samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
At the sector level, it is necessary to have an effective insolvency regime to ensure that nonviable companies can be wound up in an equitable manner before they have the chance to build up even further losses. However, liquidation should generally be a last resort and there should be an alternative to insolvency that allows distressed, but commercially viable, companies to survive as going concerns, thus preserving employment and productive capacity. This requires a framework that encourages negotiation and compromise between distressed borrowers and their creditors. The objective should be to agree a standstill on debt payments and a moratorium on legal proceedings to provide a breathing space during which negotiations on a debt restructuring can take place. In Hong Kong, the Association of Banks has issued non-statutory guidelines for the conduct of debt workouts. These are based on the so-called London Approach to workouts that was developed by the Bank of England. Other countries in the region have also used this as a model for dealing with corporate restructuring. The success of some of these schemes has yet to be proved, but I can say that the Hong Kong approach has generally worked well. The increase in the number of companies requiring financial assistance and the multiplicity of banks involved are however putting some strains on the system. Workouts are becoming more protracted and more difficult to arrange. This is partly because of the shortage of workout specialists already referred to, but also because banks do not always display the necessary spirit of cooperation.

16 John C. Williams, Lessons from the Financial Crisis for Unconventional Monetary Policy, Presentation at  National Bureau of Economic Research Conference, Cambridge, Mass., October 18, 2013; John C. Williams, Monetary Policy at the Zero Lower Bound: Putting Theory into Practice, The Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, The Brookings Institution, January 16, 2014. 17 Thomas Laubach and John C. Williams, Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest Redux, Business Economics,  Volume 51, No. 2, pp. 57-67, April 2016. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches
Øystein Olsen: Integrating financial stability and monetary policy analysis Speech by Mr Øystein Olsen, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the Systemic Risk Centre, London School of Economics, London, 27 April 2015. *  *  *  Please note that the text below may differ slightly from the actual presentation. Accompanying charts can be found at the end of the speech or on the Norges Bank’s website. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you here at the Systemic Risk Centre this evening. The Centre is bringing forward research and applied knowledge in a subject that has now become a key issue in central banking. In the aftermath of the 2008–09 financial crisis, central banks and academia have put systemic risk and the interlinkages between monetary and financial stability high on the agenda. The crisis showed that keeping inflation low and stable was not sufficient to prevent imbalances in the financial system. It also showed that, left alone, the financial system is prone to excessive risk-taking. And we were reminded of how costly a financial crisis can be. Another lesson, more specific to central banks, is that there are synergies to be gained from closer integration of financial stability and monetary policy analysis. A clearer macroprudential dimension has now been incorporated into banking regulation. Examples of this new orientation are the introduction of a systemic risk buffer and a timevarying countercyclical capital buffer for banks.

The ASEAN Finance Ministers have agreed in 2003 on the Roadmap on Monetary and Financial Integration of ASEAN in the areas of capital market development, capital account liberalisation, financial services liberalisation and ASEAN currency cooperation. In 2007, the ASEAN Central Banks established a task force, chaired by Malaysia, to chart the milestones and timeliness for ASEAN financial integration. To complement the AEC Blueprint, leaders in early 2009 have agreed to an Implementation Plan to promote the development of an integrated capital market within ASEAN. These initiatives along with other regional efforts will effectively transform ASEAN into a single integrated market, and thus strategically position ASEAN as an important economic zone with a role to play in contributing towards global stability and growth. With the broad diversity within Asia, the pace of development will not be equal for all economies. The general agreement is that growth within Asia will be led by China, India and Korea. In a large part, the shape of Asia’s future will be dictated by the dynamic engagement of these prominent growth drivers with other Asian economies and the rest of the world. The prospects for ASEAN to thrive would depend crucially on its ability to engage with these growth drivers and seize on the opportunities that they offer. However, ASEAN must also recognise that at the same time, the level of competition will further intensify within Asia.
The Principles are centred on four pillars – fairness, ethics, accountability, and transparency. Hence, the short-hand name FEAT Principles. They are not prescriptive but represent an industry consensus that individual financial institutions take reference from when formulating their own data governance policies and practices. We believe that the FEAT Principles will help to promote public confidence and trust in the use of data analytics and artificial intelligence in our financial sector. Conclusion Let me conclude. Technology and Finance must come together. And they must do so in a manner that maintains Trust. Finance, Technology and Trust are like the three musketeers of old. Like Athos, Finance allocates resources to those who need it. Like Porthos, Technology represents the aspiration for Finance to innovate. Like Aramis, Trust engenders confidence in Finance. The motto of the three musketeers is: “Tous pour un, Un pour tous” – “One for all, All for one”. If Finance, Technology, and Trust can do the same, we can have innovation and dynamism with safety and stability. We can benefit not only the financial industry, but society at large. We can raise productivity, expand opportunity, and enrich the lives of our people. Thank you. 10 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches

