samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Confidence in the speciedaler would be based on a stock of silver in Norges Bank’s vault. The promise to ensure that banknotes could be exchanged for the equivalent of their face value in silver was to be honoured. But the stock of silver had to be procured first. Appeals to raise sufficient funds through share subscription on a voluntary basis were not successful and the government had to resort to coercive measures. Anyone with the means to do so had to contribute to finance the newly established bank. For many Norwegians, the silver tax – as it came to be known – was a  1  In 1814, Norway entered into a personal union with Sweden under the Swedish king, who reigned from Stockholm. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  heavy burden. Years of war and crop failures had set the economy back. 1816 is known as the year without a summer. In many cases, families were forced to relinquish their life savings or beautiful silver ornaments in order to pay the tax. Farmers from the Hallingdal and Valdres valleys marched on Christiania in protest. The finance minister, Count Herman Wedel Jarlsberg, chopped up the family silver himself and threw it onto the scales, with the heirlooms still wet from the tears shed by his wife, Karen, Prime Minister Anker’s daughter, so the story goes. Many years later, the poet Henrik Wergeland put words to the struggle – and the reward – brought by the silver tax.

Øystein Olsen: Guardian of the monetary system Speech by Mr Øystein Olsen, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the official event to mark the bicentenary of Norges Bank, Trondheim, 14 June 2016. *  *  *  Your Majesty, President of the Storting, Minister and honoured guests, Exactly two hundred years ago today, the Act relating to the monetary system of Norway was signed into law by King Karl II of Norway. The Act was an important step in the restoration of Norway as an independent nation. Two years earlier – at Eidsvoll – Christian Magnus Falsen, a key member of the 1814 Constituent Assembly, had asserted that no state can exist without a well-functioning monetary system. A national currency would be a symbol of Norway’s sovereignty and freedom. And to secure independence, the country’s economy had to be brought into order. With a monetary system in ruins, this was no easy task. Norway’s governing men – and no doubt Norway’s women too – had long been aware that a country without its own bank was at a disadvantage. It was a long way to Copenhagen, where the nearest bank was located. With no easy access to a bank, people had to rely on friends and relatives or business acquaintances instead. Theatres were not only places of entertainment, but important meeting places where deals could be struck and money exchanged. And if the theatregoer was lucky, he might go home with a loan in his pocket.
For example, Ehrmann and Fratzscher (2005) estimate that, over one day, about one-third of US Treasury bill rate changes feed through to euro area interbank rates, but that beyond this US monetary policy has no significant impact on the euro area. Neely (2015) finds spillovers of a similar magnitude. Curcuru et al. (2018), in contrast, find that during a one-day period, ECB announcement surprises spill over to US Treasury yields in a similar manner as Federal Open Market Committee announcement surprises spill over to German Bund yields. 2 See, for example, Kim (2001), Georgiadis (2016), Chen et al. (2017) and Iacoviello and Navarro (2018). The  5/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  results for conventional and unconventional monetary policy are similar. Rogers et al. (2014) and Chen et al. (2016) provide evidence on large spillovers from the Federal Reserve’s unconventional monetary policy to the euro area. 3 Ca’ Zorzi et al. (2019) and Jarociński and Karadi (2018) draw a distinction between monetary policy surprises  (the so-called shocks) and other surprises, such as news effects. 4 Spreads relative to speculative bonds (below BBB rating), averaged over all maturities. 5 Corporate bond spreads increase by about 10 basis points and stock markets decline by about 50 basis points  in response to a monetary policy shock that increases one-year government bond yields by 2 basis points. 6 See Ca’ Zorzi et al. (2019). 7 See Miranda-Agrippino and Rey (2018).

