samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The punch line, of course, was that if you didn’t believe a man could fend off a croc with his bare hands, then you yourself were in “de-Nile.” We are no longer in denial about our national economic plight. Our great country now finds itself in a very difficult predicament. It is true that the situation here in Texas is relatively better than that of the nation; Texas is an oasis in a national economic desert devoid of lifegiving job creation. We went into the Great Recession last and were one of the first to come out. As we have for the past 20 years, we continue to outpace the rest of the United States in employment growth by a significant margin. Since the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, only North Dakota (a plucky state whose hearty population totals less than that of Collin or Denton counties) has seen faster job growth than Texas.1 As I speak, Texas has almost as many people employed as we did before the recession began. Our banks are in better shape than those in the rest of the country; we are benefiting from the blessings of nature, with copious amounts of oil and gas and abundant agricultural production; our fellow citizens have seen to it that our Legislature continues to hew to a tax, regulatory and legal environment that attracts job-creating investment and encourages business formation and growth.

As an example of this, the EU itself is looking to amend MiFID2 to iron out areas that need further work. Second, as the world moves on, so the rules need to adapt. If they do not, we will be heading for trouble. The key point here is that good practice means that authorities should be transparent at the time in explaining rule changes, and those changes should be consistent with international standards where appropriate. Let me give three examples of areas of rule changes we in the UK are looking at, two involving banks and one life insurance. First, the Basel regime for banks has, from the outset in the 1980s, applied to so-called “internationally active banks”. The EU has chosen to apply it to all banks and relevant deposit takers. That was a matter of choice. But the Basel regime is heavy duty and complicated when applied to small banks (I know many big banks will say the same, but sorry that’s life). So, we want to see if we can apply a strong but simple framework of rules for small banks that are not internationally active. This is a sensible step in my view and not out of line with the principles and practice of equivalence. Indeed, there are other countries, such as the US and Switzerland that have regimes for small banks and have been determined equivalent to the EU in many areas. Second, the EU changes its rules in December to allow software assets to count as bank capital.
Most would have been saved, however, and the simulated path of aggregate wages in the sector would now be materially higher, by around 1¼% of household consumption. 3  Details of this “no-globalisation” simulation are available on request. With a sufficiently simple production set-up it turns out that, if productivity in one sector grows sufficiently fast to produce a relative price decline of 1% a year, then in a closed economy its share of employment will fall by (1-σ) a year, where σ is the demand elasticity of substitution between the two goods. This makes sense: the greater the elasticity the bigger the response to demand to the drop in price for the good experiencing more rapid productivity growth; if, in particular, σ>1, employment would actually rise. As it is, the UK data suggest the σ for clothes is 0.44, plus or minus. We have fixed the rate of real price deflation in clothes at 1¼%, matching the observed rate before 1975 and after 2008, so the simulated “ no-globalisation” change in the share of clothing employment is -1.25 x (1-0.44) =-0.7% per year, relative to aggregate employment. The simulation also assumes the same skill-mix and therefore the same relative wage (compared with the national average) as in 1975 . 6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  Chart 7: Aggregate gains to consumers much  That’s a sizeable number – around £ But bear  larger than income losses, even assuming lost  in mind two things.

1,8 1,6 1,4 1,2 1 0,8 0,6 0,4 0,2 0 Month May Feb Nov Aug May Feb Year 1996 1997 1997 1998 1999 2000  Lending by mortgage institutions to the household sector amounted to about SEK600 billion by the end of September 2000, compared to SEK581,6 billion at the beginning of the year. About 35% of the households’ total borrowing raised in mortgage institutions are loans with floating interest rates, ie about SEK210 billion. Another reason why cross-border activities have been limited so far is that the mortgage markets are governed by national regulations. A third reason is that cross-border activities are exposed to foreign exchange risk. As long as Sweden is not a member of EMU, foreign players wishing to establish operations on the Swedish mortgage market will have to offer loans in Swedish kronor, since Swedish borrowers are unlikely to want to expose themselves to foreign exchange risks. However, if Sweden joins EMU, interest rates offered to borrowers in EMU-affiliated countries will be directly comparable. A common currency would make it easier for borrowers to assess which credit institution in the common currency area offers the best conditions. Swedish borrowers will be able to raise loans in euro without being exposed to foreign exchange risk, and access to potential lenders will increase. BIS Review 99/2000  4  The Swedish mortgage sector is currently dominated by five companies, one of which - SBAB - is state-owned (Figures 7 and 8). These five companies cover around 97% of the market.
Niklaus Blattner: The financial system and the regulatory challenges in securities clearing and settlement systems Speech by Prof Dr Niklaus Blattner, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank. at the Seventh Conference of Central Securities Depositories, Lucerne, 12 June 2003. The references for the speech can be found on the Swiss National Bank's website. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen I would like to talk to you about some basic issues and some regulatory and oversight challenges in securities clearing and settlement systems. Judging by the growing number of reports, the way your industry performs has been closely scrutinised over the last few years. Considering, for example, the G-30 Report on Global Clearing and Settlement or the second Giovannini Report, it strikes me that the emphasis has not only been put on the identification of potential difficulties and issues. In addition, responsibilities to resolve these difficulties are assigned and timetables are established. The debate has thus gained a new dimension. I shall start from a rather academic perspective, but nevertheless please count on my devotion to a number of very practical issues. I shall first discuss one of the basic functions of a financial system, which is the provision of clearing and settlement services, and its contribution to welfare. However, as we live in a less than perfect world, I shall focus on a number of important imperfections that tend to affect the smooth functioning of a financial system.

