samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In this light, the Bank of Thailand (BOT) has included financial access as our urgent aspect in the current BOT’s financial master plan. 11. Secondly, on ecology, we heed the lesson of how to progress while ensuing to environmental sustainability. After the rapid development stage in Thailand, ecological problems have become more prevalent. Concerns have been raised over the sustainability of ecology and, more fundamentally, the socio-economic well-being of the people. 12. Today, effort has been made to maintain the balance between the ecology and growth. For instance, environmental protection and sustainable development have been included as an integral part of Thailand’s National Development Plan since 1997. However, the goal of ensuing environmental sustainability cannot be easily established. And I hope that today’s conference will also examine the environmental sustainability while focusing on growth and inclusiveness. 13. Lastly, on the stability of financial system, the lessons that can be appropriately derived from Thailand’s experiences are on external imbalances and the effects on financial institutions. The 1997 financial crisis was originated from large capital inflows. Between 1992 and 1996, Thai economy had attracted massive volumes of capital inflow of more than 355 billion bahts from abroad. At that time, the volatile international capital flows went into our financial system and increased the system’s vulnerability. The crisis then erupted when there was a sudden and large capital outflow, which during 1997–1999 amounted to some 389 billion bahts. What followed is the closing down of numerous financial institutions as well as the economic slump. 14.

And without a synchronized recovery, the world will be at risk of running into a weak, patchy, and unsustained recovery for a prolonged period. So, this week is really an important week, and what has been announced so far by the world leaders, in terms of the new resources that will be made available to aid the global recovery, is positive for the market and for the global economy. The current global crisis is now in its 20th month. My count is since the Federal Reserve took the unprecedented step to reduce its policy interest rate sharply for the first time in August 2007, signaling the serious nature of the problem. Thailand, being a small open economy, could not escape the impact of the turmoil. The impact on Thailand, so far, has been felt through a sharp reversal of capital flows, on account of deleveraging by foreign investors, as well as through a tightening of access to foreign capital, and through a dislocation in economic activities as export and tourism receipts fell sharply. The banking sector, however, has been resilient given the low direct exposure to the toxic assets, the low reliance on global liquidity as a source of funding, and the strong capital base. The fact that the Thai banking sector remains safe and sound is no accident. It is largely the result of continuing improvement in risk management capacity of the banking sector following the Asian financial crisis, under a stronger regulatory framework and risk-based supervision.
As I have stressed many times recently, and in particular over the last few months during the COVID crisis, the key to understanding the degree of success of policies or the occurrence of potential unexpected consequences is to proceed with proper and timely evaluations based on sufficient background information. This is the only way to ascertain to what extent policies are working or need adjustment in terms of their timing, magnitude and focus. Global authorities are now in uncharted waters in terms of the dimension of the crisis and its multiple ramifications, and it is very difficult to calibrate the response of economic policy. Only good and timely data can allow us to design an optimal policy reaction in such a complex context. The present crisis has also stressed the importance of having data in real time: in the last few months, information on the use of payment cards, traffic on roads and at airports, electricity consumption, mobility, Google searches and so on has been fundamental for assessing the magnitude of the economic slump and the subsequent timid recovery. These indicators will hardly join the compact and methodologically sound realm of official statistics; but I think we should also pay attention and invest some resources in understanding them, familiarising ourselves with their use and incorporating them into our forecasting models. Probably, some of these indicators could be temporarily considered “experimental statistics”, a label statistical institutions may use to explore new fields and to convey to users the as yet not fully sound nature of these data.

