samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The Governing Council has made explicit in its communication that we expect the key ECB interest rates to remain at current or lower levels for an extended period of time. We have chosen not to be specific either about the date or the conditions. The euro area is composed of diverse and somewhat heterogeneous economies, as shown by the very different unemployment rates. And as I said, it is undergoing a phase of rapid structural change. The relationships between major economic variables are therefore very complex and uncertain and it may have been very confusing to tie monetary policy moves to any set of pre-specified dates or parameters. As it stands, forward guidance has been quite successful in stabilising the short-term part of the yield curve, thus bringing significant monetary accommodation. Some concluding remarks Let me end with two general remarks on the future and limitations of monetary policy. In the future, after many years of implementing non-conventional policies, one may wonder whether central banks will ever return to their pre-crisis framework. Is inflation targeting dead and non-conventional the “new normal”? I can only offer some conjectures. While the pre-crisis framework has been transformed, maybe irreversibly it has, in some aspects, also been strengthened: all central banks have now adopted a quantification of their price stability objective; everyone is aware that symmetry in implementing their mandate is crucial; everyone is putting increased emphasis on communication to impact monetary and financial conditions.

In the area of the SSM, these restrictions are particularly significant at the moment since, given the variety of supervisory practices and cultures in place, only adequate codifying of rules and procedures can help to ensure that banks are treated equitably, even if this means that some of the benefits, in terms of supervisory effectiveness, that an appropriate amount of discretion involve, have to be sacrificed. Clearly, as the new European supervisory regime matures, we must strive to develop a specific action framework that incorporates the best practices and that is sufficiently robust to enable its application to be adapted appropriately to each specific circumstance. Thank you for your attention. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches
In the area of large value payment infrastructures, the degree of integration has increased very quickly. We should bear in mind that EURO 1 and TARGET have been clearly set up to face the challenge of the EMU. It was of great importance for large value payments, in particular those linked to the money market, to rely on systems handling efficiently and safely cross border transactions. Moreover, TARGET was a prerequisite for the effective conduct of the single monetary policy, because it ensures the settlement of monetary policy operations. The timeframe was particularly tight to build up the TARGET system. Therefore, the design of TARGET 1 was based on the principle of minimum harmonisation and on a decentralised architecture, with an interlinking of the national RTGS (Real-Time Gross Settlement Systems). TARGET 2, which is due to go live in 2007, will further improve the degree of integration of wholesale payment infrastructures. It will provide fully harmonised settlement services across Europe in real-time in central bank money, supported by a single price structure for domestic and cross-border payments and a single processing platform. This single platform will be used by all central banks of the ESCB to provide services to their banking community. TARGET 2 will enhance cost-efficiency and meet stateof-the-art business continuity procedures.

Christian Noyer: The contribution of payment infrastructures to the European financial integration and to the establishment of the SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) Speech by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France, at the 20th Anniversary of the European Banking Association (EBA), Paris, 23 June 2005. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to join you today to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the European Banking Association (EBA), here in Paris at Palais Brongniart. First of all, I would like to give credit to the EBA for its strong commitment in favour of the European financial integration. This commitment has led the EBA to set up the large value payment system EURO 1 and the retail payment systems STEP 1 and STEP 2. Central banks of the Eurosystem, like any central bank, have a keen interest in securing that the financial system falling under their monetary competence is unified, competitive and stable. This is essential for the European economy, considering that a high degree of financial integration enables an efficient transmission of the monetary policy, a better allocation of financial resources, a minimisation of cost of capital, as well as a fast and safe execution of payments across the so called SEPA, that is to say the Single Euro Payments Area. Different factors support the development of a fully integrated financial system at the European level. Today, I will emphasise a key driver of this process - payment infrastructures.
Today, numerous countries -- including Ireland and the United States -- are considering which paths to follow in reforming and modernizing their banking industries. These deliberations are of great importance, because a well-functioning and stable banking and financial system is a critical foundation for long-run growth and prosperity of an economy. And such reform is inevitably difficult, for reasons which are a classic blend of political and economic considerations rooted in the crucial functions the banking system must perform in a market economy. Moreover, banking system reform is made all the more challenging by the fact that such reforms cannot be viewed in isolation from reforms in the central bank, or independent of those in the capital markets. In fact, the greatest challenge may lie in forging these individual pieces in such a way that they fit together in a cohesive whole that serves the dictates of stability, growth, and public confidence. For a financial system to mobilize and allocate a society’s savings successfully and facilitate day-to-day transactions, there must be a class of financial institutions and instruments that the public views as safe and convenient outlets for its savings. Of course, the single dominant class of institution that performs this crucial dual role as repository of a large part of society’s liquid savings, and the entity through which payments are made is the commercial bank.

