samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
1  The monetary policy counterparties consist of 14 banks and the restricted monetary policy counterparties are currently Svensk Exportkredit, Kommuninvest i Sverige, Sparbanken Finn and Öhman Fondkommission. 8  BIS Review 160/2009  The Riksbank’s lending in dollars has been funded by using the foreign currency reserve and through loans from the US central bank. I will return to this later. The interest rate for the dollar loans has been determined through a premium on the short-term interest rate on dollars in the United States. The Riksbank has paid the same interest rate to the US central bank. The Riksbank’s dollar lending peaked in the spring, but has now come to an end (Figure 9). Figure 9 The Riksbank’s lending in dollars and its funding SEK billion 300  200  300  Swap agreement Foreign currency reserve Dollar lending  200  100  100 lending  0  0 funding  -100  -100  -200  -200  -300 Jul-08  -300 Oct-08  Jan-09  Apr-09  Jul-09  Oct-09  Source: The Riksbank. The Riksbank makes a profit on the loans and deposits, through its interest rates. The total profit for the Riksbank during the period from the beginning of October 2008 to the end of October 2009 amounts to around SEK 2.3 billion. The fact that the Riksbank makes a profit on its lending and deposits in kronor is not the purpose of these measures, but rather a sideeffect.

Cash in the form of banknotes and coins does not accrue any interest for the holders. The general public’s holdings of banknotes and coins are entered into the Riksbank’s balance sheet as an interest-free liability. The Riksbank invests a corresponding amount, with a deduction for the cost of managing banknotes and coins, in yield-bearing financial assets. This equivalent amount is in practice part of the foreign currency reserve. The return the Riksbank receives on these financial assets comprises what is known as seigniorage income. In 2008 seigniorage income amounted to around SEK 5 billion, which corresponds to a return of 4.6 per cent. 12  BIS Review 160/2009  Figure 13 Banknotes and coins – monetary base SEK billion 450  450 Riksbank Certificates Fine-tuning Banknotes and coins  400  400  350  350  300  300  250  250  200  200  150  150  100  100  50  50  0  0 Jan-08  Apr-08  Jul-08  Oct-08  Jan-09  Apr-09  Jul-09  Oct-09  Source: The Riksbank. Another concept that has been discussed to some extent in connection with the financial crisis is what is usually known as the monetary base. This consists of banknotes and coins in circulation plus the banks’ deposits with the Riksbank through Riksbank Certificates, finetuning and standing facilities. During the financial crisis the banks’ deposits with the Riksbank increased substantially, as mentioned earlier, when the Riksbank increased its lending to the banks.
In any event, the evidence available in the coming months on the effective use of these capital buffers, once the losses stemming from the COVID-19 crisis materialise, will be essential to allow conclusions to be drawn on the effective use of these buffers and to assess whether any additional measures may be needed. Based on the experience obtained during this crisis, and on a medium-term horizon, the balance between structural and countercyclical capital buffers could also be analysed as a way of avoiding the difficulties I have mentioned, should they arise. Thirdly, I also wish to refer to the treatment of dividends during the crisis. As you are all well aware, one of the recommendations of the European prudential supervisors, which has also been made in many other countries, is that banks should refrain from distributing dividends and be highly prudent when paying bonuses to their staff. This measure seeks to ensure that, in this highly uncertain setting, banks are able to build up sufficient funds to absorb losses. In general, all Spanish banks that were legally able to suspend or defer dividends to be distributed out of 2019 income complied with these recommendations. This enabled them to increase in 2020 the capital buffers they had already built up before the onset of the pandemic.

