samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
With prices remaining stable, interest rates low and a good level of competitiveness, our economy is well equipped to resume a brisker growth trajectory in line with the global economy. 4  BIS Review 30/2005  As in the past, however, the international environment remains fraught with uncertainty at both the economic and monetary level. The independent course steered by the National Bank has made it possible to create a monetary framework conducive to the development of our economy. This success hinges not only on the correct interest rate decisions, but also on the credibility conferred upon us by our autonomy of action and by sufficient resources for intervening in the markets. It is in the nation's interest to preserve this achievement. Thank you for your attention, and for your interest in the Swiss National Bank and its activities. BIS Review 30/2005  5

However, the impetus for take-off inevitably had to come from outside. Our economic problems were, and still are, neither confined to a sector nor a region. The line separating positive and negative developments runs right across the economic landscape. It is still quality of performance, characterised by innovation, flexibility and productivity, which determines success. Consolidating public finances remains important. Furthermore, efforts to promote competition must continue even though considerable progress has already been made. In this context, we have to realize that in many quarters, people are obviously sceptical about the concept of competition. The argument has not yet sunk in sufficiently that when it comes to allocating resources, the free play of market forces is well suited to achieve prosperity and economic welfare. This, however, is only possible within a framework of general economic stability. One of the most gratifying recent developments is a steady decline of unemployment. Since imbalances in the labour market continue to exist, we must foster both know-how and motivation. Sufficiently flexible working conditions and greater mobility are also essential. Finally, it is important to remember that securing the right macroeconomic environment and its exploitation by people participating in the economy is an ongoing challenge. Consequently, there are no quick, simple or cheap solutions for the problems confronting us. Monetary policy The Swiss National Bank has the task of conducting a monetary policy in the interests of the country as a whole.
Mitigating measures would be most effective if they involved both monetary and fiscal restraint, as well as internal adjustment of the national economy, including a rise in the exchange rate. The more restraint shown on the fiscal side, the less need there will be to raise interest rates. A higher króna exchange rate also means less cause to raise interest rates. The exchange rate was fairly stable from the spring of 2002 until early this winter. It then began to rise and continued to do so steadily until early February of this year. The Central Bank has stated its view that the exchange rate rise in recent months has been primarily due to the effect of the proposed major construction projects in East Iceland. The operations of the aluminium smelter will likely cause the equilibrium exchange rate for the króna to be higher than otherwise. Furthermore, it appears evident that the influx of foreign currency in connection with these projects will be considerable, with higher domestic interest rates than otherwise. All of this affects market expectations and makes the króna exchange rate higher than it would be in the absence of plans for major development in East Iceland. The economy could thus be said to have already begun adaptation to the coming projects, i.e. the exchange rate adjustment has begun and is even well on its way.

Subject to achieving the target, the MPC is also required to support the Government’s economic policy objective, currently strong, sustainable and balanced growth. Accountability Under what Mervyn King termed constrained discretion, the Bank takes its orders from the remit and is accountable to Parliament and the people for its performance. Their expectations certainly have changed since Montagu Norman justified his decisions to a compliant predecessor of the TSC by appealing opaquely to his “instincts.” Not a response I’ve dared to venture during my thirty odd parliamentary testimonies. More seriously, the need for the Bank to be open and accountable is greater than ever, not only because of the growing distrust of institutions and the ‘experts’ who reside within them, but also because better public understanding makes our policies more effective. That’s why the Bank has increased dramatically the scale and quality of its outreach. We now publish all relevant information for each policy decision on the day it is released. We disclose the key judgments underlying our forecasts and account for differences when they occur. Leveraging our network of 12 regional agencies, we meet with thousands of businesses every year, discuss with the tens of thousands of people who attend our town halls and Public Forums, and engage with the hundreds of thousands more through social media. Performance and Lessons Learned The gains from independence have been enormous. In the two decades that followed independence, inflation averaged just under 2% compared with over 6% in the preceding two. It’s been one-fifth as volatile.
Regarding institutional issues, the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and World Bank have given the Bank a maximum score. *** Dear Members, Ladies and Gentlemen, Completing my speech, allow me to highlight some problems which have conditioned and will condition the functioning of Albanian economy and financial markets. We deem that these problems require prior attention and cautious solution. First, the integration of the Albanian economy with the European financial systems and markets implies that shocks and swings to our financial and trading partners are soon transmitted to the Albanian economy. The medium and long-term outlook of the Albanian economy is related to that of our trading partners. Global market ups and downs increase or decrease the economic activity in the country. Overall, the integration process remains beneficial to the Albanian economy, but it poses challenges as well. Therefore, I would like to emphasise that the Albanian economy and financial system should pay more attention to global market developments; our structural reforms should aim at increasing resistance to their swings, while our economic policies should be cautiously oriented toward long-term global trends. Secondly, the country’s financial stability should be seen as a duty of all and not as an issue of one or some institutions. The financial stability is a public good that serves the long-term development of a country. Recent global developments have proven that the financial system is a highly integrated mosaic; its stability has many dimensions and it is determined by the interplay of many segments and stakeholders.