This new set of powers has been introduced rather quickly –over a few short years – and this leaves us with a number of questions still awaiting answers. We need to better understand the effectiveness of the new instruments in improving the resilience of the financial system, in reducing systemic risks, and the trade-offs between different policy options. We also need to understand how macroprudential policies can affect risk-taking attitudes by different agents and to what extent the provision of credit to the real economy may be affected, especially during difficult periods. After a thorough analysis, it might be the case that the current macroprudential toolkit is still insufficient or incomplete. The European Union’s macroprudential framework is currently under review and different possibilities are being contemplated to fine-tune the applicable legislation and to introduce additional instruments. Over the last decade we have observed that bank-like activities are increasingly being undertaken by non-banks, in particular the so-called shadow banks. There is a debate about expanding the scope of the macroprudential instruments beyond the banking system. Another area of discussion is whether it will be necessary to introduce borrower-oriented instruments in order to address in a more effective way misalignments in real estate markets. For all these issues, your analyses and new insights are, indeed, important. So, we have ahead of us a large amount of work and avenues for research. As regards the Conference programme, some of the topics I referred to will be discussed today and tomorrow, as well as the interaction with other policies.
Today, you are gathered here to deliberate on current trends, challenges and opportunities in building a social enterprise ecosystem and to help social enterprises and SMEs to scale up and create social impact, under the timely theme of “Think Social -Produce Social - Buy Social”. I believe this conference would be an effective pathway, particularly for emerging and prospective entrepreneurs to explore new markets for social goods and services and also an opportunity to share knowledge on successful social ventures at both local and global levels. You are all aware that maintaining a stable macroeconomic environment through economic and price stability and financial system stability are the core objectives of the Central Bank. Promoting regional development is one of the agency functions of the Central Bank. Promoting social enterprises is therefore, associated with the broader objectives of the Central Bank. In that context, the Central Bank, on behalf of the Government, has a mandate for targeted lending to the microfinance, SME and agriculture sectors, as well as youth and women. In implementing this mandate, the Central Bank has been facilitating and implementing refinance schemes, interest subsidy schemes and credit guarantee schemes targeting the MSMEs. 2  In addition, the Central Bank has embarked upon developing a National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS), to introduce an evidence-based, prioritized, better resourced, and more comprehensive approach to expanding access to financial services. This would be an essential policy tool that will coordinate and implement cross-cutting actions and reforms, to increase financial inclusion in the country.

Ardian Fullani: Current development stage of the Albanian economy Speech by Mr Ardian Fullani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the regional meeting of the Bank of Albania, Fier District, 31 January 2012. *  *  *  Dear guests, It is an honour and great privilege to be here with you today to share some reflections and ideas on the current development stage of the Albanian economy in general, and your region in particular. Regional meetings have now become a consolidated tradition in our public communication philosophy. We believe that meetings of this kind serve to accomplish the Bank of Albania’s objectives by ensuring a better explanation of the monetary policy-making. In addition to enhancing the transparency of our decision-making, this direct communication also embodies another function, that of public education. We ultimately believe that this communication contributes to a greater efficiency in transmitting the monetary policy decisions to the economy. I cannot, however, refrain myself from sharing some personal impressions I have made over the years on Fier and its people. Your city is an important crossroad connecting the lower part of Albania to the south, including the Ionian Riviera. I think this makes a strong point in favour of Fier, a comparative advantage relative to many other cities in Albania. And not just that. Fier opens wide into the Adriatic Sea, beginning from the embouchure of Seman River in the north to that of Vjosa River in the south.
Although the fall in GDP was greater in Sweden than in many other countries, the recovery has gone more quickly and we are now on much more stable ground than most others. There are several reasons for this. But I believe that one important explanation is the insights we gained from the deep recession at the beginning of the 1990s. We then realised the importance of building stable frameworks for both monetary policy and fiscal policy to create proper conditions for long-term stability. When economic agents make decisions they have been able to rely on inflation being reasonably stable and on public finances not being weakened to an extent that requires severe tightening. The latter in particular is now a problem in many countries. When things get difficult, as in the recent crisis, the fundamental faith in the economic policy framework has meant that we could stimulate the economy strongly without anyone questioning the credibility of the inflation target or the sustainability of Sweden’s public finances. Our bank system has also managed better than those in many other countries. To some extent this is probably due to lessons learned from our own earlier bank crisis. For example, the banks have avoided so-called structural products with elements of high-risk US mortgages, which were one of the causes of the crisis in the first place.