Dimitar Bogov: Challenges of bolstering growth rates and ensuring their sustainability Opening statement by Mr Dimitar Bogov, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, to the Bank for International Settlements Working Party on Monetary Policy in Central and Eastern Europe, Skopje, 11–12 February 2016. *  *  *  Dear colleagues, dear guests, It is my honour to welcome you for the Annual Meeting of the BIS Working Party on Monetary Policy in Central and Eastern Europe, hosted by the National bank of the Republic of Macedonia. I look forward to discussions on the key issues the policymakers are currently facing. Many of the economies in our region have strong trade and financial linkages with the rest of the world. Therefore, a natural starting point would be to assess how conducive the global environment is for our key goal of bolstering growth rates and ensuring their sustainability. Unfortunately, almost a decade after the acute stage of the crisis, it seems that the global environment is still fragile. Although the world economy is recovering, growth rates do not seem to be strong enough, and what is even more problematic, this “low growth mode” might be here to stay. The frequent downward revisions of global growth prospects indicate that uncertainty is weighing on growth. Global growth rates are staggering slightly above 3%, on average, and the medium-term prospects do not seem to differ much.
Ravi Menon: Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Annual Report 2012/13 Opening remarks by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Annual Report 2012/13 Press Conference, Singapore, 23 July 2013. *  *  *  Good morning. Welcome to MAS’ annual report press conference. I would like to highlight five key messages today. •  first, macroeconomic outlook better this year than last;  •  second, strong $ more than offset good returns on MAS’ investments;  •  third, banking system sound but build-up in household debt worrying;  •  fourth, stepped up efforts to ensure we remain clean and trusted financial centre;  •  fifth, good progress in key drivers of financial centre growth. GDP growth stronger and CPI inflation lower this year compared to last Let me start with the economy. The overall macroeconomic outlook this year is better than last year. Barring shocks, Singapore’s GDP growth will be stronger and CPI inflation lower in 2013, compared to 2012. Economy comfortably on track to meet 1–3% growth forecast The Singapore economy will comfortably meet the growth forecast of 1–3% for 2013. Growth was estimated at 2% in H1 and should pick up further in H2 First, the advanced economies are in better shape this year. •  Tail risks have receded. There is less likelihood of a Eurozone break-up or a fiscal cliff in the US.

Vítor Constâncio: Reflections on financial integration and stability Speech by Mr Vítor Constâncio, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, at the Joint ECB-EC Conference on “Financial Integration and Stability in a New Financial Architecture”, Frankfurt am Main, 28 April 2014. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, Dear colleagues and friends, It is indeed a pleasure to participate in this joint presentation of two important policy reports: the European Commission’s European financial stability and integration report 2013 and the ECB’s Financial integration in Europe 2014 report. Both studies illustrate that some steady, albeit uneven, progress is being made towards financial stabilisation. Banks are reducing their liquidity buffers, repaying our LTROs and regaining confidence from the markets. Money market integration is slowly improving, particularly in the secured segment. Quantity-based indicators confirm a stabilisation in bond markets and improved integration in equity markets. Given where we stood barely two years ago – on the edge of redenomination risks – such progress is encouraging. However, it does not mean we are entirely out of the danger zone. If we look at banking markets, there is still a large dispersion of borrowing costs for nonfinancial corporations across euro area countries. Thus, significant financial fragmentation still remains in the euro area. This is a concern for the recovery and also for monetary and macro-prudential policy. Under the pressure of the global financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area, several solutions – both global and European – have indeed been adopted.
Being a small open economy, Thailand will not be able to avoid the impact of the global slowdown or the increase in economic volatilities. The US now forms about 12 percent of our export markets. As for the direct impact of the sub-prime, the exposure of the Thai banking system to CDO is very limited. Total investment by Thai banks on all CDOs is 0.26 percent of bank’s total asset in June last year, of which 0.03 percent was sub-prime related. Such exposure has declined further in December, and banks that have CDO investments have increased their provisionings accordingly. At the end December last year, the BIS ratio for capital adequacy for the Thai banking system was 14.6 percent, well above the minimum requirement of 8.5 percent. More important concern, however, is the indirect economic and financial impacts through (i) possible exports decline as the result of global economy slowdown, (ii) a tightening of global liquidity, and (iii) possible increase in the volatility of capital flows, as risk is being repriced by global investors. These indirect impacts have a potential to impart more volatility to our markets, depending on the magnitude of the global slowdown. So far, no adverse impact has emerged, but with more downside risk and uncertainty ahead, it is important that one is not complacent and is alert for all possible impacts and outcomes. This point was fully recognized by the Bank of Thailand’s Monetary Policy Committee in its meeting last month.

