samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Technical know-how alone is not enough. Our communication strategy should be guided by three principles: To say it correctly, to say it well, to say it differently. This will require an astute awareness of relationships from a social, economic and political standpoint. Through this understanding, we will be able to articulate our ideas or positions more clearly and coherently. The use of multiple platforms, such as social media, instant messaging services, or public online forums will offer new possibilities. Ralph Waldo Emerson, an essayist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century, once said, “In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.” This analogy is appropriate in our current environment. Responding to a dynamic environment in a timely manner will require the intuition of skill and knowledge. Many professions will see a dramatic shift in skill sets required over the coming decade, and the accountancy profession will be no exception. Given finite resources, public policy is likely to be overwhelmed by a sense of cynicism or pessimism. This is where public sector accountants may offer a breakthrough by taking on a more strategic role. As financial data expands in scope, volume and complexity, operational efficiency demands a new set of technical skills and knowledge. Complex problem solving, critical thinking, coordinating with others, service orientation, cognitive flexibility, just to name a few. Amid new international accounting standards, rising trends in financial technology and the attendant changes required, accountants are becoming among the most flexible and multi-skilled individuals.

This kind of speculation has likely pushed up house prices in above all Australia, but presumably also in the UK, the US and Ireland. BIS Review 88/2005  1  Another reason why the developments in the housing market and households’ high debt levels are unlikely to pose a threat to financial stability is that households’ ability to service debt is good. On the whole, households are judged to have financial margins that enable them to cope with rises in interest rates or a temporary loss in income without encountering payment difficulties. In addition, the banks’ earnings are good. Past experience also shows that it is unusual for the household sector to cause the banks’ particularly large loan losses. This is fairly natural in one sense. The decision to invest in a home is one of the most important a household makes, and when the decision has been taken the household is often prepared to make rather big sacrifices to meet its obligations. It is worth noting that during the crisis years at the beginning of the 1990s, losses on loans to the household sector accounted for only 7 per cent of the banks’ total loan losses. Instead, it was the commercial property market that accounted for the major losses in the banking system during the property crisis. This, too, has fairly natural explanations. An office building differs from a home in the sense that interest expenditure is intended to be covered by rental income, i.e. income that is generated by the investment itself.
68  That is more than counter-balanced, however, by productivity performance in the lower tail. This tail appears to be both materially longer and lower than the UK’s main international competitors (Chart 8). Moreover, this lower tail has lengthened by more over the past decade than in those other countries. 69  The already slower  rates of technological diffusion in the UK, by international standards, have slowed further over the recent past. These diffusion dynamics are important to productivity and living standards. The wider dispersion and longer lower tail of companies helps explain the UK’s roughly 30% productivity gap with, say, France and Germany. And the widening dispersion in productivity performance between the upper and lower tails of companies helps explain the UK’s relatively poorer productivity performance than these countries over the past decade. These diffusion dynamics are also consistent, or at least are not inconsistent, with the dawning of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. This will have had the effect of shifting outward the technology and productivity frontier for pioneer firms. There is clear evidence of that having happening. Productivity among firms in the top 1% of the distribution grew, on average, by 8% per year over the ten years to 2014. The most-productive 0.1% of firms exhibited 12% annual growth. 70  As a point of comparison, the lower 99% tail of firms have experienced annual average productivity growth of less than 1% over the same period.

