samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
By contrast, US companies recorded a strong increase in profits. Furthermore, the prospect of lower corporate tax rates raised expectations of higher profits in the future. Against this background, US stock indices reached record highs. The S&P 500 has risen by about 10% since mid-year. Swiss companies have benefited from stronger demand from Europe and the weaker Swiss franc. The Swiss stock market (SMI) also made substantial gains, up some 5% (cf. chart 2). Page 1/5  Berne, 14 December 2017 Andréa M. Maechler  News conference  The low yields on ten-year government bonds from advanced economies have remained virtually unchanged since mid-year. In the US too, although key rate normalisation is underway and the Federal Reserve has initiated balance sheet reduction, longer-term yields have risen only marginally until now. On the foreign exchange market, the US dollar initially continued on the downward path it had been following since the beginning of the year. The dollar then strengthened again somewhat from autumn onwards against the backdrop of the Federal Reserve’s ongoing monetary policy normalisation and the prospect of tax reform (cf. chart 3). As Thomas Jordan already mentioned, reduced political uncertainty and favourable economic developments in the euro area contributed to the appreciation of the euro. In this environment, the Swiss franc has lost some 5% of its trade-weighted value since mid-year.

It is based on actual transactions and binding quotes from a large number of market participants and is calculated according to a standard and transparent process. It thus accurately represents market conditions. Since April of this year, prices for interest rate swaps have been set on the basis of SARON. Although this market is not yet fully established, a SARON-based swap curve may indeed one day be used as the basis for pricing bonds and loans. Whether SARON finds widespread use and a planned and orderly transition away from Libor does take place is ultimately in the hands of financial market participants. They should be prepared for a possible discontinuation of the Libor benchmark from 2021, for instance by agreeing how existing Libor-linked contracts are to be handled. 1 As you know, the Swiss franc Libor is also used by the SNB – as the reference rate for its monetary policy. There is one thing we can say for sure today: a move away from the Swiss franc Libor would have no impact on the SNB’s monetary policy stance. Any adjustments necessitated by such a transition will be announced in due course. 1 Further information is available at https://www.snb.ch/en/ifor/finmkt/fnmkt_benchm/id/finmkt_reformrates. Page 3/5  Berne, 14 December 2017 Andréa M. Maechler  News conference  Page 4/5  Berne, 14 December 2017 Andréa M. Maechler  News conference  Page 5/5
This growth in money was accompanied by robust lending on the part of banks. Although the rate of growth of mortgage loans to households has declined since mid-2012, it is still at a high level. Most recently, mortgage lending to companies, in particular in residential construction, has increased significantly. Overall, lending has been growing faster than nominal GDP for several years. In addition, prices for owner-occupied apartments and single-family homes have risen strongly in the past few years. Given the sustained period of exceptionally low interest rates, there is a risk that the imbalances on the mortgage and real estate markets will increase further. This development jeopardises financial stability and, in the event of an abrupt correction, can have wide-reaching consequences for the real economy. SNB monetary policy Ladies and gentlemen, the SNB continues to face major challenges. In particular, the threat that the Swiss franc could suddenly come under upward pressure again has not been averted. In the current low interest rate environment, therefore, the minimum exchange rate remains the focal instrument for ensuring appropriate monetary conditions. The financial crisis has shown that for balanced economic development more than just price stability is required; financial stability must also be guaranteed. In Switzerland, the fact that the SNB is required to contribute to ensuring financial stability was already laid down in the National Bank Act of 2004. Our annual Financial Stability Report is an important instrument in this respect.

