samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The overall banking system represented more than 700% of GDP. In terms of employment, every third job was related to the financial and professional service sector. An active use of the relevant policy tools could – and indeed should – have curbed these unsustainable developments. But prudential supervision was too weak and did not prevent the build-up of large financial sector imbalances. Asset growth outpaced deposit inflows. Banks became increasingly exposed to funding vulnerabilities. They tried to attract deposits by offering very high deposit rates – on average, nearly 2 percentage points higher than in the rest of the euro area 1. Domestic credit expansion and imprudent lending practices fuelled a domestic property boom. As the bubble burst, non-performing loans increased dramatically. Moreover, Cypriot banks underwent sizeable losses following the Greek debt restructuring. This further deteriorated the soundness of their balance sheets. The lop-sided nature of the economic model was not confined to the banking sector alone. At the same time, significant external and internal imbalances had built up – notably persistent current account deficits, significant losses in competitiveness, rising fiscal deficits and public debt. All this left Cyprus in a weak position to tackle the problems of its banking sector. And these problems appeared to be daunting – especially compared to the small size of the  1  The rate for term deposits from households and non-financial corporations as of March 2013 was 4.4% in Cyprus and 2,5% in the euro area. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  economy.

It was only by acquiring these skills that workers could transition to where new jobs were being created. By keeping one step ahead of the machine, technological unemployment could be avoided. A shorter, more seamless skills transition reduced the hit to workers’ incomes and lowered the risk of skills atrophy, which might otherwise cause lasting damage to employment. This social infrastructure might be called “enabling” institutions. Another set of institutions provided workers with support to cushion the hit to their finances and well-being during the painful and lengthy period of job transition. This might be financial support, in income or loans. It might be housing or shelter. Or it might be social or emotional support. This social insurance ensured that lives were underpinned, inequalities held in check and the social fabric held together. It reduced recession risk, for individuals and for societies. These might be called “insuring” institutions. 32  29  Allen (2005) documents the stagnation of real wages in Britain from 1800 to 1840. IMF (2017). 31 Allen (2009) discusses Engels’ pause in the context of the British economy from 1760 to 1913. 32 Of course, many other institutions played a role in the labour market beyond the “enabling” and “insuring” ones mentioned here. For example, the ‘Poor Laws’ in the 1800s meant that the poor had to enter workhouses with terrible conditions to receive help in the form of clothes and food.
10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Table 2 International baseline scenario assumptions 2014 2015 (f) Jun.15 MP Report  Sep.15 MP Report  Dec.15 MP Report  Growth  2016 (f) Jun.15 MP Report  Sep.15 MP Report  Dec.15 MP Report  2017 (f) Sep.15 MP Report  Dec.15 MP Report  (annual change, percent)  Trading partners' GDP  3.4  3.3  3.1  3.0  3.7  3.4  3.2  3.4  3.3  World GDP at PPP  3.4  3.4  3.2  3.1  3.7  3.5  3.4  3.5  3.5  United States Eurozone Japan China India Rest of Asia (Excl. Japan, China and India) Latin America (excl.

