samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Such discipline is not possible without meaningful public disclosure of a bank’s financial condition. I think we would all agree that there is no greater enemy to a stable financial marketplace than a lack of confidence, and surely nothing undermines confidence more than a lack of reliable information. Discipline by the market is not always pleasant – a lesson many companies have re-learned recently. Yet better quality information, or what we often call transparency, can boost the confidence of depositors, investors, and creditors, and it can contribute to stability by encouraging banks to adopt a more proactive approach to managing their risks. In this regard, just last month the Basel Committee published the results of a two-year study on public disclosure practices of internationally active banks as a guide to the industry and accounting standards setters on areas where disclosure can be improved. BIS Review 35/2001  3  While many countries have made great progress over recent years to improve the quality and level of disclosure, disclosure practices have not kept up with the changes in how banks manage their businesses and in how they measure and mitigate their risks. To improve this situation, I believe that the notions of what is public versus proprietary information must change. It is critical to approach the question of disclosure as users of financial statements. Shareholders, creditors, and counterparties cannot understand the risks of their own exposures to a bank until they first understand that bank’s appetite for risk and its approach to, and methodologies for, managing risk.

All these developments reflect Singapore’s ideal position for asset managers to deepen and broaden their activities in the Asian time-zone. Annual accounts 28. On our financial statements, MAS recorded a net profit of $ billion for the financial year. The profits comprised mainly interest income, as changes in the valuation of foreign assets and the foreign exchange effects of a stronger Singapore dollar largely offset each other. Total assets, including the Currency Fund, grew by $ billion during the year to $ billion at end-March 2008. 4  BIS Review 94/2008  Remaining vigilant 29. We need to remain vigilant in the face of a number of risks in the global economic and financial environment. We will continue to work closely with the industry to identify vulnerabilities and threats to financial stability through macro surveillance and stress testing. MAS’ work in the coming year will continue to be driven by our mission of supporting noninflationary economic growth, and fostering a sound and reputable financial centre. 30. Thank you. BIS Review 94/2008  5
The euro was given the same definition of price stability as the one attributed to the most credible national currencies, which benefited from the lowest market interest rates at the time. As a consequence, from day one onwards, the euro was given the best yield curve available in the economies of the euro area. The European Central Bank has played a leading role in the general trend towards greater transparency and openness. It has in fact set standards of transparency in the practice of monetary policy. The ECB was the first major central bank to display its diagnosis immediately after its decisions and to hold regular press conferences after each of its monetary policy meetings. It is still the only one that does so. In those press conferences, we give a full and detailed explanation of our analysis and of the reasons underlying our policy decisions. In addition, the ECB’s Monthly Bulletin gives the public the full set of detailed assessments and data underlying our policy decisions only a few days after they are taken. **** To sum up, I trust that the success of the ECB and of the Eurosystem in firmly anchoring medium and long term inflation expectations at a level below 2% and close to 2% from day one of the existence of the euro is due to the careful gathering of all necessary conditions for such a prowess. 2  6  B Bernanke and J Boivin: “Monetary policy in a data-rich environment,” Journal of Monetary Economics 50 (2003).

Less than a decade ago, we did not even have the statistical requirements for the Monetary Union, let alone the statistics themselves for the euro area. Today, euro area statistics compare favourably with those of other major countries in many respects. A concrete example is the monthly balance of payments for the euro area and the availability of a timely, flash estimate of the euro area Harmonised  2  BIS Review 67/2004  Index of Consumer Prices (HICP). Moreover, the ECB compiles an elaborate and timely set of monthly statistics on monetary developments in the euro area and interest rates. Statistical preparations had to start early, due to the long lead times involved. On average, it takes around 18 months from inception to delivery of a new set of statistics that involves the collection of additional information from economic agents. While there is still room for improvement, which I will explain later on, I feel confident that the ECB has now at its disposal a solid set of statistics of sufficient quality for the conduct of monetary policy. Let me share with you some of the success factors and ‘lessons to learn’ from this development process. First and foremost, the achievements have been possible thanks to the intensive and fruitful cooperation and coordination with other statistical agencies.
18  History suggests each of these capitals may have played an important supporting role in the story of growth. Ideas alone, without the support of one or more of these broader capitals, have historically run aground. For example, in the UK many of the foundations for growth after the Industrial Revolution were laid in the centuries preceding it. It was on this platform of “capitals”, plural, that ideas and innovation then built. Take human capital. The most dramatic improvements in educational standards in the UK occurred prior to 1750 (Chart 3). So too did the largest improvements in measures of social, infrastructural and institutional capital. 19  Ideas needed these foundations to flourish. A steam engine is not much use without the skills to  build it, the tracks to run it on, the institutions to oversee it, the trust of the public to accept it. The causes of th  the growth inflexion in 18 century England were as much sociological as technological. Another lens through which to view this alternative growth story has recently been provided by economic historians, Steve Broadberry and John Wallis. 20  Indeed it was probably this lens on the world, above all  others, that led me to change my own story about growth. Broadberry and Wallis do two things. First, they construct some new estimates of growth going back to 1300. Rather than relying on period averages, they use higher-frequency measures of growth. This changes the growth picture significantly.

