samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
6 Recently, given the expected benefits of achieving greater market efficiency in a single interest rate benchmark regime, as well as the good progress in developing SORA markets, the industry jointly recommended for Singapore’s interest rate markets to adopt a SORA-centered approach.6 In short, a transition from SOR and SIBOR towards SORA. 7 What does this mean for SGD financial markets? First, this shift is an opportunity for us to enhance the overall functionality and efficiency of SGD interest rate markets. For banks, compared to managing both SIBOR and SOR exposures, this approach will reduce basis risks between assets and liabilities based on two different benchmarks, and allow for greater pricing efficiencies. For borrowers, the averaging effect from compounded SORA will provide more stable rates, compared to single-day SOR readings, which is exposed to idiosyncratic market factors, such as quarter- or year-end volatility. By concentrating activities in a single SORA-centered interest rate benchmark, market efficiency will be enhanced. Second, the adoption of a SORA-centered approach is aligned with the direction in key financial centres. This will support the continued participation of global institutions and 2/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  investors in SGD markets. As our banks get ready for SORA adoption, this has synergies with their transition efforts to trade and risk-manage positions denominated in other major currencies, which are similarly shifting to risk-free interest rate benchmarks. 8 The recommendation to shift to a SORA-centred benchmark rate regime has been put out for public consultation.

In addition, to inject greater impetus for market participants to shift from SOR to SORA, MAS, together with the SC-STS, will outline guidance by October this year, on specific deadlines to cease the usage of SOR in new financial products. It is important to provide forward guidance on this matter, so that banks and endcustomers can move in a concerted way towards achieving a smooth transition. This ensures our financial system is well-prepared ahead of end-2021. The forward guidance also matters from a risk management point of view. With the end-2021 deadline approaching, it is not prudent for banks and end-customers to enter into new SOR contracts that mature beyond end-2021. Doing so only compounds the problem that banks and customers will eventually have to deal with. 19 Third, is the need to build a bridge of clear and effective communication between  banks and end-customers. MAS expects banks to engage customers in a clear, timely and transparent manner. This includes raising customer awareness and providing clear explanations on: the global move towards using overnight near risk-free rates, the shift to SORA in the SGD interest rate market, how this benchmark transition will impact them, and how customer spreads over the loan reference rate may have to be adjusted to account for the economic differences between SOR and SORA, given that SORA is an overnight rate that lacks a term and credit risk premium. 20 When engaging customers on benchmark transition, banks should take into account MAS’ Fair Dealing Guidelines.
In the latter part of the 1800s, Norway benefited greatly from free trade and free capital movements and became a relatively prosperous country. Access to international technology, competence and capital were important when the first industrial base was established in the late 19th century. The banking sector also expanded rapidly in this period. As this chart shows, value added in manufacturing and services became more important and increased as a share of total GDP. Employment and value added in agriculture, fisheries etc., on the other hand, declined markedly. By the beginning of the 20th century, the standard of living in Norway did not lag behind that of other European countries. This change in industry structure is necessary and lies at the heart of economic development. The second half of the 19th century also represents a golden age for Norwegian cultural development, with the literature of Henrik Ibsen, the music of Edvard Grieg and later the paintings of Edvard Munch. In the period preceding the First World War, the world experienced a period of strong growth in trade and cross-border capital flows. There were few political barriers and major technological advances fostered growth in trade. Prosperity increased. But this period was interrupted, and in the interwar period protectionism gained ground, with trade barriers and a contraction in international trade. This was combined with deep economic recessions. Economic policy after the Second World War After the Second World War, a strong belief evolved in Norway that the economy could be controlled and steered in the desired direction.