Zamani Abdul Ghani: Scaling up financial inclusion through branchless banking Remarks by Mr Zamani Abdul Ghani, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the Microfinance Policymakers Forum “Scaling up Financial Inclusion through Branchless Banking”, Kuala Lumpur, 2 December 2009. *  *  *  Introduction Good afternoon and welcome to Malaysia. It is very encouraging to see so many senior policymakers gathered here today to participate in this Microfinance Policymakers Forum. Thank you for taking the time to be here and for contributing your knowledge. The motivation for today's event has its roots in the forum of the United Nations Advisory Group for Inclusive Financial Sectors which was held in May this year in Kuala Lumpur. As many of you may be aware, in recognition of the importance of financial inclusion, the United Nations established the United Nations Advisory Group on Financial Inclusion in 2006. The group advises the United Nations and member states on issues relating to the advancement of the financial inclusion agenda on a global scale. Since its establishment, many successes have been achieved. These include increasing the public awareness on the importance of financial inclusion, assisting governments in the design of regulatory systems that facilitate the creation of financial services for the poor, encouraging the use of holistic measures to gauge the progress of financial inclusion as well as collecting and disseminating best practices to further advance financial inclusion. One of the topics that received considerable attention at the UNAG forum was branchless banking.
But then, some may fear that instead of finding a black cat we shall find a fat tiger taking up much of the room, playing havoc, tearing up things, creating chaos and not wanting anybody to know about it. I firmly believe that the disclosure of relevant information by market participants will make markets work better. This could be done directly or indirectly through regulators and special purpose agencies such as credit registrars or custodians. The information should include data that will enable the financial position of significant market participants to be assessed objectively, such as their degree of leverage and their exposure to specific markets. This would help counterparties, such as the banks extending credit to them and the investors using their services and entrusting their savings to them, to take decisions based more on rational analyses rather than on herding behaviour. The information should also include data that will enable overall market positions and their concentration to be established. This would help the regulator in effectively ensuring systemic stability, taking regulatory action where necessary to manage or limit the systemic risks or simply to disclose publicly the relevant aggregate information for the benefit of all market participants. This is of course easier said than done. When you are dealing with international markets operating over the counter, with participants possibly registered in cyberspace, how and on what authority do you obtain that information, or impose regulatory measures, desirable as they may be?

While there is wide sympathy for our decisive action against market manipulation, we have been cautioned by some on the need not to be confused by herding behaviour. Others have challenged us to come up with hard evidence that manipulation existed, reminding us of the established academic theory of market manipulation, and urging us to examine carefully the history of the events leading to last August, collect data and conduct econometric research into them. While I agree that all these need to be done where possible, I must tell you that such advice reminded me of what Andrew Crockett, the General Manager of the BIS and Chairman of the Financial Stability Forum, once told me. He said that the economic theorists are those that attempt to look in a dark room to find a black cat. The economic historians are those that attempt to look in a dark room to find a black cat that is not there. And the econometricians, who conduct all those regression analyses from the data collected, are those that attempt to look in a dark room to find a black cat that is not there and say that they have found it. I certainly do not wish to be involved in that sort of thing. But there is surely one thing that ought to be done, if we are serious about the matter. Using the same analogy of the dark room and the black cat, why don’t we just light up the room and look?
Liquidity needs to be deployed and invested to generate returns. As the liquidity pool increases, financial institutions should capitalise on this and develop the range of renminbi money, bonds and equity products, which can leverage on the RQFII access. The impact of the Chinese economy on Asia, including Malaysia has been significantly broadbased and encompassing. Financial linkages with China have strengthened. China’s financial markets, already among the world’s largest markets, will be home to a growing number of global Chinese multinational companies with global outreach. The strong interest and commitment to infrastructure building and financing will be a long term theme that will shape Asia and China’s presence in the global markets. There are huge potential that lies ahead and we must be ready to tap the opportunities in all these initiatives. Our financial institutions, corporations and businesses should work together to ensure the readiness of our businesses and economy to keep up with the developments and capture these opportunities. With this, I wish you will have a fruitful discussion and insightful conference today. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches

A first cost is that it may create confusion as to the objective of the monetary authorities: inflation or the exchange rate. In our case, we have dealt with this through transparent mechanisms whereby we anticipate the amounts and terms of interventions, and by maintaining a flexible exchange rate. In addition it has always been clear that the exchange rate is not an objective and the main goal of the Central Bank is price stability. A second cost is of a financial nature. Foreign reserves are invested in highly liquid and secure instruments of developed countries, whose interest rates are lower than those of domestic instruments used to finance their acquisition. Conversely, the benefits of having these reserves are the enhanced security they provide in case of an abrupt cut of external financing. These benefits are hard to measure, but it is reasonable to expect that they will decline as the availability of reserves increases, as has been occurring in Chile since 2008. Allow me to express some final thoughts. Final thoughts News during these last weeks have led us to a scenario in which the effects of the deteriorating external situation that we forecast some time back are not evident and in which inflationary pressures stemming from a higher cost of energy have resurfaced. Hence, if a few months ago it was clear that the most likely scenario for monetary policy in emerging economies was a further loosening, today it is much less clear so.
For instance, there is great uncertainty over what the consequences of the turmoil in the world financial markets might be for economic developments. In Sweden there are signs of a slowdown and GDP increased at a slightly slower rate than expected, according to statistics published by Statistics Sweden just over a week ago. At the same time, inflation is high and above the target. World market prices for some commodities, such as oil, have risen sharply over a period of time and this is a challenge for central banks around the world. New information of significance for inflation is constantly coming in. As the Riksbank has also pointed out on several occasions, inflation expectations have risen in recent months and they are above our target of 2 per cent. There may be several different reasons for this. The most important reason is probably that actual inflation has risen and this usually leads to expectations rising. The Riksbank monitors inflation expectations closely; the important thing is that they do not become entrenched at a high level, whatever the reasons behind them. To curb expectations we would have to act more forcefully. To summarise – our strategy has not changed and our target stands firm. We will continue to use a large number of alternative measures of inflation in our work, not least to illustrate the direct effects of our own interest rate policy. But the focus will be on our target variable, the CPI.

