samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
BIS Review 3/2007  1  We are caught between two poles. We need rules for policymaking, yet we must also retain some discretion. The response to the economic arguments should certainly not be: "The legal department has decided that the treaty says . . . ". 2  BIS Review 3/2007

At the monetary policy meeting on 13 March 2008, Norges Bank’s Executive Board decided to keep the key policy rate unchanged at 5.25 per cent. The press release issued after the meeting states that the Executive Board considered increasing the interest rate as an alternative, but that an overall assessment indicated that it was appropriate to keep the interest rate unchanged. Reference was also made to the analyses in Monetary Policy Report 1/08, which suggest that the key policy rate may be raised further in the period to summer. The Executive Board’s strategy is that the key policy rate should be in the interval 5 – 6 per cent in the period to 25 June, unless the Norwegian economy is exposed to major shocks. The Government Pension Fund – Global As I am addressing pension funds today, I must also take this opportunity to discuss the Government Pension Fund – Global. Heightened uncertainty concerning the financial system and global growth prospects is also having an impact on the Government Pension Fund’s investment markets. In recent months, price volatility in both equity and fixed-income markets has increased. The fall in equity prices, even after several years of gains, has drawn focus on variations in the Fund’s value. In such a situation it is important to step back and remind ourselves of the basis for the investment strategy that was chosen for the Fund. The strategy must be based on the Fund’s distinctive features, in particular the Fund’s long investment horizon.
The high degree of uncertainty militates against ambitious fine-tuning of the economy but favours focusing on the main task of monetary policy, which is maintaining price stability. Moreover, uncertainty necessitates broad-based and impartial analysis as well as judgment and flexibility in monetary policy decision-making. BIS Review 5/2008  1

Large exchange rate movements have at times been a source of instability. In Norway, the household, banking and corporate sectors as a whole take on currency risk to a limited extent. Furthermore, government finances are solid, and fiscal policy is not affected to any great extent by short-term exchange rate movements. This allows the exchange rate to play an important role in absorbing shocks to the economy. We have thus been able to reap the benefits of an efficient international capital market without having to deal with its challenges. 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  At the same time, in a world of high capital mobility and extensive trade, monetary policy’s room for manoeuvre is constrained by the exchange rate channel. In a small open economy with a floating exchange rate, the domestic interest rate can differ from interest rates abroad. However, an interest rate differential that becomes too wide can lead to considerable exchange rate volatility, which will in turn feed through to inflation, output and employment. Thus, the domestic interest rate cannot be set without regard to the level of external interest rates. The room for manoeuvre in monetary policy is further constrained in periods when external interest rates are close to or below zero. Although the financial crisis in 2008 had a marked impact on Norway, our economy was affected to a lesser extent than most other advanced economies. There are a number of reasons for this. The Norwegian economy was in an upturn when the crisis hit.
Triparty services, as you know, involve a triparty agent acting as a facilitator between the two parties to the repo. Triparty services are already used within the current operational framework of the Eurosystem, although only on a domestic basis and limited to a small number of euro area countries (Germany, Luxembourg, France and Italy). In 2014 however, the possibility to collateralise Eurosystem credit operations by using triparty services on a cross-border basis will be introduced, thereby allowing for greater efficiencies in collateral mobilisation and re-use of collateral received in triparty repo with the respective central banks of the Eurosystem. Another initiative with which the ECB is associated relates to triparty settlement interoperability. 15 When we refer to this, we should keep in mind that an important feature of the European repo market set-up is the (increasing) integration between the repo clearing, settlement and collateral management layers. While there is an increasing integration across these layers however, there remains in some cases a certain fragmentation that limits traders’ opportunities based on the location of the collateral. Working in close cooperation with the European Repo Council (ERC), the international central securities depositories (ICSDs) have started to develop a triparty settlement interoperability model to support settlement of general collateral trading cleared by CCPs. With the interoperability between the two ICSDs’ collateral management systems, market participants would avoid the fragmentation of their liquidity pools. The ECB is fully behind this market-led triparty interoperability initiative because of its collateral pooling benefits and efficiencies.

