samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
That means they are unlikely to be accessible to the vast majority of the general public. It is communication among the financial elite in the language of the financial elite. Perhaps that is no more than confirmation of what we already knew. Nonetheless, it means these communications are, by themselves, unlikely to have helped build, or rebuild, generalised trust in banking. It also begs the question of what more could be done to make banking more accessible to the wider public to help build trust. One option might be for the banking industry to conduct events similar in spirit to the Open Forum – events which seek to engage with, and take messages from, the general public. These might be one means of accreting personalised trust with customers – “Trust Town Halls”. To be successful, these would need to be repeated rather than one-off events, as personalised trust arises from repeat interactions. Another idea is to consider whether there was scope for something akin to an annual report for customers, rather than investors. This might be (considerably) shorter in length, (considerably) simpler in language and (considerably) easier to digest in a 5 minute sitting. It would be part of banks’ contract, social rather than legal, with their customers. A third idea  60  Shannon (1948). 61  DuBay (2004). 62  These include the Coleman−Liau, ARI, SMOG, Gunning fog, Flesch−Kincaid and Coleman correct completion measures.

The road ahead These initiatives are important down-payments towards closing the trust deficit. Yet even if these initiatives are necessary steps, are they likely to be sufficient? The Bank’s Open Forum suggested that would be an optimistic conclusion. So too would the evidence from various opinion polls and, indeed, from banks’ own assessments of their culture. If so, what further initiatives might help in closing the Great Divide? It may be tempting to conclude that the trust gap can be closed by simply having a bettereducated public, one which better appreciates the important role finance plays in supporting the economy and wider society. On this diagnosis, closing the Great Divide would call for enhanced public understanding of finance, perhaps through a targeted public education programme. Yet as Gillian Guy, CEO of Citizen’s Advice, perceptively pointed out at the Bank’s Open Forum, the perception gap may as much reflect the lack of understanding of the public on the part of those inside finance as a lack of understanding of finance on the part of the public. I think that is spot on. Closing the perception gap calls for a two-sided effort. (a)  Enhancing public education  A great many people find financial issues difficult and boring. That is a weak foundation for making good financial choices. At least some of those problems originate in the mental block many people encounter when it comes to mathematics. Finance is a numbers game.
Capital adequacy indicators in Romania and the EU (average) 20  Figure 10. Stress test results for credit institutions (September 2017)  percent  10  19  percent  0  18 -10 17 -20  16 15  -30  14 -40  total capital ratio Tier 1 capital ratio total capital ratio – EU average Tier 1 capital ratio – EU average Source: NBR, EBA  -50 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28  Sep. 17  Jun. 17  Mar. 17  Dec. 16  Sep. 16  Jun. 16  Mar. 16  Dec. 15  Sep. 15  Jun. 15  Mar. 15  Dec. 14  13  potential impact on own funds median value of impact impact at system level Source: NBR 8  Figure 11. Value of LCR* (September 2017) percent  percent  Figure 12.

Unemployment rate stayed on a downward track and employment rate was stuck to the uptrend (Figure 6). Nevertheless, these developments should be read considering the widening of the structural government deficit and the increase in the trade deficit, whereas inflation rate returned quickly into the upper half of the variation band of the target and the exchange rate of the leu against the euro depreciated slightly since the beginning of the year. At the same time, the interbank market rate rose at an accelerated pace in September, and stabilised thereafter, amid the pick-up in annual inflation rate and the consolidation in expectations of an adjustment in the monetary policy stance, coupled with the decline in the structural liquidity surplus under the simultaneous influence of the main autonomous liquidity factors, namely operations in the Treasury account and non-residents’ transactions on the local financial market. As for the banking sector, key financial and prudential indicators have further posted a robust performance. In the assessment conducted by the EBA, the indicators are in the lowrisk bucket in terms of capitalisation, coverage by provisions, profitability, and balance sheet structure; in the medium-risk bucket in terms of asset quality and operational efficiency; and in the high-risk bucket as regards restructuring measures (Figure 8). Solvency indicators continued to stand at adequate levels and the substantial capital reserves relative to prudential requirements provide a good capacity to absorb unexpected losses and resources to ensure lending to the real sector (Figure 10).
The price-earnings ratio of the euro area stock market (shown on the left of slide 8) indicates that despite the rather elevated level, this valuation measure remains well below its peaks reached in 2000. However, should corporate earnings growth unexpectedly slow down, the consequent rise in price-earnings ratios could make stocks look relatively expensive to other assets. The chart on the right plots the implied volatility of euro area stock prices and corporate bond spreads which both gradually declined throughout the first five months of the current year, despite rising longterm bond yields. The rather sharp jump in these indicators during the last two weeks, suggests that there was room for adjustment to a higher pricing of risk in the context of changing views regarding the future macro-financial environment. Before discussing the developments in euro area financial institutions, let me first highlight an important dimension of the market-based intermediation process: the rapid development of structured finance products. Although the risk-transfer that this market has facilitated has very likely led to efficiency gains and a better management of risks within the financial systems, there are several concerns which mostly arise from the fact that relatively little is known about how this market has effectively spread risk and how it would function in a situation of extreme stress. Since June 2002, the size of the global credit default swaps market has increased nearly exponentially (see chart on the right on slide 9).

