samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
This is to ensure that these providers adopt the necessary measures and controls to manage money laundering and terrorism financing risks. Finally, there are digital tokens that represent ownership interest akin to securities, debentures or collective investment scheme products. These will be subject to existing laws under our Securities and Futures Act (SFA) including investor protection safeguards, as for conventional securities. 16 Technology is not only an enabler for the private sector. Many financial regulators also actively use technology tools and solutions to augment or improve surveillance, supervision and enforcement actions. More than a year ago, the MAS set up a dedicated SupTech Office to serve as an expertise hub to support our line supervisors across banking, insurance and capital markets. There are several ongoing projects to support business process automation and the adoption of enhanced supervisory tools and applications. We are also exploring the use of Data APIs to streamline the submission of regulatory data, and “live dashboards” for better visualisation of trends and analyses. Our supervisors will also be incorporating the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to support big data and network analytics in our surveillance and enforcement work. Collectively, these and other SupTech capabilities will complement the industry’s drive towards RegTech for better risk management and regulatory compliance. 17 As financial services increasingly become digital, management of technology-related risks especially cybersecurity is paramount. MAS recently issued a consultation paper on a set of mandatory Cyber Hygiene requirements.

King (2013) “Flow and stock effects of large-scale treasury purchases: Evidence on the importance of local supply” Journal of Financial Economics Volume 108, Issue 2, Pages 425-448 for evidence associated with programmes conducted in the US and Joyce et al. (2010) in the UK. vii See speeches of August 2016 (Handelsblatt conference), September 2016 (annual CERS conference) and April 2017 (conference at Columbia University). viii Stefan Zweig, Visiting the billions (Besuch bei den Milliarden), 1932. ix Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday, Memories of a European, 1944.
Mounting losses quickly depleted their capital base, and, with a few notable exceptions, the banks found themselves in desperate need of massive support measures by the public sector. To address these weaknesses, a considerable amount of work has been done and is still underway in the FSB and in a number of working groups of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. In line with, and in full support of these efforts, I am convinced that a more robust capital framework needs to be built around the following features: •  The amount and the quality of capital have to be increased very substantially. Capital buffers need to be high and robust enough for banks to survive a crisis on their own and thus to foster confidence in the system as a whole. In the medium term, this will be feasible without causing drastic adjustments at banks that might be harmful to the real economy. Looking at the banks that received public support, many of them paid out more in dividends and share buybacks during the years preceding the crisis than they subsequently faced in losses. •  As a supplement to the risk-based capital requirements, a simple and commonly defined leverage ratio restriction needs to be introduced. A leverage ratio prevents the buildup of excessive leverage and serves as a backstop to the complex, but fallible risk-based capital requirements. •  To address procyclicality, banks will have to build up capital buffers above the minimum requirements in good times.

This will require a close dialogue and meaningful cooperation between the public authorities and the banks. The framework should also prevent destabilizing effects of a failure on the rest of the financial sector – for example by building and improving on financial market infrastructures that reduce counterparty credit risk. Ultimately, however, it must not exclude the possibility that a large and complex cross-border financial institution can be – and should be – subject to insolvency proceedings where reorganization is not possible. Of course, we must accept the reality that different national resolution regimes will continue to coexist. To make it perfectly clear: I am not proposing to create a global resolution regime to replace national regimes. Such an endeavor strikes me as the equivalent of a journey not to the moon, but to outer space. But that should be no excuse for not improving the framework for cooperation across the relevant countries. Concluding remarks The worst of the crisis is behind us, and there are intensive efforts under way to increase the resilience of the financial system. Banks are again generating profits and, in some cases, very substantial profits, not least because of the costly public support measures, many of which remain in place. As the situation improves, complacency can easily become the rule of the game. We forget the severity of the crisis and fall prey to renewed lobbying of a powerful and recovering industry. We must not let this happen.
Chart 5: Deposit interest rates and profitability indicators 8  3.0  2013  2014  2015  POL  ROM  SRB  2016  SLO  2012  MKD  LAT  HUN  BIH  2011  SLO  SRB  ROM  POL  0 MKD  1  0 LIT  2  1 LAT  3  2  HUN  4  3  EST  5  4  CZR  5  CRO  6  BUL  6  BIH  Interest rates on enterprise deposits, in %  7  2016  EST  2015  CZR  2014  POL  2013  CRO  2012  MKD  2011  LIT  Interest rates on household deposits, in %  7  BUL  8  ROA, %  2.0 1.0 0.0 average 2004-2008  -1.0  average 2009-2012  average 2013-2015  -2.0  SLO  SRB  ROM  LIT  LAT  EST  HUN  CZR  CRO  BUL  BIH  ALB  -3.0  Source: Central Banks’ internet pages. The data on the average annual growth of households’ deposits in the region show a sharp deceleration, compared to the pre-crisis period. Yet in the last three years the growth rate was rather stable and gravitated around 5%. On a country by country basis, there are some examples where the data do reveal need for cautiousness.