We can consider how the further development of market infrastructures can be an important part of this process. 2. The role of market infrastructures  In the second part of my remarks today, I would like to consider the role of market infrastructures. Market infrastructures have proven very resilient to the crisis. 11 Resilient market infrastructures also play an important role in helping to address some of the issues that have been identified in the money markets. In this regard we can usefully build on the CPSS’ analysis of areas for further development and for enhancing market infrastructures in repo markets. The CPSS has identified seven issues directly or indirectly related to repo market infrastructure that may affect the resilience of repo markets. I would like to pick up on two of these seven issues now in the context of euro area money markets. The first issue concerns “effective protection against counterparty credit risk”, which I believe can be addressed to some extent by the use of CCPs, while the second issue relates to “the inefficient use of (high-quality) collateral due to constraints within repo clearing and settlement arrangements”, which is being addressed via collateral optimisation initiatives. a)  Role of central counterparties (CCPs)  CCPs play a major role in reducing counterparty risk, thereby mitigating the potential risks associated with the drying-up of funding sources.
This leads to the final topic I’d like to discuss, namely the issues related with the transition to the New Accord across the world. Broad application of the New Accord around the world, transition to Basel II In drafting a replacement for the 1988 Accord, the members of the Committee sought to ensure that the capital guidelines could be applied around the world to many kinds of banks. This means that our rules must build on the best practices, yet remain relevant to conventional banks in more traditional markets. The New Accord provides a “menu” of options for measuring risk, thereby offering the degree of flexibility necessary for banks of various sizes and strategic orientiations to adopt the new framework. Now that the New Basel Accord is moving away from a “one-size-fits-all” approach to capital, supervisors in every jurisdictions have the opportunity to evaluate what would be most appropriate for banks that are not large, complex, or internationally active. At the same time, we could say that Basel has moved away from a “one-schedule-fits-all” approach to implementing the new rules worldwide. Or, if you prefer, the Committee is saying to each country, “pick flowers when flowers bloom”. This suggestion is particularly crucial for supervisors who have adopted the 1988 Accord only recently. Some supervisors believe that their banks may still be strengthening their credit risk management functions and consequently would not benefit substantially from the New Accord at the moment.

If you read just a few of the comment letters on our website, you will see that many of the latest suggestions from the industry would tend to increase the complexity of the New Accord even further. Still, we know that it is easier to enforce a simpler rule than a complicated one. As we complete the text of the new rules, we will continue to simplify and streamline the framework. Conservatism and the balance between soundness and conservatism A second issue that respondents to the proposals have raised is the sense that the New Accord may be highly conservative in its assumptions about how much risk exists in certain exposures. Questions about conservatism matter to us because we are trying to align capital more closely to risk and in a way that is conceptually sound. A good example would be the treatment of retail exposures, including the small and medium enterprises that fall into this category, where the Committee found persuasive economic evidence to support a significantly lower requirement compared to earlier drafts of the new rules. Another example we are evaluating currently concerns the treatment of credit losses for banks adopting one of the more sophisticated approaches to credit risk, the “internal ratings-based” or “IRB” approach. Our current rules for the IRB approach derived capital charges on mathematical estimates of a bank’s credit losses - both those that could be anticipated versus those that could not.
After a period of very low inflation in 2004, inflation was on the rise through 2005. Thereafter, domestic inflation showed an unexpected drop in 2006. Lower electricity prices have contributed to a fall in total CPI inflation in 2007. Underlying inflation, i.e. inflation adjusted for tax changes and excluding energy products, was fairly stable for a long period at between 1 and 1½ per cent. Underlying inflation has edged up gradually since late summer 2006. The most recent figures indicate that underlying inflation is now approximately 1½ per cent. The Norwegian economy is expanding sharply after the strong upturn began in summer 2003. The upturn followed a period of slow growth from 1998 and a mild recession in 2002 and into 2003. Growth has been stronger than in the cyclical upturn in the mid-1990s. We have just reached the end of an unusually long period of economic growth. So far in the cyclical upturn, the mainland economy has grown by an average of just over 4 per cent annually. This year, growth appears to be over 5 per cent. Growth is very strong for such an advanced stage of the economic cycle. This is clear from a comparison with the upturns in the 1980s and 1990s. Unemployment has declined considerably and is now very low. The labour market is tight. Unemployment has not been as low since the latter half of the 1980s, and employment has risen faster this year than in living memory.