Developments over the past 40 years illustrate that the most important contribution monetary policy can make to sound economic developments in the long term is low and stable inflation. This provides the economy with a nominal anchor. Low and stable inflation makes it easier for economic agents to distinguish changes in relative prices from changes in the general price level. Prices become a more accurate information vehicle. Through the 1990s, inflation generally remained in the interval 1½ – 3½ per cent. When there is confidence in the inflation target, monetary policy can also contribute to stabilising output and employment. Norges Bank operates a flexible inflation targeting regime, so that weight is given to both variability in inflation and variability in output and employment in interest-rate setting. In order to make forecasts for inflation and output, we must also judge how interest rates will develop in the future. If inflation deviates substantially from the target for a period, the interest rate will be set with a view to returning it gradually to the target, so that we avoid substantial variations in output and employment. This chart illustrates the judgement as published in the latest Inflation Report. Past experience indicates that expectations as to future inflation remain stable even if inflation varies somewhat as long as the interest rate is used actively to curb the effects. Monetary policy cannot finetune economic developments, but it can prevent the largest effects from occurring when the economy is exposed to disturbances.
At the same time, households’ savings were at a high level in 2002, which means that there may be some scope to increase consumption despite the restraining effects. Altogether, I believe there is also reason for a downward revision of the estimate of the Swedish growth rate over the coming years. The expected upturn is assessed to be somewhat superficial. This also assumes that the Iraq conflict does not develop in a way that will seriously deteriorate future prospects. The shaping of monetary policy A decisive factor in the shaping of monetary policy in future is the total picture of inflation prospects. A slightly more subdued growth in demand both in Sweden and abroad is expected to lead to capacity utilisation being slightly less strained. At the same time, energy prices have pushed up inflation. However, the Riksbank’s assessment is that the upturn in inflation is temporary and that there is  reason to expect lower inflation as early as the late spring and summer. Although, as I said earlier, this assumes that those setting prices and wages do not attempt to compensate themselves for the temporary price rise. All in all, it is a question of balancing the risks of, for instance, a weaker growth in the economy, against the risk that the upturn in inflation will have contagion effects. This is what the Executive Board must do at its monetary policy meeting on 17 March.

Given these conditions, when the signals of a recovery became clearer at the beginning of 2002, the Riksbank elected to raise its steering interest rate on two occasions during the spring, by a total of 0.5 percentage points to 4.25 per cent. These increases should also be regarded in the light of the fact that inflation was still at a high level then and risked having a negative effect on inflation expectations. During the spring the rate of price increase turned back towards the target of 2 per cent as forecast. As an external analyst my assessment differed slightly from that of the Riksbank. This applied to both the international picture, where it was uncertain whether a turnaround had actually taken place, and resource utilisation in Sweden and the risk of tension that could cause rising inflation. I interpreted the high rate of wage increase that we had then as a delayed effect of an overheated labour market during 2000 and part of 2001. Shortages on the labour market had eased considerably in spring 2002. In the services sector, as in construction, capacity utilisation had fallen significantly, which indicated that wage increases would gradually become more subdued. I therefore perceived the inflation risk as less evident and did not see any immediate need for raising the interest rate. It is clear that the inflation risk the Riksbank seemed to see declined as unease on the financial markets grew in the wake of bankruptcies and corporate scandals in the USA.
It will be interesting to follow whether Swedish banks, card issuers and telecom operators will further develop this payment method, for example by means of real-time payments 9 initiated from a mobile phone. Real-time payments are already available in the UK. The British company VocaLink has introduced Faster Payments, a service that processes payments in real time. VocaLink has also been commissioned by the Swedish payment system BGC to take over the operation and development of its system. As part of this work, BGC and VocaLink have also examined the possibility of introducing Faster Payments in Sweden. The banks are already able to make larger payments in real time via the Riksbank’s RIX system, which is an RTGS 10 system. In order to enable real-time payments for smaller amounts, discussions are currently being held between the Riksbank and BGC concerning the provision of special BGC accounts in the RIX system, which can be used even when the system is closed. The advantage of this solution is that it would make real-time settlement in central bank money possible. This in turn would make it possible for private individuals and companies to make payments to be effected immediately around the clock, seven days a week, using the Internet banks and, perhaps within a few years, even their mobile phones.