In France, the ACPR contributes actively to the discussions of the Haut Conseil de Stabilité Financière (High Council for Financial Stability – HCSF) chaired by the Minister for the Economy and Finance. In the face of rapid and excessive growth in the debt of several large corporations, the HCSF has adopted a measure which comes into force on 1 July; it imposes on French systemic banks a limit to their exposures to the most leveraged large non-financial resident corporations. The HCSF nevertheless remains vigilant in the face of the rapid increase in bank lending to the private sector, which stood at +5.5% in the first quarter of 2018. French private debt reached 130% of GDP at end-2017, the highest of the large countries in the euro area. Since 2014, it has risen by more than 9% of GDP, while it has declined by 5.4% of GDP on average for the euro area. The HCSF stated on 29 March that it stands ready to act. In particular, if we have to decide, at our next meeting, on a countercyclical capital buffer, that would evidently not be in order to stop the lending today: it would be – as the name suggests – to avoid a credit crunch tomorrow when there is a cyclical downturn in the economy, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. Should banks lack sufficient capital, they could manage the heightened risks thus materialising in their balance sheets by restricting new lending.
Because bearing responsibility is not possible without having the relevant powers. Whatever happens ahead, the events in 2014 will not rewrite the BNB’s history of proven success in recent years. It is a fact that, thanks to the consistent efficient work of the central bank, including the banking supervision, during the global financial crisis not a single bank went bankrupt in Bulgaria. In other countries, even in the EU, problems with banks led to public costs running into hundreds of billions of euros. The Bulgarian citizens and taxpayers were saved from all that. The long-standing achievements of the BNB, and BNB’s banking supervision in particular, should not be forgotten or erased easily – even if it turns out that some omissions may have been made in the KTB case. It is also a fact that since June to date the BNB, the government and the commercial banks (under the strong leadership of the BNB) have successfully confined the negative effects on the rest of the banking sector after placing KTB and CB Victoria under special supervision. Making huge efforts, we continue to safeguard the financial stability in Bulgaria. In an extremely unfavourable situation of unprecedented public pressure, ferocious criticisms and direct attacks against the central bank, the BNB has once again managed to do its best. The good news is that this year the BNB has practically stood a real and very heavy stress test. We have passed an exceptionally serious stress test of our independence.

Within the first group fall all those challenges in 2014 that were not at all unexpected. We have commented these challenges in previous years. Thus, for instance, the forecasts that this year also the economic growth would not accelerate, have materialised. That has held back the quality of bank assets from improving more tangibly. Accordingly, loan demand from enterprises and households has stayed weak. As a result, for yet another year, the banks’ profitability has been subdued and their possibilities for income from lending, i.e. their core activity, have remained limited. Also expected were the tasks related to the transposition into the Bulgarian legislation of the Capital Requirements Directive and the Capital Requirements Regulation adopted in 2013 by the European Parliament and the Council of EU. This time last year in my statement before you I qualified this as a kind of a “supervisory revolution” and the largest one-off change to have occurred in our supervisory framework over the last more than 15 years. Earlier this year, amendments were adopted in the Law on Credit Institutions and in the regulatory framework, including by dropping out a few key BNB ordinances, Ordinance No 9 being one of them which governed the specific provisions for credit risk. In place of the specific provisions allocated until then, the banks made additional accounting provisions under the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), thus reducing the book value of loans past-due by more than 90 days.
Lucas Papademos: How to deal with the global financial crisis and promote the economy’s recovery and sustained growth Speech by Mr Lucas Papademos, Vice President of the European Central Bank, at the 7th European Business Summit organised by the European Business Forum, Brussels, 26 March 2009. * I. *  *  Introduction  The European and global economies are experiencing the most severe and prolonged financial crisis since the 1930s. A few facts and figures highlight the magnitude and nature of the challenge we face. Since the beginning of the financial turbulence in 2007, the total reported write-downs and losses of banks globally have exceeded 888 billion dollars. Some estimates of the overall expected losses by banks and other financial institutions are in the range of 2.2 trillion dollars. 1 Asset prices have plummeted worldwide, though the extent differs across countries and market segments. In the EU, the value of equity has fallen by 6 trillion euro, 2 a decline of more than 50% from the peak reached in summer 2007. Economic activity decelerated sharply during 2008, especially in the last quarter; it is projected to contract significantly in the EU this year and to recover very moderately and gradually in the course of 2010. Importantly, the economic outlook is surrounded by exceptionally high uncertainty reflecting, among other factors, the low level of consumer and business confidence as well as the ongoing deleveraging of banks and other financial institutions.

