samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Peter Pang: The 10th anniversary of the BIS Representative Office for Asia and the Pacific Remarks by Mr Peter Pang, Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, to a reception for the 10th Anniversary of the BIS Representative Office for Asia and the Pacific, Hong Kong, 7 July 2008. *  *  *  Mr Hannoun, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, It gives me great pleasure to celebrate with you this evening the 10th anniversary of the BIS Representative Office for Asia and the Pacific. Ten years is a long time. Long enough for us to see the robust recovery of the Asian economies following the 1997 financial crisis. Long enough to see China catapult onto the world stage and its emergence as a global economic powerhouse. Long enough for oil prices to rise 11-fold from $ a barrel in 1998 to $ a barrel now. And it is long enough for terms like Google, eBay, Facebook and MySpace to move from being the preserve of computer geeks to the mainstream. I am sure you all have your own stories to tell about these past ten years. It was also 10 years ago that the BIS made the important decision to set up its first overseas office in the Asia-Pacific region, and to strategically locate it in Hong Kong. This put the BIS at the right place, and at the right time, to meet the growing needs of Asia.

I propose a toast and wish the Asian office continued success for the next 10 years and beyond. Thank you. 2  BIS Review 88/2008
In other countries, for example the United States and Norway, costs for owner-occupied housing are approximated to the cost for renting a comparable property – and this is far less affected by interest rate changes. In the euro area and the United Kingdom, the target is formulated in terms of the HICP index (harmonised index for consumer prices) which does not include costs for owner-occupied housing, only operating costs.11 As Swedish CPI inflation has this characteristic, the Riksbank has, since the introduction of the inflation target, calculated several different measures of inflation and has also regularly let inflation indices other than the CPI guide interest rate decisions. The price index which has played the biggest role in recent years is the CPIF, or the CPI with a fixed interest rate. Unlike the CPI, the CPIF is not directly affected by changes in mortgage rates. CPIF inflation, with energy prices also discounted at times, has functioned as a “steering” variable in such a way that the Riksbank has normally aimed for it to be close to 2 per cent within the forecasting horizon. Major interest rate changes lead to substantial and long-term effects on the CPI Despite this, the target has been formulated in terms of the CPI. As interest rates sometimes go up and sometimes down, the idea has been that the differences in inflation according to the CPI and the CPIF will level out over time.

Strengthening the role of Shariah scholars The Islamic financial landscape today has undergone various transformations and progress over the last 10 years. This transformation can be testified in the increase of global banking assets that had reached nearly USD1.5 trillion, total outstanding sukuk amounting to USD295 billion, Islamic fund assets amounting to USD76 billion as well as the takaful contributions of USD21 billion (Source: IFSB: 1H 2014). In addition, there has been a marked increase in the participation from non-Muslim jurisdictions in Islamic finance, particularly in sukuk issuances, reflecting the increasingly positive reception of Islamic finance among the global community. The sukuk instrument, in particular, is among the most innovative instruments and favoured by governments and multinational corporations. In response to these developments, the role of and the expectation on Shariah scholars will be more challenging in finding solutions to emerging new Shariah issues that require immediate responses from the Shariah fraternity. To me, changes in the Islamic financial landscape should be viewed as a golden opportunity for the Shariah experts to demonstrate the dynamism of the Islamic religion as perpetually modern and evolving through time. Therefore, it is my hope that the role of the Shariah scholars could be further enhanced and not confined solely to only ensuring and monitoring the Shariah compliance aspects. In relation to this, I am also of the opinion that researches and thorough deliberations on Shariah need to consider other fields of disciplines in order for the ijtihad (reasoning) or Shariah decisions to be comprehensive, inclusive and practical.
The belief that nonbank FinTech companies will play a significant role in the future financial landscape is well established if we look at investments in fintech industry. The cumulative investments globally have more than ten-doubled the last five years and are estimated to exceed $ the next 3-5 years. This, in addition to changed customer expectation and increased digitalisation, may be the reason why today we are witnessing a trend of stronger cooperation between banks and fintechs, including in the area of innovation labs. The new technologies, such as blockchain and distributed ledger technology, though young and still-evolving, show the potential of restructuring financial industry, even encouraging discussions for cashless society with central bank digital currencies replacing the fiat money and underpinning the proliferation of cryptocurrencies. The cryptocurrencies have registered a spectacular rise – in 2017 their market valuation increased from USD 30 billion to USD 400 billion, and widened, with the rapid increase of “initial coin offerings” – fundraising facility for startup investors. So, are the cryptocurrencies, although unregulated becoming a substitute for fiat money? Are they incorporating the basic features of the fiat money such as being a medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account? Despite the rising trend, they play a marginal role globally as a medium of exchange in comparison with standard payment options; as they are not backed by legal authority and are marked by high value volatility and rather illiquid non-regulated markets, they obviously cannot be treated as unit of account and store of value.