The ultimate impact of the crisis on the banking industry will indeed hinge on its scale and duration, but also on the effectiveness of economic policies in alleviating its effects on households and firms. In this respect, in the current situation of incomplete, uncertain and uneven economic recovery, retaining a large part of the exceptional measures to support the economy is warranted, in particular for certain sectors. In any event, projections suggest that there will be a significant increase in the ratio of nonperforming loans in the coming quarters, even under the most benign scenario. 2  Against this backdrop, I have three important considerations to make with a view to maintaining the sector’s resilience in the coming months, beyond keeping the extraordinary measures in place. Firstly, much of the downturn in banks’ results in the first three quarters of 2020 was due to greater provisioning in anticipation of future asset impairment, which has still not materialised but which will do so in the coming quarters. Specifically, Spanish banks have increased their provisioning by 75% in the first nine months of 2020 compared with the same period a year earlier. Sustaining this effort in the coming quarters would enable the bulk of provisioning needs anticipated by the stress tests under the most likely scenario for this and the coming year to be met. This has led to a significant decline in banks’ profitability, but it has also raised their loss absorption capacity, something which investors should particularly value in these circumstances.
The initiative is calling for three things: first, the SNB should hold at least 20% of its assets in gold; second, it should no longer be allowed to sell any gold at any time; and third, all of its gold reserves should be stored in Switzerland. Let me address the last point first. Today, 70% of our gold reserves are stored in Switzerland, 20% are held at the Bank of England and 10% at the Bank of Canada. As you know, a country’s gold reserves usually have the function of an asset to be used only in emergencies. For that reason, it makes sense to diversify the storage locations. In addition, it makes sense to choose locations where gold is traded, so that it can be sold faster and at lower transaction costs. The UK and Canada both meet that criterion. In addition, they both have a strong and reliable legal system and we have every assurance that our gold is safe there. 6  Christensen and Krogstrup (2014), Filardo and Hofmann (2014), Stein (2012), Williams (2013) and references therein. 7  Chodorow-Reich (2014), IMF (2013). 8  Rajan (2013). BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  The initiative’s demand to hold at least 20% of our assets in gold would severely restrict the conduct of monetary policy. Monetary policy transactions directly change our balance sheet. Restrictions on the composition of the balance sheet therefore restrict our monetary policy options.

The international standards require supervisors to appropriately supervise, monitor and regulate financial institutions for compliance with AML/CFT requirements commensurate with their risks. As such, to effectively implement the above, a country’s AML/CFT supervision has to be embedded in the broader framework of prudential and business conduct supervision. This is to leverage on and optimise the synergies, expertise and resources to ensure effectiveness of both overall supervision of financial institutions and specific AML/CFT supervision. Supervisors are required to ensure effective management of ML/TF risk and compliance with AML/CFT requirements by the financial institutions by assessing institution’s policies, procedures and processes for identifying and managing ML/TF risk and in complying with regulatory requirements. This integration also ensure that supervisors are coherent and apply high standards in fulfilling their responsibilities for both AML/CFT and prudential supervision. As for AML/CFT, supervisors have to include AML/CFT risk in their risk based approach to supervisions and to be fully aware of consequences and implications of theirs supervised institutions’ failures to adequately identify and manage all risks including ML/TF risk. This is because the issue is no longer just about technical compliance but more importantly, whether the supervisory framework has been effective in mitigating and in ensuring adequate enforcement against ML/TF. Therefore, to equip supervisors in fulfilling their duties to conduct AML/CFT supervision, courses such as this is important to provide all of you with an understanding of the importance of reviewing the operational, legal, and reputational risks associated with ML/TF and their impact on the overall bank assessment.
Spencer Dale: 2010 – a progress report Speech by Mr Spencer Dale, Executive Director and Chief Economist of the Bank of England, at the Kent Business School 21st anniversary dinner, Canterbury, 1 December 2010. *  *  *  I would like to thank Ryan Banerjee, Rohan Churm, and Geoff Coppins for their considerable help in preparing this speech. The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of other members of the Monetary Policy Committee. Introduction It is an honour to be invited here this evening to help you and the Business School celebrate its 21st anniversary. Birthdays are a natural time to pause and reflect – especially those that mark a coming of age. Reflecting on your first 21 years, much has changed since the Business School was founded. Some of you may remember that 1989 was the year in which Nigel Lawson resigned as Chancellor and the Berlin Wall fell. You may remember less well that it was also the year that Kylie and Jason enjoyed four Number 1 hits and Coronation Street attracted its largest ever audience to watch Alan Bradley meet his grisly end under a Blackpool tram. How time flies. The economy has also had its fair share of ups and downs since then. After the 1990s recession, we enjoyed 63 quarters of consecutive growth, withstanding en route the effects of Black Wednesday and the dotcom bubble.

