samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Available here  0 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec  Source: DMO and Bank Calculations. Past values adjusted for inflation (April 2020 equivalents). Moment 7: central banking on the home front Table 1 and Chart 15 summarise the scale of the Bank’s recent balance sheet operations: a balance sheet that has expanded by almost a third in three months, and will reach nearly 40% of annual UK GDP by mid-year. To deliver that, we are doing more than ten times the number of weekly operations than in the pre-Covid19 period (Chart 16). This is eye-popping by itself. But, more extraordinary still, virtually all of it has been done remotely – hundreds of billions of pounds worth of operations delivered from peoples’ bedrooms, attics and kitchens, whilst isolated on their own, or caring for children and other relatives. The Bank has long embraced home working as part of its flexible working arrangements – but the sheer scale of what has been done – what we have had to do – would frankly never have been contemplated by choice. Preparation began early – and the 12  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  12  technology that enables all of our critical operational functions, and the operational and risk controls that go with them, were quickly re-configured to support working from home. By the time of the MPC’s first policy package on 11 March, we were already operating on a fully-live split-site basis.

Based on what I’ve said today, let me identify four such questions:  -  First, do we understand why intermediaries struggled to make effective markets in core government bond, money and foreign exchange instruments at crucial moments during the crisis? Was it simply the sheer scale of the shock, combined with the operational challenges of remote working? Or did regulatory constraints also play a role? If there are circumstances where our traditional counterparties aren’t able to intermediate, do we need to fix that at source? Or do central banks need to change the design of their balance sheet facilities more profoundly to fill that gap? -  Second, are we comfortable with the central role played by highly-leveraged but thinly-capitalised non-banks in arbitraging between key financial markets, if the unwinding of those trades can amplify instability so starkly? -  Third, how do we deal with the risks posed to financial stability by the structural tendency for Money Market and some other open-ended funds to be prone to runs, without having to commit scarce public money to costly support facilities? -  And, fourth, how can we ensure timely transition away from LIBOR, whose weaknesses were highlighted so starkly by the crisis? The Bank’s Financial Policy Committee will be reflecting on these and other issues in the months ahead. Closer to home, there are lessons too for us in some of the ways of working that we’ve been forced to explore whilst in lockdown.
Such “tilt” investment strategies, which overweight high ESG stocks, and “momentum” investment strategies, which focus on companies that have improved their ESG ratings, have outperformed global benchmarks for close to a decade. More widespread adoption of such strategies is essential. At present, one of the biggest hurdles to doing so is the huge variation in the measurement of ESG.18 Common taxonomies to identify environmental outperformance, such as the EU’s Green Taxonomy and the Green Bond Standard can help but they tend to be binary (either dark green or all brown). Mainstreaming sustainable investing will require a richer taxonomy – 50 shades of green. One promising option highlighted by the UN’s Climate Financial Leaders is the development of transition indices composed of corporations in high-carbon sectors that have adopted low carbon strategies. Consideration should also be given to the new assessments by leading asset owners of how well their portfolios are positioned for a two degree target. Once again, Japan is leading the way. GPIF, the world’s largest pension fund, calculates that its portfolio is aligned to a 3.5 degree world. Allianz assesses that it is on 3.7 degree path and has committed to get to 1.5 degrees by 2050.

Public authorities and industry professionals need to combine forces and continue looking for ways to redirect French savings. Without necessarily making it an issue in the upcoming electoral debate, the solution could aim to be compatible on three levels: with the low interest rate environment, with the need to better channel resources towards productive investment – and therefore corporate equity – and with the expectations of savers. Prompted by the increase in life expectancies and the need to prepare for retirement, savers are adopting increasingly long-term investment horizons: they are more 2 ACPR, 2015 Annual Report, October 2016. Page 4 sur 7  concerned with the security of their investments than with liquidity. Taking inspiration from the new Euro-croissance policies, it makes sense to offer savers new, complementary forms of saving products that are less liquid and include some form of long-term capital guarantee, and that allow them to take advantage of the higher returns offered by equities over the long run. We also need, at the very least, to avoid any tax distortions that might penalise these products more than liquid and risk-free investments. Given the current low rate environment, the ACPR is taking care to ensure that insurers remain alert to the risks of adverse developments and take appropriate measures to counter them.
For decades, the primary focus of these institutions has been on providing young people with cognitive skills. That model has worked well in meeting the needs of the skill-shifts seen through each of the three industrial revolutions. 59  Carney (2016). PM speech on science and modern Industrial Strategy, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-onscience-and-modern-industrial-strategy-21-may-2018 61 For example: https://vanguardcommunications.net/doctor-online-review-study/ 60  16  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  16  Whether that model will meet the needs of the Fourth Industrial Revolution seems more questionable, for two reasons. First, in future it seems very likely young and old alike will be in equal educational need – to train, retrain and retrain again through their 60 or 70-year careers. Second, the skills these people require for the future world of work will no longer be cognitive. Rather, they are likely to be more evenly balanced between the cognitive, technical and social - head, hands and heart. It has become rather trite to talk of the need for “life-long learning”. But never has the need for such learning likely to have been greater given the longer span and greater volatility in future career paths. Making these career transitions will itself call for a particular set of skills – personal resilience, problem-solving and flexibility. As is now well-recognised, these character attributes are best instilled in early years. If we now turn to our existing universities and colleges, at present these do not appear to be ideally sited to meeting either of these secular shifts in educational and training need.