Summers, L (2013), speech at IMF Fourteenth Annual Research Conference in Honor of Stanley Fischer. Susskind, R and Susskind, D (2015), The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts, Oxford University Press. Swinney, P (2018), ‘The wrong tail’, Centre for Cities. Universities UK (2017), ‘Patterns and Trends In UK Higher Education’, Universities UK. Van Reenen, J, Bloom, N, Draca, M, Kretschmer, T, Sadun, R, Overman, H and Schankerman, M (2010), ‘The Economic Impact of ICT’, SMART N. 2007/0020. Willetts, D (2017), A University Education, Oxford University Press. 26  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  26  Annex Chart 1: World GDP per head since 1000 AD 1990 International Dollars  7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0  1000  1100  1200  1300  1400  1500  1600  1700  1800  1900  2000  Year Sources: De Long (1998). Chart 2: UK productivity, real wages and GDP per head Index, 1760 = 100 1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 1760  1810  1860  Productivity  1910 Real wages  1960  2010  GDP per head  Sources: Bank of England, ‘A millennium of macroeconomic data’, available online. Notes: Labour productivity per head uses GDP at factor cost. Real wages defined as nominal wage divided by GDP deflator at factor cost.
With assets managed by SWFs estimated at 3,000 billion dollars, this category of investors represents twice the value of assets managed by hedge funds. 1 It is estimated that they will continue to grow in the future, to reach from 12,000 to 15,000 billion dollars, depending on estimates, in 2015. Consequently, they play and will continue to play an increasing role in the global financial system. As SWFs have long-term and diversified investment strategies and are not subject to sudden fund withdrawals by customers, they are usually considered to have a stabilising effect on the global financial system, despite their lack of transparency. Consequently, developed countries have an interest in attracting their investments. During the crisis, the behaviour of SWFs has differed according to the country of origin, but in general, it appears that their tendency to invest more than before in domestic and regionally close markets during the first stage of the crisis has come to an end, and that they have now resumed investing principally in OECD economies. 2 This is particularly true for Gulf sovereign funds, where diversified domestic investment opportunities are scarcer than for Asian sovereign funds, for example. In the first quarter of this year, Europe was by far the leading destination for Middle-Eastern and North African SWF investment. 3 Muslim countries, in particular oil-exporting ones, represent as much as 51% of total sovereign wealth funds’ assets.

Without claiming to be exhaustive on such an ambitious subject, particularly in front of an audience of  1  Source: La finance islamique : une solution à la crise ? (2009), E. Jouini and O. Pastré, Economica. 2  Monitor Group and Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (August 2009), Analysis of Sovereign Wealth Fund Transactions During Q1 2009. 3  Monitor Group and Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (August 2009). 4  An IFOP survey, disclosed at the end of 2008, on the basis of interviews with 530 people of Muslim origin from various backgrounds, considered a representative sample of the French Muslim community. 2  BIS Review 118/2009  distinguished Islamic finance specialists, it seems to me nevertheless useful to briefly recall the following points: •  The fundamental principles of Islamic finance can be seen in different ways as far as financial stability is concerned. As you well know, Islamic finance prohibits the payment and receipt of interest at a fixed or predetermined rate. Instead, profit-and-loss sharing arrangements, purchase and resale of goods and services, and the provision of services for fees are the basis of Islamic finance contracts. Islamic finance is therefore systematically backed by real assets. Moreover, it prohibits speculation and the financing of production or trade in specific sectors. On the one hand, these principles can be considered to provide stability for the financial system. Indeed, in Islamic finance, unbacked expansion of credit is precluded, and banks cannot initiate or accentuate a speculative process.
And is there an important “So what?” Starting with the “Why?”, market intelligence suggests that uncertainty surrounding the global outlook has been one factor; itself in no small part a consequence of the unexpected rough halving in the price of oil since last summer. This uncertainty can be seen in the recent increase in the dispersion of economists’ forecasts for inflation in the US, UK and euro area during 2015. Central banks themselves have reacted to the changed global outlook and monetary policy makers have been active in recent months. Indeed, so far this year 24 central banks have cut their policy rates. Moreover, the decisions by the ECB and three other central banks since  1  2  An EGARCH model is fitted to FTSE All-Share daily returns and returns on a sterling-denominated investmentgrade corporate bond flat price index. The EGARCH model allows for conditional volatility to react differently to negative and positive shocks to returns. The model is fitted on returns data split into two sub-samples of approximately equal length: pre-crisis (Jan 2001 – Jun 2007) and post-crisis (Apr 2009 – Jan 2015). BIS central bankers’ speeches  last summer to set negative policy rates have raised questions about where the lower bound for monetary policy exists. Clearly the answer is no longer as simple as just above zero for all central banks. And those decisions are raising questions about how markets work when negative rates persist several years down the yield curve (Chart 4).