Indeed, as part of the Eurosystem, as a participant in the Single Supervisory Mechanism and given its responsibility for the proper functioning and stability of the financial system, the Banco de España regularly collects a wealth of financial and supervisory information from credit institutions, which is key to performing all our duties. This information is also necessary for strengthening the performance of other functions of the Banco de España, such as the conduct of monetary policy, the oversight of the stability of the financial system and the compilation of statistics. We are also responsible for designing financial reporting as efficiently as possible and, in this endeavour, both the Banco de España and the European authorities have some substantial challenges ahead. I shall refer to these later. Some of the key statistics produced by the Banco de España are present in the Spanish National Statistical Plan (the PEN, as we refer to it). They include some macroeconomic statistics, such as the balance of payments and the financial accounts, which complement and have to be consistent with those compiled by INE. In this regard, I think we can be proud of the long-standing tradition of close and candid cooperation between our two institutions. Joint discussion continuously enriches our professionals, and their efforts to ensure the consistency and complementarity of the results are a guarantee of the quality of the statistical system.
Few times ago, I have been informed about a new EU initiative, which requires to set up, within a certain period of time, among others a unified payment system within the euro area, including payments with cards. Presently, small and medium businesses in the euro area have not the same payment opportunities as they have in their respective countries on a national scale. Such a case includes credit cards, which cannot be employed equally across the borders. For this purpose I would suggest that respective experts from the Association and Bank of Albania be as soon as possible informed about this project, making the relevant suggestions in this direction. I personally remain consistent in my position that in Albania we have to adopt the most advanced solutions in all the infrastructure projects that we are going to implement. I believe that we do not need to examine old-fashioned models, which, in addition to the initial cost, will continuously require other funds for maintenance and modification. Besides the developments in the field of payments I would welcome from you a broader commitment even in other directions. I think that the system must further expand its geographical coverage, aiming at including also areas, which, though having at first sight the appearance of being inactive, have large financial potentials in the form of threasurised savings outside the system. Also, the service level should be further improved.

As mentioned above, I understand that above all the reason behind might be our poor tradition in addition to the high degree of informality and a lot of other objective and subjective reasons. However, I think that the cause might be even the lack of detailed clarifications, and lack of informative publications, and lack of the propaganda in the public environment as well as in media. I think that in the propaganda spaces in the media more space should be given to the clarifications of special products, while launching of new products should be accompanied by standard advertising campaigns. Dear participants,  4  BIS Review 39/2005  Allow me that before closing my speech to express again my high appreciation on the Albanian Association of Banks, ensuring that Governor of Bank of Albania will always be its decent partner in the long path of institutional co-operation. I sincerely hope that this meeting of banking associations is an important step towards establishing a fruitful regional co-operation. I am personally committed, in future contacts with my colleagues of the region’s countries, to dedicate a special room to this co-operation, hoping that I will find on them a well-understanding and full support. I again wish you successful and fruitful proceedings of this meeting. Thank you. BIS Review 39/2005  5
It is all too reminiscent of the period 1990-92 in Sweden when the “nominal anchor” of the ECU peg was supposed to “bind us to the mast” but ended in a macroeconomic shipwreck. A botched entry into ERM II, with increasing public deficits, will be prone to economic and political instability. Furthermore, if meeting the convergence criteria is viewed as the main leverage for fiscal reform, it is worth remembering that this particular leverage disappears on EMU entry. A framework for fiscal policy This brings me to my next topic: fiscal policy frameworks for countries in the currency union. This is an important issue, partly for the stability of the union as a whole. It was also the perspective behind the Stability and Growth Pact. But strong frameworks for public finances are also important for each individual country when they no longer have an independent monetary policy. Only if fiscal policy is in order can asymmetric shocks be dealt with in a reasonable way. The risk of asymmetric chocks is not necessarily higher in the acceding countries than in many of the present member states; in some cases it might even be smaller. A number of studies point to a relatively strong correlation in acceding countries with the business cycle of the euro area. However, it would be unwise to assume that no important asymmetric shocks relative to the rest of the euro area cycle will ever occur. Also, there are risks of domestically generated “political” shocks due to policy mistakes.

