samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
By 2020, the estimated number of millionaires in Mainland China and Hong Kong together will be 3.7 million, with an accumulated wealth of $ trillion.2 So it is beyond doubt that the expanding affluent population in China and the rest of Asia will generate ever increasing demand for private banking services for high-net-worth individuals. While it is clear that there will be increasing number of wealthy people in Asia looking for private banking services, the question we need to ask is: “Will they choose Hong Kong?”. This begs the question on what Hong Kong can offer over and above the other centres that are equally keen to gain market share as a private banking hub. In this regard, there are  1  Global Wealth report 2011, Credit Suisse Research Institute  2  Deloitte and Oxford Economics  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  several fundamental attributes that make Hong Kong exceptionally well placed to become the leading private banking hub in Asia: •  Hong Kong has a robust legal framework with an independent judiciary that safeguards property rights. We have a simple, low and predictable tax system. Only profits and income derived in Hong Kong are subject to Hong Kong tax. There are no withholding tax, estate duty, and tax on capital gains, dividends, interests and so on. We have well established laws to protect the confidentiality of customer information.

In the early days, that led to a concentration of liquidity provision amongst the largest incumbent banks, eager to grow volumes and able to afford the expensive high-speed equipment required. More recently, however, some of those firms have exited or downscaled as the scope to deliver returns from traditional business models has fallen. And a number of non-bank providers have emerged, focused less on providing balance sheet capacity to the market, and more on exploiting new technology. Taken together, this has driven a renewed dispersion of market share (Chart 2). In 2009, the number one provider in Euromoney’s annual FX survey saw nearly ten times the flows of the number ten firm. Today that ratio is just two. Chart 2: Falling concentration amongst liquidity providers  Source: Euromoney FX surveys. 3  https://www.globalfxc.org/global_index.htm, adjusting for duplicate entries reported to more than one national index. 5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  5  There’s been an even bigger revolution in trading platforms, as the share of trading routed through liquidity providers’ single dealer offerings and the traditionally dominant primary venues has fallen, and business has increasingly migrated towards multi-dealer platforms, which allow users to put multiple chosen providers into competition on a single site (Chart 3). Chart 3: Platform use as a share of spot FX turnover in the London market4  Source: London Foreign Exchange Joint Standing Committee surveys and Bank of England calculations.
Up to September, Stock Connect captured over 65% of foreign holdings of A-shares; its Northbound daily average turnover doubled year-on-year to RMB42 billion for the first nine months of this year. In just two years’ time, Bond Connect has also quickly gained traction. It now has over 1,300 investors from 31 jurisdictions, and 61 of the top 100 global asset managers. In the first ten months of the year, it contributed to around 40% of the increase in foreign holdings of onshore bonds; its daily turnover increased 2.7 times year-on-year, and now accounts for more than 60% of the overall trading turnover by foreign investors. 10. And like other things we do, we build on the good start and keep working to make the Connect schemes more attractive to international investors. We introduced in June a new arrangement that will enable investors to obtain and hedge in CNY for the Stock Connect. For Bond Connect, we have expanded the settlement cycle, introduced DvP settlement and block trade functionality, and added an additional electronic trading platform. We continuously listen to market participants, and are exploring further enhancements such as expansion of tradable product scope under Bond Connect and launch of its Southbound leg. Huge Inflow into Mainland China’s capital markets 11. Given the much greater ease of investing in the capital markets in the Mainland of China, foreign holdings of A-shares and onshore bonds increased rapidly by 73% and 93% respectively in the past 2 years.