The active participation of the conference is provided and encouraged through panel session on “Payments challenges in an integrating world”, in which panelists from payment institutions and payment systems will be exchanging thoughts and ideas. Last but not least is the expected interactive participation in the working groups scheduled for the last day of the event. I look forward to the discussions and wish all the delegates an enjoyable and rewarding conference, as inspiring as its location – the beautiful city of Ohrid and the Ohrid Lake which I hope you will be able to enjoy too in the following Conference days. Thank you! 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches
Lim Hng Kiang: Singapore’s insurance industry – investing in future growth Congratulatory remarks by Mr Lim Hng Kiang, Deputy Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Minister for Trade and Industry, at the opening of the AXA University Asia Pacific Campus Singapore, 8 April 2009. *  *  *  Mr Henri de Castries, Chairman of AXA Management Board and CEO of AXA Group Distinguished Guests Ladies and Gentlemen I am delighted to be here with you this evening to commemorate the opening of the AXA University Asia Pacific Campus. This establishment of a full-fledged corporate training campus here reflects AXA Group’s continued commitment to people development, in Asia and to Singapore. We welcome the leadership and foresight demonstrated by AXA in investing in future growth of the industry. This investment is especially significant given the current difficult economic environment. Allow me to first comment on global economic and financial developments. Overview of economic and financial developments in the world, including Asia As you know, global financial markets are going through very turbulent times. The sharp downturn in global economic activities has taken many by surprise. Some say that this current macroeconomic condition is like the perfect storm. Sharp tightening of credit conditions, loss of confidence in banking and capital markets and sharp declines in output have resulted in a gloomy outlook for the global economy with projected growth of a meagre ½ percent for 2009. This is probably the lowest rate since World War II.

Although it is difficult for the industry to be insulated from an economic downturn, there is scope for more forward-looking evaluation and management of the risks facing the insurance industry as a whole. Rigorous stress testing and risk mitigating strategies for the asset side of the books are examples of  BIS Review 45/2009  1  areas that insurance companies should be paying particular attention to in these difficult times. (ii)  Encouraging investments in research and talent development  Second, I would like to encourage the industry to take advantage of the current downtime to channel resources to research and training. Companies should not lose sight of the long term and use this opportunity to invest in trying to identify new risks, new trends and in capacity building. For research, this is very important. As the insurance industry in Asia develops, there is an increasing need for better understanding of insurance risks in Asia in order to allow for more robust risk modelling. For instance, systemic demographic shifts in Asian countries will pose many retirement planning challenges. Just to cite a quick statistic, from the year 2000 to 2050, the old-age dependency ratio in Asia is projected to rise from 9% to 27%. There is a need for everyone to have a better grasp of this relatively new challenge of managing longevity risk. Many countries have been reviewing and improving their pension systems given this trend.
Therefore, changes in the distribution of beliefs about future inflation should affect the distribution of beliefs about future interest rates as well. Market-based uncertainty of far-future interest rates has increased relative to the immediate pre-pandemic period. Figure 6 shows the options-implied distributions of short-term interest rates seven years in the future. Note that these distributions are truncated by the lower bound on interest rates. Compared with early 2019, the median interest rate expectation is about the same, but the upper tail of the distribution is now much wider, and the probability of being at the lower bound has increased somewhat. To the extent that this reflects an increase in inflation uncertainty, it is also consistent with the pattern of greater aggregate uncertainty about future inflation, both to the upside and downside, as seen in the SCE. Distributions of future interest rates also appear consistent with the uncertainty criterion. Figure 7 shows the options-implied distributions for up to 10 years in the future, as of September 2022. Although the implied standard deviation of interest rates increases with the forecast horizon, this relationship is less than linear.18 Conclusion The importance of maintaining well-anchored inflation expectations is a bedrock principle of modern central banking, but its precise meaning and validation has been open to interpretation. My goal today has been to use economic theory to identify empirical criteria that can be used to assess the anchoring of inflation expectations during the ongoing episode of high inflation.