Chris Salmon: Financial market volatility and liquidity – a cautionary note Speech by Mr Chris Salmon, Executive Director for Markets of the Bank of England, at the National Asset-Liability Management Europe symposium, London, 13 March 2015. *  *  *  I would like to thank Andrew Butcher, Jonathan Rand, Allison Parent, Joseph Noss, Olga Cielinska, Liam Crowley-Reidy, Sebastian Vismara, Lu Liu and Yuliya Baranova for their comments and contributions. As Executive Director for Markets at the Bank of England it is my job to manage the balance sheet, implementing various policy decisions that the Bank makes. I am also responsible for ensuring that the Bank extracts as much “market intelligence” from financial market developments as is possible to inform those decisions. But it’s not my job to set policy. Given that, my remarks will focus on the key insights we have drawn from financial market developments over the past year or so, in the context of what has been quite a dynamic period for monetary policy. But I will not speculate on the future course of policy by the Bank of England or any other central bank, nor the likely effectiveness of the different strategies employed by central banks to achieve their targets. And my punch line will reveal me to be the central banker that I am: there are reasons to be cautious. In particular, recent periods of financial market volatility suggest that there are reasons to be cautious about the robustness of liquidity in core financial markets.
Deeply disappointed, the couple consulted another friend and sought advice on what went wrong and what could be done. They were told that the food variety was still too limited. They should offer hot pot rice (煲仔飯) and hot pot meals (火鍋) as well to attract a wider clientele. The couple thought it was a good advice and immediately launched the new products. In the first winter, the business went quite well but in the summer months it was dreadful. What was more surprising, in the second winter, the business fell even further. After two years of struggle, the couple felt that they had run out of new ideas and that there was no point to hang on. So they decided to close down the business and sell the shop space. So the couple went to see the branch manager of the bank to settle the outstanding mortgage payments. The branch manager, who was also an old customer of their noodle shop living in the neighbourhood, asked why they had to close their shop. The couple complained that the market environment, including people’s taste and eating habits had changed but they simply could not cope with these changes fast enough. The branch manager was astonished to hear this and said: “I used to like your noodle shop very much in the earlier years, but for reasons I don’t understand, the quality of the noodles kept deteriorating. When you introduced the cafe, the food was even worse.