On 1 January 1999, a new Riksbank Act came into force. It states that the goal for the Riksbank’s activity is to maintain stable prices. The Riksbank shall also be responsible for a secure, efficient payment system. In the preparatory legal material on the Act, it is also further stated that the Riksbank, without setting aside the price stability target, shall also support the objectives of general economic policy with a view to achieving sustainable growth and high employment. The price stability goal has then been confirmed by law. The Riksbank’s Executive Board is responsible for making the price stability goal operational and designing the framework for monetary policy. Among other things, this means that the Executive Board decides on how the price stability goal is to be defined and over what period price stability is to be maintained. The Executive Board of the Riksbank has decided that price stability shall be defined as an annual increase in the consumer price index of 2% with a tolerance interval of plus/minus one percentage point. If the consumer price index is affected by factors that are considered to only have a temporary effect on CPI, the Executive Board has agreed that we shall be able to disregard this. The reason is that monetary policy otherwise risks leading to unnecessary fluctuations in employment and production. A lot has been achieved although some things remain to be done Economic policy has been very successful in many areas during recent years.
Thus, it is not surprising that Puerto Rico did not see the sharp spike in loan delinquencies that many areas saw from late 2007 to early 2009. Instead, Puerto Rico’s delinquencies on household debt – that is, the proportion of debt where payments are 90 or more days late – have risen gradually as the recession has persisted. In 2005, households were behind on about 5 percent of the total debt. As of 2010, they were delinquent on about 9 percent of the debt, about the same as the national average – reflecting the stress imposed on many families by the deep and long recession. The outlook and exports Looking ahead to the rest of 2011, I see grounds for cautious optimism. In particular, exports, which have been so important to the economic recovery on the mainland, have the potential to contribute to growth here in Puerto Rico as well. Currently, Puerto Rico runs a sizeable trade surplus, selling more products to the world than it buys. In 2009, the latest year for which full-year data are reported, the value of exports was roughly $ billion compared with roughly $ billion of imports. Based on data through November, exports grew briskly, by about 10 percent, in 2010. What does Puerto Rico export? Pharmaceuticals are by far the island’s largest export. In addition, Puerto Rico is a successful exporter of medical equipment, computer and electronic products, and electrical equipment.

In a few moments, I will talk about how this growth abroad also presents an opportunity for Puerto Rico. The firming in economic activity, in short, is due both to natural healing and past and present policy support. In this regard, it is important to emphasize that we at the Federal Reserve have been expecting the economy to strengthen. We provided additional monetary policy stimulus via the asset purchase program to help ensure that the recovery regained momentum. A stronger recovery with more rapid progress toward our dual mandate objectives is what we have been seeking. This is welcome and not a reason to reverse course. Yet, we must not be overly optimistic about the growth outlook. The coast is not completely clear – the healing process in the aftermath of the crisis takes time and there are still several areas of vulnerability and weakness. In particular, housing activity remains unusually weak and home prices have begun to soften again in many parts of the country. State and local government finances remain under stress, and this is likely to lead to further spending cuts, tax increases, or job losses in this sector that will offset at least a part of the federal fiscal stimulus. Moreover, in recent weeks we have experienced several shocks from abroad that could have some impact on the economy’s forward momentum, at least in the short term.
Export revenues as a share of GDP.1) Percent 30 Shipping  30  Oil and gas  25  25  20  20  15  15  10  10  5  5  0 1875  0 1895  1915  1935  1955  1975  1995  2015  1) Break in the data series for shipping in 1970. Sources: Statistics Norway and Norges Bank  That same year, production at Ekofisk started in earnest. Fields such as Frigg and Statfjord followed, and combined with yet another jump in oil prices following the Iranian revolution, a new flagship ushered the Norwegian economy into the 1980s. Oil prices fell during that decade, but oil and gas production was growing at a vigorous pace. The activities on the Norwegian shelf also had a strong impact on mainland businesses. Shipyards learned to build oil platforms as new ship orders sagged. What might have been viewed as a rescue buoy eventually became a springboard to the rest of the world. The oil service industry’s breakthrough overseas came into clear evidence in the 2000s. Strong demand from China and other emerging economies led to a further jump in oil prices, and offshore oil exploration expanded worldwide. The technology developed in the search for deep-water oil and gas became one of Norway’s major exports. The offshore oil industry paved the way for wealth gains no future generation is likely to experience (Chart 3).