In addition, efforts to enhance transparency have not progressed as well as I myself and many market participants had hoped. 8 There have of course been some positive developments, such as the development by BZW of Property Investment Certificates, the growing importance of data produced by the Investment Property Databank, and the development by RICS of new valuation standards in the revised Red Book. Some of the trade associations, such as the IPF and the Association of Property Bankers, have also developed well and have begun to play a very important role. I believe the Bank of England’s Property Forum, set up in 1993 to bring all sides of the industry together, has also made a positive contribution. But these developments cannot obscure the fact that, on the whole, this period has been one of disappointment. Property’s poor performance in the past few years has undoubtedly caused some to consider very carefully whether or not they wish to remain in property. The Present 9 Are we turning a corner? The commercial property market is important to the UK economy in many ways. Property and related activities such as construction make a significant contribution to GDP. The availability of property of the right standards at the right price is very important to UK competitiveness. This puts some onus on landlords to provide what is wanted. It is equally important that the planning authorities should continue to provide a consistent and flexible planning framework in which developers and landlords can operate and earn a satisfactory return.
Such a consensus – which is today dominant within both academia and the policy-making community – developed in the wake of the major economic disruptions associated with the so-called Great Inflation of the 1970s. This world-wide monetary crisis cemented the contemporary agreement that pursuing price stability ought to be the fundamental goal of monetary policy. A third key principle is a logical consequence of the first two: since inflation reflects, to a large or even dominant extent, the economic agents’ inflation expectations, it follows that in  1  See Phelps (1968), Friedman (1968), and Lucas (1972a, b). BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  order to keep inflation under control it is of paramount importance to keep inflation expectations firmly anchored. As I will discuss later on, our success in firmly anchoring Euro area inflation expectations throughout the crisis proved very helpful in allowing us to fight the crisis’ contractionary shock. As I will argue, if inflation expectations had not been so firmly anchored, the management of the crisis would have been much more difficult and our policy responses much less effective than they were. The fourth principle of monetary policy not invalidated by the crisis is the ultimate monetary nature of inflation.

– https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2019/html/ecb.sp191112_1~f304b47e14.en.html  3/9  Mechanism (SSM) in 2014, the Banco de España’s supervisory role was integrated into a new institutional framework with the European Central Bank at its core. I will come back to this function later on. Some lessons on central bank independence Let me share with you some reflections about central bank independence nowadays. This will be in the form of five lessons which, in my view, should be kept in mind when thinking about central bank independence, particularly at the current juncture of seemingly tamed inflation but with difficulties in achieving price stability objectives in some advanced economies. 1. Institutional settings matter First, I would state that independence, to be effective, must rest on a robust legal and institutional framework. Independence must be formally recognised in all of its relevant dimensions: namely, at the institutional, functional, personal and financial levels. This is the case in the euro area, where the Maastricht Treaty4 provided the appropriate framework; but unfortunately it is not the case in other regions, thus making the task of central banks much more complicated. 2. The need to deliver Second, the main reason for central bank independence is a utilitarian one: independence is an instrument to enhance effectiveness in order to achieve agreed objectives in the general interest, such as price or financial stability. The social value of central bank independence is thus inextricably linked to the effectiveness of its policies.
The Riksbank and Finansinspektionen cooperate in the analysis of the mortgage survey, but these random samples entail a small selection and only capture the new loans granted by the banks. There is thus a need to go one step further to see how the debts are distributed and thus how large the risks in the entire banking system are, not merely those in the newly-granted loans. Another factor that affects household debt is residential construction. Not enough housing is being built in metropolitan regions to keep up with the growth in population. This naturally affects both housing prices and household debt and is a long-term problem that should be managed but that neither monetary policy nor macroprudential policy can affect. Developments during the summer While waiting for macroprudential policy to be established, we are continuing to work on our monetary policy analysis in the way I have described and at the beginning of September it will be time for a new repo-rate decision. Since we made our assessment in July new information has been published that we will analyse and make an overall assessment of at our meeting in September, but I shall now summarise what has happened so far. Clearer guidance about future monetary policy During the summer the financial markets have largely focused on expectations of future monetary policy, in particular how the Federal Reserve is expected to act in the coming period.

