samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Until the outbreak of World War I, indeed, monetary regimes based on commodity money, such as gold and silver, which had dominated for centuries, guaranteed an extent of price stability which is, by today’s standards, virtually unimaginable. In spite of such remarkable price stability, however, those standards had been recurrently plagued by financial crises and asset price booms and busts. Historical evidence therefore clearly shows that macroeconomic stability – defined as stability in inflation and output growth – does not necessarily imply financial stability. On the contrary, the experience of the years leading up to the crisis, provides evidence of Kindleberger’s thesis that macroeconomic stability does not automatically lead to financial stability, and, on the contrary, that it may well sow the seeds of future financial instability. Dissenting voices, however, did not have major impact on the mainstream view, which remained resolutely optimistic. I will return to this point in the last part of my speech, when I discuss a further key lesson of the crisis, that is, that we, central bankers, should be more open to dissenting voices. 3  See Kindleberger (2005). BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  What lessons should we draw from what precedes in terms of policymaking? Although (it is important to stress) we are currently in uncharted waters, and the new monetary framework is being developed as we speak, some issues are already clear.

The new framework will feature two objectives – price and financial stability – which, based on standard economic analysis, means that we will need two separate set of instruments to achieve them. Further, based again on standard analysis, the assignment of instruments to objectives ought to be based on the principle of comparative efficiency: monetary policy is the natural instrument for pursuing price stability, whereas macroprudential policies – defined as a set of policies aimed at limiting both excessive credit growth and the build-up of systemic risk within the financial system – will have to take care of preserving financial stability. II.2. Monetary policy and financial stability  During the years leading up to the crisis, the dominant doctrine was that monetary policy should not attempt to lean against bubbles as they inflate by raising interest rates, and it should rather only “mop up” the consequences of their eventual bursting by cutting rates aggressively. There were three main rationales behind such a position. First, it was argued, it is impossible for central banks to identify a bubble in real time: if it were possible, markets would have identified it too, and the bubble would not have developed in the first place since central banks have access to the very same information as market participants. To be sure, this argument did not go unchallenged.
One should not attach too much importance to surveys of inflation expectations. They have their limitations. But they are nevertheless interesting as a part of the base for monetary policy. I believe that the following conclusions can be drawn from Prospera’s most recent survey, published in January: •  Firstly, inflation expectations five years ahead have fallen from 2.6 per cent in October to 2.3 per cent in January. This is good as they were a little too high in October. •  Secondly, inflation expectations in the longer term have not been pushed up by our rapid and large repo rate cuts. As I said, they have instead declined. •  Thirdly, there are no widespread expectations of deflation in the longer term. Inflation expectations five years ahead are close to 2 per cent. The normal correlation between actual inflation and inflation expectations five years ahead also  8  BIS Review 25/2009  indicates that inflation expectations will remain close to 2 per cent even if the CPI falls in 2009 in line with our forecast. •  Fourthly, inflation expectations two years ahead have fallen from 2.8 per cent in October to 1.5 per cent in January. This is slightly more worrying. It is a larger fall than the normal correlation between actual inflation and inflation expectations two years ahead would indicate. The fact that they are far below 2 per cent also indicates that the interest rate should remain low for a longer period of time.

Labour market indicators such as redundancy notices and the number of job vacancies are pointing to a continued rapid decline in the labour market. In the February Report our forecast is for employment to decline by almost 200,000 persons at the end of 2010, from the top level in 2008, and for unemployment to rise to around 9 per cent in 2010. However, our most recent forecast is that the current economic downturn will not be as severe as that during the crisis in the 1990s. On the other hand, we are assuming that it will be more severe than the most recent economic downturn in connection with the dotcom crash in 2000. This is indicated by the various measures of resource utilisation we regularly produce. Since the monetary policy meeting in February Statistics Sweden has published the National Accounts for the fourth quarter of 2008. GDP fell by just over 9 per cent calculated as an annual rate during the fourth quarter of 2008. This is the weakest rate of change measured during the period for which statistical comparisons are available, that is, since 1980. Our forecast in the February Monetary Policy Report assumed that GDP would fall by almost 4 per cent calculated as an annual rate during the fourth quarter. Inflation will fall rapidly In 2008 CPI inflation rose up to September. It then peaked at 4.4 per cent. Since then inflation has fallen rapidly. In January 2009 it amounted to 1.3 per cent.
All supervisory authorities in the Kingdom, including SAMA, continued their efforts in performing periodical inspections in the area of anti-money laundering over entities under their supervision in accordance with the concept of the risk ratio standard to increase efficiency of control and supervision operations and benefit from the capabilities available in various fields to ensure the application of instructions and regulations. Dear Audience, Bearing in mind the risks posed to our economy by Money Laundering and emphasizing its supervisory and control role, SAMA issues continuous instructions and updates regulations and guidelines to cope with domestic, regional and international developments. We stress here the necessity of compliance with regulations, standards and instructions related to Anti-Money Laundering; the implementation of policies to monitor operations; and reporting Money Laundering activities to thwart any attempts aimed at abusing banks and money-changers operating in the Kingdom as channels to pass illegal transactions. Dear Audience, The positive results achieved by the Kingdom are an incentive and impetus to all of us to keep on executing development plans and work continuously to combat Money Laundering crimes, safeguarding the soundness of our national economy with all its financial and non-financial sectors against adverse impacts. The Kingdom will not hesitate to undertake all measures and means to attain the highest levels of quality and to meet International Anti-Money Laundering standards. I would like reiterate the importance of cooperation among relevant domestic, regional and international entities, intensifying efforts and exchanging technical information and expertise to detect, monitor and pinpoint Money Laundering operations.