Lucas Papademos: ECB Financial Stability Review June 2006 Opening remarks by Mr Lucas Papademos, Vice President of the European Central Bank, at the press briefing on the occasion of the publication of the June 2006 ECB Financial Stability Review, Frankfurt am Main, 1 June 2006. The slides and charts for this speech can be found on the ECB website at www.ecb.int. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen,  1. Introduction  Welcome to this press briefing on the occasion of the presentation of the June 2006 edition of the ECB’s Financial Stability Review. As usual, the financial stability assessment contained in the Review reflects the input of a significant number of experts, and it builds on both inter-departmental work within the ECB and very close collaboration with the ESCB Banking Supervision Committee. The report that has been made available to you follows the same overall structure as the previous Reviews which the ECB has been publishing semi-annually since December 2004. However, the scope of the analysis has been broadened to include dedicated sections on the euro area commercial property markets, credit risk transfer market issues and hedge funds. Specific themes of particular interest have been addressed in a total of 17 boxes. There are also three Special Feature articles, notably a discussion of macro-level stress testing practices across EU countries, an assessment of banking system risk using extreme value analysis, and an investigation of the driving forces behind EU banks’ stock returns.
Asia is clearly slowing amid the weak US economic recovery and the euro crisis. At the last policy forum, Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble, Federal Minister of Finance of Germany, spoke at this forum and shared with us his views from the eye of the storm. Now, as the storm moves east to Asia, Governor Glenn Stevens will be able to share with us his views from the perspective of our region with respect to the external challenges we are facing.2 3. Apart from common external challenges, Australia and Thailand also share many internal characteristics as well as a similar monetary policy framework. For example, both are open economies. Both export commodities and import oil. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) practices inflation-targeting with a flexible exchange rate. In fact, it is considered a pioneer among central banks as it adopted inflation-targeting in 1994. As you all know, the Bank of Thailand also practices inflation-targeting with a flexible exchange rate. Both Australia and Thailand recently experienced substantial exchange rate swings amid the euro crisis. A flexible exchange rate regime allows flexibility in responding to exchange rate movements. However, in a world where global liquidity is especially fluid due to loose monetary policies in the US and the euro zone, can exchange rates move out of line with fundamentals for prolonged period of time? This is an issue that faces not only Australia and Thailand but also the region as a whole.

As a life-long central banker, I’m sure Governor Glenn Stevens can give us the broader perspective on this issue. 4. I sincerely hope that the common lessons learned from our experiences within the region will help us, and indeed other central banks, better manage the complexities of the global economy. 5. Before we hear from Governor Stevens, I wish to take this opportunity to thank all guests for joining us at this Policy Forum to mark the 70th anniversary of the Bank of Thailand. Many of you here have been an integral part of our policy progress over the past many years. On this note, may I propose a toast of appreciation to all of you and of hope that many of you will continue to support a common vision toward building further policy progress for the well-being of all Thais in years to come. 6. Thank you. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1
In political terms it would help make the Euro area more than the sum of its parts. Jean Monnet famously declared that “nothing is possible without men, but nothing lasts without institutions.” The mandate of this decision-making institution must be to achieve the strongest, sustainable and balanced growth. II. How we should define concretely the tasks for a Euro area Finance Minister  I see four of them. First, the Minister would be in charge of preparing the euro area-wide collective strategy to fulfill the mandate I just described. It would be essential for the euro area to collectively agree on overall economic policy objectives, and on the division of tasks through the setting of individual performance targets for Member States. Such an agreement could be reached following a two-step process: •  A preparation phase would require assessing: (i) potential growth, with a quantified ambition to raise it; (ii) the euro area output gap; (iii) the sustainable fiscal and external stances for the euro area as a whole, as well as the sustainable distribution of these positions across countries. •  In a decision phase, the euro area Finance Minister would propose a strategy, consisting of the collective objective and – as far as necessary – its country specific translations in terms of reforms and policy stance, bearing in mind of course the rationale for subsidiarity.