A third of the interviewees said that they used their cards despite a charge being levied. On the other hand, there was a lot of opposition to the idea of levying a charge in connection with cash purchases or cash withdrawals. A majority of the interviewees said that in this case they would make more payments by card and reduce the number of cash withdrawals. Common to all types of charge is that they arouse strongly negative reactions. It is not up the Riksbank to decide how the retail trade or the banks should distribute the costs for different forms of payment. But there are considerable gains to be made from a pricing model that better reflects the underlying costs – both for society and the companies. Consumers do not realise that they always pay the costs of their payments. Other countries have begun to charge for expensive cards in the retail sector and for the use of cash in the form of charges for ATM withdrawals. This has affected payment patterns. The introduction of a similar system in Sweden would, in all likelihood, also affect the choice of payments made in this country. Secure card payments However, it is not only the cost that is important for payments, but also security. And this is where card payments have a technical disadvantage in relation to cash payments. Security is important to all types of card transaction, not least when private individuals use cards for payments to different types of webshop, which is becoming increasingly common.
The clearest example was the constitution of institutional protection schemes initially, without which it would have been extremely difficult to finally bring about inter-regional mergers. Today some of these problems have already been resolved thanks to these seven laws that have gradually improved the resolution instruments available at the start of the crisis. For instance, with all savings banks having converted de facto into banks, the current situation differs greatly from that at the start of the process, when the regional governments had the  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  power to veto mergers. And although the perseverance and skill of the Bank’s supervisory arm managed to convince most regional governments of the inevitability of merging with savings banks from other territories, there have been cases in which sounder inter-regional alternatives were turned down for the sake of mergers which, though they were viable in the scenario then foreseen for the Spanish economy and avoided, moreover, more costly interventions for taxpayers, were clearly worse than the mergers suggested by the supervisor. As encouraging examples of Spain’s achievements during these years, I have chosen the progress made in correcting the current-account deficit and in financial restructuring. However, I could have chosen other actions. For instance, the Pension Reform Law has made historically significant changes and, if its sustainability provisions are properly implemented, will enable not only the pensions of our generation, but also of our children’s, to be paid without problem.

Monetary policy responded with a force never previously seen in history. Today, the most likely shocks or downside risks to the economy are very different in their source and impact. They arise from factors such as global trade wars and Brexit. These shocks are different in their duration – more slow-burn than spontaneous conflagration. And they are radically different in their source, as they hit the supply potential of the economy, as much as its demand side. 31  El-Erian (2016). 32  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  32  Consider the effects of Brexit uncertainty on the UK economy. By far the largest effects have been on companies’ investment and productivity. According to our Decision Maker Panel, investment among UK companies is estimated to be between 6-14% lower, and firms’ Total Factor Productivity (TFP) around 2-5% lower.32 These are large negative shocks to the economy’s supply-side potential. They are hits that monetary policy is not itself well-placed to mitigate. There is a risk of people normalising the deviance in monetary policy since the crisis. Around a quarter of adults in the UK working population have never experienced Bank Rate above 1% in their adult lives.33 In these changed circumstances compared with a decade ago, it is important that monetary policy is not a prisoner of its past, that the monetary cavalry are not called at the first whiff of grapeshot, that a dependency culture around monetary policy is not allowed to develop.
This did not prove to be the case. As Jacques de Larosière, the former IMF Managing Director, once remarked, what was supposed to be a system of “peer pressure” too often turned into a system of “peer concessions” or “peer arrangements”. On the whole, the Maastricht framework proved unable to deal adequately with the high degree of economic and financial integration in the euro area. It was not fully understood that sharing a currency means much more than sharing the same monetary policy. It is a commitment to ensuring sound fiscal, economic and financial conditions. Euro area countries largely overlooked the substantial spillover effects that national policy decisions would have on their fellow countries in EMU euro area partners. The ongoing crisis has brought these shortcomings into sharp focus. 3. Short and longer-term solutions to the crisis: going beyond the Maastricht framework  3.1. The ECB’s contribution to resolving the crisis  Let me now turn to Europe’s policy response to the crisis. The EMU framework relies on a strict separation between monetary policy on the one hand, and fiscal and economic policies on the other. The monetary policy function is carried out by the ECB under a clear mandate: maintaining price stability over the medium term in the euro area. To achieve this goal, the ECB has been given full political and operational independence. Since the start of the crisis, the ECB has reacted forcefully. Since 2008, it has lowered its policy rate from 4.25% to 0.75% now.