SPEECH  A Steady Anchor in a Stormy Sea November 09, 2022 John C. Williams, President and Chief Executive Officer Remarks at SNB-FRB-BIS High-Level Conference on Global Risk, Uncertainty, and Volatility, Zurich, Switzerland As prepared for delivery  It is a pleasure to be here today to discuss a timely and important topic: the anchoring of inflation expectations. Against the backdrop of the stormy seas of the global inflation of the past year and a half, a steady anchor is more critical than ever. But, what does it mean for inflation expectations to be well anchored, and how would we know if they are? In my remarks, I will describe three criteria for well-anchored inflation expectations. I will then provide an initial assessment of the behavior of inflation expectations in the United States against these three criteria since inflation surged in the spring of last year. I should emphasize the word “initial,” since we are still in the midst of the storm, and definitive conclusions on the anchoring of expectations will await the ship’s safe return. This is the perfect time to give the usual Federal Reserve disclaimer that everything I say reflects my own views and not necessarily those of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) or anyone else in the Federal Reserve System. The critical importance of anchoring inflation expectations is now enshrined as a bedrock principle of modern central banking. One way central banks have sought to anchor expectations is through a commitment to an explicit longer-run inflation goal.
One name that has gained popularity is the “Great Recession”, which is dated as beginning with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008. This name conveys both the severity of what occurred, as well as the calamity of what was avoided. The contraction in real output in the six months following the demise of Lehman Brothers exceeded in size any other post World War II recession – in that sense, it was a great recession. However, aggressive monetary and fiscal policy actions both domestically and abroad were successful in preventing a complete meltdown of the U.S. and the world economy. In that sense, the name also emphasizes what the crisis was not. However, the name tends to focus one’s attention too much on the effect and not the cause of the crisis. An alternative name is the “Panic of 2007”, which is dated as beginning with the announcement by BNP Paribus on August 9, 2007, of its suspension of redemptions for three of its investment funds. This name stresses the financial crisis as the precipitating event leading up to the severe decline in real economic activity slightly more than a year later. The name conveys that at its very basic level, the crisis was a form of a banking panic. The parallel to the name “Panic of 1907” is also a reminder to us that history has a way of repeating itself unless we learn and apply its lessons well.

Gent Sejko: Welcome address - Second Conference of the Museum of the Bank of Albania Welcome address by Mr Gent Sejko, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the Second Conference of the Museum of the Bank of Albania, Tirana, 20 September 2018. * * * Distinguished professors, Dear participants, It gives me a great pleasure to welcome you to the Second Conference of the Museum of the Bank of Albania, via this recorded message. I wish I were present to attend in person the proceedings of the Conference, but, regrettably, due to the rather tight agenda I will not be able to. Nevertheless, I will have the possibility to read all the presentations, discussions, and input in the Conference book that will be compiled subsequent to the Conference. As I have already emphasised, the Conference of the Museum of the Bank of Albania is one of the most prominent events, providing us with the opportunity to enrich and further the studies on the exposed collections, and serves as a platform for Albanian experts to discuss and share their research findings. We are pleased to see that the Museum of the Bank of Albania brings for the second time together representatives from renowned research institutions, such as: the Albanian Institute of Archaeology and History, European Universities and central banks to present their studies. As the title suggests, this Conference will address the role of money in wartime.
[4] If the trend continues, it could eventually entirely disappear. Since cash is the only source of public, risk-free money available to everyone, we see the need to adapt to people's preferences by offering a public version of money in this growing digital sphere. While doing this, we do not want to replace cash but to complement it with a widely usable, inclusive, free-for-basic use and convenient form of money. The other important reason for embarking on this digital journey is related to something we call "strategic autonomy". As I mentioned at the beginning, current geopolitical tensions show us how fragile our world is. Dependence on external sources and external suppliers for the basic needs of our population brings risks, and we must ensure these risks do not materialize, particularly in times of crisis. It is our duty to support the smooth functioning of the payment system or, to put it more bluntly - to ensure payment services continuity in unexpected scenarios. And this is precisely where the digital euro fits in. Built on its own infrastructure and further developed in cooperation with domestic payment service providers, we must ensure this option will work when all others fail regardless of the cause of the disruption, be it a cyberattack, technical glitch or something else. We must ensure the digital euro is there when you need it the most. PRIVACY Now let's mention privacy. This is very important for us, and I want to emphasize this aspect.

