samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
However, the broad trend is to combine investor protection and consumer protection for banking securities and insurance, and split these away from the systemic aspect. The precise architecture in different countries depends on historical, political and institutional factors. Personally I feel we have been quite enlightened in the UK. As a former Chairman of the old Securities and Investment Board - a forerunner of the FSA - I could certainly see the limitations of the earlier situation. And despite the inevitable challenge - being well addressed in my view - of managing a supervisory authority with the size, scope, and powers of FSA, it reflects the realities of today’s environment. And as for financial sector oversight in the UK, this is carried on under the auspices of a Standing Committee of the three authorities involved: HMT, FSA and the Bank of England. The roles of each party have been carefully thought out in relation to which party is best placed to do what, and laid out in a published MoU. The FSA is responsible for the supervision of firms, markets and clearing systems, and for the conduct of regulatory operations in response to problem cases affecting these players. The valuable intelligence it gains can help in understanding concentrations and threats. The Bank has responsibility for the overall stability of the financial system as a whole.

The public deficit of the euro area has shrunk from 6.3% in 2009 to 4.1% in 2011. At the current juncture, this is clearly an asset for us and an element of confidence both for the markets and  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  economic agents, and needs to be further enhanced. In addition to these efforts at the national level, a much stronger framework for common discipline has been put in place, which represents a major step forward towards a more integrated economic union. It is crucial that all of the efforts in this area are pursued with determination. Now turning to competitiveness, here too the progress already made in terms of structural reforms and the adjustment of unit production costs in many countries is very encouraging. Never in the recent past have the European economies been reformed so much in such a short space of time. I could cite many examples, in Spain (labour market and financial sector reforms), Italy (pension and services market reforms) and in France, where an important pension reform was made in 2010 and where structural reforms on the labour market and on the goods and services market are in preparation. These structural reforms constitute the necessary foundation for dynamic and sustainable growth in the future and they must be vigorously pursued. Furthermore, at the European level, the new Stability Pact includes a surveillance mechanism for macroeconomic imbalances, which had been missing up till now.
While the initial focus has been on institutional building and financial infrastructure development, greater attention needs to be given to increasing the range of products and services to meet the greater sophistication of consumers and the more complex requirements of today’s businesses in addition to enhancing the overall efficiency at which such products and services are provided. Several factors are important to provide an enabling environment that would encourage and promote innovation. Firstly, a highly qualified and skilled workforce in the industry is indispensable for innovation. Training is a major means for promoting innovation. Personnel development in the industry is therefore important. In addition, industry involvement and participation in university education through course development, teaching and internship will contribute to this process. In Malaysia, an industry-owned research and training institute in Islamic banking and finance known as the Islamic Banking and Finance Institute Malaysia or IBFIM has been established to spearhead greater collaborative efforts with universities to undertake research in areas that are vital for the progressive development of the Islamic financial industry. Increasing the capacity to innovate and securing long term competitiveness also underscores the importance of developing strategic leaders for Islamic financial institutions, leaders who are able to  BIS Review 20/2004  1  reinvent themselves in this new environment.

More generally, all over the world, the best private sector involvement is foreign direct investments, privatisation and going back as soon as possible to spontaneous market financing. FTD: Is the ECB sticking to the line that any solution for Greece that leads to a credit event, a selective default or a default must be avoided? Trichet: The Governing Council has not changed its position. Again we are in a domain where Governments are responsible. Our duty is to say clearly what we judge appropriate in order to avoid the risk of adverse developments in the euro area and in Europe. As you know there has been several times in the past when our advice was not followed, such as when we advised solemnly against watering down the letter and the spirit of the Stability and Growth  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Pact. If this advice had been followed, we may have avoided some of the problems we are facing today. FTD: How is the ECB helping to battle the crisis? Trichet: The most important thing for the Governing Council of the ECB is, for the future as it did in the past, to stick to its mandate and ensure price stability for the euro. The fact that the euro is a stable and credible currency is a prerequisite, a necessary condition for mastering this difficult situation. The ECB is an anchor of stability and confidence which is particularly fundamental at a time when everything else seems to be moving and shifting.
As a Fed policymaker, I strive to be clear in my communications. But I can’t tell you today precisely what I’d favor doing in the future, because that future remains uncertain. Thank you very much for your kind attention. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches

