samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
William C Dudley: Student loans and household finance Opening remarks by Mr William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the Convening on Student Loan Data Conference, New York City, 4 March 2015. *  *  *  Andrew Haughwout, Joseph Tracy and Wilbert van der Klaauw assisted in preparing these remarks. Good morning. I’m happy to welcome you to the New York Fed for this workshop that is intended to increase our understanding of student debt and how it affects individuals, their families and the economy. I am delighted to see such widespread and growing interest in this important topic. Making continued progress on understanding these issues will depend critically on efforts to identify and address existing data gaps that hamper its study. I am particularly happy to welcome Deputy Secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin, who has spoken frequently and eloquently in the past about the need for improvements in student loan servicing and debt collection, the macroeconomic consequences of increased student debt, and the need for better data and analysis. I look forward to her remarks today. Before I make some specific comments on student debt, let me take a step back and say a few words on household finance more generally. As always, what I say represents my own views and not necessarily those of the Federal Open Market Committee or the Federal Reserve System.1 There are several reasons the New York Fed has increased its focus on household finance.

It was compiled using your perspective as a school student, as an elder of the village, as a hard working stay at home mother and as a danceloving-father when he gets his paycheck without his wife knowing; or to put simply, as an everyday Samoan citizen. MoneyPACIFIC has produced the Guide and made it easy to understand, and made it accessible to everyone so that you can plan, measure, prioritise or just to be aware of how  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  much you are spending for everyday necessities. Again the intension is not to dictate how much your wallet is crying but to ensure that your wallet is happy to deliver a well sought out purpose for you and your families. To round up my remarks, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the New Zealand and Australian Governments for the support afforded to the MoneyPACIFIC iniative as we have benefitted greatly from the work it carries out for the Pacific communities. I would like to thank each and every one of you for making the time to attend today’s MoneyPACIFIC Money Guide launch.
Global companies may see their chains of supply disrupted by strikes in far away lands. We have no control over these events and no possible way to guess where the next catastrophe – natural or manmade – will occur. Let me return to global finance. I have said before that the world today is less likely to witness the recurrent crises that afflicted so many countries in the 1980s and 1990s. I am convinced that this is the case. By choosing a flexible exchange regime, they have chosen a more resilient system, and many of them are pursuing sensible macroeconomic policies that should help them navigate turbulent waters more safely than in the past. But I am also convinced that not all countries are equally well prepared to cope with free capital mobility. For those countries with weak institutions and underdeveloped financial sectors, globalisation means more rather than less vulnerability. International financial integration may look like a blessing when foreign capital flows in, but it will look like a curse when foreign investors head for the door. The present monetary order is more resilient than the previous regime of fixed exchange rates, but crises can still occur, and if they occur they are more likely to be extensive and spread rapidly. And globalisation, of course, goes far beyond financial integration. Global companies are located all over the world. They have to deal with different legal frameworks, with different business cycles, with different political realities.

Mojmír Hampl: Monetary policy and the current macroeconomic environment in the developed world Speech by Mr Mojmír Hampl, Vice Governor of the Czech National Bank, at the Deutsche Bank Prague Client Conference, Prague, 25 October 2016. * * * Ladies and gentlemen, Good afternoon. Thank you very much for inviting me again to your flagship event. It is my utmost pleasure to be here. Actually, this is the third time in a row I have had the chance to speak here. In 2014 my topic was, quite expectedly, the exchange rate commitment and its introduction in November 2013. I recently looked at my slides from 2014, and I would not change anything about them. Only the timing of the exit has changed – quite radically, I have to admit. The following year, 2015, the obvious topic was a comparison of the Czech and Swiss cases. This was especially interesting given the abrupt and completely surprising Swiss exit from their exchange rate commitment in January 2015. I thought to myself: “What would be a natural candidate for this year?” I put my mind to work and suddenly a topic appeared: our own Czech exit, our own way of abandoning the exchange rate commitment, which is almost three years old now. However, I somehow feel that the exit will be a key topic for your questions and comments. So, I eventually decided to speak about something else, something more abstract and may be a bit more general: the constraints on monetary policy in the developed world.
The first is through transparency in our macro-economic policies - in the provision of reliable data, and through clarity in both our monetary and fiscal objectives, in our analysis and in our decision-making, so that you are not exposed to wholly unpredictable behaviour and can make your own considered judgements as to how far our policies are likely to succeed. Your judgements, of course, can in turn have an important bearing on our policy decisions. Secondly we can help in providing robust infrastructures - and I have in mind not just the financial infrastructure, though sound financial systems are clearly hugely important, but much more widely the legal framework, accounting and disclosure standards, and governance structures, for example, as they apply throughout the private sector, so that again you can base your assessment of corporate credits on a fuller understanding of the risks. We have been making very considerable efforts in different international fora in recent years to establish codes and standards of best practice in all these areas which can be universally applied, but I don't need to remind you how far we all still have to go. And thirdly, in relation to sovereign debt, I think that the international community could, and should, do more to clarify the scale of official support that a country running into difficulties might reasonably look for, and the kind of conditions that it might expect to apply.

