samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In this respect, and in what, in my view, should be the third main defining principle of Spanish fiscal policy in the coming years, public resources should be geared towards those uses or initiatives that have the most capacity to increase future economic growth. Apart from certain support measures that may be necessary in the short term, it is vital that economic policy in general, and budgetary policy in particular, are geared towards achieving the structural transformation of the Spanish economy, to correct some of the shortcomings that have accompanied us in recent decades and to ensure that we are not left behind in the profound changes that are taking place worldwide, including in terms of the level of globalisation, digitalisation and ecological transformation of our economy. Lastly, it is advisable that budgetary policy, rather than promoting initiatives that involve acquiring future payment commitments that will drive up our structural deficit, instead encourages temporary increases in the deficit, concentrated on items that can boost our growth potential in the medium term. I will refer repeatedly to these basic principles later. 2 Draft State and Social Security Budget for 2021 In this section I wish to offer my assessment of the main revenue and expenditure measures included in the Draft Budget, of the general budgetary policy stance envisaged for 2021, and of expected developments in Spanish government debt.

I referred in detail to these structural reforms in my appearance before the Parliamentary Committee for the Economic and Social Reconstruction of Spain after COVID-19 last June.9 Allow me simply to recall here that low potential growth was already a problem in Spain before the crisis, characterised by low growth of factor productivity and a higher unemployment rate than in the other developed countries. Also, although it is still early to quantify its impact, this crisis will foreseeably further damage the economy’s potential 8  Also, the debt rule requires that the ratio between this variable and GDP be reduced annually by one-twentieth of the differential with respect to the reference value of 60%. Since the debt ratio could reach around 130% of GDP, this differential would amount to some 70 pp, so that, according to this European rule, it would have to be reduced by some 3.5 pp per year. 9  https://www.bde.es/bde/en/secciones/prensa/intervpub/Discursos_del_Go/comparecencia-del-gobernador-en-la-comision-para-lareconstruccion-social-y-economica--de-espana-tras-el-covid-19--del-congreso-de-los-diputados.html  29  output. The message is that structural reforms are now even more necessary; they are also needed to alleviate and accelerate fiscal consolidation. 3.3  The composition of public finances  The strategy to reduce budgetary imbalances should be detailed and credible, setting out the deadlines and objectives and the measures to achieve them. It should also be long-term growth-friendly, which requires a thorough review of the various revenue and expenditure items. In addition, it should ideally be an integral part of an overall strategy that also addresses the adoption of long-term growth-friendly structural reforms.
Historically, there has been a reasonably strong and stable relationship between unemployment and wage growth – the so-called Phillips curve. As unemployment has fallen recently, this Phillips curve relationship would have led us to expect wage growth to pick up. That, plainly, has not happened. Over recent years, the 3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  3  Phillips curve relationship has been anything but strong and stable (Chart 3). And that same flatness in the Phillips curve has been found in a number of other countries (Chart 4). 1  There are many potential causes of the weak wage puzzle over recent years. Some of these are likely to have been short-lived, such as the impact of low actual and expected levels of inflation globally. Others are likely to have been longer-lived, such as the impact of the financial crisis on slack in the labour market and workers’ willingness to move between jobs in search of a pay rise. A third set of factors are structural in nature. For example, there is evidence technology and globalisation may have weakened the bargaining power of workers, leading to a secular fall in the share of income going to workers in several countries. 2  Another set of longer-term factors arise from the changing nature of work and the shifting relationship between employers and employees. One such shift, which has operated over a number of decades, is the decreasing incidence of unionisation and collective bargaining in the workforce.