At their summit in June, EU Member States entered into a political commitment, and the European Commission is now proposing to create a single supervisory mechanism for banks in the euro area and to entrust this task to the ECB. This single supervisory mechanism should be implemented in a way that does not compromise the ECB’s independence and does not constrain monetary policy. It should be complemented by a single regime to wind down failed banks and by a single resolution fund at euro area level. Finally, building a deeper EMU requires a strengthening of democratic legitimacy and accountability. The people of Europe will only accept a further pooling of competences at European level if European policy-makers are subject to high standards of accountability. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The European Parliament, whose representatives are directly elected by citizens, already plays a central role in holding the ECB and other EU institutions to account. As a consequence of deeper economic and political integration in EMU, the euro area will become, in my view, more and more a “political space” in its own right and, as such, it will require proper euro area accountability mechanisms. Political legitimacy is vital to build popular support for further integration. 4. Conclusion  Ladies and Gentlemen, When Robert Schuman drafted the declaration that started the European integration process, he predicted that “Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity”.
This may encourage an excessive demand which, in turn, can only be accommodated through higher expenditure, which then absorbs resources that could otherwise be productively used by the private sector. I think it should by now be clear that enhancing the economy’s competitiveness is in everybody’s interest. As I have suggested, securing this objective requires a number of wide-ranging reforms to the  4  BIS Review 83/2001  labour market, the wage indexing mechanism, the educational system, the social security system, public sector employment levels and bureaucratic procedures, the provision by the State of free goods and services and monopoly practices. These involve making difficult choices between, on the one hand, a status quo that shelters categories of individuals to the detriment of the growth, and indeed the sustainability and livelihood, of the rest of the economy and ultimately even of the sheltered individuals themselves; and, on the other, reforms that may cause pain in the short run, but which could secure the entire community’s livelihood by ensuring the economy’s competitiveness. A shortterm oriented approach would likely lead to bad choices which we and future generations would come to regret. And this brings me to my concluding point, which is in the form of two questions. If there seems to be such a wide consensus regarding the presence of inefficiencies in our economy and about the need to eliminate them, why has Maltese society been so lethargic in undertaking this vital task?

Why did we decide to inject further monetary stimulus into the economy? And how likely is it to be effective? We started quantitative easing in March 2009 in the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, as the UK economy was undergoing its deepest post-war contraction. Bank Rate was almost as low as it could go and further stimulus was necessary to put a floor under demand and get the economy growing again. All told we bought £ billion of gilts during that initial phase of quantitative easing. Quantitative easing essentially involves trading one liability of the state – gilts – for another – monetary claims on the Bank of England. We aim to buy mainly from non-bank private financial institutions, such as pension funds and insurance companies, not from the  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  banks, as is sometimes erroneously claimed 1. When we buy a gilt, we simply credit the bank account of the seller with an appropriate sum. If the seller were indifferent between holding the gilt and holding the associated bank deposit, that is where things would stop. But because deposits tend to yield less than gilts and assets such as corporate bonds and equities, the seller is likely to want to buy some other asset instead. The consequence is upward pressure on the prices of a whole range of assets, including corporate bonds and equities. That increases the availability, and reduces the cost, of finance to corporates.
Ravi Menon: A supervisory push for transition planning and blended finance Opening remarks (virtual) by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Chair of the Network for Greening the Financial System, at the Green Swan conference 2023, Basel, 31 May 2023. *** Ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to join you again at the Green Swan Conference. On behalf of the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), I would like to express our gratitude for the opportunity to co-host this conference with the Bank for International Settlements, the Central Bank of Chile, and the South African Reserve Bank. The world is still not on a transition path that is aligned with the goals of the Paris agreement. According to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we need to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 43% in the next 7 years to reach net zero by 2050. We are now one third of the way through this "critical decade" and nowhere near this target. Emissions are still rising, not falling. We need to convert commitments to plans and plans to outcomes. More countries and corporations are committing to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 so as to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But few have drawn up concrete plans to do so. Without credible transition plans and financing strategies to support them, climate action will be sporadic and ineffective.

All these measures for the support and restructuring of the financial system have proven technically correct, they are well adjusted to Spain’s situation, and they were rapidly designed and approved with broad consensus. Certainly, such characteristics should be applied to other areas so needy of reform, such as the rebalancing of public finances and certain labour market institutions. The need for restructuring has been understood by most of the banks that required this to ensure their viability and soundness in the future, and they have reacted by working on various integration processes. In previous talks I explained the criteria used by the legislator for these processes, and which are those that should prevail: the sufficient reduction of capacity, the soundness of the resulting banks and the minimal use of public funds. These should be the goals both of banks themselves and of all the public authorities intervening in the process. BIS Review 51/2010  1  Along with restructuring, my recent speeches on the financial system have focused on a matter I consider, unquestionably, to be the biggest risk hanging over Spanish credit institutions, especially the least diversified ones: mass unemployment. Unless a reform of our labour institutions that tackles this most serious and most Spanish problem with resolve is approved promptly and with the widest possible consensus, many of our credit institutions will suffer the consequences: more bad debts, less business, higher public indebtedness and, consequently, dearer wholesale funding, etc.