On top of this system, banks or similar credit institutions can create money by lending, more or less as they do today. But it is uncertain how credit institutions will behave in a more decentralised system such as this one. It also raises new questions about where the responsibility for licensing and regulation should lie, especially if the system operates independently of national borders. This poses a risk of increased instability and more frequent crisis. Norges Bank’s role Chart: Norges Bank is tasked with ensuring: Norges Bank plays a key role in the financial system. Norges Bank is responsible for keeping inflation low and stable. That secures confidence in the Norwegian krone. We are also responsible for promoting financial stability and an efficient and secure payment system. Banks settle obligations between themselves over accounts in the central bank. If necessary, we can 5/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  provide banks with additional liquidity. At the same time, our role as the bankers’ bank gives us a channel into the wider economy, which we use to implement monetary policy. A change in our policy rate will pass through to banks’ lending and deposit rates. Norges Bank closely monitors developments in the banking industry and the financial system. Innovation and competition can bring better and cheaper services, but can also bring risks associated with, for example, cybercrime, data protection and financial stability. There is also the risk that some participants gain substantial market power.
Regulators must be prepared to take early and decisive corrective actions to forestall a build-up of risks in individual banks and the banking system as a whole. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Further, contagion amongst banks is a fact of life. Financial systems can be severely stressed by their weakest points, even if it involves a single bank or a group of small banks. The Northern Rock episode in the UK was an example in the earlier phase of this crisis. The Spanish cajas or regional savings banks are now another. The largest Spanish banks are widely acknowledged to be well capitalised, to have lower exposure to the property sector and to have well diversified earnings internationally. But until the troubles in the cajas are resolved, even sound Spanish banks are being penalised by higher funding costs, and citizens and tax payers too are exposed. Confidence is therefore about banking systems, not just about individual banks. This is all the more why regulators have to be vigilant in spotting weaknesses and requiring corrective actions, both across a system and in individual banks. The weakest point matters. International regulatory reforms The global financial crisis has prompted a major review of international regulatory standards. We have achieved much, with the new rules developed through the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Financial Stability Board – new rules on the quantity and quality of capital and liquidity and the ongoing work to strengthen cross-border supervision and resolution frameworks for global banks.

Banking liberalisation provided the spur for our local banks to raise their game and compete with some of the world’s largest banks while maintaining high prudential standards and they have done well. We had previously announced the Government’s policy of maintaining the local banks’ market share at no less than 50% of total resident deposits. This remains our position. We are committed to having strong local banks at the core of the banking system. In a very real  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  way, our three strong local banks also give Singapore the confidence to continue opening up the banking sector to foreign competition. Encouraging foreign banks to deepen their Singapore roots A diverse international presence and global connectivity must remain key strengths of Singapore’s financial centre. We host many international banks, who conduct an increasing share of their activities out of their Singapore offices. Some banks have moved their global heads of business to Singapore, or hubbed specific business lines or IT operations in Singapore. Consumers and corporate customers have benefited from the wider range of products and services, offered at competitive rates. The majority of foreign banks in Singapore operate as branches, taking advantage of the cost efficiencies arising from branching within an international bank. We continue to support the use of branches for the vast majority of banks in Singapore, which are in the wholesale and investment banking businesses. Additional measures may be appropriate for retail banks that are important to the domestic market.
Having a panel reduces the variability induced by changes in composition month to month and increases the precision of any measured changes in expectations. Before we implemented the survey, our proposal was reviewed and approved by the Bank’s senior management. Next, we issued a request for proposals and received three bids from independent survey organizations to field our survey design. In the end, we chose to work with the Demand Institute, a partnership of the Conference Board and Nielsen. The resulting Survey of Consumer Expectations is a nationally representative monthly internet-based survey. Its rotating panel consists of about 1,200 household heads. We find that the internet approach allows us a great deal of flexibility to ask new questions, and it BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  makes it considerably easier to pose probabilistic questions and to run experiments. It is also – and this is an important consideration – the most cost-effective mode of collection; at the same time, there is also some evidence of higher response accuracy to personally sensitive questions. Our sample is based on the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Survey sample, which is drawn from U.S. postal addresses. Respondents are compensated with a payment of $ per survey, and surveys vary in length from fifteen to thirty minutes. Our firsttime response rate is about 60 percent, and we find that respondents have somewhat greater-than-average education and income. The average response rate among repeat respondents is more than 80 percent.