The couple in Wanchai should not have forgotten what drew customers to their noodles in the first place. They had failed not because their customers had decided to eat sandwiches rather than noodles but because they forgot that it was quality that made the noodle shop  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  successful in the first place. Very often we become complacent and take things for granted after we have been successful, just like the Wanchai couple did. Shifting to a new product line in which we have no real expertise or niche was a recipe for disaster. The same holds true if we look at what made Hong Kong tick twenty or thirty years ago. Many good qualities such as can-do spirit, never-say-die, openness and versatility that were cherished by Hong Kong people in the past seem to have faded away. Keeping these good qualities, Hong Kong can hope to maintain its competitive edge even when the goings get rough. 10. Ladies and gentlemen, the message I have for you is: while an entrepreneur should always strive to expand and grow his business, it is equally important that he should resist complacency and continue to excel in what he is doing or what he is good at. To venture into an unfamiliar universe in which one has no expertise or advantage is risky. The market is fiercely competitive and no doubt customers’ preference may change, but the market is generally fair and always rewards quality and consistency handsomely.
We are also aided by the fact that we are more reliant on traditional banking rather than the capital markets for our debt financing. Beyond the direct impact on banks, the general reduction in risk capital and financial deleveraging will be felt in Asia, through higher costs of capital. This is the downside that many companies and investors will have to confront. On the upside, this should further spur the efforts of Asian countries to make their own financial intermediation process more efficient. This can be done through a lowering of barriers to global capital and the building of channels to facilitate the growth of this capital. Global investors will increasingly look to Asia for investments as Asia remains an attractive area for growth in the long term. On the other hand, Asian companies will continue to require funds as they extend their global footprint. In this regard, lessons from the subprime crisis are timely. As Asian capital markets evolve, investors and risk managers alike will need to understand the innovations and the products as they develop. I believe that some key issues in the securitization markets will also have to be addressed, such as in origination standards. How investor confidence is restored will shape the ability of companies to tap capital market solutions in the near future. US recession and Asia’s growth story Let me now turn to the third issue, which is the impact of the US recession on Asia.

It does not itself have the force of law, but failure to adhere to the standards may call into question whether the bank continues to satisfy the criteria for authorization laid down in the Banking Ordinance. The draft guideline describes the general responsibilities of the board, the legal obligations of directors and the use of auditors. It then goes on to specify detailed guidelines to which locally incorporated authorized institutions are expected to adhere. Let me summarise these for you. While I will refer to  BIS Review 24/2000  2  the guidelines in relation to banks, most of them are also applicable to restricted licence banks and deposit taking companies. •  First, the board should ensure that the bank establishes policies, procedures and controls to manage the various types of risk with which it is faced. Altogether the HKMA has identified eight types of risk for the purposes of its supervision. These are credit, interest rate, market, liquidity, operational, reputation, legal and strategic risk. The board should approve the relevant policies while management should put them into effect. It is important that the policies should not exist merely for form’s sake - in other words, just to keep the HKMA happy - but should dictate how the institution is actually run in practice. •  Second, the board should ensure that the bank fully understands the provisions of section 83 of the Banking Ordinance on connected lending and establishes a policy on such lending.
Jean-Claude Trichet: European priorities - an ECB perspective Speech by Mr Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the ECB, at the European Institute, Washington, 23 April 2004. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, The introduction of the single European currency has been a historical landmark. For more than five years now, we have had a single currency and a monetary policy conducted by the Eurosystem, consisting of the European Central Bank and the national central banks of the euro area. The euro has been firmly and credibly established as a stable currency. The euro area has witnessed a period of moderate inflation rates and low long-term interest rates. Almost all countries have seen their lowest market interest rates since the Second World War. Where do we stand now and which are the “European priorities” we are currently facing? I would like to concentrate on three key priorities, which I consider particularly challenging at the current juncture: the historical enlargement process of Europe, the need for higher growth and employment by means of structural reforms and the necessity of implementing an original concept of fiscal surveillance in a single currency area. The historic enlargement of Europe Ten countries in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Mediterranean will join the European Union (EU) on 1st May 2004. This upcoming enlargement is profoundly rejoicing. It is an emblematic illustration of the victory of political democracies on totalitarism. It is a living demonstration of the efficiency of market economy rules.

Both new and current Member States alike will be able to enjoy the mutual benefits of a wider Union, in particular from the expanded internal market, as the cases of past enlargements showed. Trade integration has already reached a high level in the acceding countries, where 67% of the total exports and 60% of total import stems from the EU. Both the current and new Member States have prepared intensively for enlargement. Let me first focus on the situation in the new Member States and then in the present Union members. I will concentrate on the ultimate objective of enlargement from the monetary standpoint, namely the future adoption of the euro by the new EU Member States. The acceding countries have made remarkable progress in recent years. They significantly advanced macroeconomic stabilisation and structural reforms. Moreover, the former centrally planned economies have been able to establish functioning market economies. Overall, the progress they have made so far is encouraging. There remain, however, great challenges. The key ones are to advance real convergence while safeguarding and, where necessary, enhancing macroeconomic and financial stability. Locking in inflation at low levels, preserving the soundness of the financial sector, correcting of unsustainable external imbalances in a few cases and renewing efforts towards fiscal consolidation are all of the utmost importance. Moreover, the gap in per capita income between the  BIS Review 23/2004  1  current and most of the new Member States remains large.