The MPC’s post-meeting statement made clear of the need to monitor the situation in the global market closely so that the stance of monetary policy can be appropriately and flexibly calibrated to ensure price stability and steady growth. Finally, the last point I want to stress is that the ability of the Thai economy to weather external shocks and global slowdown at this time are now much greater compared to the situations say ten years ago. 2  BIS Review 29/2008  First, the country’s economic fundamentals have improved from the crisis years, with solid external positions marked by current account surpluses, high level of international reserves, and much lower level of external debt. This stronger financial position will enhance the ability of the economy to cushion itself against external shocks. Second, our banking sector is in excellent shape, with good profitability, strong capital base, and improved asset quality. The corporate sector is also in good financial shape with strong earnings and low financial leverage. These qualities will make the private sector more resilient to the impact of economic volatilities from outside. And third, policy regime in Thailand has become more flexible, especially the exchange rate, with market force now playing a dominant role in allocating resources. Such attribute provides the private sector with a mechanism to efficiently adjust to the impact of external shocks.
At the same time, an increasing proportion of lending by the banks is to smaller enterprises and households, where the possibility of evaluating the credit risk in a traditional way is poorer than for large companies. Altogether therefore considerably higher demands are made on the banks’ risk management systems than previously. Major investments in knowledge on modern financial economy and IT-based risk systems are required for instance. This development is taking place at the same time as increased competition is tending to squeeze profits and information technology is changing the conditions for provision of payment services. When traditional bank activities shrink and change, the direction of activities has to be reviewed. The banks can for instance opt to take part in the provision of capital in the securities market and generate profits by charging fees for this activity. One strategy may be to offer businesses and private persons all financial services such as advice, insurance and payment services. In order to be competitive, larger banks are then often required, which is a driving force behind the increased frequency of bank mergers and mergers between banks and insurance companies taking place. Another alternative is of course to concentrate activities and become competitive within a particular niche. Small and medium-sized enterprises need for instance to have access to capital via banks which are able to obtain knowledge on the risks associated with lending to these. The possibility of turning to the securities market to have their need of capital satisfied should above all be confined to large businesses.

One of the key challenges for monetary researchers is, accordingly, to discover more about what determines inflation expectations. Meanwhile, whatever is incorporated into forecasting models, policymakers cannot sensibly just take it for granted that expectations are anchored, so that inflation will painlessly come back into line with the target whenever it is driven away by temporary cost shocks. What that means right now is that arresting the upside risk to inflation cannot rely entirely on real-economy interactions. So what diagnostics have we got on nominal trends, right now? On the whole, they are not signalling an imminent resurgence in inflationary psychology. Nominal demand growth has slowed quite sharply (Chart 5). Adjusting for various misleading technicals, 14 broad money has decelerated sharply (Chart 6). The rate of growth of so-called Divisia money, a measure of transactions balances, has similarly fallen sharply. And in the labour market, nominal earnings growth has recently been below 3.5%, although the annual wage round lies ahead. Sterling’s exchange rate has fallen, however. That might be consistent with the foreign exchange markets expecting a nominal shock in the future. But there are other possible explanations, notably that a risk premium may have become incorporated to compensate for uncertainty in the outlook. Had there been a shift in the market’s inflation expectations, the obvious place for that to show up would be in the yields on nominal government bonds.
The ECB thus decided to develop a benchmark rate: a new daily euro short-term rate, also known as ESTER. This rate will complement existing rates by the private sector and serve as a backstop to them. The ECB will start publishing ESTER by October 2019. This project will entail significant challenges. Every working day, we will need to produce a reliable rate, based on individual transactions. This will need to happen within a very narrow time frame, while ensuring full quality control. Leadership Ladies and gentlemen, I have talked a lot about past achievements and future challenges. And I have talked about the need to work together as a team. But, of course, all good teams need good leaders. And speaking of good leaders brings me to Aurel Schubert. As Aurel is due to retire soon, I would like to take the opportunity tonight to say a few words about what he has done for this institution. For eight years now, he has steered the ECB statistics ship with great competence. Aurel has made invaluable contributions to some of our most ambitious projects: the granular Securities Holdings Statistics, the MMSR and Anacredit. Thanks to his leadership, supervisory statistics were available from the start of European banking supervision. He helped amend our statistical legal framework to align it with international standards. But, of course, his career started long before he became Director General of Statistics. He has worked in the field since 1997.