Since the financial crisis, we have been de facto operating a “floor” system, characterised by ample excess reserves and interbank rates pegged to the DFR. This floor system, similar to that adopted by the Federal Reserve, is different from the “corridor” system that we operated before the crisis, which was characterised by a leaner balance sheet and scarcity of reserves. 10 The decision we take in this respect, as well as regarding the desired long-run composition of assets and liabilities, will anchor the desired size of our balance sheet. 10  Fo r an in-depth discussion see Chapter 3, Banco de España Annual R eport 2018, and Arce, Nuño , Thaler and Tho mas (2020), “A large central bank balance sheet? Flo o r vs co rrido r systems in a New Keynesian enviro nment”, Journal of Monetary Economics , Vo l. 114, pp. 350-367. 6  The potential impact of reducing the size of the balance sheet Once we reach the point of reducing asset holdings acquired through the APP, the crucial question is how strong an effect this form of quantitative tightening will have on long-term interest rates. It is tempting to see quantitative tightening as simply the opposite of quantitative easing. In this light, our experiences with QE over the past decade and more may give us some idea as to how large the effects of QT may be.
When equities were included in the investment portfolio in 1998, the strategic equity share was set at 40 percent, and the equity share in the actual portfolio had reached this level by June of the same year. 1/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  In June 2007, it was decided to increase the strategic equity share further to 60 percent. The implementation of this strategic change took place during a demanding period. Financial market uncertainty was elevated. Although equity markets declined sharply in autumn 2008 and winter 2009, the new strategic equity share was maintained. The increase in the equity share was been completed by June 2009, and Norges Bank had purchased NOK 1000 billion in equities for the fund over this two-year period. The fund’s average ownership stake in global listed companies had increased from 0.4 percent to 1 percent. A large share of the equities held by the fund today was purchased during these two years. In 2010, the GPFG’s investment universe was expanded to include unlisted real estate. Since then, the fund’s strategic benchmark index has been composed of 60 percent equities and up to 5 percent real estate, with the remainder in bonds. As real estate investments involve some equity risk, the equity share in the strategic benchmark index, in an index composed solely of equities and bonds, is now slightly higher than the allocation defined in 2007. The question of the fund’s strategic equity share is once again on the agenda.

There is, of course, a circularity involved, since liquidity depends on valuation, fair value must be based on a market price, and the ability to price an asset itself depends on sufficient liquidity in the market. The difficulty to get out of this circularity in periods of stress is currently creating significant uncertainty. o  Hence a dependence of the whole market on the rating process. In a securitized world, investors heavily rely upon rating agencies to provide information about the risks attached to various instruments. These agencies have been strongly criticized recently. It is not my purpose to enter into any blame game. Suffice it to say that there has been a deep misunderstanding between investors and rating agencies as to the scope and true meaning of ratings. Most investors were not fully aware that rating did not encompass liquidity risk; nor did they realize that ratings for structured products were intrinsically more volatile than for more simple "plain vanilla" securities. The use of identical metrics for rating what are fundamentally different categories of assets certainly did not help and may have contributed to the confusion. o  Finally the turmoil has revealed the fragility of off-balance sheet structures and vehicles which underpinned securitization. Conduits, especially SIVs, were not built to absorb shocks. Their relationships with sponsor banks are sometimes very ambiguous.
In most cases, this two-year horizon provides us with the scope to return gradually to the target without having to apply monetary policy with such force as to create unnecessary fluctuations in the real economy. Occasionally in the wake of a major disturbance, there may even be grounds to allow a period of more than two years to return to the target. In such cases, however, we should communicate this clearly. Like most central banks with inflation targets, we apply what is usually referred to as a flexible inflation target policy. When we decided at the most recent monetary policy meeting to increase the repo rate, we once again had to take into account the continuing rapid increase in house prices and household debt. This was not because we have a target for household debt or house prices. However, it is important for us to monitor the trend in the housing market, bearing in mind both financial stability and price stability. As far as financial stability is concerned, there are no indications that house prices or household debt constitute a threat to the banking system. We produce regular analyses and reports on such matters in our six-monthly stability reports. As far as the work with price stability is concerned, we must take into account the effect that house prices have on household saving and consumption decisions through their impact on wealth and thus the level of demand in the economy as a whole.

For households with debts, the scope for consumption is also affected by interest rate adjustments if the share of income used for interest payment changes. Accordingly, we take this into consideration when we make our inflation assessment. There has been a swift increase in household debt and house prices over a long period. One potential cause of concern, which we cannot disregard, is that if this trend continues at the same rapid rate, a situation could develop where, at a later date, there is a risk of a considerable slowdown in growth and employment as a result of households finding themselves compelled to increase savings owing to a heavy debt burden. The risks involved here are very difficult to quantify in forecasts or pinpoint in time, but could none the less be a threat to macroeconomic stability. Inflation could then also revert to a state that might prove difficult to deal with. However, it should be underlined that the likelihood of such a scenario arising is regarded as slight, in particular when we have identified it in good time. We have taken these factors into consideration even if they have not been crucial for our monetary policy decisions. The Riksbank does not have a target for the krona exchange rate. However, since the exchange rate is one of many factors affecting growth and inflation, we must naturally take the path of the krona into consideration in the inflation assessment. The exchange rate affects inflation directly and generally relatively quickly through prices of imported goods and services.
One way to deal with moral hazard would be to distinguish explicitly between two different risks facing each country: on the one hand idiosyncratic risk, created by national policies and country specific shocks; on the other hand, “systemic” risk stemming from aggregate liquidity shocks occurring on a broader – global or regional – scale. Countries would self insure against idiosyncratic risk by holding a sufficient amount of reserves. Protection against systemic risk would come from a multilateral mechanism for international liquidity provision. Of course, the distinction between idiosyncratic and systemic risk may be difficult and involves a broad degree of judgment. But two basic rules should be guiding future work on a multilateral safety net: (1) conditions for access should be specified ex ante; and (2) those conditions should be fully delinked from the situation of individual economies. Rather, they should depend on the state of the global economy and international financial markets. From the point of view of an individual country, access should be fully unconditional, once global conditions are met. A considerable amount of work is currently devoted to devise instruments of contingent capital for financial institutions in times of crisis. The same intellectual framework can be extended to liquidity. What is needed is contingent liquidity i.e. liquidity available to nations in times of aggregate shocks to the international financial system. This raises two questions: where would such liquidity come from? How could it be mobilized?