I feel the need at this ceremony to pay tribute to all deserving persons of history, who left inerasable trace in the development and building of the institution and in the establishment of the monetary system of the country. Here I would mention Dr. Todor Mirovski, as the first director of the Regional Office of the National Bank of FNRY of the then National Republic of Macedonia. Then, Mr. Aleksandar Bogoev who succeeded him in office shortly afterwards, and his successor, Mr. Trajan Ivanovski. I would also pay tribute to Mr. Bozidar Dare-Dzambaz who served as a finance minister at the time of establishing the central banking in the Republic of Macedonia. To Mr. Vladimir Polezhinoski – Polezhina as a Macedonian representative of the body that adopted the Decision that made the dinar a Yugoslav currency. To academician Ksente Bogoev, who also served as a governor of the National Bank of Yugoslavia. To the Governors of the National Bank in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, Mr. Stojan Kjosev, Andon Makraduli and Risto Filipovski. I would pay special tribute to the first prime minister of independent Macedonia, academician Nikola Kljusev, who was one of the main protagonists not only of the monetary independence, but also as a maker of other decisions of that time, which meant completion of statehood. There is also the academician Petar Hristo Ilievski, known as the man who gave the name of the Macedonian denar.
But these numbers are still low for the bond market to play a meaningful role in contributing to financial stability and enhancing the efficiency of financial intermediation. A number of regional initiatives are currently underway to accelerate this development. Under the APEC forum, Hong Kong, China, joined by Thailand, Korea and the World Bank are leading the APEC Initiative on the Development of Securitisation and Credit Guarantee Markets. The ASEAN+3 forum has initiated an array of studies under the Asian Bond Market Initiative (ABMI) while the EMEAP Central Banks have already launched Asian Bond Fund I and are now working on Asian Bond Fund II, which aims at channelling a small portion of the very sizeable official reserves held by the Asian economies back into the region. Mr President, the Bank is uniquely placed to lend support to the region in these efforts, in three ways. First, the Bank can enlarge its technical assistance programme on capital market projects. In this connection, we are pleased to note the assistance the Bank is already providing to the bond market initiatives that I have mentioned. Secondly, the Bank can structure its own debt issuance programme with this objective in mind, as exemplified by Bank’s current efforts to issue local currency bonds in China and Thailand. Thirdly, the Bank can encourage borrowers to issue bonds in conjunction with ADB-financed projects through the provision of partial credit guarantees. Thank you, Mr President. 2  BIS Review 30/2004

The problems were the result of a development that had been going on for a long time, and even though it had been a cause for concern for almost as long, we had not been able to get to grips with it. Perhaps the main concern was the strong domestic inflation trend with price and wage spirals that collided with attempts to maintain a fixed  *I would like to thank Mikael Apel for his work on this speech, Eric Leeper for fruitful discussions, Johan Almen-  berg, Roberto Billi, Charlotta Edler, Bul Ekici, Mattias Erlandsson, Jesper Hansson, Åsa Olli Segendorf, Marianne Sterner and Anders Vredin for valuable comments and Calum McDonald for translation. The views expressed in this speech are my own and are not necessarily shared by the other members of the Executive Board. 1 [17]  exchange rate, and therefore led to recurring cost crises and devaluations. Another reason, which was partly connected to this, was that fiscal policy was often too expansionary, with rapidly rising public spending and tendencies towards structural deficits as a result. In addition, there was a deregulation of the credit market in the mid-1980s, which would turn out to lead to greater problems than were anticipated when the reform was implemented.1 In the early 1990s, these and other ingredients contributed to another domestic cost crisis, which also coincided with a financial crisis largely caused by excessive lending to households and companies. Unemployment rose sharply and public finances deteriorated dramatically.
8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Figure 3 GDP, domestic demand and components (annual change, percent)  9  21  Domestic demand  6  14  Consumption GDP  3  7  0  0 Gross fixed capital formation (right axis)  -3  -7  -6  -14 12  13  14  15  Source: Central Bank of Chile.

5 There are three important enablers: a culture of fostering customers’ trust in the financial industry; strong market discipline that incentivises right behaviours; and adequate and timely public disclosures of pertinent information. Engendering trust in the financial industry 6 Let me start with the theme of trust. It was a decade ago that we had the Global Financial Crisis. With a suite of regulatory reforms that followed, the global financial system is generally safer and stronger. Just being safe is not good enough. A vibrant financial sector must be able to support the smooth functioning of credit and money flows. It should meet the savings, investment and insurance protection needs of the people. Investors on their part want to have the confidence that they are treated fairly by financial institutions and that their savings are safe. This is why building trust in our financial institutions is so important. That trust goes beyond doing what is legally required, to include what is good and what is right. 7 Some of you may have seen recent reports on the Royal Commission review in Australia that investigated widespread misconduct issues in its banking industry. Financial institutions in Singapore are generally well regarded. But we have our share of malpractices too, such as the mis-selling of Lehman Minibonds and other structured or complex products. 8 Financial institutions have a duty to act in the best interests of their customers. However, in our supervisory reviews, we have uncovered lapses in conduct.
Bwalya K E Ng’andu: Benefits, problems and challenges associated with credit cards Remarks by Dr Bwalya K E Ng’andu, Deputy Governor (Operations) of the Bank of Zambia, at the launch of the Access Bank Zambia Limited Visa International Credit Card, Lusaka, 19 June 2013. *  *  *  The Board Chairman, Access Bank Zambia Limited, Mr. Caleb Mulenga; Access Bank PLC Executive Director – Subsidiaries, Mr. Tek Koroye; Access Bank Zambia Limited Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Jekwu Ozoemene; Members of the Diplomatic Corps; Government Officials; Members of the Press; Ladies and Gentlemen It is indeed a pleasure for me to be here this evening to join Access Bank on this important and auspicious occasion marking the launching of the Access Zambia Limited Visa International Credit Card. Through you Chairman, I wish to extend our congratulations to the Bank for this commendable addition to your range of products and services. Undoubtedly, this will go some distance in responding to demands and needs of customers who are looking to benefit from this product with its combination of credit and the application of technology in payment for goods and services. While acknowledging this initiative, I will fall short of presenting the introduction of a credit card service as cutting edge technology, because it is not. As you are aware credit cards have a long established history of extensive usage in many countries around the world, including a number of African countries.