Chart: 3 Lending interest rate and the adjustment* Interest rates on enterpise loans, in %  18  Interest rates on household loans, in %  18  2015  SLO  2014  SRB  2013  ROM  2012  POL  2011  MKD  SLO  SRB  ROM  POL  MKD  LIT  0  LAT  2  0  HUN  4  2  EST  6  4  CZR  8  6  CRO  10  8  BUL  12  10  BIH  12  HUN  14  2015  EST  2014  CZR  2013  CRO  2012  BUL  2011  BIH  14  LIT  16  LAT  16  Change 2016 - 2007 in pp 0  -1 -2 -3 -4 -5  Policy rate  Lending rates  -6 -7 -8  Source: Central Banks’ internet pages. *Policy rates in Baltic countries are approximated with the ECB interest rate, while for Bulgaria, where currency board is in place, the interbank rate is used as a proxy. The ease of the lending rates, was probably important, but not sufficient prerequisite for enabling stronger credit financial flows in the region. Although in the last couple of years signs of credit recovery are visible in many of the countries, it is still tepid, and in some of the countries deleveraging of the private sector continues.
Both the central bank and the government may harbour a false view in them that allowing the exchange rate to depreciate is equivalent to publicly accepting the failure of their actions, it would further raise the cost of living and it would worsen the budgetary outcome by raising the interest cost on the government’s external debt. This false view may force the government to defend the exchange rate at the expense of the loss of foreign reserves of the central bank. At this stage, the auditors should notice a change in the composition of the assets of a central bank: a decline in the foreign assets and an increase in the domestic assets mainly in the form of lending to the government. The change in the asset structure of a central bank leads to a series of unfavourable outcomes that raises the risk of insolvency of a central bank. First, there will be a change in the composition of the income of a central bank. The foreign income will fall and the domestic interest income will rise. Second, the decline in the foreign assets will force a central bank to borrow abroad on a short term basis, raising its foreign liabilities and interest out-payments. Third, if the government is still bent on keeping the fixed exchange rate, even the borrowed funds would be used to defend the exchange rate, converting the net foreign assets of a central bank to a net foreign liability position.

3 The key findings of the Finscope Survey on the demand for financial services included the following: •  Only 34% of the population were “financially served”, i.e., used formal and/or informal financial products, whilst 66% had no access to financial services;  •  77.5% of Zambians report to have never had a bank product or service;  •  40% of salaried staff reported not having bank accounts, signifying that they received money in cash rather than through the financial system;  •  The barriers to accessing financial services include cost, distance, time and transport to reach the bank or financial service provider;  •  Rather than purchase treasury bills, buy life insurance or stocks on the stock exchange, most of the respondents preferred to invest in agriculture or a business;  •  Microfinance institutions although used by only 5% of the adult population plays an important role in increasing levels of access to financial services; and the  •  The informal sector in Zambia played a significant role in the provision of financial services catering for 11% of the population, compared with other countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) where similar surveys have  3  The FinScope™ 2005 survey was a representative, nationwide survey of 4,000 households, with questions on the use of a wide range of financial services focusing on four main product types: savings, credit, insurance and transactions, both formal and informal. The survey focused on the use of personal financial products and services.
Price Developments in Sweden Since 1880)  Price Developements in Sweden Sin ce 1880 In dex: 1880=100 4500  4500  4000  4000  3500  3500  3000  3000  2500  2500  2000  2000  1500  1500  1000  1000  500  500  0  0  1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990  Source: Statistics Sweden  Given what I have just said about the importance of low inflation, we may ask ourselves how inflation could have been allowed to reach such heights in recent decades. Why was there not a tighter policy all along the line to restrain inflation? Developments in other BIS Review 14/1998  -4-  countries of the western world appear about the same. This indicates that there is a common explanation. It is clear that economic thought has shifted in recent decades and the shift in the price level trends that coincided with the Keynesian approach (which was not infrequently a grossly exaggerated interpretation of what Keynes himself had written or said) had a dominant influence on economic policy. The ambition to stabilise the economy and create full employment using economic policy tools grew stronger and stronger. For a long time it was believed that by allowing inflation to rise a little higher, less unemployment could be ‘bought’. Both actual developments up until the 1970s and the theory then prevalent supported this approach.