William C Dudley: The national and regional economy Remarks by Mr William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at Queens College, Flushing, New York, 18 November 2013. *  *  *  Good afternoon. It is always a pleasure to speak with the different communities that make up our region, and it is especially gratifying to have the opportunity to speak with you, our future leaders. So thank you for inviting me. I am especially pleased to be here at CUNY (City University of New York) Queens College, given the relationship that we have developed with CUNY through our educational and regional outreach. This academic year we are hosting, at the Bank, a Queens College student participating in the CUNY Service Corps which is a program to provide students with work experiences in regional and economic outreach. We also collaborated with CUNY for this year’s College Fed Challenge, our yearly competition where teams of students from area universities take on the roles of the members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and debate the appropriate next step for U.S. monetary policy. A number of CUNY schools competed and professors served as judges, including your own Professor Thom Thurston. My meeting with you today is part of our continuing efforts to understand what is going on at the grassroots level of our economy and to share what we are seeing.
3) The system is not the sum of its parts My next principle concerns the stress tests themselves – where the stress scenario is applied to the system. It is to beware; the system is not the sum of its parts. Feedback loops within the system mean that the entities in the system can be individually resilient, but still collectively overwhelmed by the stress scenario. These are the feedback loops that helped to turn around $ bn of subprime mortgage-related losses into well over $ trillion of potential write-downs in the global banking sector within a year. 20  There are the obvious feedback loops that arise because entities have direct exposure to each other: think lending from one bank to another. The good news is that the importance of this loop is now negligible. Unsecured interbank lending has contracted and banks are materially less leveraged. 21  And this loop is now incorporated into our annual  banking system stress test, so should it ever re-assert itself, we can ensure resilience keeps up. But we need to go further. At the next level are the feedback loops that link seemingly unrelated entities in the system. These are loops created by firesales of assets into illiquid markets, driving down market prices, forcing others to mark down the value of their holdings. 22  This type of loop will be most aggressive when the fire-seller is funded through short-term debt. As asset prices fall, there is the threat of needing to repay that debt.

They cut back spending 16  more sharply as incomes and house prices fall, amplifying any downturn ; 17  Distressed sales of homes drive house prices down ; 18  Reliance on foreign capital inflows can expose the economy to global risks ; 19  And credit booms overseas can translate to crises at home . All of this economic analysis would still not have told us what would happen in 2007. It would not have allowed us to predict the roll of the economic dice. But it would have revealed that a bad roll would have very serious consequences. The financial system could have been stress tested against that. Its resilience could have been reinforced. It could have been prepared. What became a disaster could have been contained to a downturn. 5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  5  Now, with my second principle ringing in our ears, the toughness of our stress scenarios reacts not to whether a downturn is likely to unfold but to how deep it could be if it did. So when all appears bright – as real estate prices rise, credit flows, foreign capital inflows increase, and the last thing on people’s minds is a downturn – our stress scenarios get tougher. And my first call to arms for academia this evening is for further research into indicators that can help to guide us in asking how bad it could be.
Monetary policy has an impact on intermediaries’ risk-bearing capacity However, changes in the OIS term premium are not able to fully explain the gap between ten-year yields and the expected future path of short-term interest rates in all parts of the euro area. Issuers with lower credit ratings, in particular, saw their spreads over the OIS increase, albeit to a limited degree in most cases (Slide 13, right-hand side). A rise in spreads, however, would be expected if QT was a reversal of QE. This can be seen when considering one of the main transmission channels of asset purchases: the portfolio rebalancing channel. [21]  This channel works in two complementary ways. One way is that asset purchases lower the yields on benchmark government bonds and thus induce a broad range of investors to shift their investments into riskier assets. The other is that by reducing the amount of duration risk held by leveraged financial intermediaries, asset purchases create balance sheet capacity to hold other riskier assets. In the euro area, portfolio rebalancing has been powerful, with risk premia on bonds issued by lower-rated sovereigns and firms falling measurably because of our purchases. [22] Prospects of QT might have led to a partial reversal of these effects, in particular after a long period of low interest rates. [23] In practice, however, it is inherently difficult to distinguish such QT effects from the more direct impact of a rise in the risk-free rate on the country-specific risk premium.