News conference  22 September 2022, 10.00 am  Introductory remarks by Thomas Jordan Ladies and gentlemen It is my pleasure to welcome you to the news conference of the Swiss National Bank. Our news conferences will now be held after every monetary policy assessment. The introductory remarks will be shorter overall. This will give us more time to take your questions afterwards. Monetary policy decision  I will begin with our monetary policy decision. We have decided to tighten our monetary policy further and to raise the SNB policy rate by 0.75 percentage points to 0.5%. In doing so, we are countering the renewed rise in inflationary pressure and the spread of inflation to goods and services that have so far been less affected. It cannot be ruled out that further increases in the SNB policy rate will be necessary to ensure price stability over the medium term. To provide appropriate monetary conditions, we are also willing to be active in the foreign exchange market as necessary. The SNB policy rate change applies from tomorrow, 23 September 2022. Moreover, we are adjusting the implementation of our monetary policy to the positive interest rate environment. This ensures that the secured short-term Swiss franc money market rates remain close to the SNB policy rate. Banks’ sight deposits held at the SNB are remunerated at the SNB policy rate up to a certain threshold. Sight deposits above this threshold are remunerated at an interest rate of zero percent. We will also use liquidity-absorbing measures.
The FOMC similarly committed to keep the US economy growing, with state-contingent forward guidance being issued in December 2012. The MPC had voted to increase its stock of asset purchases to £ billion in July 2012 and introduced the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS). Taken together these factors were generating a growing “hunt for yield”, initially cautious and focussed on relatively simple, liquid financial instruments but gradually expanding, especially in terms of credit risk – for example “high yield” bonds were in particularly high demand, leading to historically compressed spreads. Since then, we have seen a game of two halves. If I move on to around April this year, the picture had changed substantively relative to the autumn. The previously perceived tail risks were fading from discussions. Europe was making progress on a number of structural reforms, including moving towards a banking union. A mini-crisis in Cyprus had been dealt with, without too many spillovers. Spreads over bunds for sovereign debt of the larger vulnerable euro-area economies had narrowed considerably. The US “fiscal cliff” at end-2012 had passed by with some relief (although concerns about the processes associated with the US fiscal deficit have now resurfaced). While fiscal consolidation might have slowed US growth somewhat, the process of adjustment around the turn of the year had been smoother than feared and the macroeconomic repercussions rather less. China had injected some renewed stimulus and Japan had introduced a far reaching new economic framework of quantitative and qualitative easing to improve the outlook there.

Lenders report that loan spreads have fallen for companies of all sizes, and that credit availability has increased, but the improvement has been less marked for small and medium-sized businesses. We have seen banks take different approaches to SME loans: one bank has scrapped some of its arrangement fees, another is offering guaranteed discounted borrowing costs and another offers a cash back scheme. So one can’t capture the impact of the FLS on the cost of borrowing for businesses in a single simple, headline, interest rate measure. Survey evidence from the Federation of Small Businesses suggests that the pricing of loans for small businesses was more favourable in 2013 Q2 than in mid-2012 – but availability was reportedly poor. So it’s a mixed picture overall for SMEs. Going forward, SME credit conditions should be supported by the extension to the FLS announced in April, which provides additional incentives for participants to increase lending to SMEs both this year and in 2014. A large proportion of FLS participants have indicated their intention to participate in the extended Scheme. It is likely that any person or business who has borrowed from a bank since the middle of last year will have done so at a cheaper rate than they would have done in the absence of the Scheme. If so then the FLS will have had a monetary impulse on the economy. We think that the FLS will continue to bear down on lending rates to households and businesses in the rest of this year and beyond.
In addition, low interest rates minimize the cost to the United States of our substantial negative net debt position. In addition, the fact that our foreign indebtedness is for the most part denominated in our own currency is a huge advantage in the event the dollar were to come under significant downward pressure. That is because a decline in the dollar would raise the value of the income earned on our foreign direct investment and foreign-currency denominated assets, relative to the income that foreigners earned on their dollar-denominated investments in the United States. All else being equal, this would boost our net investment income balance. Note that borrowing per se is not necessarily a bad thing. The key is what the borrowing is used for – to finance consumption or investment. And, if it is used to fund investment, it is also important how productive that investment turns out to be over time. So what did we do with this inflow of foreign saving? We invested in a substantial volume of physical capital, particularly residential and nonresidential real estate (Chart 4). It seems clear that one important factor behind this investment was the decline in long-term interest rates. For example, from 2003 through 2005 mortgage rates declined to just under 6 percent on average, the lowest level since the first half of the 1960s. These lower mortgage interest rates were capitalized into asset prices. Rising prices for residential and nonresidential real  1  Brender, Anton and Florence Pisani. 2007.

