 59 58 57  67 66 65 64 63 62 2000  2004  2008  2012  2000  2004  2008  2012  UK Participation rate  UK Employment Rate  US Participation rate  US Employment Rate  Source: ONS, BLS  Source: ONS, BLS  Chart 7:  Chart 8:  UK productivity exceptionally weak  UK real wages have fallen  £ at 2010 prices 40  £ at 2010 prices 600 550  35  500 30  450  25  400 350  20  300 15  250  10 1977 1982 1987 1992 1997 2002 2007 2012 Output per hour worked Trend  Source: ONS, Bank of England calculations  8  200 1977 1982 1987 1992 1997 2002 2007 2012 Real wages per week  Source: ONS, Bank of England calculations  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Similarly, the level of unit labour costs is lower in Malta than in both the weaker and stronger groups, as will be discussed later. It is important that the public debate and the formulation of policy focus more closely on what is needed for Malta to remain aligned with the better performers. In the first two quarters of 2013, Malta’s GDP growth rate stood at 2.7%. Net exports have been the main source of expansion. The outlook is for stronger growth in 2014 as Malta continues to benefit from its competitiveness. The economy continues to diversify, creating high value added job opportunities. While some sectors have had to downsize, there has been a compensating expansion in other sectors, such as financial and other services. This is shown in Chart 4. An aspect that may go unnoticed is the role of the financial sector in the resilience of the Maltese economy and its alignment with the stronger group of countries. Financial soundness indicators confirm that Malta has a sound and robust banking sector. A three-way split of the banking sector distinguishes between the core domestic banks that are closely integrated with the domestic economy at one end and the international banks that conduct all  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  their business abroad at the other end, along with a relatively small sector, the non-core domestic banks, in between, as shown in Chart 5.

As always, the thoughts I offer today are my own, and should not be interpreted as representing the position of the FOMC or the Federal Reserve System. First, what we may see in terms of market strains and macroeconomic adjustment during this normalization process will not be new. Changes in Fed policy, and especially the tightening of monetary policy, have often created challenges for countries abroad, especially in EMEs. Second, these countries, as a group, are better equipped today to handle those challenges than at perhaps any time in the past. This reflects the fundamental improvements and stronger policy frameworks that many EMEs have put in place over the past 15 years. Third, given the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency, the Federal Reserve has a special responsibility to manage U.S. monetary policy in a way that helps promote global financial stability. Like other central banks, our monetary policy mandate has a domestic focus. But, our actions often have global implications that feed back into the U.S. economy and financial markets, and we need to always keep this in mind. For most of us, the market volatility that we saw during the so-called “taper tantrum” in the spring and summer of 2013 still remains fresh in our minds. EME financial markets were hit hardest, with declines in equity prices, a widening in sovereign debt spreads and a sharp increase in foreign exchange rate volatility.
The Supervisory Risk Assessment will incorporate supervisory judgment on all risk factors, aiming to evaluate measures and summarise in a comparable form across banks all potential sources of risk. This risk assessment will also be used for the portfolio selection to be undertaken as part of the balance sheet assessment. The second element, the Balance Sheet Assessment, will be carried out at a given point in time and on an accounting basis. This assessment will be broad and inclusive, covering credit and market exposures, on and off-balance sheet positions, domestic and significant non-domestic exposures. One key issue is going to be the capital threshold used for this exercise, which, in accordance with the definitions of the Capital Requirements Regulation and Capital Requirement Directive IV, based on Basel III recommendations, will take into account the need for a demanding threshold. The main content and details of this exercise will be made public in the next few days. The third element, the Stress Test, will review the major risks of banking groups under various scenarios, testing the sensitivity of bank balance sheets to hypothetical external shocks. The features of the stress test will be defined in conjunction with the EBA, and publicly disclosed at a later stage. The results of the assessment will be published once finished and prior to the ECB assuming its supervisory role. The ECB will manage and oversee the exercise in close cooperation with the National Authorities and with the support of an international consultancy firm.

Many jurisdictions have implemented macroprudential measures similar to those in Hong Kong, including loan-to-value ratio (LTV) caps and stress testing on the mortgagor’s ability to cope with interest rate rises in terms of their repayment ability. Challenges and mitigation: calibration of macroprudential policies 4. I would like to take this opportunity to share our experience gained since the GFC in operating our macroprudential measures on mortgage lending. My remarks would focus on what I call the “4Cs”. 5. Calibration: Driven by the low interest rate environment and limited housing supply, residential property prices in Hong Kong continue to grow since the GFC. This has posed increasing risks to financial stability in Hong Kong. In response, the HKMA implemented 8 rounds of tightening of the macroprudential measures from 2009 to 2017. Unlike monetary policies, there has been far limited literature on how macroprudential measures should be calibrated with respect to changes in asset price levels. The complex dynamics underlying the property market in Hong Kong has made it very difficult, if at all possible, to develop an ex ante framework governing how the HKMA should operate its macroprudential policies. So, what we have done is to tread extremely carefully in each round of adjustment. The HKMA has established a cross-departmental committee to regularly review whether the prevailing macroprudential measures would need to be adjusted, taking into account a host of factors including the property price trend, transaction volumes, domestic economic fundamentals and the external environment.
Research has shown that the majority of cyber incidents can be avoided if some simple cyber hygiene practices are adopted. MAS will soon issue a set of mandatory requirements on cyber hygiene that will apply to all financial institutions in Singapore. They include basic things like: securing administrative accounts; controlling network access at the perimeter; installing security patches promptly; installing anti-virus software on their systems; and implementing multi-factor authentication for users who access confidential information over the Internet. 8 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches  In short, if we don’t get cyber security right, financial institutions will be constrained in how much they can leverage on technology. The second area financial institutions must address to ensure customer confidence is information security risk. Information security is not the same as cyber security. Information security is focused on protecting data, while cyber security is focused on protecting systems. They are however closely related. Data leaks can occur when a system is not properly secured. In the financial ecosystem, information security risk is growing for two key reasons: One, more data are becoming digitised. The International Data Corporation has estimated that digital data will increase fivefold from 2018 to 2025. Two, as banks begin to collaborate with FinTech and BigTech players, customer data that was traditionally within the inner sanctum of banks will increasingly be shared with third party service providers. Banks have to exercise care for the data they hold, as well as those that they have shared with third parties.

Much has been written of late as to whether costs in Hong Kong are too high. Let me ask you to reflect on the following. Cities such as London and New York have a reputation for being expensive. So also do of a number of capital cities in former communist countries. In a very general sense one can say that London and New York are expensive as a consequence of success as business centres and because, presumably, people still feel that there is value for money there. I leave you to judge whether the others would fit that description; to my understanding, some of them have become expensive for rather different and less palatable reasons. I strongly believe that Hong Kong fits the London-New York paradigm. Actually, our competitiveness (as measured by the real effective exchange rate) is now back where it was in mid-1997 before the onset of the Asian crisis, thanks to the sharp adjustment of property prices and reductions in labour costs, and with help from a strengthening of other currencies, notably the yen. Nevertheless, although costs may now be back closer to their norm, Hong Kong will never be a cheap place. But when you take account of what is on offer here and the high productivity of the labour force, I hope you will agree that you get value for money.