  For a small number of you, we will need better information and visibility going forward to bring you in line with others. We will start that discussion with you now.   For those going in to TPR, it will be a gradual evolution. These firms have had extensive interaction with the PRA’s supervisors over the past three years – we have seen substantial preparations by  9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  9  these firms as part of their authorisation submissions and we have worked together with firms on a large number of thematic reviews.   And, for those considering coming to the UK to operate, it provides clarity on our approach so you can consider how best to meet our expectations. For our regulatory colleagues around the world, we look forward to continuing to build our open and supportive relationships. 10  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  10
Stefan Ingves: The Riksbank and the Swedish economy Speech by Mr Stefan Ingves, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, to the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, Tylösand, 28 May 2007. *  *  *  Introduction Firstly, thank you for the invitation to come and speak to this assembly. Today I will talk about my views on the role of the Riksbank and about the current monetary policy situation, roughly as expressed in the discussion at the May monetary policy meeting. International economic activity remains good Sweden is a very open economy and large parts of the business sector are dependent on being able to sell their products to customers abroad. If the economies in countries around us are doing well, then the Swedish economy also does well. In recent years global growth has been extremely high. We believe that the growth rate will slow down slightly in 2007 and 2008, but will nevertheless remain high. After many years of high growth the US economy has now entered a slowdown phase. Economic activity has been dampened above all in the housing sector, but also in the manufacturing industry. Productivity growth is lower. The earlier upturn in house prices has slowed down and residential construction has declined. The problems have been aggravated by the fact that it has been easy for people with low incomes to obtain large loans for housing. As yet the problems in the housing market do not appear to have spread to the rest of the economy.

