samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Against this background, it is timely that SEACEN Centre has initiated this course to explore the nature of financial intermediation, the role of financial markets in the allocation of resources and the need for appropriate regulatory framework. As regulators, we need to understand the concepts and the basics of the working, the pricing and trading strategies of the derivatives markets and instruments, how financial entities use them in risk management, as well as their potential impact on financial system stability. But more importantly, in these two weeks, we will benefit from the presence of a number of distinguished speakers that have kindly given up their time to be with us. I hope we will use this opportunity fully. On this note, I would like to thank Mr. Sunil Sharma, Chief, Asian Division, IMF Institute, for his efforts to coordinate this course with the SEACEN Centre and the Bank of Thailand. I trust that this course will be most fruitful and rewarding for all the participants, but above all that the interaction among yourselves will provide an opportunity for you to learn from one another, and strengthen the bonds of friendship that bind the works of our institutions for many years to come.

BIS Review 56/2004  1  Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I now declare the SEACEN-IMF Institute Course on Financial Markets and New Financial Instruments open and wish everyone of you success in your deliberation, success in your career, and most importantly, that you would take back with you pleasant memories of your brief stay in Thailand. Thank you. 2  BIS Review 56/2004
I think successive Chancellors came to recognise that the opaqueness of the existing decision-making process was inappropriate in principle in an effective democracy, which requires that we should each be accountable for the decisions that we take or for the advice that we give. They may also have thought that the public generally and Parliament in particular would not put up with it for much longer anyway. Or they may simply have felt that they were no longer prepared to carry the can for the bad advice they received. Whatever the motivation it is to their great credit that they were prepared to put their own reputations - as well as that of the Bank - on the line in this way! It not only allowed the Bank to express its own analysis and judgements about monetary policy publicly, it actually required us to do so. That really concentrated the mind I can tell you; and it provided us with added stimulus to sharpen up our act. But for it to have this effect it was crucial that the intended integrity of the process was respected. What you saw in the minutes of “the Ken and Eddie show” was verbatim the advice which I gave to the Chancellor and which I had discussed with senior colleagues beforehand. This new transparency was a big step towards greater independence for the Bank.

The negative interest rate and our willingness to intervene in the foreign exchange market remain necessary to ensure appropriate monetary conditions. These measures reduce pressure on the Swiss franc and support economic activity, thereby stabilising price developments. We will continue to exploit our monetary policy latitude where necessary in order to guarantee price stability and support the economy. In so doing, we carefully weigh up the costs and benefits of possible measures. Our investment policy ensures that we retain our room for manoeuvre in the implementation of monetary policy, even with an expanding balance sheet. At the same time, we invest the currency reserves with maximum value preservation and minimum market impact. A growing balance sheet, however, inevitably leads to greater fluctuations in annual results: increasing both absolute potential profit and absolute potential loss. It is therefore vitally important that we ensure a sound capital base through our policy on provisions and our profit distribution agreement. Overall, the SNB continues to face major challenges. We are experiencing an unusually long period filled with difficult tasks and decisions. So let me conclude by taking this opportunity, also on behalf of my Governing Board colleagues, Fritz Zurbrügg and Andréa Maechler, to thank our employees for their hard work and dedication. We also thank you, our shareholders, for your loyalty to the SNB and your faithful support. Let me also thank our young guests from the Kantonsschule Solothurn and the Gymnase cantonal de Nyon for their interest in monetary policy and the SNB. Thank you all for your attention.
It is a remarkable a story of individual imagination and collective action – the self-same ingredients that first enabled humans to break free from their biological chains. One response to the Great Fire was the introduction of new fire laws and regulations. The first-ever building regulations were after soon put in place, specifying the materials to be used when building houses and the minimum spacing between them. This may not sound transformational now, but at the time marked a significant rewriting of the social contract between government, businesses and households. A second response, this time from the private sector, was to create a market previously missing entirely. In response to the devastation, a market for insuring people’s homes was for the first time created. The first fire insurance company, the “Insurance Office for Houses”, was set up in 1681 at the back of Royal Exchange, close to my office. It was the inspiration of (of all things) an economist, Nicholas Barbon. The idea was simple enough. By pooling risks across a number of households, both the insurer and insured were provided with an extra degree of financial protection against fire risk. A problem shared was a problem halved. The newly-installed rules and regulations around house-building reduced this risk further, by protecting individually-insured households, and collectively-at-risk insurance companies, from correlated conflagrations. This risk-pooling idea caught on. The home insurance industry grew rapidly, first in London, then Edinburgh, then across the UK. In 17th century Britain, home insurance was very much a creative industry.

