samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Norwegian banks have been an important importer of foreign capital. Net capital inflows to banks amounted to about NOK 140 billion in this period, with short-term capital accounting for almost half. Chart 12 Banks’ gross foreign debt Percent of lending  13  BIS Review 67/2000  Since 1995 there has been a shift towards higher foreign funding in the banking sector. Banks have financed the widening difference between customer deposits and lending from foreign sources. Chart 12 shows that a large portion of foreign borrowing has been short-term. In 1998, lending growth slowed and customer deposits increased, and growth in banks’ foreign debt came to a halt. In recent years we have thus recorded exports of long-term capital that are considerably higher than the current account surplus. The substantial net outflow of long-term capital from the private sector may partly reflect a thin Norwegian capital market. The Norwegian bond market is not very developed and the value of equities in the Norwegian market in relation to GDP is very low. Chart 13 Net fixed investment rate and productivity growth in manufacturing Percent  It is also worth noting that according to highly uncertain national accounts figures, fixed investment is now at a very low level and there is little growth in productivity in Norwegian manufacturing. There are few signs at the moment that the “new economy” has reached this segment of the Norwegian business sector.

Norman Chan: The new membership regime of ACI - The Financial Markets Association of Hong Kong Remarks by Mr Norman Chan, Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Chairman of Treasury Markets Forum of Hong Kong, at the cocktail reception to mark the new membership regime of ACI - The Financial Markets Association of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 14 October 2004. *  *  *  Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to welcome you all to this reception to mark the successful launch of the new membership regime of ACI - The Financial Markets Association of Hong Kong, and the introduction of accredited educational programmes for market practitioners. This is a major milestone in raising the professionalism of treasury market practitioners in Hong Kong. The Treasury Markets Forum of Hong Kong was established in March this year with a view to promoting co-operation and synergy to raise the professionalism of practitioners and the overall competitiveness of the treasury markets in Hong Kong. The Forum brings together the providers, users and intermediaries in treasury markets, including representatives of Hong Kong Association of Banks, ACI - The Financial Markets Association of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Capital Markets Association, Hong Kong Association of Corporate Treasurers, DTC Association and Hong Kong Foreign Exchange and Deposit Brokers’ Association, to consider how we can co-operate in raising the professionalism of market practitioners. I am pleased to report that we are made major progress in raising the professionalism of treasury market practitioners.
Perhaps the most natural explanation for the fact that inflation in the 1990s has been lower than its historical relationship with growth suggests, seems to be the markedly lower inflation expectations. This is also indicated by data from studies at the Riksbank. From a level between 6 and 8% in the 1970s and 1980s, in recent years expectations of longer-term inflation have gradually moved down to about 2%. This is an impressive change that stems in the main from regime shifts in various fields that have been achieved since the late 1980s. Furthermore, it looks as though expectations are now anchored relatively firmly in the vicinity of that level. Once a low-inflation regime has been established and people count on price increases being low in the longer run, the rate of inflation is determined mainly by the demand situation in relation to production capacity. During a process of disinflation, however, low capacity utilisation and falling inflation expectations both exert a downward effect on actual inflation. This can give the impression that the relationship between demand and inflation has changed. In that the pattern in the 1990s has been dominated by the reduction in expected inflation, the partial relationship between demand and inflation has been difficult to analyse, not least because it is hard to arrive at statistical measurements of the output gap, structural unemployment and their impact on the inflation process. Still, the hypothesis that inflation’s sensitivity to resource utilisation has changed from the 1980s to the 1990s does seem to have some support.