Tackling climate for real: progress and next steps Speech given by Andrew Bailey Governor of the Bank of England  BIS-BDF-IMF-NGFS Green Swan 2021 Global Conference 3 June 2021  I am grateful to Thomas Viegas, Chris Faint, Zane Jamal, Theresa Löber, Timothy Rawlings, Matthew Trott, Michelle van der Merwe, and Karen Jude for their assistance in helping me prepare these remarks. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  It is a pleasure to be participating today, at such a unique event. Over recent decades, our global economic system has faced multiple shocks or swan events, ranging from the Covid-19 pandemic to the global financial crisis of 2007/08. But if we turn our eye to the future, we can see another swan lurking in the reeds, and it’s green. That green swan is why we are here today, the threat posed to our economies and our financial system by climate change. Central banks, regulators and policymakers came together in the aftermath of the financial crisis to reform the system so that it could better weather future shocks. Like before, we must come together again to address the threat of climate change. But unlike before, we cannot wait until the aftermath to do so.
6  3  Uncertainty about the distribution over time and the use of the NGEU programme’s funds also conditions the projections. In this case, as regards our December forecast, a delay in the investment expenditure financed by the programme in 2021 is assumed. Accordingly, the impact on GDP is expected to fall from 1.3 pp in December to 1 pp in the latest projections, with the estimated contribution for 2022 rising at the same time, as a result of the assumptions that funds not invested this year will be applied the following year. Based on these assumptions, GDP would grow by 6% in 2021 under the baseline scenario, dipping to 3.2% under the severe scenario and increasing to 7.5% under the mild scenario. Following a sluggish first half of the year, activity would quicken in the second half under the baseline scenario. Greater dynamism as from the summer would give rise to a powerful carryover effect in 2022, added to by the greater estimated impact of the European funds for next year, whereby GDP would post high growth in 2022 of 5.3%, before easing to 1.7% in 2023. These figures represent a downward revision of 0.8 pp in GDP growth for this year compared with those projected in December. The lesser momentum of activity in the short term and, to a lesser extent, the revised distribution of spending under the European funds largely account for this revision.

Also, in this case, the effects have been uneven across banks, given what were diverging starting positions and the differing degree of exposure to the regions, sectors, firms and population groups most affected by the crisis. One area where the impact of the crisis is most visible is public finances, which have seen a deterioration with few precedents in peacetime. The budget deficit was up almost 7 pp to over 10% of GDP. And the rise in the public debt ratio exceeded 20 pp, to around 120%. In short, a little over a year later, the consequences of the pandemic remain very much apparent in the economy. Output and employment are still some distance off their preCOVID levels, markedly so in certain services sectors, and the general government sector as a whole and some households and firms segments have seen their financial position worsen significantly. Further, financial institutions, whose profitability has fallen, will foreseeably witness a progressive worsening of their credit portfolio. The medium-term outlook: uncertainty remains high But what is the outlook ahead? As stated, the successive waves of the pandemic have checked the recovery after the summer. Indeed, quarterly GDP growth in Spain was zero in 2020 Q4 and, for 2021 Q1, our projections under the baseline scenario point to slightly negative growth of -0.4%. 2  Specifically, in the industries involving social interaction, half the people employed reside in households where saving is lower than one-quarter of their annual income.
Its consequences are still being felt today and the focus of policymakers has, therefore, shifted to the immediate task of giving the economy a quick resuscitation and lifting it out of the short-term slump. After the crisis, foreign direct investments from the eurozone have dropped significantly. However, despite the weakness back home, the UK’s net FDI to Thailand still managed to register a positive number of approximately 48 million USD for the first three quarters of 2009. It is, therefore, to our mutual benefit for the BCCT to have a good understanding of the outlook and challenges for the Thai economy from a policymaking standpoint. This will be the mission of my speech today and I would like to proceed in the following sequence: First, I would like to start by giving you an update on the current economic development; second, I would attempt to draw an outlook for the Thai economy for the year 2010; and third, I will outline the key challenges that await the Thai economy going forward. Ladies and Gentlemen, As you all know, the Thai economy was hard-hit by a sharp drop in the external demand caused by this global financial crisis. The spillovers from the large decline in exports were far-reaching and affected all sectors of the domestic economy, with the manufacturing sector being hardest hit. Consequently, sentiment turned gloomy as more workers started to lose their jobs. To make matter worse, the escalation of internal political tensions adversely affected private consumption and investment.