If so, that could herald the beginning of the end of the protracted post-crisis super-cycle of weak investment. At a regional level, the global recovery appears to have a broad base across the world. Most regions of the world have seen growth upgrades over the past six months. Currently, countries representing around 80% 12  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  12  of global output are expected to be growing above-trend, meaning the global output gap is shrinking. The simultaneity of that uptick in regional growth should give it greater momentum, given the increased importance these days of cross-border spillovers, in trade and finance, and integrated global supply chains. A second reason for greater resilience in world growth since the start of the year is reduced political and policy uncertainty. For anyone who has lived through the UK’s political undulations of the past few weeks, or who is consuming a daily diet of world news, blogs and tweets, that may sound like an odd statement. But, viewed in the round, political and policy risks in a number of countries have eased significantly since the start of the year. At the start of the year, there was widespread media and market concern about changes to economic, trade and foreign policy in the US. By and large, the worst of these fears have failed to materialise. At the start of the year, there were fears of a populist surge through Europe.
William C Dudley: The road to recovery – Puerto Rico and the mainland Remarks by Mr William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the E-3 Summit of the Americas: Export Trade Basics Forum 101, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1 April 2011. *  *  *  Good morning. I am pleased to be back in Puerto Rico to speak to you and meet with various communities in the Commonwealth. Each visit gives me a chance to deepen the Bank’s relationship with the island. Last year I visited La Cantera and met with community leaders, business people, academics, bankers and government officials. This year I visited Goya Foods – the oldest Hispanic-owned plant in our country with subsidiary facilities in my home state, New Jersey, and upstate New York. I will also meet with a similar wide range of people to talk about what we do and to hear first-hand the economic and financial issues important to Puerto Ricans so that I can best represent all my constituents in my work at the Fed. Your beautiful island is unique within the Second Federal Reserve District. For me, personally, being here also recalls special memories of my childhood visit with my parents. I thank the organizers for inviting me to speak at the Export Trade Basics Forum, to help kick off the week-long summit on Education, Exports and Entrepreneurship that begins next week.

The mainland is Puerto Rico’s primary trading partner, accounting for half of the island’s imports and three-quarters of its exports. There are many reasons for this. While Puerto Rico interacts with many other economies, for generations the mainland United States and Puerto Rico have had a special multifaceted economic relationship. One of the most obvious of these ties is the free flow of goods between the mainland and the island. Another link is our common use of the dollar. This means that tourists from the mainland can visit without worrying about changing currencies. In addition, businesses can make long-term investments in Puerto Rico without worrying that currency fluctuations against the dollar will undermine their competitiveness. The island runs a surplus with the mainland that accounts for much of the island’s overall surplus. So the signs of a further pickup in economic growth on the mainland bode well for the island. Puerto Rico’s export markets also extend overseas. Aside from the U.S. mainland, the top export markets for the Island are Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. Exports to  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  these four countries combined exceeded $ billion in 2009 and have grown by more than 30 percent since 2007. The success that Puerto Rico has in selling its goods and services to industrialized countries bodes well for the island’s future. As more emerging economies narrow the gap between themselves and the more developed countries, the market for Puerto Rico’s goods could well expand accordingly.
But I think this is a somewhat misleading view as I will explain later. The SSM and the SRM, both components of the Banking Union thus contribute to reducing the negative feed-back loop between banks and sovereigns. One important objective of the SSM Regulation is to improve the quality of supervision and to ensure strong homogenous supervisory standards across the euro area. The essential contribution that European supervision can give to the separation of banks and sovereigns is the build-up of trust in the robustness of banks as stand-alone entities, so that enhanced confidence by their peers can help normalise interbank markets and overcome financial fragmentation. The establishment of the SRM also addresses the problem of breaking the bank-sovereign nexus because the orderly resolution of banks, even large ones, helps to avoid costly rescues by sovereigns that may endanger their own finances. In practice, however, the SSM and SRM may not be sufficient to completely sever the ties between sovereigns and their domestic banks. The effect of SSM and harmonised supervision on trust among banks may be more limited than expected, while the SRM, important for organising orderly resolutions, is limited in the amount of resources it can contribute to recapitalisations. The Bank Recovering and Resolution Directive (BRRD) is in my view the most crucial regulatory change in Europe in relation to breaking the bank-sovereign nexus. It represents a true paradigm change, ending the culture of bail-out and ushering in a culture of bail-in.