This emphasis on macro-economic stability - and sustainability - has served to focus attention increasingly on the supply-side of our economies - on structural reform and supply-side flexibility - as the key to raising the underlying rate of growth which our economies can maintain. And that is the second general trend I'd like to touch upon. It has meant increasing reliance upon free markets - again both nationally and internationally - to allocate productive resources to where they can most effectively contribute to meeting demand. The collapse of communism is a dramatic example, but the promotion of free trade through the WTO and of the free movement of capital through the IMF, or the spread of privatisation and deregulation all around the world, not least in financial markets, can all be seen as aspects of essentially the same thing. This emphasis on free markets cannot mean "anything goes". Public policy concerns, of course, remain; and we need to have rules to ensure that competition is fair as well as free. But it does mean less centralised, bureaucratic, intervention telling people what they may or may not do, leaving them much greater freedom to do what they choose provided they meet the necessary nationally or internationally agreed standards. The resulting intensification of competition can, of course, be uncomfortable for existing producers - and can lead to protectionist pressures at the micro-economic or even the national level - so we still have a long way to go.
We reviewed these issues related to the development of the national payment infrastructure during the panel discussion, and my colleagues answered all the questions and spoke on our plans. This is really a crucial area. Winding up, I would like to say that we will continue our efforts to ensure price and financial stability, maintain the resilience of the financial sector, and enhance financial inclusion. Despite the pandemic, this topic also remained relevant for us since people even in small localities should have access to basic services. We have achieved significant progress in each of these areas. Today, I would like to thank the Seventh State Duma for the really enormous contribution to the advancement of financial laws. You have adopted many essential laws. I would like to mention a few very complicated major legislative changes enabling us to develop a modern financial sector meeting the needs of Russian people and companies. In 2017, the State Duma approved the law on banks’ financial resolution. Without this law, it would have been impossible to avoid losses for households and businesses that kept their money with several very large but, unfortunately, hopelessly impaired banks. I would like to reiterate that when we allocated funds for their resolution, this was not to provide financial aid to the banks’ owners and management, but rather to protect the funds of the banks’ depositors. Russia has completed the reform in compulsory motor third-party liability insurance. There were many discussions and doubts about it.

However, as the economy bounces back, such a large-scale programme is now mostly pushing up housing prices, and this rise is not covered by the subsidised interest rate. Nor does it improve the affordability of housing for people, while the main goal is to increase the affordability of housing for people. We needed a shift to more targeted programmes addressing social issues, rather than focused on boosting construction in general. This is exactly why the parameters of the subsidised programme were changed, as was announced by President Putin. The next measure is reducing people’s and companies’ costs for covering their daily financial needs. In other words, this is not only loan restructuring and new loans which largely offset plummeting incomes, but also lower costs in the financial sector. We introduced a free limit of 100,000 rubles for P2P money transfers in the Faster Payments 2/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  System and obliged all banks to provide convenient access to the FPS in their applications. In addition, we limited acquiring fees to reduce companies’ costs related to cashless payments. This was a temporary measure, but it helped companies save 1.5% of their non-cash flows. Accommodative monetary policy and, accordingly, lower deposit rates made people opt for more profitable instruments in the stock market. Russia recorded a surge in the number of retail investors. As of the current moment, almost 13 million people have entered the stock market. They are mostly newcomers in the stock market, and we need to protect their rights.
d. Finally, there are some additional risks to take into account: Reputational risk if CBDC is not widely adopted by the public, or if privately issued currencies gain more traction; Financial exclusion of the “nontech” persons? Even though many CBDC experiences are from developed economies such as Canada and Sweden, there are also some experiments in developing economies such as China, Colombia and Uruguay. For emerging economies, where persons tend to be financially underserved, is CBDC the most efficient way to solve this problem? Other alternatives, such as fast payments solutions, can be evaluated. Page 9 of 11  Central Bank of Chile September 2019  In conclusion: a. Blockchain technology implies opportunities and concerns that should be carefully addressed: Which is the goal of technology adoption? b. This is especially important in the case of CDBC: financial inclusion, response to new forms of e-money, facilitate wholesale payments, faster payments, cross-border payments? c. CDBC does not necessarily need blockchain. Our understanding is that DLT or Blockchain technologies are more useful when several participants of a given system need to have access to a ledger of information and/or when participants do not necessarily trust each other (and therefore proof of work requirements make the register almost immutable). However, when a Central Bank issues its currency -- either in physical or digital format -- trust should be a given. Also is far from obvious that all market participants should have access to sensitive information such as all transactions in which the CBDC was used.