Perhaps the ability to pay high wages has been more dependent on the oil industry than thought earlier. Going forward, the key to success for Norway will be the same as for other countries: We must make the most of our number one resource - labour. The value of Norway’s human capital is around three times the sum of its natural resources, production capital and financial capital.7 Our future welfare level therefore depends on how many are in work and how productive they are. Employment in Norway is no longer as high as it once was. Today, a smaller share of the population aged between 25 and 54 is employed than 20 years ago (Chart 17), and the share is now higher in a number of countries, not least because female employment abroad has also risen. At the same time, the share of adult men in work in Norway has fallen. 7 See Meld. St. 29 (2016-2017), Long-term perspectives for the Norwegian economy 2017. 16  NORGES BANK  Chart 17a No longer at the top of the employment chart. Employment. Share of population aged 25-54.
Finally, and crucially, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, we are working with our colleagues in Washington, D.C., and at other agencies to help put the nation’s financial system on a firmer footing. Yet, much remains to be done and we are determined to keep at it. I recognize fully that there can be no return to pre-crisis business as usual – whether on the part of the financial sector or on the part of regulators like ourselves. All in all, there is a lot to keep my colleagues busy. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  National economic conditions Now, let me update you on national economic conditions. We stand here today several years after the worst financial crisis in modern times. The origins of the crisis are complex, but it had its roots in the bursting of a credit bubble that had grown to great size during the middle part of the last decade. Prior to the onset of the crisis, a combination of rapid financial innovation and imbalanced global economic integration resulted in a mispricing of risk worldwide. This was particularly extreme in certain markets such as U.S. housing and housing finance. This mispricing of risk led to a misallocation of resources and an excessive build-up of debt in many parts of the global economy. Many – though not all – U.S. households responded to the easy availability of credit and rising home prices by taking on more debt.

William C Dudley: The national and regional economic outlook Remarks by Mr William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the University at Albany, Albany, New York, 18 November 2011. *  *  *  Good morning. I am pleased to be at the University at Albany. It is always a pleasure to speak with students and faculty because of the intellectual leadership role you play in your communities. I also welcome the addition of business leaders to this gathering because you shape the economic landscape in the region. So, I thank you all for coming today and helping make this such a rich audience. Over the past 20 months, I have been engaged in a series of outreach meetings all across my Federal Reserve District. I consider these visits just as important as my trips to Washington, D.C., to help formulate monetary policy or to Switzerland to shape international bank regulation. The understanding of issues and concerns that I gain today will help ensure that my policy decisions reflect the public interest in the broadest sense. Each visit within the region helps me deepen relationships with the people I represent. As you may know, the New York Fed’s District includes all of New York State; 12 counties in northern New Jersey; Fairfield County, Connecticut; Puerto Rico; and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In August, I met with community leaders, businesses and elected officials in Newark, Patterson and Jersey City.
We have built economic institutions that allow us to reach substantial levels of growth, and the necessary tools to mitigate any adverse shocks facing our economy. But we are not immune. In the globalized world of today, any change in conditions is rapidly propagated to other economies. The movements in financial markets that I mentioned a while ago are proof of this. Trying to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world would be not only useless, but harmful in the long run. The important thing is for us to have the capacity to shield ourselves from negative events and, when necessary, to take action to reduce their effects on our country. We already did so when the Lehman Brothers crisis hit in 2008. We couldn’t prevent the global recession from affecting our economy, but we did succeed in fostering a fast, sustainable recovery from 2009 onwards. In any case, our domestic macroeconomic situation has varied in these four years. Today, inflation is at 3 percent, GDP is growing at near-trend rates and the MPR is in a neutral range. This provides room to respond with monetary policy if necessary, although the timing and magnitude of the measures will have to be evaluated with special prudence and in light of the actual effects of external developments on our economy. Our financial system, meanwhile, has been solid and resilient to sudden changes in the international economy.

7  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  7  Chart 7: whole economy regular pay growth  Chart 8: measures of domestically generated inflation Per cent  5  Three-month on three-month annualised  4  4  Three months on a year earlier  3  3 2  2 1  1 0  0 Unit labour cost growth  -1  GDP deflator  -2 10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  -1  -2  Core services CPI  18 2013  2014  2015  2016  -3 2018  2017  Notes: dotted lines show 1997-2007 average for each measure. There is no clean measure of domestically generated inflation, the chart shows a subset of the range of measures that the MPC considers as a guide to domestically generated inflation. We have of course seen false dawns before. Last November, with those very much in mind, I voted against a rate rise. For me, structural uncertainties about the economy warranted a stodgy approach. In the face of these types of uncertainty I was prepared to trade off moving more slowly in order to let evidence accumulate, with a little more resistance in our reaction function, rather than moving more in line with the forecast. I will await our August forecast of course for the latest assessment of the evolution of domestic inflation pressures and of the first quarter of the year.
These adjustments will provide a more balanced exposure to global output. Two years ago, the fund made its first real estate investments in Europe. We have recently begun investing in US real estate. In February, the fund announced a joint venture with the TIAA-CREF11, where we invested in five properties on the east coast. One of the properties is on Arch Street here in Boston. Direct real estate investments will provide a fairly stable, inflation-adjusted cash flow. Over time, we aim to invest up to 5 percent of the fund in real estate. Investments will be allocated to more countries as we gain experience. Chart: Further information Regulatory requirements may limit the distribution of certain types of information and must always be met. However, our aim is to be as relevant and transparent as possible in our communication. Our policy is to be transparent about our evaluation of markets. All of the fund’s holdings at the end of 2012 are listed in the recently published annual report, as is the fund’s voting at 10 000 shareholder meetings last year. The fund is a large investor in a macro perspective. At company level, however, we are a minority shareholder. Strengthening shareholder rights and promoting equal treatment of shareholders are two of our key targets when we work with companies and standard-setting authorities. In this regard, we are happy to cooperate with the program on corporate governance at Harvard Law School12.