Of course, this is not to say that financial sector weaknesses are not important, or sufficiently recognised. The broad Comprehensive Assessment that we have started reflects precisely the importance of balance-sheet repair. My point is rather that while the on-going deleveraging in the banking sector certainly plays an important role in the inadequate current levels of credit supply to the real economy, factors related to the demand side may play an even more important role. The weak demand outlook combined with the slack in industrial capacity is the most important explanation for the drop in private investment since the crisis, and the most relevant limiting factor for future investment. In addition, the protracted period of low inflation and consequent low nominal growth will increase the burden of the debt overhang of households and governments, further complicating the recovery process. The separation of banks from sovereigns As I mentioned before, the goal of separating the fortune of banks from that of the sovereigns and vice-versa through direct European recapitalisation of weak banks via the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) was present in the embryo of what later became the Banking Union project. Somewhat ironically, however, this widening of the focus caused the initial objective to become obscured. The question of European direct recapitalisation – for which a framework has still not been published– ceased to be the main focus of attention. In the view of many commentators, the SRM became the expected instrument to achieve the separation between banks and sovereigns.
Withdrawals from the fund at 4 per cent can therefore finance 15 per cent of public spending in 10 years’ time. This can continue on a permanent basis without reducing the capital in the fund. The fund will therefore lead to smaller cuts in government welfare spending than would have been the case without the fund as the costs related to the ageing of the population have an impact on government budgets. The actual building up of the fund may span a short generation. A fund with investment abroad enables Norway to separate the revenues generated by oil and gas production from petroleum revenue spending. An alternative could have been to regulate the production rate, keeping our wealth under the sea bed for a longer period, as was attempted in the 1970s when the production ceiling was set at 90 million standard cubic metres per year. Oil companies currently produce 240 million standard cubic metres per year. The fund acts as a buffer between widely fluctuating oil revenues and domestic expenditure. The annual spending decision can be made independently of the size of the revenues. Thus, the fluctuations in government oil revenues do not have an automatic impact on the Norwegian economy. The fund also has a stabilising effect on the krone exchange rate as capital outflows increase when Norway’s petroleum revenues rise. As a savings plan, the fund enables petroleum revenues to be used by not only the current generation but also future generations. The fiscal rule ensures that this is the case.

We can also ask whether investment in Norway could be an alternative to our investments in international financial markets. It is important to emphasise that the oil fund does not stand in the way of corporate investment. The government can choose the composition, required rate of return and risk profile for its investments without considering the funding requirements of Norwegian enterprises. By the same token, Norwegian companies can choose their debt and equity structure independently of the government’s financial investments. There is a capital market between the government as investor and corporate capital needs. The government’s foreign savings plans do not therefore affect Norwegian companies’ access to capital and required rate of return on their investments. There are sound arguments for investing in infrastructure, better schools and state-of-the-art research. But this should be possible anyway given the increase in expenditure that is provided for by the fiscal rule. The profitability of government investments is based on a discount rate of 4 per cent. This secures about the same required rate of return as the government can expect to achieve on its oil fund investments over time. 6 A question that might be raised is whether there is a queue of sound and profitable projects that have to wait because of an excessively tight fiscal policy. It is difficult to find support for this. 7 In the National Transport Plan for 2010–2019, which can perhaps be considered representative of government spending, spending on road investments is set at around NOK 140 billion.
Source: Bank of England  Chart 7: Spread of effective mortgage and personal loan rates (new business) to Bank Rate P ersonal loans  30  50  5  PNFCs  100  Chart 8: UK corporate bond spreads  Per cent 6  Basis P oint s 1200 Non-invest ment grade  5  M ortgages  1000  4  800  3  600  2  400 Invest ment grade  1  200  0 2001  2002  2003  2004  2005  2006  2007  0 1998  Source: Bank of England  2000  2002  2004  2006  Source: Bloomberg, Bank of England  Chart 9: Decomposition of UK noninvestment grade corporate bond spreads  Chart 10: Issuance of UK residential mortgage-backed securities  Basis point s  Residual including liquidit y Uncert aint y about default loss Expect ed default loss  £ blns 60  1000 Actu al  50  800  40 600  30 400  `  20 200  10  0  0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007  -200 1998  2000  2002  2004  2006  Source: Dealogic  Source: Bloomberg, Bank of England  12  BIS Review 149/2007  Chart 11: Gross corporate bond issuance by UK private non-financial companies (all currencies)  Chart 12: Basis between credit spreads on bonds and credit default swaps  £ billions 12  basis point s 150  10  100 Europe  8  50  6  0  4  -50 -100  2  US -150  0 2003  2004  2005  2006  -200  2007  -250  Source: Bank of England Jan.  Apr.