It is also encouraging to note that the report makes a similar positive assessment for a group of reforms undertaken by the Albanian government and other authorities in the area of market liberalisation, privatisations, energy sector and infrastructure. 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  Looking ahead, the report assesses objectively the global macroeconomic environment as overall favourable. The nature and origin of capital flows toward the transition economies is immune from the adverse effects from the Brexit or increase in interest rates in the US economy. For the Central and Southeastern Europe, during 2017, the economy is expected to grow faster, driven by domestic factors and a slight and stable improvement of the economic situation in foreign trading partners. The main risks relate to the performance of commodity prices, and in particular to geopolitical and global economic developments. The deepening social inequality is an issue of particular concern that has been present across the board in transition countries. The report evidences that inequality in the economy, in terms of opportunities and financial inclusion, has been expanding, contributing negatively to economic welfare in transition countries. Finding solutions is a difficult challenge, with financial education and financial inclusion considered as tools for addressing this issue successfully. I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to emphasise that the Bank of Albania and the banking system are paying particular attention to these two topics.
By the late eighteenth century, fears of renewed Anglo-French conflict contributed to runs on the Bank which drained its gold reserves and led to the suspension of convertibility of its notes into gold. This prompted an MP to describe the Bank as “an elderly lady in the City who had…unfortunately fallen into bad company”. To this day, the Bank of England is known as the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. It was not until the 1844 Bank Charter Act that the Bank of England’s note issuance responsibilities were 6  formalised and the rights of others to issue notes in England and Wales began to be phased out. Today the Bank is the sole issuer of banknotes in England and Wales, while a number of Scottish and Northern Irish banks can issue notes provided that they are backed by Bank of England notes or funds on deposit at the Bank of England. 7  Most forms of money, past and present, have nominal values that far exceed their intrinsic ones. And this gap has meant that money has a long and sorry history of debasement. Over the centuries, forms of private th  money, such as the notes issued by American banks during the free banking of the 19 century, have inevitably succumbed to oversupply and eventual collapse. 6  The last private bank to issue its own banknotes in England and Wales was Fox, Fowler and Company in 1921. Seven banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland can issue banknotes.

Their loan ratio to total assets is down to around 12% from around 50% in 1985 and 30% only 5 years ago. That is still much higher than the illiquid asset ratio for the large US securities firms which has fairly consistently been around 2%. The conclusion that I draw from all of this is that while there certainly have been important changes affecting the banks, and the environment in which they operate, they have not, yet at least, been such as to affect fundamentally their relevant key functions or the importance of those functions to the economy; nor have they altered fundamentally the distinctive characteristics of either the banks’ liabilities or their assets. To what extent have other financial institutions become more like banks? So, then, to what extent have other financial institutions developed similar characteristics to the distinctive characteristics of the banks as I have described them? The question, let me be quite clear, is not whether other financial institutions perform economically or socially important functions - clearly they do - and those functions may equally be special in their own distinctive ways. It is also obviously true that, with the upsurge in financial innovation and globalisation that we have seen in the past 10-20 years, there has been substantial blurring of the boundaries between different types of financial institution and the increasing emergence of multifunctional, multinational, financial groups, so that non-bank institutions have taken over banks or offered banking services just as banks have entered substantially into non-banking financial activities.
Our goal was to portray a theme in a coherent and consistent overall context. However, as work progressed it became evident that it was going to be difficult to depict the thrust of the original overarching theme ‘Switzerland open to the world’ satisfactorily in a banknote series. This ran counter to our plan of designing banknotes that had a clear internal logic and were immediately recognisable as a series. The production delay bought us some time to consider the overarching theme of the new series, the selected illustrations and the messaging of the various motifs on the notes in greater depth. The result was a decision to change the overarching theme to ‘The many facets of  Page 2/4  Berne, 3 September 2019 Thomas Jordan  News conference on new banknotes  Switzerland’. Taking this as our inspiration allowed us to portray our country with all its facets very effectively and gave us more latitude for the design. In line with this thematic development, each denomination depicts a typically Swiss characteristic, which is then illustrated graphically using a key motif. The key motif appears in various forms in all the illustrations and security features on a given denomination, and ties the different sections of the note together. You can see from this image that the key motif of the 100-franc note is water.