The early stages of past recoveries have been led by consumer spending, particularly for durable goods and residential investment. For example, in the first year of recovery following the deep recessions of 1973–1975 and 1981–1982, real consumer spending increased an average of 6.5 percent and residential investment rose an average of 38 percent. It is unlikely that we will experience this type of strength this time. Households have suffered unusually large shocks to both income and wealth and many remain highly leveraged (Chart 18). Although the household debt to net worth ratio has declined considerably from its peak, it is still around 26 percent, well above the already elevated average of the past decade (Chart 19). Moreover, even if consumers wanted to borrow, credit availability is still constrained and underwriting standards remain relatively tight. Real consumer spending increased at a 2.25 percent annual rate over the second half of 2009 and looks to be growing at about that rate in the first quarter of 2010. Given that the personal saving rate is still relatively low, it will be hard for consumer spending to grow more quickly without large increases in real labor income. But big increases in real labor income won’t be possible without a much stronger recovery in output. And a much stronger recovery in output is unlikely without stronger consumption. Residential investment did increase over the second half of 2009, boosted by relatively low mortgage interest rates, lower home prices and the first-time home buyer tax credit.
29  This was not the first time Norwegian authorities established a silver standard. In accordance with the regulation of King Haakon V of 1314, silver was to have a standard of purity of 13 ½ lødig, which is equivalent to .844 silver according to the modern method for calculating fineness (Halén, Widar (2009): “Arvesølvet og Peter Wessel Zapffes sølvgave” [The family silver and Peter Wessel Zapffe’s gift of silver]. Lecture at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. 30  The speciedaler became legal tender shortly after Norges Bank was established. 31  Adam Posen, a former member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, compares central banks to pharmacists: “[W]ith a limited medicine cabinet, and restricted by law from exceeding certain bounds, both must make sense of scrawled prescriptions from differing specialists, decide what side effects to take into account, and then ultimately dispense the proper dosage of medicine to their customers, all without knowing or controlling everything else the patient is consuming.” See Foreign Affairs: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/ articles/139465/adam-s-posen/the-myth-of-the-omnipotent-central-banker. 32  Karl Bomhoff was appointed as the first Governor of Norges Bank in 1893. When Norges Bank’s head office was moved to Oslo, Bomhoff also moved to the head office, where there was more extensive expertise than earlier. This facilitated Norges Bank’s role as bankers’ bank. The theme of my speech is institutions. It might seem paradoxical to refer to physical persons, such as Bomhoff, and not decision-making bodies.

The introduction of the Deutschmark was followed by measures to deregulate the economy and dismantle price controls. Virtually overnight, goods were available in the shops again. In the wake of these reforms, the Bank deutscher Länder, the precursor of the Bundesbank, was founded. The launch of the Deutschmark was an institutional prerequisite for the beginning of the postwar German Wirtschaftswunder. The successful reform bolstered the reputation of the monetary policy authorities and provided fertile soil for the trust the Bundesbank has enjoyed as a defender of stable money up to the present day. 21  The events in Argentina in 2007 led to the initiation of a research project at the MIT Sloan School of Management to collect price data from retailers on a daily basis using scraping technology. The project, currently referred to as the Billion Prices Project (see http://bpp.mit.edu/) is primarily associated with the MIT researchers Alberto Cavallo and Roberto Rigobon. The project started on a very small scale where in 2007. Cavallo used the technology to collect price data from supermarkets across Argentina, and he showed that inflation in Argentina was between twice and three times as high reported in the official figures. Today, the project is being continued under the direction of the private company PriceStats, which provides data collection and processing services. The Billion Prices Project currently involves the collection of price information from more than 70 countries and daily inflation series are published for over 20 of them.