samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
European Central Bank: Press conference – introductory statement Introductory statement by Mr Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank and Mr Lucas Papademos, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, Luxembourg, 2 July 2009. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice-President and I are very pleased to welcome you to our press conference here in Luxembourg. I would like to thank Governor Mersch for his kind hospitality and to express our special gratitude to his staff for the excellent organisation of the meeting of the Governing Council. We will now report on the outcome of today’s meeting of the Governing Council, which was also attended by the President of the Eurogroup, Prime Minister Juncker, and Commissioner Almunia. On the basis of its regular economic and monetary analyses, the Governing Council decided to leave the key ECB interest rates unchanged. The current rates remain appropriate taking into account all the information and analyses that have become available since our meeting on 4 June 2009. The fall of annual inflation rates into negative territory in June is in line with previous expectations and reflects mainly temporary effects. After a return to positive inflation rates, we expect price developments to remain dampened over the policy-relevant horizon. Recent data releases and survey information provide further indications that economic activity over the remainder of this year is likely to remain weak but should decline less strongly than was the case in the first quarter of 2009.

Recent data releases and survey information provide further indications that economic activity over the remainder of this year is likely to remain weak but should decline less strongly than was the case in the first quarter of 2009. This assessment incorporates adverse lagged effects, such as a further deterioration in labour markets, which are likely to materialise over the coming months. Looking ahead into next year, after a phase of stabilisation, a gradual recovery with positive  2  BIS Review 83/2009  quarterly growth rates is expected by mid-2010. Available indicators of inflation expectations over the medium to longer term remain firmly anchored in line with the Governing Council’s aim of keeping inflation rates below, but close to, 2% over the medium term. A cross-check of the outcome of the economic analysis with that of the monetary analysis corroborates the assessment of low inflationary pressure, as money and credit indicators continue to be weak. Against this background, we expect the current episode of extremely low or negative inflation rates to be short-lived and price stability to be maintained over the medium term, thereby continuing to support the purchasing power of euro area households. As the transmission of monetary policy works with lags, our policy action should progressively feed through to the economy in full. Hence, with all the measures taken, monetary policy will provide ongoing support for households and corporations.
The infrastructure in a wide sense in the metropolitan areas, perhaps in the Stockholm area in particular, may affect the possibilities of continuing to benefit from the existing demand. The rapid price rise for houses and tenant-owned flats in the Stockholm area is a clear illustration of certain supply-side problems. Another sign is the shortage of rented dwellings, or rather the lack of mobility in this market. Thus it is not only labour demand that will determine the future development of unemployment. A growing part will be played by supply-side factors in the form of occupational and geographical mobility. So while it can be concluded that in the near future the Swedish economy’s growth rate may be capable of topping the potential level of - as I just indicated - between 2 and 2.5%, this applies only for as long as there is a supply of labour with the appropriate training and occupational experience and the possibility of being geographically available. According to the most recent national accounts, published just before Christmas, GDP growth in the first three quarters of 1999 was over 3.5%. The fourth quarter outcome is still difficult to estimate precisely but demand growth seems, if anything, to have accelerated. An unusually good Christmas season appears to have resulted in a strong trend for private consumption, for example. A continuation of the strong development is suggested, moreover, by such leading indicators as household confidence, a high increase in the money supply and rapidly rising asset prices.

But it cannot yet be said that productivity growth in the Swedish economy has improved to the same extent. Neither have we registered a similar growth of investment, which could then be a leading indicator that the new technology is being introduced on a wide front. In the 1990s the stock of corporate capital, for example, grew twice as fast in the United States as it did in Sweden. It is certainly conceivable that the high level of the Stockholm stock exchange represents expectations that productivity growth will also move up in Sweden. The sum of the values of individual companies can serve as a yardstick of what is expected of the stock market as a whole and this presumably reflects expectations of how the total economy will develop. And if current share prices are regarded as reasonable, there will clearly have to be an appreciable increase in future profits. This can then be interpreted as expectations of an overall improvement in productivity growth and thus of a higher potential output. An alternative interpretation could be that the stock market is at least partially over-valued. A third possibility is, of course, that the development of share prices is explained by a combination of these two factors. It still seems too hazardous, however, to assume that potential growth in Sweden has moved up towards the level in the United States. It is possible - perhaps even probable - that similar supply factors will emerge in the future and the Riksbank must be alert to this.
The structural reform of major UK banks and a small number of international banks will help anchor their safety and soundness. And by guarding against the risks of double leverage, we are ensuring that UK banking groups operating around the world are robust. But signals from overseas suggest that geofinance could go too far, too fast. Bringing up the borders in wholesale finance would be regrettable for all sides, be they the home or host of international groups. To finish where I started:   Although it makes our job more challenging, it is a good thing that investors putting capital at risk in London provide insurance cover for properties hit by hurricanes in Florida.   It is a good thing that banks are able to provide some services across borders, whether between the UK and our fellow nations in Europe or further afield.   And it is a good thing that we have, to date, been able to agree global capital standards for banks. Doing all of these things efficiently and effectively relies on a strong degree of trust and co-operation between public authorities across borders. We hope we can secure that in the years ahead. 9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  9