Instead it is probably the labour market that should be focused when analysing resource utilisation. Another reason for doing so is that in a price analysis at macro level, the weightiest item in costs is wages: total wage costs are equivalent to over two-thirds of GDP. The level of unemployment, although it has been reduced, is still high, particularly compared with the post-war period up to the early 1990s. Seen from that angle, some might say that the Swedish economy has plenty of unutilised resources. Experience from other European countries has taught us, however, that when an economy has been through a severe shock, as happened in the early 1990s, unemployment tends to stick at a high level, at least for a while. This structural or equilibrium unemployment cannot be reduced by means of expansionary economic policies. Attempts to do so simply lead in the end to a higher inflation trend and probably an economy that functions less efficiently. This is because wage costs tend to adjust upwards as the expansionary policy acts on the economy and higher long-term inflation expectations are established. Viewed in this way, unemployment could be divided into two components, structural and cyclical. If the level of structural unemployment could be identified with some precision, it would be easier to gauge how much room the Swedish economy still has for expansion above its potential growth trend. As always when one turns from theory to practical policy, things immediately become much more difficult.
The Governing Council today also decided on the modalities for reducing the Eurosystem's holdings of securities under the asset purchase programme (APP). As communicated in December, the APP portfolio will decline by € billion per month on average from the beginning of March until the end of June 2023, and the subsequent pace of portfolio reduction will be determined over time. Partial reinvestments will be conducted broadly in line with current practice. In particular, the remaining reinvestment amounts will be allocated proportionally to the share of redemptions across each constituent programme of the APP and, under the public sector purchase programme (PSPP), to the share of redemptions of each jurisdiction and across national and supranational issuers. For our corporate bond purchases, the remaining reinvestments will be tilted more strongly towards issuers with a better climate performance. Without prejudice to our price stability objective, this approach will support the gradual decarbonisation of the Eurosystem's corporate bond holdings, in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. The decisions taken today are set out in a press release available on our website. The detailed modalities for reducing the APP holdings are described in a separate press release to be published at 15:45 CET. I will now outline in more detail how we see the economy and inflation developing and will then explain our assessment of financial and monetary conditions.

The temptation to go back on it is extremely dangerous and would increase the risk of another financial crisis. In this respect, the current situation in the United States is worrying. Generally speaking, the measures that will be effectively adopted and implemented by the new administration and the competent government agencies regarding financial and banking regulation still have to be clarified. There is a possibility that the regulations already finalised in Basel such as the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) or the Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR) could be called into question. Unilateral deregulation would be nothing less than a lose-lose scenario with serious consequences for the stability of the global financial system as well as the competitive landscape for US and European banks. In view of this, the integration of a possible agreement on Basel III into European standards should be finalised while keeping a close eye on what the other major countries will do, starting, as you will have understood, with the United States. We must also avoid regulatory arbitrage. For non-bank players, significant progress is required on liquidity management by funds and asset management companies, on fintechs and more generally on the major digital platforms, which, if they carry out financial activities, will have to comply with similar regulations sooner or later. As for the financial markets, the decrease in market liquidity must be explained, and in doing so we must also consider the role of high frequency trading and its highly debatable social utility.
There is a strong case to place them to a higher level of responsibility. This is understandable. Banking, or credit in particular, is deemed to be the lifeblood of the economy. Through provision of credit to businesses and consumers, the banking system spurs productive economic activities. Lack of trust and confidence in the banking system might lead to disintermediation and cause slower economic growth, rise in unemployment and decline in wealth generation, just to name a few. The consequences are dire, and the stakes are high. Since the financial crisis, more than $ billion have been levied on banks for various cases of misconduct and breach of trust. As recent as three weeks ago, a major bank was fined $ billion. Both of these are astronomical amounts. In Malaysia, over the past three years, Bank Negara Malaysia has imposed close to RM110 million in penalties. To strengthen the system against these abuses and breaches of rules and regulations, a Code of Conduct and Principles was issued last year by Bank Negara Malaysia. In a more positive light, there is evidence that public trust in banks around the world is improving. This is something we can build upon. The right place of finance is to be the catalyst for the economy. As guardians of public trust, bankers must protect the system against any threats. This means protecting against abuse, misconduct and exploitation. No banker should tolerate misselling of products to customers which are not suited to their needs.