Christian Noyer: The end of the financial dictatorship? Introduction by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, to Session 5 “The end of the financial dictatorship?”, Aix-en-Provence Economic Forum, Aix-en-Provence, 6 July 2013. * 1. *  *  Firstly, is finance really a dictatorship? This question isn’t new: already Petronius, in Roman times, at the start of our modern era, asked: “What use are laws when money is king?” The question seems rhetorical, and you can sense in its resignation that the Latin writer (who, incidentally, was born in the nearby city of Marseille) was already worried about the difficulties of establishing the primacy of politics over finance. i)  It is true that the world of finance does have considerable powers:  •  The power to create and support economic development. In its most traditional forms, this is finance’s most crucial role – and power: it is an essential cog in the wheel of economic activity, allocating capital, supplying credit and enabling the management of risk. More than just “the sinews of war”, it can be seen as the lifeblood flowing through our veins. •  But also a highly destructive power: it was the unchecked sophistication of finance and the excesses this caused that lay behind the 2007-2008 financial crisis, a crisis that subsequently transformed into an economic, social and political crisis.
But in principle, the reasoning with regard to the market for single-family dwellings also applies to the market for collectively owned  1  According to estate agents statistics (maklarstatistik.se) the price per square metre for a tenant-owned apartment has risen by 300 per cent in ten years. 2  BIS Review 56/2007  dwellings. The substantial increase in house prices has gone hand in hand with the increase in household indebtedness. Of all the loans granted to households, 85 per cent have property as collateral. A sharp fall in property prices combined with households experiencing difficulty in paying their loans could therefore cause problems for the banks. A central issue here is whether house prices have been pushed up by exaggerated optimism or by speculation. Despite the rapid upturn in prices, I do not believe that we are currently seeing any general overvaluation of the property market. This is because there are a number of factors that can largely justify the rise in prices 2 . Firstly, interest rates have been historically low in recent years. Since the Riksbank introduced its inflation target, in the mid-1990s, the inflation rate has become lower and has stabilised. A more stable development in inflation also means that the real interest rates – interest rates excluding inflation – have fallen. At the end of 1996, after the crisis years, the real variable mortgage rate was around 7 per cent. Today it is around 2 per cent.

Mr Lopes’ speech before the Economic Affairs Commission of the Federal Senate Summary of a speech by the new President of the Central Bank of Brazil, Mr Francisco Lopes, before the Economic Affairs Commission of the Federal Senate in Brasilia on 26/1/99. Translated from Jornal do Brasil of 27/1/99. Inflation I am sure inflation will not come back. Of course, there will be some adjustment in relative prices but there is no possibility of resuming the old inflationary process. We will have to put in place tight monetary policy and prevent any forms of indexation, opportunism or speculation. As the Brazilian economy is relatively closed - imports correspond to 8% of GDP - a devaluation of 50%, (i.e. the exchange rate stabilising at the very depreciated level of $ 1.80), would add about 4 to 5% to the rate of inflation. Overvaluation of the real The use of the exchange rate anchor made an exchange rate overvaluation inevitable. Nevertheless we had imagined it would be possible to shift from the mini-band regime to the free floating regime in a rather gradual way, while the economy was still attracting foreign capital. But reality sometimes frustrates the best intentions. With the benefit of hindsight (after the Asian and Russian crises), the widening of the exchange rate band in April last year, which widened the amplitude of the exchange rate fluctuation by 1% per year, was a rather timid movement. But it is easy to be wise after the event.
The presence of a liquidity risk reduced confidence in the Swedish banking system in general and led to a disruption to the Swedish financial system. If the banks had internalised this liquidity risk, lending in the Baltic would probably have been less extensive. One circumstance that may be worth taking into account here is that the credit market, in practice, is not entirely homogenous. One distinction that can be made is to view the credit market as being divided into a corporate market and a household market. In the recent period in Sweden, we have seen ample evidence of the great variance in developments between these two sectors (Figure 9). 16  BIS Review 68/2010  Figure 9 Lending to companies and households Percentage of GDP 80  80 Lending to companies  75  75 Lending to households  70  70  65  65  60  60  55  55  50  50  45  45  40 Dec-06  40 Jun-07  Dec-07  Jun-08  Dec-08  Jun-09  Source: The Riksbank  Even if certain factors affecting the lending rate are common to these two sectors, for example the policy rate, other factors can be sector specific. In other words, there is no common interest rate for the corporate sector and the household sector. Consequently, no single equation can be used to describe the lending rate for all sectors in the economy.