Another suggestion I want to make is that, for the market-based approach to work efficiently, we should also engage more formally the cooperation of the private sector. On this, I think East Asia can learn a lot from the experience of the EU in engaging the private sector in planning and reviewing major financial initiatives. Specifically here, I am thinking of the Giovannini Group of private experts, established in 1996, which has done at least four useful reports for the EU Commission. Their inputs have helped the EU in introducing the necessary directives. 2  BIS Review 95/2006  I think I have taken up a lot of time already and hope my remarks have been useful. Again, I want to thank JP Morgan for the invitation. Thank you. BIS Review 95/2006  3
As inflationary pressure varies with the state of demand and resource utilisation, the events influenced the formulation of monetary policy in many countries, including Sweden. Six months later, however, we are now seeing more and more signs of an imminent improvement in activity abroad. The attacks’ impact on the global economy were fortunately limited, though certain sectors, such as air transport and insurance, have been heavily hit by the attacks and their repercussions. Production last year was constrained by excessively large stocks but it now looks as though stock adjustments have come a long way, which is a good sign for output. A certain amount of optimism is beginning to spread. Order books are becoming more stable and in some cases even improving. Then there is the additional impetus that comes from the expansionary economic policy in many countries. A proper global recovery that becomes increasingly strong does, however, presuppose a broad and sustained increase in demand. An increase in production that is generated solely by an end to stock reductions is liable to be relatively brief. In this respect there may be some uncertainty. There are still large imbalances in the American economy and stock market values are high, both in a historical comparison and in relation to the current cyclical phase. Opinions differ somewhat about the imbalances in the United States. Many observers focus on and are worried about structural imbalances in the U.S. economy.