BIS Review 128/2010  3  Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques The endorsement of the Ninth Development plan coincided with the announcement by the Central Department of Statistics and Information of preliminary results of the population census. The population of the Kingdom amounted to 27.1 million, of whom about 18.7 million are Saudis, and 8.4 million are residents. The number of houses stood at 4.6 million. These results support your Royal instructions to exert every effort to achieve the objectives of the Ninth Development Plan in a timely manner, especially with regard to enhancing citizens’ welfare, providing housing, employment, education, health care services, and modern facilities needed, and working hard to fight poverty, paying special attention to balanced development in all regions of the Kingdom. At the regional level, the four member states of the GCC Monetary Union (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait) have ratified, at the beginning of this year, the convention of the Monetary Union. By your Royal encouragement and support and that of your brothers the leaders of the Council’s states, the Monetary Council began its work as the nucleus of the central bank to be established upon the completion of the main facilities and infrastructure of the Monetary Union. The central banks and monetary agencies, members of the Monetary Council, are doing their utmost to conduct the Council’s work in accordance with the guidance of the leaders of the Council’s States. In spite of these bright achievements, there are still many challenges posed to our development march.
Fiscal decisions affect the room to manoeuvre in monetary policy not only via their direct impact on demand—and hence on inflation—but also by how they influence economic policy’s credibility. A fiscal policy that is perceived as being untenable in the longer run can raise doubts about the overall policy commitment to low inflation and stability. To this should be added fiscal policy’s influence on the macro economy. The ways in which taxes are levied and public revenue is spent influence the behaviour of households and firms, which may thereby—generally in the longer run—alter the economy’s inflation propensity. Today, however, I shall not be developing this aspect. In the first respect—fiscal policy’s impact on economic activity—the picture is clear-cut: in recent years the fiscal stance has been very tight. Of course, this has contributed to the low rate of inflation and in this sense it has assisted monetary policy. With the current fiscal proposals for the years ahead, however, the stance will not be as tight as before. But to some extent the growth of household income is still being restrained by the overall change in taxation and public spending. As regards credibility, there has been a marked improvement. Last year the Government laid down a long-term objective for government finances which goes further than the average of the corresponding commitments in Europe. Over the business cycle the budget balance is to average a surplus of 2 per cent of GDP. The Riksdag has approved this objective. The Riksbank finds this objective reasonable.

With greater amounts of capital and liquidity in the financial system, this may be more realistic. There may be less need to fine-tune the regulatory engine and correspondingly less need for the tug-of-war between regulator and regulated that has characterised the past few years. A robust banking system ought also to be less prone to credit booms and busts, thereby reducing the need for discretionary macro-prudential actions to lean actively against the wind. Regulation would be handed back to the risk managers. In this world, the operational activities of central banks could also return to a more even keel. Wider collateral, longer tenors and new counterparties were necessary ingredients during crisis. But a return to more conventional operations – short-term lending against government collateral to banking counterparties – may be sufficient to oil the wheels in normalised market conditions, as it was for hundreds of years prior to the crisis. Market-making, at least beyond short-term money markets, would be a last resort. As for central bank transparency, with monetary, regulatory and operational policy no longer hyperactive, it is conceivable central banks could retreat from centre stage. Central banks could migrate to the back pages of newspapers. Like good children, they would be relatively rarely seen and infrequently heard. Central bank-watchers would find something better to do with their lives than hang on to every gubernatorial semi-colon. For a central banker, this sounds like the good life – a low-intervention, low-visibility world. In some respects, it would be back to the future.
I am referring in particular to the mandate given to the European Payments Council (EPC) for the creation of a dedicated open finance scheme, the SEPA Payment Account Access Scheme (SPAA). On the other hand, the debate on open finance should also be an opportunity to push for an improvement in the quality of APIs – i.e. premium APIs – by openly addressing the issue of financial compensation for data providers. 2- The second lever is in the hands of central banks, in the form of new services to financial intermediaries. This is the aim of the Banque de France’s experimentation programme with new technologies. These experiments show, in particular, that a wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) would make it possible not only to maintain but also to promote central bank money as the safest and most liquid settlement asset, while adapting it to changes in demand and thus avoiding the fragmentation of settlement assets. With this improved security, wholesale settlement through distributed ledger could be optimised in terms of efficiency, cost and traceability, including for cross-border payments, by ensuring interoperability between several CBDCs in different jurisdictions. Part III: Competition and sovereignty To conclude, I would like to say a few words about the growing challenges related to competition and sovereignty. A- In this regard, open finance is a development that must be addressed with caution: while it promises to open up the financial market to new players, it could paradoxically increase its concentration, and compromise our strategic autonomy.