I will then discuss the risks and challenges facing the Thai economy, especially those relating to volatile international capital movements and their impact on the Thai baht in the short term and in building resiliency and enhancing productivity for the longterm. Ladies and Gentlemen, Let me start with the global picture. For a number of years now, we have witnessed strong global growth driven mainly by growth in the US economy and in emerging markets, particularly non-Japan Asia. During this same period, we have also seen growing global imbalances with the rest of the world financing the US’s growing current account deficits. There is yet no consensus on how this global financial imbalance will unwind, but everyone expects that a large dollar correction will be part of the unwinding process, which will impact on financial markets and exchange rates worldwide. My view is that we are likely to see more market jitters along the unwinding process of this global imbalance. Indeed, for the last couple years, we have already experienced large magnitude of capital fluctuations and exchange rate volatilities. This year alone, we have observed two episodes, in February and again in August, of the shift toward greater risk aversions, with sharp falls in the stock markets across the world, from New York to Shanghai, and Bangkok included. At this juncture, there seems to be an increasing disconnect between global growth and financial stability.
While this demand is largely already met through an increasingly diversified and digitalised supply by many payment services providers – be they new entrants or established players-, stablecoins could challenge the latter by offering cheaper, easier and instant anonymous and peer-to-peer payments. In addition, at the global level, we are far from having a network (or set of interconnected networks) that could support quick and cheap 1/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  transfers of funds. The current supply of cashless means of payment lacks a universal and ergonomic cross-border solution akin to cash person-to-person payments. Stablecoins could be seen as a “universal” means of payment facilitating cross-borders payments in a single unit of account. As we know, this is an argument put forward by some global stablecoins promoters. Furthermore, stablecoins could help remedy other limits of the existing payment ecosystem, even if the issues at stake might concretely vary between developed and developing countries. In particular, their blockchain-based technology could help improve wholesale clearing and settlement mechanisms and facilitate Delivery-versus-Payment processes as well as cross currency settlements, while guaranteeing resilience and recovery from operational incidents. However, stablecoins may also bring material risks to payment systems. As many central bankers have pointed out, stablecoins do not satisfactorily offer the qualities expected from a settlement asset to be used interchangeably with commercial bank money and central bank money.

In my speech today I would like to touch upon main elements of the forecast which are of key importance from the point of view of the decision we took today and for understanding the logic behind our future actions. I will start from the assumptions. We assume the Urals crude price this year at around 50-55 US dollars per barrel. We have reasons to expect oil prices to rise to 70–75 US dollars per barrel by 2017, but nonetheless remain significantly below the levels observed during several past years. We also assume that access of the Russian companies to the global capital markets will be restricted throughout whole forecast period. A long period of relatively low oil prices will force Russian economy to adapt to the new conditions. As a result, GDP is expected to decrease by 3.5%-4% in 2015 and 1%-1.6% in 2016. Moreover, as I have already mentioned, the structural constraints of the economy will be supplemented by factors of cyclical nature. Despite the drop in oil and other commodity prices, the net export will make a positive contribution to GDP dynamics due to the effects of the ruble depreciation on imports and Russian exporters’ competitiveness. However, net export dynamics will not be able to fully offset the reduction in consumer and investment activity during two coming years. As in 2009, contraction in the domestic demand will primarily influence durable goods, including imports, and also some services sectors.
We could have chosen instead to offset the price level shocks by running a much tighter monetary policy. Had we done so, spending in the economy, activity and employment would all have been squeezed. Conditions have anyway been difficult for many households due to the squeeze on real incomes, but I think it would have been worse if we had tightened policy. Our ability to sustain exceptional monetary stimulus has, I should reiterate, depended on the credibility of our commitment to low inflation over the medium term being preserved. I worried that chatter in the markets in late 2010/early 2011 marked incipient signs of fragility in that credibility. That was one of the reasons why, at the beginning of this year, I had expected to vote for an increase in Bank Rate at our February meeting. The weak output data for Q4 2010 published shortly before that meeting changed my mind, and the Committee’s course, as they revealed that the economy was softer than I had thought. Escape velocity In the months that followed, I made clear that, with inflation well above our 2% target, I would be looking for an opportunity to begin the process of withdrawing the exceptional monetary stimulus once the economy had achieved “escape velocity”. By that, I meant that the economy would need to be growing, and be set to continue to grow, at a rate that would gradually absorb the slack in the economy. “Escape velocity” has not yet been achieved.