Big data has brought us tools and techniques that can be applied to rapidly process large sets of traditional data too. This makes it much easier for us to realise projects like MMSR and AnaCredit and helps us to keep pace with an ever-changing world. AnaCredit, for instance, involves immense sets of extremely granular data, reflecting the far greater complexity and interconnectedness of today’s economy. To understand this complexity and assess the interconnections, we need a very detailed view. And this is exactly what AnaCredit gives us. Thanks to the granular data it provides, we will be better able to understand what is driving credit growth, making it easier to know whether such growth is healthy or not. MMSR, on the other hand, is about speed: money markets move fast and never stop. So taking a snapshot every now and then does not suffice. We need much faster data, and that’s what MMSR provides. It allows us to constantly assess who lends how much money to whom in the money market and at what rates. This gives us a very clear and quick picture of how the market is structured, how exposed players are to one another and how vulnerable they are. And MMSR helps us to keep pace in other ways too. Look at the important role benchmark rates play. They provide anchors for contracts in financial markets and are important for the 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  transmission of monetary policy.
BIS Review 63/2004  3  At present, producers are in a position to differentiate, to a large extent, whether the increase in prices is attributable to inflation or to an increase in demand, and can take their decisions with regard to increasing production, making investments, etc., within this framework. They now give importance to cost control and productivity increase while determining the profit margins in their pricing policies. Similarly, consumers have also begun to actively participate in the pricing process, using the advantage of a more competitive environment. At this point, I wish to emphasize two issues I deem significant. The first one of these has to do with inflation falling at a slower pace compared to other sectors, also due to pricing behavior directed to increasing the profit margins, at those sectors where demand is relatively rigid and competitive structure relatively weak. This situation, also expressed as rigidity in inflation, by way of causing differentiation in relative prices, forms an obstacle to prices to carry on their task of conveying information properly. The rigidity in inflation recently observed in Turkey, in sectors such as education, rental services and hospital services, with prices falling at a slower pace for the services group compared to the commodities group, is an example of this. It is crucial that measures to increase competitiveness in these sectors are taken promptly in order to eliminate this distorted structure and also in terms of the risk it constitutes to the inflation target in future.

It falls if decisive and correct policies are applied and low inflation and permanent price stability can be continuous if only these policies are carried on. We should not forget that inflation was not only the most important problem of our country for years but also kept us from seeing the existing problems in the society and in the economy. Attaining price stability will repair the damage of the economy caused by high inflation and will help us see other unnoticed problems hiding behind inflation. The key to erasing the traces of past period high inflation and to solving other problems of our country is structural reforms. Today, the process of erasing these traces begins with operation of dropping six zeroes from Turkish lira. I would like to underline that an important issue here. In some countries that had dropped zeroes from their currencies this operation was conducted as a part of the disinflation policies. However, in our country it is the consequence of the successful implementation of the stability program that has already reduced inflation considerably. Within this framework, YTL to be issued as of January 1st, 2005, depicts both the decline in inflation and our determination to achieve price stability. Before I finish, I wish to repeat a remark I made two years ago at the start of the fight against inflation. “Above all, people deserve to live in an environment where price stability is achieved.” Thank you for listening. BIS Review 63/2004  5