As for the issue of asset price bubbles, while the signs of accelerating asset prices observed in many countries in Asia are not so apparent in Thailand at this time, the risk is not BIS Review 164/2009  3  neglected. As a matter of prudence, the Bank of Thailand will continue to closely monitor asset prices to ensure financial stability prevails in the long term. Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to conclude my speech tonight by reiterating that the economic recovery in Thailand is expected to continue going forward. Nevertheless, the risk of an aftershock is not negligible due to fragile global and domestic environment. Hence, businesses and policymakers alike need to remain vigilant, but at the same time, should not be overcome by unreasonable fear. One important factor that will help speed up the process of recovery is the return of investment and trade within the country. With our economic resilience and strong economic fundamentals, I would like to assure you that Thailand remains a lucrative place to invest. Despite this difficult time, the BCCT has always been a great supporter of our investment programs, an example of which is your Thailand Means Business 2008 report which is very relevant in terms of attracting new or re-investment from British businesses. I hope that this long relationship will continue to be as good as ever or even better in the coming years. Thank you. 4  BIS Review 164/2009
Michael C Bonello: Overcoming the competitiveness challenge - Malta’s economic imperative Address by Mr Michael C Bonello, Governor of the Central Bank of Malta, to the Malta Chamber of Commerce National Competitiveness Conference, held in Qawra, 5 October 2001. *  *  *  That competitiveness is the key to survival is a maxim that applies as much to firms as to national economies. Countries tend to be competitive when they pursue sound macroeconomic policies and a market-oriented growth strategy. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a firm, however efficient it might be, remaining competitive for long in a country which does not provide a congenial policy environment. The focus of my remarks will, therefore, be on how national competitiveness could best be promoted. For this purpose it is first necessary to enquire why it is that competitiveness has become such a vital issue and why we simply must not fail to overcome the challenge. The imperative derives from a combination of exogenous and endogenous factors, both structural and cyclical. Perhaps the single most important structural factor is globalisation. Advances in information technology and communications have greatly reduced the costs of doing business internationally. The removal of barriers to the free movement of goods and also of some services has been followed by a large increase in cross-border trade. Firms are thus no longer guaranteed captive national markets. The process of global economic integration has been driven even faster by foreign direct investment (FDI).