To the contrary, innovation came thick and fast in the pre-industrial era, from the windmill in the 12th century to the mechanical clock in the 13th, from the cannon in the 14th to the printing press in the 15th, from the postal service in the 16th to the telescope in the 17th.20 It is clear pre-industrial innovation played an important role in fuelling subsequent growth. Shakespeare’s imaginative genius would not have been sparked without Guttenberg’s 14th century invention. Einstein would not have transformed our understanding of the world without Lippershey’s 17th century creativity. Yet neither great invention translated into consistently higher living standards for the great mass of society at the time. What was the missing ingredient? A number of historians believe it was a second “i” – institutions.21 In the words of economist Douglass North, institutions are “humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interactions”.22 If ideas and imagination are the fuel and engine that drive economies forward, rules and institutions are the bolts and chassis holding societies together. Institutions, defined broadly, play two crucial roles. First, they provide the rules of the game that allow the creative process to flourish. For example, the rule of law can help ensure property, physical and intellectual, is not stolen and contracts are honoured. This provides private individuals and companies with the foundations to flourish.
We start from a position where the high road is both readily attainable and highly desirable for all involved. The UK and the rest of the EU have exactly the same rules governing our systems. And we have the most highly developed frameworks for intensive supervisory cooperation. Capital flows seamlessly across our borders. The current EU legal regime allows firms to passport throughout the Union, supervised by the home supervisor. The EU and UK are therefore ideally positioned to create an effective system of deference to each other’s comparable regulatory outcomes, supported by commitments to common minimum standards and open supervisory co-operation. These commitments could be reinforced by reliance on independent peer reviews and a new, independent dispute resolution mechanism. Such an outcome would be entirely consistent with the UK Government’s stated aim of a new, comprehensive, bold and ambitious free trade relationship with the EU that embraces goods, services and network industries. And such an approach could be applied more broadly to the immense benefit of the global economy. The UK and EU have the potential to create the template for trade in financial services – one that leverages the tremendous progress that has been made in recent years building resilience and cooperation. But financial services are only part of a much broader negotiation. Given our responsibilities to promote financial stability, the Bank – like its counterparts on the continent – must plan, purely as a precaution, for all eventualities.

As the home country regulator for four G-SIBs and the host for all 30 G-SIBs we see them as essential elements of delivering global financial stability. We participate actively in supervisory colleges, sharing the supervisory expertise we have developed from managing the multitude of complex risks that are traded in London. And we expect the same from those whose firms operate and take on large risks here. Symmetry is fundamental to an effective global system. Third, the most critical element of supervisory cooperation is confidence in how each other will behave when things go wrong. In this regard, operationalising new “gone concern” regimes are critical. These set out what happens when a firm fails. In our view, best practice is captured by the FSB’s Key Attributes and involves resolvability assessments and regular crisis management group meetings for systemic firms. The UK was an early adopter. We host Crisis Management Groups for the UK G-SIBs, G-SIIs and systemic CCPs and attend all such meetings internationally for firms with significant operations in the UK. And we conduct exercises with other major jurisdictions to test preparedness. V.  The Road Ahead  We are at a fork in the road. One path builds on the foundations of a new responsible global financial system that are being put in place. The combination of robust international standards and trust built through transparent implementation and intensive supervisory cooperation can create a system of enhanced equivalence and mutual deference.
Thomas Jordan: Challenging economic and financial conditions for the Swiss banking sector Introductory remarks by Mr Thomas Jordan, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the media news conference of the Swiss National Bank, Berne, 20 June 2013. *  *  *  The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is maintaining its minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20 per euro. The Swiss franc is still high. An appreciation of the Swiss franc would compromise price stability and would have serious consequences for the Swiss economy. In the current environment, the minimum exchange rate remains important in order to avoid an undesirable tightening of monetary conditions for Switzerland in the event of sudden upward pressure on the Swiss franc. We stand ready to enforce the minimum exchange rate, if necessary, by buying foreign currency in unlimited quantities, and to take further measures, as required. The target range for the three-month Libor will be left unchanged at 0.0–0.25%. Since March, the SNB’s conditional inflation forecast has remained almost unchanged, apart from inflation for the current year, which is slightly lower due to a reduction in the oil price. The forecast is again based on an unchanged three-month Libor of 0.0% over the next three years. For 2013, we now anticipate slightly lower inflation of –0.3%. For 2014, the inflation forecast is unchanged at 0.2% and for 2015 at 0.7%. Consequently, inflation in Switzerland will remain very low in the foreseeable future.