Our strength can be seen from the current account surplus, a strong reserves position, low level of external indebtedness and strong capital buffers in the banking system. We expect these strong conditions to persist. As many of you here can testify, our financial system is resilient and robust. On numerous occasions over the past decade, we have been able to manage market volatility in our stride. To a large extent, this was due to the continuous measures taken over the years to develop our financial markets. Our market now is balanced, deep and liquid to provide the structural support for orderly market conditions. Conclusion Let me conclude with the wisdom of the great philosopher Socrates. He viewed that any state should be led by wise, noble and exemplary ‘guardians'. These guardians will “...unite themselves in philosophy and spirit and swiftness and strength...and they ought to be wise and efficient." As bankers and guardians, let us aspire to exemplify these traits; to pursue professionalism, agility and wisdom. Thank you and congratulations again to all the graduates. A bright and exciting future awaits you. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches
But that has more to do with the difficulties in producing exact forecasts of deregulations and their price effects than with the effects of deregulations differing in some more principled sense that warrants treating them differently from other shifts in relative prices. 3. The inflation target and rising productivity growth  3.1  Effect on demand and direct downward effect on inflation 2  Another type of structural change occurs when productivity growth rises . Higher trend productivity implies a permanently faster growth of total output. At the same time, as the productivity growth subdues unit labour costs, in a process of this kind inflation tends to be pushed down, at least initially. The return on capital rises and stimulates an expansion of the capital stock. In addition, the equilibrium real interest rate tends to move up in order to maintain the balance between saving and investment. The background to this is that demand for capital is assumed to rise when investment is perceived as more profitable in the light of higher productivity. In recent years some observers have concluded that rising productivity growth contributes to a decreased risk of inflation, a smoothing of cyclical fluctuations and a virtually endless continuation of the upswing. That is not so, as we shall shortly see. A path of this kind is, of course, highly desirable, leading as it does to higher real incomes and prosperity. But it faces monetary policy with troublesome problems and it is in the actual process of adjustment that the difficulties arise.

Urban Bäckström: What shall guide monetary policy? Speech by Mr Urban Bäckström, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank and Chairman of the Board of Directors and President of the Bank for International Settlements, to the Swedish Economics Association, Stockholm, 17 April 2001. *  *  *  Thank you for inviting me once again to the Swedish Economics Association to discuss various aspects of the Riksbank and monetary policy. I greatly appreciate the opportunity of addressing what can be called a historical and academic forum and conducting a dialogue about economic policy both with the two opponents and with other scholars and students. The inflation target has been monetary policy’s rudder ever since 1993 and I believe most people would agree that on the whole in this period it has functioned fairly well. After a couple of decades of high inflation, we have managed to re-establish price stability. Market players as well as people in general are now more confident in and have a better understanding of the regime and the general formation of monetary policy. It also looks as though the importance of fiscal discipline as a means of supporting the monetary policy regime is anchored in the political system and in Swedish society. Sweden is not the only country where a regime with an explicit inflation target seems to be working well.
5  King (2012) and Tucker (2012) make similar arguments in the context of financial stability and the role that the newly formed Financial Policy Committee can play in this respect. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The second possibility is that the effective capacity of the economy to supply goods and services depends on the state of demand: the stronger the demand, the greater somehow the capacity of companies and employees to meet it. The likely responsiveness of supply to an increase in demand, it’s argued, means that it would be possible for the economy to grow relatively rapidly without significantly reducing the degree of slack in the economy and so without adding markedly to cost and price pressures. Let’s consider briefly each of these possibilities in turn. The suggestion that the Phillips curve may be relatively flat appears, at least at first blush, to be consistent with our experience over recent years. Following the worst recession in living memory, our economy has barely grown over the past two years. Output is well below its pre-crisis level, unemployment close to 8%. But inflation remains stubbornly above target. The trade-off between output and inflation has indeed been remarkably flat. But that doesn’t mean that the flatness of this trade-off can be relied upon to continue in the future: it depends on why inflation has been so sticky. Much of the slack in our economy is concentrated in the labour market, where unemployment remains painfully elevated.

In November 2011, the Riksbank, the Ministry of Finance and Finansinspektionen announced that the four major Swedish banks would meet the capital adequacy requirements of 10 per cent of the risk-weighted assets from 1 January this year and of 12 per cent from 1 January 2015. All of the four major banks now have CET 1 ratios that are higher than 10 per cent according to the definition in Basel III. Three of the banks are also above 12 per cent. The Swedish authorities have also said that the banks should meet the short-term liquidity measure in Basel III (the LCR) both in total and separately for the euro and the US dollar. This requirement has been compulsory for the eight largest Swedish banks since 1 January this year.3 The Riksbank has also recommended the banks to improve their public information on liquidity risks and the degree of encumbered assets. This is because greater transparency increases both confidence and market discipline. I am pleased to say that the banks’ public  3  These are Nordea, Swedbank, Handelsbanken, SEB, SBAB, Svensk Exportkredit, Kommuninvest and Länsförsäkringar Bank. 8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  reporting has improved in line with the Riksbank's recommendations, although some work still remains to be done (see Table 1). Table 1 The banks’ public information on liquidity risks  These measures have contributed to the relative stability of the Swedish banks. But I don’t think we have finished yet.
In this regard, the risks to price stability remained persistently, up until our recent decision on interest rates, on the upside. According to the forecasts currently available, consumer price inflation in 2000 and 2001 is generally projected to be slightly below 2%. This is clearly higher than was expected in the respective forecasts at the end of last year and early this year. We should, of course, bear in mind that these forecasts are snapshots of economic prospects as they appear at a particular point in time. They are typically surrounded by a fair degree of uncertainty and they are highly conditional on a number of specific assumptions. Oil prices and exchange rates are prominent examples of such forecast assumptions. The movements in these variables in the past few months show how quickly such assumptions can move out of line with actual developments. Moreover, in the case of the forecasts currently available, some of these explicitly assume that short-term interest rates will rise over the forecast period. I think that it is fair to say that without this assumption projected inflation would most likely have been higher in the forecasts concerned. Thus, the inflation outlook for the euro area gave a very clear signal to monetary policy: namely that there was no reason for complacency and that monetary policy had to react. The developments in oil prices and the exchange rate have led to a strong rise in import prices.