To contribute to the reflection, we are about to publish a discussion paper on the possible regulatory options for DeFi. In order to build the most appropriate framework, taking notably into account the question of proportionality, we need to feed our thinking with input from all stakeholders: financial services or crypto-assets industry professionals, IT specialists, academics, other regulators and supervisors- That is why this document will be open to a wide consultation and I look forward to listening to your reactions on it. 2. The second axis is to use DeFi innovation to serve the possible development of tokenised finance and to improve cross-border payments Our monitoring of DeFi is not just motivated by financial stability risk but also by our intuition that its innovative potential could serve the development of an ongoing trend: the tokenisation of finance. To do so, central banks and the traditional financial players need to understand how DeFi operates and master its innovative aspects in order to use them in a secure way to do something else than speculate on crypto-assets. This is what we are trying do with the project Mariana, our ongoing experiment with the MAS, the Swiss National Bank and the Eurosystem, Singapore and Switzerland BIS Innovation Hub Centres. Basically, we are building an automated market for the exchange of CBDCs based on a concept imported from DeFi. This project is really at the crossroads of a number of topics: enhancing cross-border payments, CBDCs interoperability, understanding of DeFi and the development of tokenised finance.
The important thing is that taken together they set a more favorable outlook for activity in 2018 and, possibly, in the years to come. Actually, in this Report we present our first growth forecast for the years 2019 and 2020,1 which indicates that the economy should grow between 3.25% and 4.25% next year, and between 3% and 4% in 2020. With these projections, we estimate that the activity gap will progressively close until 2020. This considers that potential GDP growth, currently estimated between 2.5% and 3%, is approaching trend growth, which we estimate between 3% and 3.5% (figure 5). For the purposes of the inflation outlook, the somewhat faster closing of the activity gap will compensate in the medium term the downward pressure of inflation derived from the peso appreciation of recent months. At the end of March, the peso had fallen by 4.5% compared to its average value for the fourth quarter of 2017, which is equivalent to a drop of around CLP25 per dollar. This owes to several factors. Abroad, the main thing has been a global trend of depreciation of the dollar and a copper price persisting above $ per pound. The interest rate differential between Chile and the US, although theoretically important, empirically has a somewhat smaller effect. There have also been domestic factors mainly that the Chilean economy has been improving both its actual and expected performance.

The government’ commitment to carry out a full program of structural reforms in banking sector served as an instrument for re-establishing the public confidence in financial institutions and services. The program of that period was focussed on four main objectives: •  Improving the legal and regulatory infrastructure;  •  Building sound and reliable institutions;  •  Strengthening the financial infrastructure; and  •  Liquidating or privatising the state-owned banks. Besides the adoption of new laws on the Bank of Albania, on the banking system, on bankruptcy, and on safe transactions, of importance was the program for a rapid change of the state-owned banks’ ownership, which led to the liquidation of the ANB and the establishment of the Bad Assets Resolution Trust. The NCB was recapitalised and privatised in 2000. During 2004, the privatization process of the Savings Bank was finalized, being purchased by the Raiffeisen International Bank Holding, thus recording the transfer of 94% of the banking capital to private ownership. Currently the Albanian banking system is composed of 17 banks, 14 of which are of foreign capital. The capital source is from different places, such as Greece, Italy, Austria, Germany, United States of America, etc.
Mr. Ingves discusses retail trade, EMU and the Euro with respect to Sweden Text of a speech by Mr. Stefan Ingves, a Deputy Governor of the Bank of Sweden, held on 14/4/97. First a word of thanks for the invitation to speak about EMU. Less than twelve months have passed since the Riksbank last attended a meeting of the Swedish Retail Federation with information about EMU. Perhaps some of you were present on that occasion. Whereas the issue of EMU was still fairly new a year ago and not much discussed by most people, the situation today is different. In the interval we have experienced a marked increase both in what people know about EMU and in their interest in the matter. This naturally has to do with the rapid approach of the starting date. Today the move to Stage Three lies fewer than 500 working days ahead. Moreover, there is no mistaking the strength of the political determination in Europe to start on time. This was evident not least at the recent Ecofin meeting in the Netherlands when the EU finance ministers agreed on several important matters such as the stability and growth pact and ERM2. Today I shall be outlining the process leading up to Stage Three of EMU and the changes that we already know will occur. I will also say something about EMU's consequences for retail trade. Before considering practical aspects of EMU, permit me to begin with a look at some general economic features.

First and foremost, I would like to focus on instant payments introduced in response to the dynamic development of communications, digital services and e-commerce. Instant payments outline the forthcoming changes in payment infrastructure both in the EU and in the country. Their advantage is the possibility for synchronisation between dispatching of goods and receipt of payment. Transferred funds are immediately available, which enhances the security and trust in business relations and in the payment process. In the EU Retail Payments Strategy, instant payments are called ‘the new normal’. The Commission aims at full uptake of instant payments in the EU by the end of 2021. In Bulgaria the project of instant payments in the national currency (BGN) is already at an advanced stage. It has been developed by the BISERA6 retail payment system operatorBORICA AD with the assistance of the BNB as the operator of the national RTGS system RINGS. Recently, the necessary amendments have been made to the legal framework and the payment systems. Technical and functional changes were implemented in the BNB-operated RINGS system that ensure a possibility for making instant payments. The license of BORICA AD as the operator of the BISERA6 payment system was updated, thus allowing the system to process instant payments of up to BGN 100 000. The operator BORICA AD developed the necessary infrastructure that made possible the launch of testing and implementation of the new functionality with market participants. Instant payments are based on the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer scheme.