Ranee Jayamaha: Recent economic developments, challenges and strategies – proactive strategies in reducing inflation Speech by Dr Ranee Jayamaha, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, at the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Colombo, 25 May 2007. *  *  *  Inflation is a common enemy. Its impact will be felt by every single person in a country. Managing inflation and reducing inflationary expectations cannot be achieved by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) alone. It can only be done collectively and with cooperation from all stakeholders. Who are these critical stakeholders ? CBSL, the government, banks and financial institutions, fund managers/traders/dealers operating in various markets, investors both local and foreign households and consumers. 1. Central Bank of Sri Lanka  Given its prime objective of maintaining price stability, CBSL has been proactive in the conduct of monetary policy, which is the instrument through which this purpose can be achieved. CBSL sets monetary targets taking into consideration growth prospects of the economy, liquidity requirements necessary to facilitate growth and inflation at a desired level. The ultimate aim is to keep inflation at desirable levels and reduce inflationary expectations. CBSL, at its disposal, has a limited number of instruments to conduct monetary policy. The current framework places greater reliance on market-based instruments, such as changes to the policy interest rate and conduct of open market operations. Accordingly, CBSL has announced its monetary policy strategy and targets at the beginning of 2007.
More specific instruments, such as amortisation requirements and higher risk weights for mortgages, are also probably more precise in their effects than the repo rate when the aim is to prevent and  8  The Riksbank (2013)  9  See IMF (2013)  BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  manage the risks associated with household indebtedness. A mortgage cap is already in place. But we still do not know exactly what form future instruments will take and when it will be possible to begin using them. Once they are in place, however, I hope that there will be less need to take household indebtedness into account in the decisions on the repo rate. The current discussion on the division of responsibility for macroprudential policy also calls to mind the relationship between monetary policy and fiscal policy. Through the medium of monetary policy, the Riksbank can influence the development of the real economy and thereby the loan losses of the financial institutions, the profitability of the companies and assets prices on the financial markets. All this in turn affects financial stability. And a macroprudential policy that aims to promote financial stability and comprises risk weights, capital requirements and amortisation requirements will affect interest-rate margins and interest-rate differentials which in turn will have an impact on the transmission mechanism of monetary policy.

All kinds of regulatory arbitrage, which would enable firms to relocate to other jurisdictions to bypass national regulations, should be avoided. In this regard, the European Union is currently building a harmonized regulation. Last September, the European Commission launched its proposal for a “Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation” (also known as MiCA). If this proposition is adopted by the EU, companies that issue crypto-assets or provide additional services will be subject to the same requirements, under the watch of supervisory authorities. For example, the crypto-assets intended as a means of payment will have to provide a predictable redemption right in sovereign currency for asset holders, which is deemed necessary for the protection of consumers. At the international level, a cooperative framework is gradually setting up in order to deal with the challenges raised by stablecoins. 2. Supporting initiatives to strengthen Europe’s sovereignty in payments such as EPI The second response is to support private initiatives that can have a constructive impact on market functioning, payment systems efficiency and help address European sovereignty in payments. The best example of this is the European Payments Initiative (EPI), a project led by a set of major European banks and processors aiming at creating a unified, innovative and autonomous European payment solution. The Eurosystem, as well as the European Commission, has been in support of this work right 2/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  from the start. 3.
So it is the outlook for inflation, rather than its current rate, which explains the MPC’s decision to resume asset purchases. Asset purchases work by increasing the amount of money in the economy. When the Bank buys assets, the people who sell the assets to us receive money which can then be used to buy other assets. In turn, the sellers become buyers of other assets, and so on indefinitely as the money is transferred from one account to another. The prices of assets that investors choose to buy go up, raising wealth and pushing down on yields. Those yields are the opposite side of the coin to the borrowing costs of companies. In these ways, the Bank’s purchases of assets increase demand in the economy. Some of you have asked why the MPC has focused largely on purchases of gilts, rather than securities issued by companies. The answer is three-fold. First, gilts are the only asset available in sufficient quantity such that the Bank can rapidly inject large amounts of money into the economy – £ billion in the present case. Second, we have bought, and continue to buy, corporate securities, but this was designed to ensure that the corporate bond market functioned normally with the Bank acting as a temporary market-maker in a dysfunctional but previously liquid market. We were able to achieve that objective without the expenditure of large sums of money – unnecessary given the size of the market.

On its  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  own, however, such a policy will raise difficult political questions about the capacity of the weaker sovereigns to pay for any recapitalisation of their banks. Bank and sovereign solvency concerns are inextricably intertwined. In the end, the underlying solvency concerns require countries to adopt compatible policies so that they can credibly service their internal and external debts. What does this mean for our own economy? Our objective must be to steer the UK economy slowly back to a position of more normal interest rates and lower budget deficits. With a lower level of sterling and a credible plan to reduce the fiscal deficit over the medium term, we were on track. But the problems in the euro area and the marked slowing in the world economy have lengthened the period over which a return to normality is likely. 2011 has been the year of the reluctant recovery. Growth has disappointed, both here and abroad. Business and consumer confidence have fallen sharply, not only at home but also elsewhere in Europe and the United States. And the level of world trade in goods has stagnated. A slowing of the world economy, especially in the euro area, is a threat to our strategy of rebalancing and recovery of the UK economy. Despite the more competitive level of sterling, the recovery in our trade position is at risk of stalling.