Jean-Pierre Roth: Ten years’ experience in steering interest rates – taking stock of the Swiss National Bank’s monetary policy strategy Summary of a speech by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the University of Fribourg, Fribourg, 20 November 2009. The complete speech can be found in French on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  The Swiss National Bank’s monetary policy strategy has proved successful over the ten years since its introduction. Throughout this period, the SNB fulfilled its mandate of ensuring price stability while taking into account economic developments. The inflation forecasts, produced quarterly on the basis of various indicators, have proved especially useful. It has always been possible to successfully manage the Libor – the operational objective of the SNB’s monetary policy – despite an international environment which, at times, has been extremely turbulent. The Libor was maintained within a range intended to provide the bestpossible conditions for a favourable development of the Swiss economy.
That twenty year period has been far from a quiet one, for the Bank or the commercial property industry. The Bank gained operational independence for monetary policy through the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) in 1997; had its role in supervising individual firms first stripped from it in 1998 and then, earlier this year, re-instated through the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA); and, most recently, has taken on responsibility for so-called macro-prudential regulation through the new Financial Policy Committee (FPC). The commercial property industry’s fortunes have been just as undulating. But throughout those ups and downs, the Forum has remained a key source of intelligence for the Bank and the industry and an important sign of cooperation between the Bank and the industry. Since 1997, the Forum has helped inform the deliberations of the MPC and, over the past few years, the PRA and FPC. And it was the success of the Forum that led me, three years ago, to set up a parallel Residential Property Forum, chaired by Nick Ritblat. Some of you will have heard me say that the Forum is one of the best meetings I attend at the Bank. And I know some of you, on hearing that, have been left wondering just what my other meetings must be like. Speaking on behalf of the Bank, I wanted to say how grateful we are to you all for those contributions. But what has the Forum achieved during its life? And, looking forward, what could it achieve in future?

The new bank resolution regime in the EU Let me now turn more specifically to the EU, where a legislative proposal for a directive – in line with the FSB standard – will shortly be published by the Commission. Judging by the papers and communications previously made public, the new framework has the overall objective of dealing with failing institutions in a way that safeguards the stability of the EU financial system as a whole and minimises public costs and economic disruption. A number of innovative elements can be identified in this emerging framework. First, it covers not only resolution, but rather all phases of a bank crisis, including preventive measures and early intervention powers. Accordingly, if problems were to arise in a bank, so that it became likely that it would breach the prudential requirements, a harmonised set of early intervention measures could be applied by supervisors. This area is highly important, since I strongly believe that a timely step by a supervisor to prevent things from getting worse is worth more than the best resolution efforts. The early intervention measures envisaged, such as prohibiting the payment of dividends, imposing additional reporting requirements, and requiring the replacement of managers or directors or the cessation of certain risky activities, are already in the toolkit of some Member States, but the new framework would mean that each tool would be available in each Member State, and it would be applied in a harmonised manner, based on common triggers.
Svein Gjedrem: Transatlantic economic partnership - Nordic and American perspectives Speech by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the Nordic Investment Bank Economic Colloquium, New York, 19 November 2002. Please note that the text below may differ slightly from the actual presentation. *  *  *  The Nordic countries and the US have long historic ties. I believe, Mr. Chairman, that the number of Norwegians and their descendants living in the US today is larger than the population of Norway. I think similar numbers can be found for the other Scandinavian countries. I will attempt to show here today that even in economic terms, the ties have never been closer. I will mainly concentrate on the Nordic perspective, but I also have few specific remarks about Norway. GNI per capita 2000. PPP 40000  International dollars  35000 30000 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 0 US  Norway  Iceland  Denmark  Finland  Sweden  Source: World Development Indicators database, World Bank, 7/16/01 SG 240802  The Nordic economies are small, open and mature economies. At least, Norway, Iceland and Denmark compare roughly with US income levels. In the case of Norway, the income differential against the US is mainly explained by shorter working hours. Labour productivity in the US1) and Norway2) Index.

Investments – all portfolio investments - are spread between equities and fixed income instruments, as well as across countries. Approximately 29 per cent of the fund is invested directly in the US stock market and in dollar-denominated bonds. The size of the fund has increased rapidly over the last few years, and will reach approximately 90 per cent of GDP by the end of this decade, according to estimates from the Ministry of Finance. This implies further investments of considerable amounts, also in the US market. While the US economy has always been an important trading partner, our investments abroad and the globalisation of the financial system will further increase our interest in the US economy in the years ahead. The links, already important, will expand further. 6  BIS Review 70/2002