Bank deposits are already uniform, robust money in the UK – indeed they account for 85% of the money in circulation for retail purposes and are generally acceptable for wholesale transactions. We have a comprehensive regulatory regime, deposit insurance and resolution and insolvency procedures to protect bank depositors. Commercial banks settle between each other in Bank of England money which helps to reinforce uniformity. Nonetheless, the tokenisation of bank deposits raises some important questions. Currently, money issued by a commercial bank can only be held by someone that has an account at that bank. It is not directly transferable from one holder to another unless both parties have an account at the same bank. In order to transfer money from the holder of an account at one bank to the holder of an account at another bank, there needs to be a transaction between the two banks which ultimately settles in Bank of England money across our books. New ledger technology developed in the crypto world could allow tokenised bank deposits to circulate freely as ‘tokenised deposit money’, in what might be thought of as a digital banknote issued by a private bank’. They would constitute claims on the issuing bank that could be held, for example in a wallet, without the holder having to have an account at the issuing bank. This raises some difficult issues about how deposit insurance would operate in the event of failure of the issuing bank. Could a bank maintain a single customer view of those who held its liabilities?
It is important to note that the Riksbank made forecasts under the assumption of an unchanged repo rate up to the publication of the second Inflation Report of 2005. With this method CPI inflation should actually be over-estimated in the shortterm if the interest rate is cut. It is actually only with effect from this year, when we have begun to make forecasts based on our own interest rate path, that the forecasts fully mirror our views of the future. Another point is that the forecasts are rarely made at the same point in time, which can of course make accuracy more difficult. However, the analysis here is designed to ensure this problem is as small as possible. Forecasts are uncertain and we mark this by an uncertainty band Forecasts are uncertain and one is not always right. Most of those who make forecasts are very well aware of this. Back in 1997 when we began publishing forecasts of inflation we reported uncertainty bands around the forecasts. As uncertainty increases over time, the uncertainty band takes the form of a fan (Figure 13). We now also publish uncertainty bands for the GDP and repo rate forecasts. The uncertainty that is reflected in the bands can be divided into three parts. It reflects the fact that we are uncertain about the current situation, regarding how the economy functions, and about what shocks might occur during the forecast period.

On the other hand, our forecasts for the real economy are not as accurate as the inflation forecasts, although they compare fairly well with the time series model’s forecasts. Our forecasts also compare fairly well with those of other forecasters. The result of the comparison with other forecasters shows that our GDP forecasts up to one year ahead are often among the most accurate. This also applies to the CPI, but here the difference is smaller compared with the NIER and the Consensus panel. This does not mean that we have not occasionally made considerable forecasting errors. But the errors are not so systematic that there is reason to believe they are due to inadequate forecasting methods. And nor does this mean that we cannot or do not wish to become even better. We are constantly working to improve our methods. In some areas we need to work extra hard to improve our forecasting performance. One such area is productivity. It is important that we continue to regularly assess monetary policy, and particularly with regard to our forecasts, both in our annual assessments and in other ways. This is necessary both to be able to gain better knowledge of which variables are difficult to forecast and to see where it is necessary to develop methods and analysis. A major advantage of publishing our forecasts is that external experts can also evaluate us. Thank you for inviting me here today! Figure 1.