  Performance of the mining sector increased following higher output arising from increased capacity utilisation at various mines and investments into operations at various mines. Metal mining was the main driver of this growth, with copper and cobalt output growing by 17.4% and 49.4% to 819,159.19 mt and 8,781 mt, respectively.   Construction output was driven by increased public and commercial infrastructure projects around the country, as well as continued high demand for housing. This was supported by expansion in domestic production of cement. Inflation   Consistent with the favourable performance in economic growth, the country has succeeded in lowering inflation. Inflation has declined from 17.2 percent in 2003, 9.9 percent in 2009 and stood at 7.9 percent at end-2010. Inflation continued to be moderate, and stood at 9.0 percent as at June 2011.   The decrease in inflation over the years can be attributed to prudent monetary policy and a relatively stable exchange rate. The increase in food supply, arising from the favourable crop harvest, has also been a key factor in moderating inflationary pressures in light of high and increasing prices of petroleum products due to high international oil prices. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Interest rates   Interest rates have generally been on a declining trend in line with the fall in inflation and yield rates on Government securities. This trend was broken as a result of the financial crisis in 2008.
Stretched fiscal positions have raised questions about the ability of several euro-area governments to support their banking systems. And the weak position of those same banking systems has also heightened doubts about the sovereigns’ fiscal sustainability (Chart 3). Though UK banks’ exposure to peripheral country debt is relatively modest, interlinkages with euro-area banks that are more heavily exposed have meant that UK banks have also experienced heightened funding difficulties in recent weeks. Unless those conditions improve, our banking contacts indicate that the availability of credit to the real economy may soon begin to suffer. Moreover, the heightened tensions in financial markets are likely to have raised uncertainty more generally and further depressed household and business confidence. Our regional Agents are already starting to tell us that some businesses are putting investment projects on hold as a result. In the early hours of last Thursday morning, European leaders agreed to take further steps: to address the fiscal sustainability of Greece and other periphery countries; to expand the  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  firepower of the European Financial Stability Facility; and to buttress the resilience of European banks through recapitalisation. While the major UK banks will not be required to raise capital, they would nevertheless be well advised to take advantage of any opportunity that does arise to further strengthen their capital and liquidity buffers, thereby putting themselves in a better position to withstand any further deterioration in conditions, without needing to constrain lending.

4  Note that this only requires consumers to wish to smooth their spending over time, not that they internalise the implications for future taxes of more government borrowing (so-called “Ricardian equivalence”).
However, from December, market expectations have approached the Riksbank’s forecasts (see Figure 4). So how can the gap between market expectations and the Riksbank’s repo rate forecasts in 2009 be explained? Some of the deviations may be explained, for example, by the possibility that statements on the lower bound of the repo rate were interpreted to mean that there were only upside risks for the repo rate, but this does not explain them all. A major part of the deviations thus remain to be explained. One possible explanation may be that money market participants have taken a more positive view of economic development. For example, they may have expected GDP growth and inflation to be higher in the future than stated in the Riksbank’s forecasts, and thus require a tighter monetary policy. However, this hypothesis is not supported by surveys of the expected economic development. These show that the money market participants expected both lower inflation and lower GDP growth in the period ahead than the Riksbank. 12 The market participants seem to have believed in a different reaction pattern from the Riksbank than that expressed in the repo-rate path. The disagreement among the members of the Executive Board may have contributed to this. At the monetary policy meetings in July, September, October and December, reservations against the published repo rate path were entered by members who considered that the repo rate path in 2010 should be slightly higher.