I take note of the vitality of these policies’ net premium inflows (up 27% in 2016, with inflows for the first 10 months of 2017 at more than twice their levels for the same period in 2016), but they offer no capital protection, and let me remind you of the duty to advise on the real risks incurred by policyholders. Instead, we must encourage the Euro-Growth (Eurocroissance) product, which should be revamped and expanded. The product’s initial calibration has prompted debate; its commercial take-up, though tangible (assets under management of around EUR 1.8 billion), is still slow. I know that certain professionals have their own ideas to address that. And it’s my sincere hope that progress is made on those ideas, and quickly. It is not the responsibility of the public authorities to develop good products – that is down to you –; but it will be our responsibility to encourage them, at the proper time, through the appropriate prudential and even tax-related measures. This struggle, targeted towards life insurance that is more equity-linked and long term, seems more promising to me than the struggle against the flat tax (prélèvement forfaitaire unique); I would like to mention in passing that the flat tax contributes to a neutral stance on the different forms of savings, which is long overdue. The diversification, properly understood, of the investments of French savers towards more equity-based, long-term savings is in everyone’s interest.
Let me now move on to the next question, which concerns the actual size of the risks linked to household debt in Sweden. It is true that there are estimates suggesting that the housing market in Sweden is not overvalued. Some of these estimates have been made by the Riksbank itself. This could mean that the high level of debt among Swedish households is not such a large problem, either. But there are also estimates that suggest an overvaluation.17 And when there is so much at stake, there are good reasons, as I see it, to be particularly cautious. After all, it was not the case that the corresponding estimates prior to the crisis showed any impending problems in the countries that have now been hit so hard. As Stefan Gerlach, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, noted recently, it is always easy to gain support for the opinion that housing prices are currently correctly valued – even if this soon proves to be incorrect.18 In Ireland, the opinion immediately prior to the crisis was that housing prices were not abnormally high and that the banks were stable and wellconsolidated. I am convinced that this was how most countries, which have suffered problems, viewed their situation.19 Nor does the size of household wealth appear to have had any decisive significance for the impact of the crisis. The countries that have been hit hardest include ones with both stronger and weaker wealth positions than Sweden (see Figure 8).

“Quantitative easing” is able to provide the much desired relief for everyone, be it a household in negative equity that has overstretched itself, an over-expanded enterprise or a government faced with social unrest as a result of the stringent measures it is forced to implement. Yet, quantitative easing is the exact opposite of deleveraging. Quantitative easing aims at: 1. reducing the interest burden of highly leveraged individuals, enterprises and governments, and 2. propping asset prices, lessening the negative wealth effect or even trying to create positive wealth effect, enhancing people’s confidence so that they will be more willing to spend, and increasing employment. However, quantitative easing is not a panacea. In the past three years, quantitative easing had limited stimulating effect on the real economy. There are several reasons. First, household deleveraging has reduced households’ propensity to consume, particularly for the  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  lower income households. Secondly, with interest rate close to zero in the US, and the cost of current consumption already very low relative to future consumption, further interest rate cuts would have little effect in stimulating households to bring forward future consumption. Thirdly, regulatory reform and economic uncertainty are restraining banks’ ability and incentive to lend. And we must not forget there is a price to pay for implementing quantitative easing, the interest income of depositors, including investment funds and retirees, is greatly reduced.
In addition to that, in countries in which a QIS 4 has been conducted, the QIS 5 might be either a partial update of the QIS 4 or a new exercise. Finally in terms of the schedule, to enable banks to make early preparations for the impact study, the Committee intends to provide banks with workbooks for the QIS 5 in July. This is in relation to the calibration. The second point I wanted to make is related to this but is of a more general nature. I agree that much is changing today in a short span of time. The wide range of standards that are evolving in parallel represents a drain on the limited resources that banks have to keep pace with these changes. In this respect, and especially in relation to our work on Basel, I see some merit in concentrating, at least for a while, on completing our current regulatory work, and on ensuring the quality and consistency of its implementation. This will allow us all a period to digest the framework we have designed. 2  BIS Review 23/2005  Let me conclude with a few words on the third topic: implementation of Basel II. I have just two remarks. On validation, we have recently published six principles that will guide our future work.