In most areas, inflation has fallen significantly and has been more stable than previously. The real economy also seemed to be developing with more stability, which was probably partly due to the fact that the policy was being conducted in a better reasoned manner than previously. There may be those who believed that most problems had been solved, and that the improved stability of the macroeconomy was here to stay. But the Great Moderation would turn out to be a deceptive calm. But an improved monetary policy was not enough The recent period has seen frequent discussion of the financial crisis and its causes, to put it mildly. Consequently, I do not intend to go into any detailed description of the development of the crisis, but will remain on a relatively intuitive level. The origin of the financial crisis lay in a number of interacting macroeconomic and microeconomic factors. However, the core of the crisis was that the banks and other participants took on too much debt in relation to the risks they were taking. Shortcomings in the regulatory framework, combined with a lack of understanding of new complex financial instruments, contributed towards the altogether too low pricing of risk by the market. Regulatory frameworks and supervision also failed to ensure that the banks had enough high-quality capital to maintain confidence when the economy took a downward turn and inflated asset values fell.
In January the consumer price index (CPI) increased year on year by 7.5% in the US. In the euro area, the HICP rose by 5.1%. Second, it should be noted that, while in the euro area both GDP and private consumption are still far from their pre-pandemic trends, in the United States these measures of broad economic activity have fully recovered, partly as a consequence of the more forceful fiscal policy response in this country to the COVID-19 crisis. Third, while a significant part of the current inflationary pressures in the euro area is driven by exogenous and external factors, such as energy prices (to which the euro area economy is particularly sensitive), in the United States there are significant domestic pressures, especially in the form of extraordinary wage growth, which contrasts with the relatively subdued dynamics seen in euro area wages so far. As an illustration, core inflation stood at 2.3% in January in the euro area, compared to 6% in the US. Fourth, a rather significant part of the current high-inflation episode in the euro area can be interpreted as a negative shock to our terms of trade, given our high dependency on external sources of energy. This is very different to the situation in the United States and therefore its consequences are also expected to differ.

In this regard, high inflation and subdued wage growth (like we have observed so far in the euro area) imply a substantial decline in real incomes, which could translate into lower consumption and investment, and, therefore, into weaker underlying inflation dynamics beyond the immediate short term. Even though part of these negative effects have been mitigated so far by fiscal policy in many countries − where measures have concentrated on compensating, at least partially, low income households for the higher energy prices − looking ahead it is unclear how persistent this policy support may be. 11  3.2  Implications for monetary policy  Now that I have characterised recent inflation dynamics and the risks surrounding future price developments, let me draw some conclusions on how monetary policy in the euro area should respond, which are fully embedded in the ECB’s new monetary policy strategy. First, in this setting of heightened uncertainty, we have underlined the need to maintain optionality and flexibility and to remain attentive to the incoming data and forecasts in order to correctly adjust our monetary policy stance. As we have stated on numerous occasions, the ECB stands ready to act at any time and to adjust all of its instruments as deemed appropriate. But, I insist, the near term is plagued with uncertainty, in terms of pure inflation dynamics but also in relation to several geopolitical risks which could potentially be highly disruptive. That is why, now more than ever, we must maintain optionality and flexibility.
The improvement over the last few years is the largest since the First World War. The level of our terms-oftrade has not been as high since the late 1940s. Sweden has experienced a decline in terms-of-trade. If we again compare terms-of-trade developments in Norway and Sweden, we see that the shocks to the Swedish economy have tended to be smaller. Challenges in a petroleum economy The current macroeconomic framework, most notably the fiscal and monetary policy regimes, has been quite successful so far in shielding the Norwegian economy from excessive fluctuations. The increase in income has not led to a pronounced rise in price and wage inflation. Businesses have become increasingly efficient in their use of resources, and the supply of labour has been ample. Nevertheless, in the face of such strong external influences, smoothing developments in the Norwegian economy is no easy task. Government revenues include large net cash flows deriving from oil, which gives us an economic base that is not available to many other countries. The size of the cash flow from petroleum activities varies, however. And if petroleum revenues were to be spent as they accrue, the result would be wider fluctuations in the Norwegian economy. Petroleum revenue spending also has an impact on competitiveness in Norwegian business and industry. Extensive and uneven spending of petroleum revenues would have a negative impact on exposed industries. The particular challenges of petroleum revenues can be illustrated by looking at the basic relationship between aggregate production, consumption and relative prices.