François Villeroy de Galhau: The challenge of an efficient European economic governance as a contribution to a prosperous global community Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, at the Emerging Markets Forum, Paris, 11 April 2016. *  *  *  Dear friends and distinguished guests, Let us take the long view. This forum, thanks to Michel Camdessus and Harinder Kohli, is a rare opportunity to discuss what the global economy and its governance might look like two generations from now. In a moment, we will argue about global megatrends and alternative scenarios. With so many distinguished participants from emerging market economies and specialists of the international monetary system in the room, I would like to speak today as a European. As I see it, the European perspective is relevant in this Forum for at least three main reasons: •  Regional integration may be one of the megatrends: how it will affect the delicate balance between sovereignty and international cooperation is a question that the EU has been mulling over since its inception. •  Many of the global and coordination challenges we are facing have been confronted over the course of European integration, and are still at the core of the debate: economic spillovers and externalities, monetary stability, and effective governance.
23 It is important to note that these new regulatory and behavioral factors are related to liquidity in general and not strictly about reserves held in Federal Reserve accounts as in Regulation D. Banks have many possible means for addressing their requirements under the LCR, and the LCR rule does not impose any specific requirement to hold central bank reserves. 7  have various ways to meet their obligations under this system: their choices are not limited to simply holding more reserves. As a result, reserve scarcity may be accompanied by shifts in market pricing and flows that we might not have seen in the old framework. Finally, the old system provided a degree of stability over time through its ability to reallocate scarce reserves among banks in response to shocks through interbank lending in the federal funds market. This interbank activity largely dried up following the crisis and has not meaningfully returned—in part due to regulatory incentives, but also because banks report that they are now less interested in taking on financial exposure to other banks. 24 As a result, it is possible that a regime of less abundant reserves may now be accompanied by an element of increasing volatility or periodic turbulence in money markets. One new way in which scarcity might manifest itself going forward is through effects related to the LCR. Very generally, the LCR is designed to ensure that banks hold a sufficient reserve of high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) to allow them to survive a short-term period of significant liquidity stress.

Importantly, there are no signs of worsened counterparty concerns among banks, and spreads in the FX swaps market in dollar and other advanced-economy currency pairs have tightened in recent months, demonstrating that foreign firms that wish to obtain dollars by providing foreign currency effectively as collateral can do so on reasonable terms. That said, I do recognize that capital flows to emerging market economies have diminished in recent months. But, this shift appears to be largely driven by divergence in nearterm growth momentum, which has supported the dollar and triggered some pullbacks in portfolio flows and reduced borrower demand, and not by general dislocations in the availability of short-term dollar funding. We will continue to monitor developments in U.S. and global dollar funding markets closely, as we always do. In this regard, our ongoing dialogue with fellow central bankers, including through meetings such as this one, provides us with very valuable insight and perspective. As part of the New York Fed’s ongoing engagement in and commitment to the region, we are pleased to be partnering with Bank Indonesia on a joint Central Banking Forum, which will take place prior to the 2018 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group in Bali in October. This forum will highlight economic and monetary policy developments in the United States and emerging markets as well as geopolitical and technological trends and their implications for central bankers. We hope that you and members of your delegation will be able to join us for this event.
Giving such bonds favourable treatment in debt sustainability assessments could enhance their attractiveness. More work is needed to pin down how such instruments could be implemented in practice. Work by the IMF on introducing flexibility for sovereign debt in distress situations is also worth considering. 12  See Bank of England (2013). 13  See IMF (July 2014). 14  See IMF (April 2013). 15  Brooke et al (2013). 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  (ii)  Facilitating agreements on a debt restructuring  The Bank has also been a strong supporter of the recent contractual innovations to ease resolvability once default occurs: i) changes to “Collective Action Clauses” (CACs) in bond contracts so that decisions can be taken by a majority of creditors across all bond issuances, without the need for an issuance-by-issuance vote; and ii) reforms to the “pari passu” clause to prevent a repeat of the Argentinian situation. Indeed, the Bank has set an example here by including a new style CAC clause in a recent US Dollar bond issue. The new style contracts have also seen good take-up among emerging market issuers in their foreign-law bonds (the new clause was designed for foreign law bonds, for which the collective action problem tends to be more acute). Since October 2014, 59% of the nominal principal amount of total issuances has included these enhanced CACs for countries such as Mexico, Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Egypt.