The longer you wait to settle, the more money you will owe since interest will be charged each month on the unsettled balance. Cardholders therefore need to be careful not use the card liberally. If you think, the card makes you throw caution to the wind as you spend; you might consider leaving the card alone. The possibility of falling into a debt trap is another real danger that cardholders need to watch out for. Interest rates on credit cards can be high. In some countries interest rates on credit cards can be as high as ten times what banks are willing to give on deposit balances. We will keep our sight on what rates apply in the market as a central bank and may even intervene if necessary. But the responsibility of avoiding falling into a debt trap lies primarily with the cardholder. It is prudent to remember that whilst a credit card can make your life easier and can be a wonderful tool for facilitating payments, if you do not use it wisely, it will become a massive financial burden for you. We must learn some lessons from how failure to keep track of purchases and the uncontrollable propensity to spend outside budget, has led to the financial ruin of many people in the developed economies. The last risk, I want to talk about is pertinent to both cardholders and issuers of cards – and that is the risk of credit card frauds.
That reduces the cost of borrowing across the board, from mortgages, to business loans, to corporate debt. Our securities purchases are an important reason why longer-term interest rates are at or near post-World War II lows. In addition, we’ve publicly announced that we expect to keep the federal funds rate exceptionally low at least through late 2014. This guidance tells investors that short-term interest rates are likely to stay low for a long time, which then gets passed through to longerterm rates. Of course, our statements are not an absolute commitment to keep rates near zero. It’s simply the FOMC’s current judgment about the best future course of policy. If the economic outlook changes, then the guidance could change too. Let me emphasize that the unusually stimulatory monetary policy now in place won’t last forever. Eventually we will cut back the size of our securities holdings and raise our unusually low interest rate target. We’ve thought hard and communicated frequently about how to exit from these special conditions.6 The key point is that the economy currently needs an  5  See Williams (2012) for a discussion of the Fed’s mandate and the implications for the conduct of monetary policy. 6  See the discussion of exit strategy in the minutes for the June 2011 FOMC meeting (Board of Governors 2011). 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  extraordinarily supportive policy. But we’ll reverse course when the time comes to remove this support.

The Joint Staff Report on the Treasury flash event, the Treasury Department’s subsequent request for information, and the work that has followed identified a number of changes that have reshaped the Treasury market over the last decade. These include the increased electronification of trading, the changing nature of intermediation and liquidity, and the entry of new market participants. In light of these changes, the Joint Staff Report highlighted four important priority areas for additional work. In taking these efforts forward, we have benefited from ongoing engagement with market participants and other members of the public. The first priority is gatherings like this one, where both private and official sector participants come together to study and share views on what the market’s evolution means for its structure and liquidity. Understanding how the Treasury market is evolving can enable us to be good stewards of its trajectory. A second priority is improving the availability of data on activities in the cash market. After the historic volatility that occurred on October 15, 2014, the official sector had limited access to transaction data. This resulted in a months-long lag in the process to gather and analyze data from the event. The introduction this year of transaction data reporting by broker-dealers to the official sector is thus a critical step forward. While closing this data gap for the official sector is an important milestone, work remains to ensure that the scope of collection is sufficiently complete and dynamic to maintain coverage of relevant firms, as intermediaries and liquidity providers evolve.
Nina Stoyanova: Opening of “Fintech Summit” Conference Statement by Ms Nina Stoyanova, Deputy Governor and Head of the Banking Department of the Bulgarian National Bank, at the opening of the “Fintech Summit” Conference, organised by Capital newspaper, video conference, 30 March 2021. * * * I would like to welcome you to the annual Fintech Summit organised by Capital Weekly. Until a few years ago the term ‘fintech’ was mainly associated with small innovative companies that by using digital technologies were trying to redefine the provision of financial services and find their own place on the market. Today and even more after the watershed year of 2020, we can assert that technologies and innovations have become an intrinsic feature of the financial sector and a trigger for its rapid developing. Recent trends show expanding cooperation and technical exchange between banks and fintech companies, which is to the benefit of clients, and results in better, faster and more secure services. The coronavirus crisis and expected recovery act as an impetus for further modernisation and digitalisation in response to consumers’ demand and changes in society. In this context, the ambitions for accelerated reforms were also confirmed by the European Commission in the ‘EU Digital Finance Strategy’ and the ‘EU Retail Payments Strategy’ published in September 2020. Almost half a year after their launch, we can already note the first concrete steps in the implementation of the goals set in these strategies.