The main arguments against a more expansionary policy that have been put forward lately are that this type of policy would be too risky, given the size of household debt.3 Let me therefore use this argument as a starting point for my reasoning. The discussion among the Executive Board members to a large extent reflects a broader international debate on the relationship between monetary policy and financial stability, on whether household debt is too high and, if so, whether monetary policy should be used to try to limit indebtedness – although the Swedish debate does contain a number of specific characteristics. In brief, one can say that those who believe the repo rate should be held extra high appear to think as follows.4 If the interest rate is too low, households take on too much debt. A large share of the loans households take on are used to buy housing, which also pushes up housing prices. If indebtedness and house purchases are based on overly optimistic calculations, there is a risk of a heavy fall in housing prices when the mood changes, for some reason. If prices were to fall, many households would find themselves in a situation where their assets have substantially declined in value, while their debt remains unchanged. They may then want to pay off some of their debt to come down to a more suitable level. This means they will prioritise saving over consumption. Demand in the economy will then decline and unemployment will increase.
In addition, the Public Institution for Social Security also postponed subscription payments. Government fee waivers were extended to impacted institutions, and banks extended moratoriums on affected customers’ loans. The Committee had also communicated with all  1  Chapter Five refers to Kuwaitis registered with the Public Institution for Social Security as self-employed. Chapter Three refers to Kuwaitis registered with the Public Institution for Social Security as working for a private sector employer. 2  Central Bank of Kuwait - Public ‫ عام‬- ‫بنك الكويت المركزي‬  -5-  government entities urging them to swiftly pay their dues to the private sector and is following up in this regard. The Committee further proposed an amendment on provisions of the Labor Law that takes into consideration special and extra-ordinary circumstances and gives more flexibility for both employer and employee. It also presented to the Council of Ministers a proposal to postpone evictions of tenants in commercial real estate. Lastly, the Committee proposed setting up courts specialized in economic, commercial, and financial affairs in view of the unique nature of this sector and the real need for judicial expertise in this field, especially amid expectations of an increase in disputes in this field that the court system would have to address upon resumption of activity. The Banking Sector: As the financial intermediaries in our national economy and the sector entrusted with the community’s savings, it is vital to maintain financial stability and to encourage the banking sector to extend financing.

This scheme comes in two parts; the first relates to concessional financing support while the second concerns the State’s guarantee of the financing. Central Bank of Kuwait - Public ‫ عام‬- ‫بنك الكويت المركزي‬  -7-  Part One: support to cost of financing This program was designed to support cost of financing (return/interest) granted to SMEs and cost of financing given to companies. In line with the nature of SMEs and their unique needs, the scheme subsidizes cost of financing at a maximum of KD 250,000 per customer. This support covers part of the financing where the State shoulders the full cost of the financing for the first two years, 90% of the cost for the third year, and 80% for the fourth. The scheme specifies the purpose of the financing as meeting periodic contractual dues and expenditures, such as payroll and lease payments, with a term of up to four years. It meanwhile keeps cost of financing at a low level (discount rate as specified by the CBK + 1%), which currently comes to 2.5%. As for eligibility for financing, the program covers SMEs affected by the COVID19 pandemic that had been performing well and enjoyed a good position prior and excludes entities whose parent companies have alternative sources of financing. The scheme also requires the entity to retain current national staff and meet the Kuwaitis employment quotas to be met by end of 2021 for the relevant sector in which it operates.