In case that sounds odd given that Bank Rate has been at 0.5% for over two years, I should underline that, even in normal circumstances, monetary policy works through the expected path of our policy rate. The markets now expect us to keep Bank Rate low for longer. Two-year risk free money market rates are over 100bp lower than in the late spring. That has helped to offset the rise in credit spreads, and so means lower borrowing costs in the real world. I place weight on that, as my MPC colleagues know. Above that, we have decided to add £ to our programme of Quantitative Easing (QE). The degree of monetary stimulus will slowly increase as the agreed QE is executed. That money does not, as is sometimes suggested, get stuck with the banks. The whole point of the Bank’s operating framework for QE has been to avoid that. All central bank money is ultimately held by banks: that is what a banking system is. But by buying bonds from insurance companies, pension funds and others, we put the money into their hands. It is money that, by construction, provides a meagre return – negative in real terms – and so money that they will want to get rid of by purchasing other higher-yielding assets. Policy still works through asset prices, increasing wealth and reducing the cost of capital relative to where they would be otherwise.
We need contingency plans. 15. So we will focus, for the next ten years, on three areas. First, we must start earlier, with teenagers. Forming the right attitudes towards spending and saving early in life goes a long way. 16. Starting from next year, the Ministry of Education will introduce Food and Consumer Education (FCE) for all secondary one and two students. This is a way of teaching them life skills that they’ll find very helpful. A key objective is to inculcate basic financial literacy in our students, at a time when they are starting to think of ways of using money. MoneySENSE is working closely with the MOE and NIE to equip teachers with the relevant skills and knowledge, so they can help the children with money management skills. This is the first objective, start early when they are teenagers. 17. Second, we must deliver targeted financial education messages at key points in a person’s life, for instance, when couples intend to get married, to plan for wedding expenses, which can be very large if we are not careful; and later, when they are buying a flat, how to make sure they can buy an affordable flat for the future; advising parents on how they can plan and save for their child at public hospitals and clinics; and advising older Singaporeans when they withdraw monies from their CPF. So at each key point in life, we will provide targeted advice for people at the immediate stage of life they are coming upon.

In addition, MAS will exempt from the restrictions under the policy, any extension of temporary overdrafts of $ vostro accounts to prevent settlement failures. This will facilitate straight-through processing and more efficient handling of $ payments. With the progressive relaxation of the $ restrictions, the current policy essentially limits only lending of $ to non-resident financial institutions for the purpose of speculating in the $ and does not specifically seek to prevent the internationalisation of the $ The present label: “Non-Internationalisation of the $ may suggest that Singapore restricts foreign participation in $ markets, which we do not do. We have therefore also decided to rename the policy "Lending of $ to non-resident financial institutions". Conclusion Asia has had a remarkable recovery and can now look forward to a period of renewed growth and prosperity. Financial markets will play a major role in this process. Despite some strategic and security  6  BIS Review 33/2004  risks in the region, the political situation is generally stable and positive. There are challenges ahead, but with greater regional collaboration and integration, and continued reforms and developments to financial sectors in individual countries, Asians, and investors in the region, can look forward to a vibrant and dynamic future. BIS Review 33/2004  7
This in part reflects compositional effects, as a higher proportion of non-UK born ethnic minorities have no qualifications compared to their white counterparts. 19  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  19  Chart 16: Granular ethnicity gaps by country of origin, sample average Ethnicity groups Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups Indian Pakistani  Bangladeshi Chinese Any other asian background Black/African/Caribbean/Black British  Other ethnic group ‐50  ‐40  ‐30  ‐20  ‐10  0  10  20  30  40  Ethnicity pay gap, per cent Non‐UK born  UK born  Source: ONS Labour Force Survey and Bank of England calculations. Note: A positive ethnicity pay gap in this chart indicates that ethnic minorities earn less than their white counterparts, whereas a negative ethnicity pay gap indicates that ethnic minorities earn more than their white counterparts. On average, ethnic minority women earn more than white women, whereas ethnic minority men earn less than white men (Chart 17). This is also true in the latest data. Unconditionally, there is a clear and well-defined pay gap for females, a clear and well-defined pay gap for ethnicity but, somewhat surprisingly, no clear, well-defined pay gap for ethnic minority females. This is a third puzzle in the unconditional pay data.

However, there is a risk that the complexity of these instruments will increase the difficulty of seeing to which credit risks companies and banks are actually exposed. 2  BIS Review 18/2002  The complexity of the financial instruments and the fact that they are often found, in various forms, on both the asset side and the liability side of companies' balance sheets as well as "off balance sheet", makes it difficult to detect the financial risks within banks and companies. This is particularly serious as an increasing number of households have their savings in these companies' shares, but nor is it easy for professional analysts and portfolio managers to see. The collapse of the American company Enron can serve as an example of the problems connected with the development of complicated financial instruments. A lack of understanding of the instruments used and a lack of transparency in the company's accounting meant that directly after the collapse there was considerable concern over possible contagion effects. Here I do not mean the evident breach of the regulations in force, where auditors burn documents and senior managers sell shares in the company prior to publishing negative information. Enron raises a number of other, in the long term more fundamental, issues. Today, I shall limit myself to discussing three of these. Firstly, Enron was basically an energy company, which in time came to pursue financial operations on a large scale, but without coming under the supervision to which financial companies are normally subjected.