Periods of low productivity are normally followed by periods when productivity recovers quickly. The labour market and current monetary policy Last week the Executive Board of the Riksbank decided to hold the repo rate unchanged at 0.25 per cent. But at the same time we made it clear that the time for a repo rate increase was not too far off. This could come in the summer or the early autumn. But even with the increases in the repo rate included in our repo rate path, monetary policy will be expansionary for a long period of time. The real repo rate is negative throughout the whole year, and will be below one per cent for the whole of 2011. The underlying CPIF inflation rate, that is, the CPI excluding the effect of changes in mortgage rates, is now relatively high at 2.5 per cent. But our assessment is that inflation will begin to fall, partly as a result of a stronger krona. In addition, slowly rising wages and increasing productivity growth will together mean that companies can produce goods at low cost. As economic activity strengthens the inflation rate will be pushed up and when we look ahead to the end of the forecast period it is close to 2 per cent. The forecast for the CPIF is therefore only marginally changed, compared with the assessment in the February Monetary Policy Report. Resource utilisation is an important variable for monetary policy as it is, for instance, an important indicator of future inflationary pressures.
Figure 8 shows the forecasts for average CPI inflation in 2009 made by various forecasters during 2008 and 2009. 8 The figure shows that the pattern over time is roughly the same for all the forecasters. During the first half of 2008, most forecasters expected that inflation would be between 2 and just below 3 per cent in 2009, while the actual outcome was –0.3 per cent. The explanation for this overestimation is that the forecasters did not foresee that the financial crisis would take such a dramatic turn in the autumn and, consequently, that inflation would fall so quickly as a result of the Riksbank’s repo-rate cuts. Once the financial crisis was upon us and the dramatic downturn in economic activity that followed in its wake had begun, all of the forecasters revised their forecasts downwards quickly and substantially. From the beginning of 2009, the forecasts were gathered around the actual outcome. 8  12  The analysis is based on data gathered by the National Institute of Economic Research. One advantage of these data is that they show exactly when the forecasts were made. The forecast comparison covers ten forecasting institutions and their whole-year forecasts for GDP growth, the CPI and the percentage of unemployed. The ten forecasting institutions are: the Swedish Ministry of Finance, the Swedish Retail Institute, the National Institute of Economic Research, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), Nordea, SEB, Svenska Handelsbanken, the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, Swedbank and the Riksbank.

All in all, it can be noted that the Riksbank overestimated the outcome for inflation in 2009 to approximately the same extent as the average for other forecasters, although with the exception of July and September 2008 when the Riksbank’s forecasts overestimated the prospects for inflation to a higher degree than other forecasters (see Figure 8). This was because energy prices increased more than expected during the spring, which led to inflation reaching over 4 per cent in the summer of 2008. The Riksbank thus saw a risk that the substantial increases in the prices of food and oil would also lead to rapid increases in other prices. Unusually high inflation expectations also contributed to this assessment. With regard to the outcome for GDP growth, the Riksbank’s overestimation was approximately the same as the average of the other forecasters. All of the forecasters continued to overestimate GDP growth for 2009 even during the first quarter of 2009. In other words, no forecaster predicted the economic downturn sooner than any other. How accurate are the Riksbank’s forecasts? As monetary policy is based on forecasts it is important that the Riksbank’s forecasts are acceptably accurate. However, it is not possible to assess accuracy by analysing the forecasts for a single year. Even forecasters with a good average accuracy may be less successful in an individual year. A fairer assessment requires a longer observation period.
Mario Draghi: Global and domestic inflation Speech by Mr Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, to the Economic Club of New York, New York City, 4 December 2015. *  *  *  Over the past years, central banks across advanced economies have provided unprecedented support to our economies, and the results are being felt. Output has been put back on an upward path. Growth is strengthening. The output gap is gradually closing, as is the case in the euro area, or in some cases it is closed already. Insofar as monetary policy is intended as a macroeconomic stabilisation policy, it is succeeding. But our mandate is not phrased in terms of real growth. It is phrased in terms of price stability. And there, success is not achieved yet. Inflation remains low everywhere, lower than our objectives require. And medium- to long-term inflation expectations have been less steady for some time, and also generally lower than our objectives. To some extent this apparent disconnect between real and nominal developments is an expression of lags in the transmission process. But it has also triggered suggestions that perhaps central banks are unable to fully control the trend in inflation – either because they lack the appropriate tools, or because inflation in any one economy is driven to a large extent by global factors outside their control. I would dispute entirely the notion that we are powerless to reach our objective.