However, information on why the repo rate is being kept unchanged is in principle just as important for understanding the monetary policy conducted as is information on why the repo rate is being adjusted. Secondly, we have decided to make changes with regard to monetary policy signalling. By this I mean how we on the Executive Board of the Riksbank communicate what we intend to do with the interest rate. Now that we publish an entire path for the interest rate, the need to signal between the meetings has declined. Our conclusion is that there will not normally be any reason between the monetary policy meetings to give an indication of how the interest rate will be set. In exceptional cases, such as when an event occurs that radically changes the economic situation, while there is a long time to go until the next meeting, there may be reasons to signal between two monetary policy meetings. Of course the individual Executive Board members should continue to be able to express their own opinions publicly. But this is above all a question of afterwards clarifying and explaining personal deliberations made in connection with the monetary policy meetings. Differences of opinion within the Executive Board will also, as before, be made clear when the minutes of the meetings are published. This leads me on to the third change we have decided to make.
Brealey, R, Cooper, I and Kaplanis, E (2011), ‘International Propagation of the Credit Crisis: Lessons for Bank Regulation’, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Vol 24, No 4, pp36-45. Brown, S and Vitter, D, “Ending Too Big To Fail: Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness Act”, http://www.brown.senate.gov/download/tbtf-bill-summary Cihak, M, Demirguc-Kunt, A, Martinez Peria, MS and Mohseni-Cherghlou, A (2012), ‘Bank Regulation and Supervision around the World: A Crisis Update’, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series, No 6286. Demirguc-Kunt, A, Detragiache, E and Merrouche, O (2010), ‘Bank capital: lessons from the financial crisis’, Policy Research Working Paper Series, No 5473. Fisher, R (2013), “Ending 'Too Big to Fail': A Proposal for Reform Before It's Too Late”, Remarks before the Committee for the Republic, Washington D.C., available on: http://www.dallasfed.org/news/speeches/fisher/2013/fs130116.cfm Furlong, F (1988), ‘Changes in Bank Risk-Taking, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Economic Review, Spring, pp 45-56. Gigerenzer, G (2007), Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, Penguin/Allen Lane. Goodhart, C (2011), The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision: A History of the Early Years, 1974-1997, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Haldane, A (2009), ‘Rethinking the Financial Network’, Speech delivered at the Financial Student Association, Amsterdam. Haldane, A (2012), ‘On being the right size’, speech delivered at the Institute of Economic Affairs’ 22nd Annual Series, The 2012 Beesley Lectures, London Haldane, A and Madouros, V (2012), “The Dog and the Frisbee”, given at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s 36th economic policy symposium, “The Changing Policy Landscape”, Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Since bottoming out in late 2009, employment here on the island has rebounded by almost 2 1/2 percent. So we’ve come a bit more than halfway back to the early 2008 peak. Moreover, these job gains have come despite ongoing job cuts in local government. While other parts of the region sustained job losses in local government starting in 2010, Long Island’s just started in the spring of last year, creating a drag on the labor market overall. Nevertheless, the private sector has picked up the slack. This is most pronounced in professional and business services, finance, leisure and hospitality, and health care. Even the island’s manufacturing sector has added jobs over the past year. Another sign that a recovery is taking hold on Long Island is that banks that were created just before or just after the financial crisis – while only a small portion of the local market – are starting to show signs of growth. Long Island’s labor market has also been aided by its proximity to New York City. With a large portion of the island’s workforce commuting to New York City, especially from Nassau County, the brisk job creation we’ve seen in the city has helped matters here as well. Unemployment here on the island topped out at 7.6 percent back in late 2009, and it has hovered around 7 percent for most of the past year – a high rate to be sure, but well below both the national and state levels.
But it cannot yet be said that productivity growth in the Swedish economy has improved to the same extent. Neither have we registered a similar growth of investment, which could then be a leading indicator that the new technology is being introduced on a wide front. In the 1990s the stock of corporate capital, for example, grew twice as fast in the United States as it did in Sweden. It is certainly conceivable that the high level of the Stockholm stock exchange represents expectations that productivity growth will also move up in Sweden. The sum of the values of individual companies can serve as a yardstick of what is expected of the stock market as a whole and this presumably reflects expectations of how the total economy will develop. And if current share prices are regarded as reasonable, there will clearly have to be an appreciable increase in future profits. This can then be interpreted as expectations of an overall improvement in productivity growth and thus of a higher potential output. An alternative interpretation could be that the stock market is at least partially over-valued. A third possibility is, of course, that the development of share prices is explained by a combination of these two factors. It still seems too hazardous, however, to assume that potential growth in Sweden has moved up towards the level in the United States. It is possible - perhaps even probable - that similar supply factors will emerge in the future and the Riksbank must be alert to this.

However, due to the increase in household net debt, net interest expenses will fall considerably less than this. The impact of the interest rate decline also depends on how long interest rates are expected to remain low. When the sight deposit rate was reduced last autumn, longer interest rates showed relatively little change. The interest rate reductions in December and January, combined with the decline in inflation, have had a stronger impact on long-term interest rates. This indicates that financial market participants expect interest rates to remain low for a longer period. The rise in inflation from February to March, however, gave rise to somewhat higher interest rate expectations and a stronger krone exchange rate. The outlook for the business sector is brighter now. The fall in the value of the krone over the past year has strengthened Norwegian business and industry. The business sector is, however, still feeling the effects of the sharp rise in labour costs over a period of several years. Relative labour costs measured in a common currency are in line with the level prevailing in 1990, but approximately 10 per cent higher than in the mid-1990s. The internationally exposed sector has been scaled back. Companies that are still in operation may be in a better position to cope with the high wage level. In 2003, employment and investment both fell, although investment picked up somewhat towards the end of the year. Efficiency-enhancing measures are expected to continue to characterise the business sector in 2004.