In the US, the recovery will be supported by the labour market and rising asset prices. In Japan, the very expansionary economic policy is having an invigorating effect. Due to the upturn in world trade and the improvement in financing conditions, the euro area is also likely to emerge gradually from recession. In addition, the burden imposed by budget consolidation will be lower next year. Overall, however, the outlook remains uncertain. The risk of a deterioration in the global economy continues to be high. As before, the biggest risk remains a renewed deterioration in the euro area financial and sovereign debt crisis. Even though our baseline scenario  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  assumes a gradual solution of the crisis, it is possible that tensions could re-emerge on financial markets at any time. Swiss economic outlook In Switzerland, the economy experienced a temporary revival in the first quarter, as expected, and real GDP rose by 2.3%, in annualised terms. Thus, we experienced more favourable growth than our neighbouring countries. The difference is primarily attributable to domestic demand. Once again, growth was mainly driven by private consumption and investment in residential construction. These demand components benefited from the relatively robust labour market, a continued strong inflow of immigrants and the favourable financing conditions. In particular, the supply of credit in Switzerland is currently having a much stronger effect on the real economy than in most European countries. In the case of exports, however, there are no indications of a lasting revival.
It is however worth noting that quite aside from the crisis, recent episodes of compliance and market misconduct issues surrounding financial institutions have had very little to do with the crisis, but nevertheless have their roots in corporate governance problems. Poor governance allowed, and in some cases, likely encouraged, internal control failures leading to large-scale fraud, excessive risk-taking, market manipulations, and an endemic disregard for compliance with laws and regulations. While such issues have not plagued our domestic financial industry to nearly the same extent as they have in some other parts of the world, there are other reasons why we need to continue to pay close attention to corporate governance in Malaysia. For one, global economic and financial conditions have become considerably more uncertain. In the last Monetary Policy Statement, the Bank Negara Malaysia observed that economic activity is slower in most major advanced economies. There is considerable policy uncertainty in these economies, while conditions in the international financial markets continue to be volatile. In this environment, effective leadership reinforced by a robust framework within financial institutions for directing strategy and for regulating behaviour will be especially important. Domestically, the financial industry also faces greater competition as a result of the progressive liberalisation of the financial sector. Within the general insurance industry, the course has been set for greater price competition with the gradual removal of tariffs. A review of the operating cost controls which also regulate incentives for insurance sales is also in train.