And though the euro area unemployment rate is declining – down almost 1.5 percentage points from its 2013 peak – a great deal of slack still remains in the labour market. Indeed, if unemployment continues to decline at its current pace, it may take years before the euro area returns to its pre-crisis unemployment rates. And as we have seen in the UK and the US, even at that point – when the so-called “NAIRU” is reached – there may still be a substantial time lag before a tight labour market translates into higher wages. This suggests that, for services inflation to rise over the medium-term, we will need to see a faster closing of the output gap in the euro area and a quicker return towards full employment. 2  “Understanding Inflation Dynamics and Monetary”, Policy Panel remarks by Vítor Constâncio, Vice-President of the ECB, at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, 29 August 2015. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  The ECB’s monetary policy response So putting the picture together, we have seen two factors that could endanger medium-term price stability in the euro area and warrant a monetary policy response: a global environment of volatile oil and commodity prices that could feed into expectations; and a domestic environment where persistent slack continues to constrain price pressures. But as we have shown, even with interest rates at zero, we have an array of conventional and unconventional measures to deliver that response.
François Villeroy de Galhau: Monitoring large and complex institutions Welcome address by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France and Chairman of the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de resolution (ACPR), at the ACPR Academic Conference, Paris, 11 December 2017. * * * Good morning, I am very pleased to welcome you to this high level academic conference jointly organised by the Financial Stability Department of the Banque de France and the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR). This year, the conference will focus on the challenges posed by the monitoring of large and complex banking institutions. It is true that large global banks might look complex. The 2008 Great Financial Crisis showed how highly interconnected financial institutions that were exposed to overly complex derivative products could spread and amplify domestic shocks. Since then, the “too-big-to-fail” issue has been put high on the agenda of the Financial Stability Board and significant progress has been made in this regard. However, there is evidence that some global banks are growing bigger and perhaps becoming even more complex than before. Complexity is not in itself a drawback. After all, the globalisation of trade might require a certain dose of complexity either due to the nature of the financial products required to hedge against traditional or newly emerging risks, or due to the organisational structures that result from crossborder activities. Similarly, one should not preclude the diversification benefits associated with large global financial institutions exposed to partially correlated domestic markets.

To conclude, interactions between policy makers, researchers and practitioners are very valuable and I am certain that this conference will contribute to fuelling these interactions. We strongly believe in the positive spillovers from the research function being closely intertwined with the supervisory and financial stability divisions. In particular, empirical evaluations and theoretical works on policy design – and we will see some of them presented today – are absolutely necessary in order to fine tune and reinforce the regulatory reforms that have been implemented not only in Europe but worldwide. I wish you a very fruitful conference and I will give the floor right away to Henri Fraisse, who will chair the first session. Thank you for your attention. 1 Claessens, Stijn and van Horen, Neeltje (2014), “The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Banking  Globalization”, IMF working paper 14/197. Their data set covers 138 host countries for the period 1995–2013. 2 Focarelli, Dario and Pozzolo, Alberto (2005), “Where Do Banks Expand Abroad? An Empirical Analysis”, The  Journal of Business, 78, Issue EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jnlbus:v:78:y:2005:i:6:p:2435–2464. 6,  pp. 2435–2464,  3 Credit Value Adjustment. 4 Correlation Trading Portfolio. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches
This document sets out the institutional objectives throughout a three-year period, 2016–2018, and identifies the measures and sources needed to accomplish these objectives. The fulfilment of these objectives depends, first of all, on how understandable we are to the public, how responsible we are in our policies and actions, and how trustworthy we are to the public. Hence, enhancing the Bank of Albania’s independence is always considered related to the strengthening of transparency and accountability. In terms of accountability, the Bank of Albania has regularly fulfilled the accountability obligations to the Parliament, the financial system and the public. Also, information on the activity and results of the Internal Audit Department is attached to the Annual Report 2016. Also, the financial statements and the opinion of the external independent auditor were an integral part of the Annual Report, in compliance with the International Audit Standards. The approval of the financial statements in compliance with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS Standards) was among the most important priorities of the Bank of Albania for 2015. The implementation of this priority over 2016 met the legal requirements and observed the internal and external recommendations. Transparent communication is an important pillar in Bank of Albania’s activity for both fulfilling the responsibility for maximum transparency about decision-making and its effects, and raising public confidence in the central bank.