As a consequence of our first hands-on experience with this technology, some questions which are still unanswered were raised during the process: a. How could this primary market be integrated with the secondary market? Could this same model be useful? b. There is the need for further analysis of our legal framework and identify possible gaps (the PoC scope only has a high-level legal analysis). c. When will this technology be mature enough to be considered as an alternative for critical systems? Now, I will narrow the topic of blockchain to Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), which is the focus of our panel, and talk about the motivations, benefits and concerns. To begin with, it is important to understand that CBDCs are not new, and Central Banks have been issuing CBDCs since the first RTGS systems were around. These are the commercial banks’ reserves held in the RTGS systems. Even though this form of CBDC is not blockchain based, it is important to mention that the CBDC concept is not a novelty. Page 5 of 11  Central Bank of Chile September 2019  That being said, the central banks need to have a clear motivation to issue a CBDC. These motivations will be different and therefore the CBDCs will be different in their design, benefits and concerns. One way of categorizing CBDCs is by their access: general purpose, or retail, and wholesale.
Yet, inflation remains the main concern for our fellow citizens - and in particular the most vulnerable among them - and for us. Admittedly, it has started to stabilise, or even to fall back to 8.6% in the euro area at the end of January in the context of a slowdown in energy prices. However, the first figures for February published yesterday for Spain and France call for vigilance, and for perseverance in our monetary action: inflation persists, for France at 7.2% according to the European Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices, at 6.2% according to the national price index. According to our forecasts, it should reach its peak in the first half of 2023 and could have halved by the end of the year. But that is still too high, and core inflation, i.e. excluding energy and food, is still rising and amounts to 4.5% for France according to our estimates. The nature of inflation has indeed changed beyond the initial energy crisis: it is not only  Page 2 sur 5 higher but also more widespread, not just imported but also domestic, not just linked to a transitory supply shock but also potentially persistent. In light of this, no one can deny that monetary policy can and must respond. Here, I would like to emphasise not only our forecast, but also our commitment to bring inflation down to 2% by the end of 2024-25.

At the same time, business start-ups remain at a record level, at over 400,000 excluding microentrepreneurs. Similarly, we do not have any general concerns about the reimbursement of SGLs. Since February 2022, we have received 671 requests, covering less than 0.1% of the total number of SGLs. Of the EUR 143 billion that have helped close to 700,000 businesses, EUR 46 billion have already been repaid. And today, over 95% of businesses are repaying their SGL correctly. The Banque de France's Credit Mediation remains mobilised in each of your départements to address the most difficult cases, within the framework of the "local agreement" renewed for 2023. Regarding households, growth in housing loans still amounted to +5.3% in December (and +5.1% in January) in the context of a gradual rise in the average rate, which then stood at 2.05%,2 compared with 2.9% on average in the euro area and 3.5% in Germany. In France, housing credit remains the cheapest,  1 2  Business failures | Banque de France (banque-france.fr) Excl. fees and insurance; Loans to individuals — December 2022, Banque de France, 3 February 2023  Page 4 sur 5 most abundant and safest in Europe - with 97% of outstanding loans at fixed rates. Source: ECB Of course, we have come out of the years of exceptionally easy credit. Nevertheless, the financing needs of the real economy are still largely met, thanks to the soundness of French banks.
The solvency ratio across the banking sector would diminish from 17.1% to 14.6%. VI.2. Realistic solutions  The NBR advocates the implementation of customised solutions, negotiated between the parties directly involved in the credit agreement (i.e. the credit institution and the borrower). The solutions take into account the specifics of CHF-denominated loans, in particular, and FX loans in general on the Romanian market and combine: (i) free market principles, (ii) state support for vulnerable household groups, and (iii) the carrying out by the NBR of its legal tasks on safeguarding financial stability. The realistic solutions are complementary and each bank may apply an adequate mix tailored to each individual case. They are equally valid for loans in other currencies as well  BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  and may be optimised on a case-by-case basis. The solutions which may be deemed as both realistic and balanced include those whose outcome is keeping the domestic currency equivalent of monthly instalments of CHF-denominated loans close to the December 2014 level, with several options available to the parties to credit agreements: A. Converting CHF-denominated loans into lei at the market exchange rate and/or granting a discount on the debt service amount – which may be tantamount to a conversion at an exchange rate below the market rate  B.