I’d like to mention one other area of preparations that will affect banks directly: the recalibration exercise. In order to establish a common data set on which to base this review, the Committee has decided to begin the recalibration exercise in autumn this year. We recognise that the recalibration exercise will demand resources from both banks and supervisors. The IIF expressed clearly to us this concern. In this regard I would like to make two comments. First, we discussed this issue yesterday in our meeting and decided to publish a newsletter clarifying some elements of the proposed work that I hope will address these concerns. In this newsletter, available on the BIS website, we underline several ideas. The Committee thinks that this early recalibration, in the spring of 2006, will give banks and supervisors more time to reflect and will facilitate implementation. In order to ensure that the envisaged review is based on recent and high-quality data, the Committee will undertake a so-called fifth impact study between October and December 2005, three months earlier than previously envisaged. The calibration of the revised Framework will be discussed in spring 2006 on the basis of QIS 5 data. As we are conscious of the workload of this exercise, the Committee does not intend to set data requirements or timeframes for the parallel calculation that will be conducted in 2006. So there is no duplication of work.
Given this definition, measuring volunteering activity is likely to be a tricky business. Would you know how many hours you had spent over the past year helping your neighbours? Those London commuters might know – a roundish number? – but the rest of the UK population is unlikely to keep score. Household surveys can help. In the UK, the Community Life Survey and the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) ask respondents about the nature and scale of their volunteering activities. Although far from perfect, they enable us to build up a good overall picture of the volunteering sector. And what a picture they paint. First, the volunteer army in the UK is huge. Figure 4 illustrates the extent of participation in voluntary activities in 2012, based on the Community Life Survey. Around 44% of respondents had done some form of formal voluntary work over the previous 12 months and 29% volunteer formally at least once a month. This means around 15 million people in the UK volunteer “frequently”. Looking at hours worked, this equates to just over 2 billion hours per year spent formally volunteering. To give you some context, that is just under one hour per week for every person over 16 in the UK. It is 5% of the total hours worked in the UK by paid employees. It is equivalent to 1.25 million full-time equivalents (FTEs), or double the number of paid FTEs in the voluntary sector.

This brings me to the issue of ERM2 membership and its consistency with our current monetary policy regimes. The proponents of the ERM2 regime argue that it is a useful monetary policy framework which can have a disciplining impact on domestic policies, limit exchange rate volatility, and help determine the conversion rate for EMU entry, but at the same time provides enough flexibility. Even though there is no doubt a valid point in all these arguments, some of the accession countries’ central banks have expressed much less enthusiasm about the ERM2. I wonder whether we are able to reach a consensus on this subject today. On the practical level, we all have to define our policy positions as regards the appropriate timing of ERM2 membership, choice of central parity, supportive policy mix and so on. Our debate should pay attention to the differences among the individual accession countries in addressing these policy issues. So far, I have focused on the monetary aspect of EMU entry only. In many cases, though, monetary policy is unlikely to be the major bottleneck in the accession process. For many countries, the key practical constraint seems to be their public budgets. Notable exceptions are the Baltic States and a few other candidate countries, for which there seem to be few obstacles to early eurozone entry in this respect. But many other countries run large public deficits, even after subtracting one-off transition costs.
This assessment will be informed primarily by our staff macroeconomic projections, on which all data are incorporated in a coherent manner. In this regard, the staff March forecast pointed to a weakening of activity in 2023, with real euro area GDP expected to grow by 1% in 2023 (compared with 3.6% in 2022). This scenario is somewhat more optimistic than that of the previous projections (published in December), reflecting better than expected recent economic data and the fall in the cost of energy, so that real income losses are lower. Growth is expected to pick up, to 1.6%, 1  See “An overview of the ECB’s monetary policy strategy”. 1  in both 2024 and 2025, based on a robust labour market, improving confidence and the recovery of purchasing power. However, these growth rates are lower than projected in December owing to a stronger tightening of financial conditions, including a larger appreciation of the euro exchange rate. And, in any case, the accumulated growth path expected now for 2022-2024 is significantly lower – around 2.5% lower – than that projected in December 2021, before the war in Ukraine, reflecting the material deterioration of euro area terms of trade. On inflation, the baseline scenario is one of gradual convergence of inflation to our 2% target. After peaking at 10.6% in October last year, HICP declined to 6.9% in March this year, according to the flash estimate, on the back of lower energy prices and base effects.