This move is now validated by similar directions in other countries including Canada, Australia and the UK to require separation. Moreover, the enormous challenges of implementing new financial reporting standards, have substantially increased the demands on the audit committee, which further affirms the separation of these committees as best practice in order to maintain a clear focus on both risk management and controls. Within existing structures in the insurance industry, we observe common overlaps in membership between audit and risk committee members. We also observe varying degrees in which firms explicitly refer to coordination between the audit and risk committees in their respective charters. There is even greater variance in the actual practice of how the two committees interact with one another. These observations lead us to believe that there is room for greater clarity and improved coordination in responsibilities between these committees. Bank Negara Malaysia is mindful of concerns expressed by the industry that we are adding too much responsibility to the board’s plate, and requiring boards to approve numerous policies and management actions may be distracting boards from being effective in performing their core oversight functions. The addition of new responsibilities to the board has also raised some questions within institutions on whether the separation between management and oversight is being appropriately preserved.
2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  A financial-stability crisis can start when a financial institution is unable to repay funding to the lender at the repayment date, whilst the lender needs the liquidity at that repayment date. Fear of such occurrences happening simultaneously was an important element in the proliferation of the US subprime lending crisis to a global one. Central banks, recognisant of the impediments to markets’ functioning and the threat to the existence of solvent economic actors, utilise payment systems to grant liquidity not only to the market as a whole, but to individual institutions as well. Because of the re-emerging crisis, central banks can still use unconventional or non-standard monetary policy operations or target individual banks for assistance. The latter is however under-utilised by banks, because they avoid incurring a penalty over the market rate, fearing it may stigmatise them in the interbank markets. Talk of “emergency liquidity assistance” or “acting as a lender of last resort” is at present fading into the background because the commercial banks’ liquidity scare is largely, though not exclusively, a symptom of the sovereign debt crisis Nevertheless, risk stems from commercial banks typically holding positions across many participants (the central bank, other banks, brokerages, non-bank businesses and households) and across different payment systems. These positions lead to interdependencies among the real-time gross settlement systems, mainly operated by central banks, and designated-time net settlement systems, mainly operated by commercial banks jointly.

To this end, the Bank of Zambia will ensure that the Committee that has been spearheading the development of these guidelines become a permanent one and meet every so often to make the necessary changes in an inclusive manner. Accordingly, you are all urged to forward any contributions you wish to make on an ongoing basis. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me now to welcome and thank Mr Mervin King for graciously agreeing to officially launch the guidelines. Mr. King is internationally renowned for his work on corporate governance, and in particular for his work on the King Committee of South Africa which issued its first report in 1994. The King Report, along with the Cadbury Report of the United Kingdom and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of the United States have become key references on the subject and it is for this reason that we feel both proud and honoured to have Mr. King with us today. BIS Review 119/2006  1  It is now my honour and privilege to call upon Mr. King to launch the Corporate Governance Guidelines. Mr. King!
Challenges for policy Turning now to macroeconomic issues, we in the Hong Kong Monetary Authority have had a particular interest in the arrival of the euro, since it was the final step in the transition of the eleven participating countries from closely aligned rates to irrevocably fixed rates, and has therefore consolidated the number of economies where, like Hong Kong, some form of fixed exchange rate arrangement is regarded as both desirable and workable. Of course, I accept that technically the eleven currencies have not been fixed or pegged to one another, but have gone a stage further and been replaced by a single successor. But the critical point is that the euro countries individually have to a large extent, as Hong Kong did to an even larger extent over fifteen years ago, surrendered scope for exchange rate adjustment as an instrument of policy. In the euro case the surrender is not total since, although no member can any longer move relative to the ten other participants, the European Central Bank can of course still pursue an independent monetary policy relative to the rest of the world. Hong Kong is more tightly bound, since we are linked to the US dollar over whose wider value we have no influence. When we pegged the Hong Kong dollar to the US dollar in 1983 we did so at a time of crisis and partly because there was, for institutional reasons, effectively no viable alternative available to us at the time.

Investors are still feeling their way: for example, deciding on a benchmark yield for the euro, when there is a significant spread of perceived credit risk even between member state governments, is one area where fund managers may still be finding their feet. Although I am not close to it myself, it is my impression that the industrial and commercial sectors have also adapted well to the euro, although the amount of adaptation that has been required differs across individual cases. Many may not be affected, but equally many may be experiencing a drift towards more quoting and invoicing in euro; in some cases there will be pressure to do so which, on competitive grounds, they can ill afford to ignore. And there will be some who find themselves at a slight competitive disadvantage if they are bidding for business in a euroland country against a competitor from another euroland country; previously both bidders had to take account of exchange risks and conversion costs, but now it is only the Hong Kong bidder who faces these. Finally, I understand that among the general public there was an initial burst of interest in euro deposits (over and above mere redenomination of existing ones in the parent currencies), but that this interest waned somewhat with the euro’s subsequent depreciation.