The shocks that we are seeing are restricting supply in the economy relative to the recovery of demand. This is important because monetary policy will not increase the supply of semi-conductor chips, it will not increase the amount of wind (no, really), and nor will it produce more HGV drivers. Moreover, tightening monetary policy could make things worse in this situation by putting more downward pressure on a weakening recovery of the economy. But what is crucial here is whether and how expectations of future inflation respond to these supply shocks, and thereby embed rising inflation. The most commonly talked about mechanism goes from higher inflation expectations, to companies feeling able to raise prices and employees asking for higher wages, to wage pressure and more persistent inflation. In this way, what start out as relative changes in price levels for some goods and services can  The hard yards ‐ speech by Andrew Bailey | Bank of England  Page 4  become generalised and turn into persistent inflation. I take this risk very seriously, it has form so to speak. That’s a world where people expect further price rises and thus seek to hold lower money balances relative to income than they otherwise would. But, in a world where people expect the price rises to be temporary and reversed, they will delay spending, and hold higher money balances relative to income than they otherwise would, and the growth of demand will be weaker. As a pertinent example, will second hand car prices stay elevated?
Lack of adequate logical security may be prone to technical exposure to unauthorized implementation or modification of data and program at either the network, platform, database or application level. A classic example of this type of controls is the use of user ID and password. Supervisor should be able to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of both physical and logical access control in accomplishing financial institution's information security objectives. Integrity Supervisory objective An objective of IT supervision in an integrity area is to ensure reliability and completeness of system functionality in order to verify that data is processed in an accurate and timely manner. Supervisory areas Therefore, supervisors need to review and assess whether financial institutions have sound application control in place. In this regard, they should have control built in the procedure and programmed in the system to ensure the integrity of input, process and output. In a large financial institution using various applications, a sample of applications including core banking applications and management information system (MIS) would be examined for control adequacy. Data and system integrity can reflect the effectiveness of system development, acquisition and change control procedure. Therefore, it is necessary to cover those areas in the scope of supervision. Availability Supervisory objective An objective of IT supervision in an availability area is to ensure financial institutions' readiness for being able to run business without interruption during an occurrence of disruption.

And the issuance of asset-backed securities in the UK, which involve parcelling up and selling different claims on pools of assets such as consumer loans and mortgages, has risen to some $ billion from $ billion in 1995. The UK now accounts for around a third of the issuance volume in European ABS markets. On the whole, such developments are positive for financial stability. Coupled with greater macroeconomic stability (Chart 3), they have made the financial system more robust by allowing market participants greater scope to distribute and diversify risk and to manage it effectively. Experience of previous rounds of financial innovation also suggests grounds for optimism. Swaps and other over-the-counter interest rate derivatives, for example, are now well understood and widely recognised as increasing economic flexibility and the productivity of capital. More recently global financial systems and the newer asset markets appear also to have withstood several recent shocks, such as September 11, the Dotcom bubble, the GM related wobbles in May 2005, Refco, and the Iraq war. The fact that some investors, such as hedge funds, are willing to take on greater risk does not necessarily give rise to system-wide concerns. Systemic risk in modern financial systems But there are limits to the amount of risk that can be hedged away. The financial system cannot reduce the amount of risk in the economy, but only repackage and transfer it.