Andrew Bailey: Financial stability – objective and resolution Speech by Mr Andrew Bailey, Executive Director of the Bank of England, at the Pro Manchester Business and Professional Services Conference, Manchester, 17 March 2011. *  *  *  Thank you for inviting me to speak at Pro-Manchester. It is a pleasure to be here. Today, I will talk about the financial crisis that is now in its fourth year, and particularly about the new regime of financial regulation that is being put in place. There is, I am afraid, nothing new about financial crises. On one count there have been sixty different crises since the early seventeenth century, and the first record of a bank panic dates back to at least Rome in AD331. A common theme of the antecedents of financial crises is that they begin with a wave of optimism and borrowing among consumers, companies, investors and governments. One of the best modern descriptions of this sequence can be found in a book by the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. They summarise the sequence as one where: “excessive debt accumulation, whether it be by the government, banks, corporations, or consumers, often poses greater systemic risks than it seems during a boom. Most of these booms end badly”.2 Reinhart and Rogoff’s book goes under the title “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly”.
•  Third, it is striking that virtually none of these onion layers is captured by official statistical measures of activity, such as GDP. And, indeed, only some are captured by broader measures of subjective well-being. Measuring the value of volunteering typically relies on secondary, often non-official, statistical sources. In combination, this means that very little of the value created by the volunteer sector is easily visible to statisticians, to policymakers, to politicians, to companies, indeed to the volunteers themselves. This is a vast, but often invisible, army. So let me try to improve that visibility somewhat by piecing together some evidence. The economic value of volunteering Let’s start with the easiest bit – the economic value of volunteering. In other words, when volunteers give up their time to paint a building, take an elderly neighbour to hospital or feed the homeless, what is the value of the output they are producing? GDP measures the monetary value of goods and services produced in an economy. Because it is not normally associated with a monetary transaction, volunteering activity is not captured by existing GDP statistics. This point is well-recognised by statisticians, which is why the ONS publishes a series of Satellite Accounts to pick up important sources of activity which lie outside GDP. The Household Satellite Accounts are one example. They measure activities like childcare, adult care, meal production, laundry services and also the work of volunteers which do not involve a monetary transaction. In aggregate, these activities are huge.

For example, the NCS programme only covers holiday periods and participants pay a small fee to participate. By contrast, the AmeriCorps programme lasts for up to a year and participants are offered financial support towards educational costs. This has meant AmeriCorps has not only encouraged volunteering; it has also provided incentives for generations of Americans, especially from poorer backgrounds, to stay on in higher education. This small financial nudge has thus potentially delivered lifelong returns. More generally, the UK already encourages giving money by allowing charities to reclaim tax on donations through “Gift Aid”. Is there a case for providing tax-based incentives for people who instead volunteer time? The idea is not without precedent. In 2008, the Canadian Parliament debated a bill that proposed taxpayers who volunteer at least 250 hours be issued a tax credit up to $ 39 It was rejected. But since 2011, Canadian firefighters, most of whom are volunteers, have received a tax credit of $ if they complete over 200 hours of volunteering a year. Such a policy may sound ambitious, certainly administratively, as it would require auditable records of volunteer hours worked. But it is not impossible to conceive of a system of Individual Volunteering Accounts (IVAs) for people engaged in formal volunteering. Relative to the value created, the administrative costs would probably be modest. Once in place, those IVAs could serve a number of useful purposes.