Denis Beau: From open banking to open finance Speech by Mr Denis Beau, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, at the France Payments Forum “The Europe of banking and financial services” – Paris Europlace – France Innovation, Paris, 24 March 2022. * * * Technological innovations, changes in demand, the arrival of new players: the changes underway in the financial sector are providing a strong impetus to relax the conditions of access to the market, in order to foster competition and thus encourage the development of new, more efficient and less costly services. In Europe, in the field of payments, this relaxation has already occurred. The EMD, the PSD1 and finally the PSD2 directives have all resulted in the emergence of more agile players, particularly in terms of data exploitation. The pressure to open up data now extends to insurance and savings: after open banking, we now speak of open finance. This pressure calls for further adapting the regulatory framework. But what should our guiding principles be? In the payments sector, the main objective of the directives I mentioned was to reconcile openness and security. While this challenge remains relevant for the transition from open banking to open finance, with digitalisation and the development of the platform economy, we have seen two other challenges emerge: reconciling innovation and integration on the one hand and competition and sovereignty on the other.
And it means we have to understand the dynamics and interrelationships of markets; how new products work; and the possible behaviour patterns of intermediaries, investors, and borrowers. Above all we need to be focused on where major risks are most likely to emerge and the market dynamics if those risks start to crystallise. And we need to distinguish those which are systemic from a myriad of fascinating developments, many of which are just “noise” but which could otherwise distract us. b)  Risk Reduction: Oversight of Payment Systems  The second area where we, and typically other central banks, are required to perform is oversight of payment systems. Payment systems facilitate economic transactions of goods, services and financial assets and are an essential component of a well functioning financial system. So reduction of risks in these systems, for example through the introduction of our Real Time Gross Settlement system, is clearly a priority from a systemic perspective. c)  Provision of Liquidity and Preparation for a Financial Crisis  And thirdly the MoU stipulates that we need to be in a position to inject liquidity at all times. This means that we must be able to provide liquidity in normal times, as well as in times of stress or crisis. This puts an increased onus on well developed and tested crisis management plans, and a particular focus on ensuring that we are able to undertake a range of official financial operations in exceptional circumstances. 4.

a)  Credit Risk  Financial crises have traditionally arisen where the solvency of one or more institutions either crumbles, or is perceived to be in danger of doing so, in a way that threatens the financial system. So we need to focus on credit concentrations, credit aspects of prudential standards, credit pricing and terms etc. We need data and intelligence to do that. Understanding credit conditions and vulnerabilities is quite well developed territory. But new threats have arisen, particularly from sophisticated credit transfer instruments. This is a tricky and opaque arena. It is hard to know where concentrations of credit risk actually reside and even where credit risk ends and market risk begins. In addition there is the increasing range of participants who are also taking on credit risk. Of course in addition to this we can – and do – think about credit risk standards like Basel II. We focus on the systemic aspects of prudential design since in the UK FSA focuses on supervisory issues. b)  Market and Liquidity Risk  As the global capital market has expanded on the back of securitisation and derivatives increasing vulnerabilities arise. Change has been so rapid and development so fast that it has been hard for any of us to keep up. Given the multitude of new instruments and new markets that have appeared and the resulting increase in risk, this is a significant area of work for us.