The real exchange rate appreciated, and manufacturing industry was scaled back. Frequent devaluations from 1976 were unable in the long term to prevent a decline in the manufacturing sector. On the contrary, they proved to be selfreinforcing. The absence of a nominal anchor was one of the main reasons behind the pronounced swings in the Norwegian economy in the 1970s and 1980s. With a policy of low interest rates and devaluations, inflation took root. Nominal interest rates were kept at a low level even though inflation rose. The wide fluctuations culminated in a credit boom in the mid-1980s. Victor Norman recognized this mechanism. In 1986, he argued in a newspaper article 4 that: “We are again treading a path where monetary and fiscal policies amplify cyclical fluctuations instead of moderating them. We saw this clearly in 1982/1983 and again last year.” The value of petroleum exports can be quite volatile and uncertain. Petroleum exports rose rapidly until the oil price declined markedly in 1986. The recession after the credit bubble burst and after oil prices fell was deep. The recession was more severe than would have been the case if we had maintained a larger, competitive manufacturing sector. Norwegian manufacturing lost export market shares in the late 1980s in spite of booming conditions abroad and substantial capacity slack at home. The value of petroleum exports rose again to historically high levels in 2000. High petroleum revenues to the government made it increasingly challenging to smooth cyclical fluctuations by means of fiscal policy.
Why are you in favour of an enhancement of the rescue umbrella? Governments need an effective mechanism, which is supportive to ensure financial stability. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Germany is the biggest contributor to the rescue of the euro. Are we Europe’s paymaster? Germany is a very important country in Europe. The measures to combat the debt crisis are borne jointly by the Member States. Germany is an important anchor for Europe, not only on account of its economic size, but also and above all owing to its own creditworthiness, its sound fiscal policy and its competitiveness. Why does Europe not just let default countries go bankrupt? First, I would say: debts should be repaid. It is the rule of law. Now, the International Monetary Fund has been around for many years to help marshalling adjustments in countries with difficulties, in order for them to recover their creditworthiness and honour their commitments. Europe is in line with this approach, for the sake of the financial stability of the euro area as a whole. Many experts believe that Greece’s bankruptcy is unavoidable. The Greek government has taken measures within a strong programme negotiated with the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund. We expect Greece to implement these measures to the letter. Compliance with the announced adjustment programme is checked every three months. After Ireland, will other countries be taken under the EU rescue umbrella? We are asking all countries to bring their fiscal house in order.

This is the best way for them to win back their creditworthiness. Have the right lessons been learned from the financial crisis? We are on the road to far-reaching changes in the international financial system, and it is important that these changes are made. Together with the international community we are working hard to ensure that banking rules are changed. Much has already been done, but a great deal also remains to be done. Will the euro still exist in 20 years’ time? Of course, there is no doubt about that. Will more than the current 17 countries then have the currency? Today, 331 million people in 17 countries use the euro. The rules for joining the euro area must be applied strictly. That is the main thing: provided strict application of the rules, the euro area is open, as the entry of Estonia demonstrates. Mr Trichet, your term of office ends in October. Do you already have your eye on a suitable successor? That is not up to me. Rather, it is the responsibility of the Heads of State or Government. A German at the head of the ECB would surely not be a bad thing for the euro. This decision is a very important responsibility of the Heads of State and Government! What are you particularly proud of in the seven years you have been in office so far? The ECB has a clear primary mandate, which is to ensure price stability in the euro area.