Demand for office and retail space is strong. The high hotel occupancy rates have spurred new interest in hotel developments. In private housing, annual take-up of uncompleted residential units has surpassed the previous high in 1994. The Government land sales programme will continue to provide new development opportunities in Singapore. Already, we have seen strong market interest supporting the development of the Marina Bay and Orchard Road areas. With the positive outlook for Singapore and the government’s strategic plans for development of key industries, investments in real estate from foreign investors have substantially increased. Investors in Singapore real estate now come from many countries, namely the U.S., Hong Kong, Australia, Germany, Japan, the Middle East and Indonesia. Singapore as a gateway to property finance Investment opportunities in Asia, including Singapore, have not gone unnoticed by global investors. Property and property-related assets are also gaining popularity with investors seeking high-yielding and predictable returns with exposure to capital gains. Attracted by the region’s rapid economic growth and positive outlook on Asia, global investment funds are increasing their allocation to Asia, specifically in Asian real estate. Singapore can play an important role as a gateway for global investors to access Asian opportunities via our capital markets. As a leading home for global fund managers, total assets under management in Singapore exceed $ billion with over 50% of these funds invested into Asia Pacific. The Singapore Exchange is an established listing venue for regional property companies based in Singapore as well as foreign property developers.
According to DC Independent Survey 2003 and KPMG’s 2nd Global Survey on Basel Readiness Assessment of 190 institutions in 19 countries, increasingly, banks appear to be moving towards Advanced Measurement Approach rather than Standardized Approach in dealing with operational risk. As for the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, we have decided to follow a consultative process while implementing Basel II norms and move in a gradual, sequential and co-coordinated manner, for which dialogue has already begun with the banks. A steering committee comprising representatives of banks and supervisors is taking stock of all issues relating to its implementation. Here too, the regulators need to be on top of things to assess readiness of banks. 14. Conclusion Let me sum up the key messages of this address. Today, the degree of sophistication in financial markets urge all market participants, including regulators and supervisors, to increase their focus on risk management in an effort to build more robust and sound financial systems and to position themselves to participate more fully in this complex and fast-paced financial environment. In that sense, Basel II, aiming at further strengthening of the soundness and stability of the international banking system, offers a unique opportunity to respond to all these concerns and pay attention to the main sources of risk and vulnerability that could pose challenges for the financial system stability. 15. Implementation of Basel II has been described as a long journey rather than a destination by itself. The journey is certainly tougher than we thought.

https://www.icmagroup.org/green-social-and-sustainability-bonds/green-bond-principles-gbp/ 9  4  The second problem is the price that the markets assign to these assets and the higher costs associated with their issue. The issue of a green asset involves additional costs for the issuer, as it is necessary to hire a certifying company for the issue of the green bond and to pass regular audits to be able to continue to use the label over the lifetime of the bond. Thus, issuing a green bond will only be worthwhile for the issuer if it can sell such bonds at a higher price than normal bonds. At the moment, this is the case, given that there is a negative premium in their favour (greenium), which shows the greater appetite of certain investors for these assets. And the third problem arises from the limitations inherent in bond markets. Access to bond financing, due to its high fixed costs, is restricted to issuers requiring large volumes. It is currently unimaginable that SMEs or households would issue bonds to make the transition towards a more efficient economy less based on greenhouse gas emissions. For this transition to occur it is therefore necessary for a green credit market to be developed, in which banks will have a fundamental role to play. This is particularly important in countries like Spain, in which banks intermediate the bulk of funds between savers and investors. For this purpose, it is crucial that banks include these types of considerations in their analysis.