This shows what enormous costs the global financial crisis has entailed, not only in the form of capital injections to international banks and governments, but also in the form of loss of growth and welfare. In the United States, conditions for a continued recovery were good, although growth was expected to be slow this year. There were several signs that households would soon have reduced their debts to more sustainable levels, at the same time as the housing market continued to improve, with rising housing prices and increased turnover. We therefore assessed that GDP in the United States will grow by just over 3 per cent on average in 2014 and 2015. The economic prospects for other regions looked rather mixed. In China, the high growth had slowed down at the beginning of 2013, while Japan had showed some positive signals after the new stimulus package. The United Kingdom and Denmark showed weak growth, partly due to problems in the housing market, while Norway was assessed to have somewhat higher resource utilisation than normal. All in all, the economies in the countries important to the Swedish economy were expected to be weaker than normal this year, and then to gradually improve. Gradually brighter growth prospects in Sweden In July we pointed out that the weak developments in the euro area in particular affect the Swedish economy, partly through low demand for Swedish exports and investment.
The first thing I should say is that the effort has to be shared, not only by monetary authorities and governments, but also notably by the institutions themselves. The monetary authorities have, in recent months, mediated to a greater extent in the provision of liquidity to the financial system, also granting it at longer maturities and in other currencies, such as the US dollar and Swiss Franc. The Eurosystem has firmly committed itself to strengthening this line of action, and has in fact undertaken to grant the liquidity that institutions may require, without limit as to the amount and at a fixed interest rate, provided that they have the appropriate collateral, the acceptable range of which has been significantly widened. Also, in an unprecedented action, the central banks of the main  BIS Review 133/2008  7  economic areas of the world took the joint decision to cut interest rates by 50 bp on 8 October. Admittedly, this reduction was not immediately passed through to market rates, owing to the crisis on the financial markets. But it is a measure that should be conducive to recovery in the confidence of consumers and businesses in the medium term. For their part, governments have taken various decisions for coordinated action at the international level. The upshot is a set of measures characterised by their exceptional nature and forcefulness, since their objective has been to break the market standstill. The proposal agreed by the European governments covers various areas.

Thus, for financial institutions with insuperable solvency problems, it is proposed that the appropriate rescue solution be implemented. For other institutions, that are solvent, but in difficulties that make a strengthening of their capital advisable, many governments have made capital available to them through shares, or other debt instruments that are, for regulatory purposes, deemed to be capital, such as preference shares. Apart from capital strengthening, and in order that solvent institutions should start to function again as normal and have access once more to financial markets that have remained blocked, government guarantees are going to be granted for issues of bank debt. This latter line of action, i.e. that relating to the availability of liquidity and financing, has been supplemented in the case of Spain by the purchase of highquality assets. Finally, and in order to boost the confidence of depositors, practically all countries have increased the amount covered by deposit guarantee schemes and have proposed reducing the period within which such deposits must, where necessary, be returned to depositors. The Spanish government has prepared a roadmap that envisages all these actions. It will be implemented not so much to alleviate solvency problems, which have not materialised in our country, as to help restore confidence and facilitate institutions’ access to financing. The ultimate aim is to avoid institutions’ financing difficulties being the cause of a reduction in lending to firms and households.