Although it has injected a weak stimulus to the economy, the consolidating fiscal policy has facilitated the accommodative monetary policy pass through, by reducing the risk premia in the economy, favouring the reduction of financing costs, and increasing the space for lending to the private sector. According to reports from the Ministry of Finance, for the first time after six years, the public debt was reduced from 72.7% of the GDP in 2015, to 71% in 2016. The Bank of Albania has been and is certain in the position that efforts for reducing public debt should continue. The functioning of the monetary policy pass through mechanism, and factors contributing to or preventing it, are an integral part of the work of the Bank of Albania. Research efforts in 2016 aimed to assess the ability of the tools used for generating economic projections at the Bank, as well as the understanding of the functioning of monetary transmission vis-a-vis the current challenges in the financial system. In this context, I would like to point out that the Bank of Albania has identified two main obstacles in the monetary policy pass through mechanism, whose solution requires broader-scale cooperation. The first obstacle relates to the high level of non-performing loans. To reduce this risk, a national action plan for reducing non-performing loans has been drafted, and is currently underway. The second obstacle relates to the high level of euroisation in the economy, which creates potential risks in the financial system and renders the monetary policy pass through more difficult.
Emerging economies in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia have become important centres in the global economy. These trends have resulted in an increasingly multi-polar world in which the economic power is more dispersed in the global economy. In Asia, the growing significance of domestic demand, the enhanced quality of the workforce and the more developed and resilient financial systems have all contributed to this strong growth performance. While the strong global linkages continue to be an important element in this growth process, this decade has seen the tremendous expansion in intra-regional trade in Asia. Intra-regional trade has increased from 32% of total trade in 1995 to now exceed 50%. This trend has generated mutually reinforcing growth in the region. While this trend has reduced the extent to which external demand and supply shocks affect the Asian region, the more recent phenomenon of greater international financial integration has left no country insulated from the contagion of external shocks and from financial crisis from other parts of the world. In this new environment of greater international financial  BIS Review 74/2010  1  integration, developments in one asset class in a market in a distant country can spread to other asset classes, markets and to other parts of the world. Financial exposure through third markets are also becoming the new norm as liquidation of assets frequently occur in well functioning and high performing markets to meet obligations in other markets that have experienced disruptions or meltdowns.

In addition to supporting price stability, the Bank of Albania has also paid attention to the promotion of financial stability, through the supervision and careful regulation of the banking 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  sector, as well as through the coordination of work with other supervisory authorities of the financial sector. 2. Banking supervision and financial stability The Albanian banking sector continues to remain financially sound and has shown increasing dynamism. This sector has been profitable during 2019, while its liquidity and capitalization indicators are above our regulatory requirements. Also, resistance testing exercises show that the banking sector exposure to systemic risks is controlled and that the banking sector’s ability to withstand risks is strong. Below I will briefly list some of the main directions of our work to strengthen banking supervision and to support financial stability. First, the Bank of Albania successfully administered the banking sector consolidation process. This process reshaped the domestic banking market, bringing in new and motivated actors, as well as increasing domestic capital. Second, the Bank of Albania fulfilled all its obligations under the national plan for the reduction of non-performing loans. Thanks to measures taken over the years, the nonperforming loan ratio fell from a maximum of almost 25% in 2014 to 8.4% at the end of 2019. Third, the Bank of Albania worked to meet the recommendations of the CoE Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Measures against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (MONEYVAL).