Central bank measures in the monetary area In the conventional monetary policy domain, since there was no inflationary risk over the relevant horizon owing to the deterioration of the economic outlook, the central banks’ priority has been preventing the disinflationary process in the Western economies from translating into deflation. Back in October 2008, in a concerted move the central banks of the main economics cut interest rates by 50 basis points, and this was followed by further cuts in late 2008 and early 2009. Currently, after an unprecedented monetary impulse, rates stand at one of the lowest points in history. The narrowing of the room for manoeuvre for conventional monetary policy measures gave a leading role to liquidity-provision policies and the implementation of exceptional or non-conventional measures, aimed at ensuring the transmission of interest rate cuts to agents’ financial costs and to facilitating their access to funding. Since the crisis began in August 2007, there have been numerous innovations in monetary policy implementation. These have involved increasing the number of institutions with access to central bank funding; extending the collateral eligible in monetary policy operations; lengthening the maturities at which liquidity was supplied to the market; and public and private asset-purchase programmes (or loans to the private sector for such purchases). As a result, there has been an unprecedented expansion in the balance sheets of the central banks concerned, and a substantial change in the composition of their assets.
In contrast, there are signs that the depreciation in sterling is having the expected effect on the market share of goods exporters. That is also reflected in the robust growth in manufacturing output and in business surveys which report buoyant export orders. So far, there is less sign that the lower level of sterling is leading to the substitution of imports by domestically produced goods and services. But it is likely that the producers of internationally tradable goods and services take time to respond to the improved opportunities associated with a lower real exchange rate, especially if investment in foreign distribution networks or the repatriation of off-shored activities is required. So, other things equal, it seems reasonable to expect the impact of the lower level of sterling on net exports to continue to build through next year. The prospects for net exports obviously depend not only on the response to the past depreciation of sterling, but also on demand in the UK’s main export markets. While global growth has been strong over the past year, much of that has been in emerging economies that presently account for a relatively small proportion of UK exports. Growth has been patchier in the developed economies. In the United States, following a series of soft indicators through the late summer and early autumn, the US Federal Reserve announced additional purchases of US treasuries.

I take this opportunity to invite all the economic agents to consider the benefits, that our national currency provides, impassively, as the best long-term instrument for protecting their savings and as the greatest buffer to wealth volatility. To Albania, the Lek has been, is and will remain a successful currency. The Lek serves as an anchor for all our European initiatives. In the last 17 years, the Lek has managed to withstand the inflationary pressures and the pressures deriving from the foreign markets. Therefore, it should be left alone. It should move freely on its path, concurrent with the market demand and supply. The Lek is the icon of the Albanian economy that will guide us through the European gates. I take this opportunity to invite the media to comprehend this message and transmit it to the public at large. Before giving the floor to our dear friend, I would like to briefly introduce Governor Yilmaz. Mr. Yilmaz obtained his BA in Economics from the City University of London and his MA degree from the University College, University of London. Mr. Yilmaz started to work in the Foreign Exchange Department at the Central Bank of Turkey in 1980. After a long and successful career, Mr. Yilmaz was appointed Executive Director of the Workers’ Remittances (Non-Residents FX Deposits) Department in 2002. One year later, in the Shareholders Ordinary General Meeting held on 7th April 2003, Mr. Yilmaz was elected Member of the Board of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.