Finally, one principle – that has gained much attention during the current crisis – is to keep the determination of the monetary policy stance distinguished from the management of liquidity in money markets. All these principles are captured in the ECB’s monetary policy strategy. And globalisation does not fundamentally alter these principles – which give guidance, in particular, in critical times. To weaken or even abandon these principles would undermine our commitment and credibility. And, in the end, we would risk losing orientation. Our strategy has provided a consistent and coherent framework not only for internal analysis and policy decision-making but also for external communication. Using the same framework for internal and external purposes has helped the ECB to ensure that its monetary policy remains consistent, credible and effective. One key element here is that the ECB, from the outset, has been transparent about its mandate, strategy, and decisions, as well as about what monetary policy can do and, even more importantly, what it cannot do. In this sense, expectations about transparency requirements should be in line with the actual strategy followed by the central bank. Without compromising on its mandate, the ECB has demonstrated a willingness and capacity to react rapidly to exceptional circumstances. It has taken a large number of extraordinary measures to support the functioning of the money market and interbank intermediation.
CONCLUSION Let me conclude. The climate crisis demands urgent collective action to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The world is probably on the cusp of the greatest economic and societal transformation since the Industrial Revolution. The coming green revolution will involve all segments of the economy and society – governments, businesses, and individuals will all need to do their part. Everyone must contribute. Every bit counts. It is in this spirit of collective action that MAS is publishing a sustainability report, to account for what we are doing together with the financial industry, and in our own right, to help remake a greener world and secure a more sustainable future. 8/9  BIS central bankers' speeches  We want to be the change we want to see. 9/9  BIS central bankers' speeches

The general trend in the market has been to charge SMEs with high interest rates relative to the large scale corporate sector because of the perceived high risk they are supposed to present. Distinguished Invited Guests, my view is that this presumed high risk profile associated with SMEs can be effectively managed by banks if they make the necessary effort to understand the sector and build expertise in dealing with its unique characteristics. I trust that you will double up your effort in building the expertise necessary for your bank to be a major lender to the SME sector. The issue of interest rates is of particular concern to us at the central bank. In response to the current situation, the Bank of Zambia recently took measures aimed at facilitating the reduction in commercial banks’ lending rates with the view to increasing access to credit by private individuals and business entities. Some progress has been made in this area and we are monitoring the situation in the market to ensure that borrowers are enjoying a reduction in their effective lending rates. We do not want the reduction in the base lending rates to be cosmetic, but should be reflected in lower effective lending rates for measures taken so far to be meaningful. Furthermore, with the reduction in the corporate tax rate for banks recently announced by the Minister of Finance in his 2012 Budget, the expectation is for a further reduction in lending rates by commercial banks going forward.
I would also like to stress here that the two points for attention I have just mentioned do not, in my view, overshadow any of the following: the many other initiatives announced in the action plan, the work to facilitate remote access and promote an interoperable digital identity, the provisions on cybersecurity, or the forthcoming discussions on artificial intelligence or data sharing in financial services - open finance after open banking. The message that I think is important today is the following: the stakes of this action plan on the financial sector are high and it will have a major impact on the innovative ecosystems of the French and European financial sectors. That is why the Banque de France and the ACPRwill be particularly attentive, in the coming weeks and months, to your feedback, suggestions and 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  questions on this “digital finance package", which is closely in line with the rationale of the ecosystem that I have just outlined. In other words, we have the opportunity to demonstrate today that the discussions held in recent years between the Banque de France, the different players in the innovative financial ecosystem and other supervisory authorities, the relationships of trust established between us, the complementary expertise, the shared experiments and knowledge, have a concrete and tangible effect: that of further strengthening the dynamics of an ecosystem that is destined to count in the future of the European financial sector. * Thank you for your attention. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches

BIS Review 105/1997  -2For a currency union to function “smoothly and in a sustainable way, it is absolutely necessary that all participants agree on either a single common policy or closely coordinated policies”. All costs and benefits of the union must be shared equally. Any member acting with the “free-rider” mentality, and benefiting from the system at the expense of the others, will eventually cause the system to disintegrate. Therefore, a single common currency requires a single monetary policy with a clearly defined target, which is price stability. This basic principle of monetary policy has already been embedded in the Maastricht Treaty. And the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) has been made responsible for achieving it. In order for the ESCB to fulfil the task assigned to it, it must act in full independence from national governments or from European institutions. The ESCB Governing Council, which is composed of the Board of Management of the ESCB and the governors of the participating central banks, will not be representing respective national interests. Although there are some differences between the two systems, the ESCB is like the Federal Reserve System of the US. For the ESCB to act independently, individual national central banks must already be acting independently of their governments, because the ESCB will be built on individual national central banks. That is why the Maastricht Treaty made it obligatory for the national governments to grant independence to their central banks in the period leading to the formation of the ESCB.