BIS central bankers’ speeches  Charts and Tables Chart 1: Evolution of the global financial  Chart 2: Composition of IMF resources  safety net as a percentage of external liabilities (1980–2014) Per cent of global external Per cent of global external liabilities liabilities 14 3.5 Regional Financing Arrangments Swap Lines  12  3.0  IMF Temporary  10  2.5  IMF Permanent Self Insurance: FX Reserves (LHS)  8  2.0  6  1.5  4  1.0  2  0.5  0  1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012  0.0  Sources: IMF, central bank websites, RFAs, Lane and MilessiFeretti (2012) and Bank calculations. GAB – General Arrangements to Borrow NAB – New Arrangements to Borrow Source: IMF and Bank calculations. Chart 3: Regional FX over- and underinsurance (2014)(a)  Sum overinsurance  Sub-saharan Africa  Middle East and North Africa  Latin America  Central and Eastern Europe  Sum underinsurance  Asia  $ billion 1000 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0  Sources: IMF and Bank calculations. BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  (a) Degree of insurance is measured against the standard IMF metric. Chart 4: Access to regional financial arrangements bigger than 0.5% of regional GDP (2014)  Sources: National Sources, IMF and Bank calculations. 10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  References Brooke, M et al (2013) Sovereign default and state-contingent debt, Financial Stability Paper No. 27.
The Governor gave precisely one speech a year - the annual Mansion House lecture (Chart 4). This tended not to be rich in content. Nor was it not ideally suited to enhancing wider public understanding, being delivered to an audience of around 300 City bankers and merchants, several glasses of wine into the evening. Body language can sometimes substitute for the spoken word. So it was at the Bank of England. In the 1920s, the Governor’s “eyebrows” famously became one of the Bank’s means of communicating. The eyebrows were, in a way, a primitive form of emoji: sterling crisis – sad face. Nonetheless, for even the most malleable-faced Governor, the “eyebrows” were an imperfect communications medium. Beginning in the 1960s, there was a sea-change in central bank communication practices. Speeches by the Governor and his deputies increased, by the 1960s averaging around five per year. They were matched by other communication innovations. December 1960 saw the first edition of the Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin. There was roughly a doubling in the number of speeches in each subsequent decade. In 1992, a formal target for inflation was announced in the UK, together with a regular schedule of monthly monetary policy meetings. In 1993, the Bank began publishing a quarterly Inflation Report, setting out its views on the economic outlook. In 1996, the Inflation Report gained a sister publication, the six-monthly Financial Stability Review.

In December last year we held a Stakeholders Workshop at which the drafts of the Revised Companies Act, the Securities Bill, the Bankruptcy Bill and the Collective Investment Schemes Bill were tabled for discussion by all stakeholders. These pieces of legislation are now being finalized and would be presented to the next Parliament for enactment. The Other Financial Services Amendment Act 2007 will serve to provide the legal basis for the operation of the stock exchange until the enactment of these legislations. We have also invested in training of personnel to guarantee the professional conduct of operations, and in this regard, we have collaborated with relevant institutions and professional bodies to make sure that the codes and practices underlying the operations of the market meet established standards. Today, as we inaugurate the Sierra Leone Stock Exchange we note with pride and confidence that we have achieved a significant milestone in the development of our financial system. In the coming weeks we will commence actual operations. In this regard, I wish to solicit the support and cooperation of all institutions and the general public to work towards the success of this venture. In closing, I wish to thank all those who have helped us in getting to where we are today, and seek your continued assistance as we traverse this very difficult terrain.