Banking liberalisation The second example of our measured liberalisation approach is the opening of our retail banking sector, with simultaneous steps to help strengthen local Singapore banks. Our starting position was different from most countries. Foreign banks (mostly British) dominated the Singapore banking system when we gained independence. For three decades, the Government has protected the local banks, especially in the retail business, to enable them to expand their market share. We believed that strong and well-managed local banks, with a significant share of the home market, were critical to the resilience and stability of our financial system. We wanted to be sure that in a crisis, we could count on major institutions whose long term interests were aligned with the Singapore economy. We still hold this view. Like banks in other Asian countries, most of our local banks started as family banks, and are still run by their controlling shareholders. But strict supervision enabled them to grow into sound, wellcapitalised institutions, free of the problems of improper and imprudent lending to related companies. By Asian standards, the local banks were exceptionally well run. But compared to the best international banks, they lagged in many areas: size, technology, expertise, range and quality of service, and shareholders’ returns. We could not afford to let Singapore banks fall behind, or deprive the rest of our economy of worldclass financial services. In any case, because of globalisation and cross-border competition, a protectionist policy was becoming less and less tenable.
Financial institutions are providing a range of retirement solutions. Insurers are selling products that encourage regular savings, in order to receive a steady stream of income during one's retirement years. According to Life Insurance Association, the number of such policies taken up last year in Singapore increased by about 50%. There are also unit trusts that provide a regular monthly dividend. MAS has issued the Singapore Savings Bonds, or SSB in short, to provide a flexible risk-free investment option for investors to diversify their portfolio for retirement. Last year, we doubled the individual limit for holding SSBs to $ due to the increased appetite for safe investments. Across Asia, the focus is shifting from pure wealth creation to wealth preservation and wealth bequest. Succession planning and intergenerational wealth transfer have moved up the agenda. A growing number of affluent families are consolidating their wealth through trusts and family offices, to optimise investment and legacy planning. Singapore is an ideal place for families to set up such structures. There is political and economic stability, a clear regulatory regime, a comprehensive network of tax treaties to avoid double taxation, and a robust ecosystem of professional services. The number of family offices in Singapore has increased four times between 2016 and 2018. We continue to see strong interest from families to set up in Singapore 4/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  MAS is working with the industry to strengthen Singapore’s value proposition as a centre of excellence for managing family wealth.

Many observers fear that the forthcoming ruling by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court will impose strict limits on OMTs, and that this could trigger turbulence. How big is that risk? I don’t know how the judges in Karlsruhe will rule either, and I have great respect for the court – from one independent institution to another. I think, though, that the views of market participants in New York, Frankfurt and Hong Kong are quite clear: the OMTs are fine the way they are, without any limitations being imposed. Is it really realistic to assume that the mere announcement of OMTs will be sufficient in the longer term? Jens Weidmann, President of the Deutsche Bundesbank, has said that one lesson from the crisis is the fact that announcements will be tested. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  The principle of deterrence also applied in the cold war. But what matters is that we are completely ready to act. When the necessary conditions have been met, we will take a monetary policy decision. We’ve had extremely low interest rates worldwide for a long period of time, combined with unprecedented non-standard measures. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is warning that, this time, the exit will be even more difficult than in the past. Is it actually possible to exit this situation without turbulence? Otmar Issing said that an exit was a question not of technical possibilities, but of political will. This exit will certainly be more complex on account of the non-standard instruments.