The present adjustments imply that there are less unutilised resources that can be brought into production without this leading to a rising rate of price and wage increases. That in turn affects the prospects for future  2  BIS Review 19/2002  inflation, particularly as economic activity, in Sweden as well as elsewhere, seems to be improving and overall economic policy is expansionary. This analysis has ramifications in the labour market. The general weakening of demand during 2001 did not show up in employment. Unemployment has been more or less stable. Both the economy as a whole and the labour market show signs of a dichotomy; industrial output and employment have fallen, accompanied by an increase in demand and jobs in the services sector. At the same time it is mainly in services that wages and prices have risen. Thus, in the light of what has been happening to prices and wages during the past year, the Riksbank has gradually arrived at a somewhat altered view of the Swedish economy’s inflation propensity. Higher resource utilisation, together with higher wage increases and a weak exchange rate, has led to somewhat stronger inflationary pressure. This affects the forecast we are presenting today. Meanwhile, we are, of course, continuing the work of developing our analysis and interpreting new data as they become available. Rising inflation All in all, in the Inflation Report the Riksbank notes that incoming statistics confirm the impression that activity in Sweden has probably stopped falling.
This complicates the compilation of balance of payments statistics, in particular on factor income and factor expenditures, and on the stock of foreign assets. Official data shows foreign assets at market value where market prices are readily available. Otherwise, assets are recorded at their book value. In an article in the Central Bank’s most recent Monetary Bulletin 1 , an attempt is made to estimate the market value of inward and outward foreign direct investment using methods developed in other countries. This is done by estimating the likely market value of assets that do not have a readily available market price. The result of the calculation is that rather than being negative by 120% of GDP, the international investment position was negative by less than 30% of GDP at the end of quarter III of 2007. The large difference stems not the least from the fact that assets of Icelanders abroad are much larger than those of foreigners in Iceland. The lower figure is not necessarily correct. However, it shows that there is an overriding likelihood that the large negative net international investment position of Iceland is exaggerated in the official statistics which are compiled in accordance with IMF standards. The Icelandic economy is at crossroads. It is quite evident that the expansion of recent years is coming to an end. The forecast issued by the Central Bank on April 10 envisages a contraction of GDP in 2009 and 2010. The Ministry of Finance forecasts a milder and more short-lived contraction.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam: Singapore’s dynamically changing landscape Speech by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the opening of One Raffles Place Tower Two, Singapore, 18 September 2012. *  *  *  Wee Ee Cheong, Chairman, OUB Centre Limited, Mr Henry Kok, General Manager, OUB Centre Limited, Distinguished guests, Good evening. It is my pleasure to be invited to officiate the opening of a new twin skyscraper in Raffles Place – One Raffles Place Tower Two. It is part of the continuing rejuvenation of the cityscape at Raffles Place, which continues to be at the heart of businesses and commerce in Singapore. Raffles Place – a continuing history of new blended in old Raffles Place has indeed been a continuous story of the new inserted in the old, as it emerged from being a humble docking location for small boats and ships in the early 1800s, to become a thriving centre of regional commerce and now a global business and financial centre. On 8th August 1988, OUB Centre, now called One Raffles Place Tower One, was opened by Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who was then Prime Minister. He had noted the building’s quality design and distinctive workmanship. It was also an icon for Singapore at the time, as the building went on to be recognised as the tallest building in the world outside of the United States. Designed by Kenzo Tange, One Raffles Tower One still remains amongst the tallest three skyscrapers in Singapore.
We realize that if one finance company were to have difficulties, that it can have harmful effects on the others as well. That is why we issue directions and circulars. That is why we have teams who are well trained to supervise, monitor and regulate. We want to be regulators who will be able to understand you, and work with you in order to preserve the financial system stability of this country. Occasionally, we place advertisements in the newspapers saying that such and such banks, finance companies and leasing companies are regulated by the Central Bank. Do you know that immediately after our advertisements, we get many calls? The callers say, “we have deposited our money in such and such institution. But, we don’t see its name in your list. Is that institute regulated?” When we say that such organization is not regulated, many get frightened. So you see, people take regulation seriously. People believe that if something is regulated, then there is some element of order that is brought into that system. We are well aware of this and therefore we take a lot of pains to fulfil the regulating task. We have a Deputy Governor in-charge who looks into all these aspects. We have the Department of Supervision of Non-Bank Financial Institutions that supervises finance companies. They take their jobs seriously. That is why they are organizing a seminar of this nature. Today, the business world is continuously looking at risk and trying to figure out how to manage risk and hedge against risk.

But apart from this progress on the international and European levels, the crisis has also required national governments to come up with energetic responses at home. This is because not all economies faced the onset of this crisis with the same macroeconomic imbalances or the same weaknesses in their banking systems or supervisory arrangements. From the start of the crisis, governments in some of the biggest economies were, in addition to compensating for the effects of the tightening – and even closing down – of certain funding markets, obliged to support some of their major banks with public funds. Fortunately, the more strictly regulated and supervised Spanish banking system withstood reasonably well this first wave of the crisis. But that does not mean we were immune to it. The crisis entailed an abrupt decline in world growth and gave rise to major problems on international funding markets which significantly affected the Spanish economy in general, and its banking system in particular. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  In the long upturn prior to the crisis, the Spanish economy had built up significant imbalances, such as the external deficit, the increase in private debt and the excessive expansion of the real estate sector. In parallel, weaknesses had been incubating in the banking industry, especially in parts of the savings bank sector.