Behavioral risk refers to behaviors within an organization that could potentially lead to negative business outcomes.3 In such organizations, behavioral risk is not effectively mitigated or even considered, and the stated values of the firm are not reflected in the actions and norms of the organization’s members. Group think is prevalent and employees do not speak freely, or are ignored, when they have concerns about the way their group is doing business. The letter of the law may be followed but not the spirit, with illegal activities only coming to light when discovered by authorities. “Conduct” is viewed as something that is only the responsibility of the compliance department through a set of rules and controls. The outcomes stemming from high behavioral 1/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  risk reduce cultural capital, damage the firm and the trustworthiness of the industry over time. In an organization with a high level of cultural capital, on the other hand, behavioral risk is low. Employees refrain from taking excessive risks and they are unafraid of – and rewarded for – raising issues up the management chain. When they speak up, they believe the organization will take them seriously with meaningful responses. The organization recognizes and rewards employees who understand and internalize the expectations of laws and regulations, and do not view compliance as a checklist. In organizations with a high level of cultural capital, an important factor in advancing to senior leadership is role-modeling behavior consistent with a firm’s values, assumptions and behavioral norms.
We also focus on topics that influence the development and regulation of companies’ input factors – both regarding human resources such as labour, in particular children’s rights, and natural resources such as access to clean water and clean air. Norges Bank’s Executive Board has established a set of principles and a strategy for the exercise of ownership rights. Openness and transparency are key principles in the management of the Government Pension Fund – Global, and we aim to be as open as possible about our active ownership work. Our active ownership is practised in a number of different ways: through the exercise of voting rights, through dialogue and engagement with individual companies, through collaboration with other investors, through submissions to the regulatory authorities, and through research and public communication. We aim to vote at all general meetings of the companies in which the Fund has shares. We voted on 68 724 items at 7 871 general meetings in 2008. 4  BIS Review 58/2009  The impact of the crisis on the Norwegian Fund The Norwegian Fund has been hard hit by the crisis. In 2008, the total return on the Fund was a negative 23 per cent, the weakest in the Fund’s history. There was a negative return of 41 per cent on the equity portfolio, while the return on the fixed income portfolio was close to zero. The real rate of return after costs has been 1 per cent since 1998. This is well below the assumed long-term return of 4 per cent.

This also enhances the expected return on government wealth and contributes to diversification of risk. The Fund is by law fully integrated with the government budget, and the same priorities are imposed on spending from the Fund as on any other government spending. This means that the entire petroleum revenues are transferred to the Fund. Then, as part of the budget resolution, the Norwegian parliament decides on an annual transfer from the Fund to cover the government budget deficit. This procedure effectively prohibits use of the capital in the Fund for purposes not considered sufficiently important to be prioritised in the regular budget process. In 2001, the Norwegian parliament approved new fiscal policy guidelines stipulating that the annual transfer from the Fund to the fiscal budget – that is annual spending of oil money – should correspond to the expected real return on the Fund. The expected real return is estimated at 4 per cent. The point of reference for the spending rule is a normal cyclical situation. In the event of particularly high capacity utilisation, spending should be lower than 4 per cent, whereas in a cyclical downturn, somewhat higher spending may be appropriate. The governance structure is based on a clear division of responsibilities between the political authorities and the operational management. •  The Ministry of Finance is the owner of the Fund. The Ministry defines the mandate and monitors and evaluates performance. Key changes to investment guidelines are presented to the Norwegian parliament before implementation.
[3] The evolution of nominal interest rates is covered in my speech entitled “The yield curve and monetary policy” at the Centre for Finance and the Department of Economics at University College London, 25 November 2019. [4] See the speech by Isabel Schnabel on “The ECB’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic” (16 April 2020), the blog post by Luis de Guindos and Isabel Schnabel on “The ECB’s commercial paper purchases: A targeted response to the economic disturbances caused by COVID-19” (3 April 2020) as well as my own blog post on “The monetary policy response to the pandemic emergency” (1 May 2020). https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2020/html/ecb.sp200519~e5203d3520.en.html  13/14  5/19/2020  Disclaimer Please note that related topic tags are currently available for selected content only. Copyright 2020, European Central Bank  https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2020/html/ecb.sp200519~e5203d3520.en.html  14/14

1  Testimony of Ben S. Bernanke, Nomination hearing before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate, November 15, 2005. 2  Remarks by Governor Edward M. Gramlich, Federal Reserve Board, “The Politics of Inflation Targeting”, Paris, France, May 26, 2005. BIS Review 80/2006  3  Norges Bank’s practice in this respect is in line with the recommendations of leading academics in the field of monetary policy, such as Professor Lars Svensson 3 : “… announcing the optimal projection – including the instrument-rate projection – and the analysis behind it would have the largest impact on private-sector expectations and be the most effective way to implement monetary policy.” Norges Bank’s interest rate projection is based on seeking to achieve an interest rate path that provides a reasonable balance between the objective of stabilising inflation at target and the objective of stabilising developments in output and employment within a reasonable time horizon, normally 1 – 3 years. Interest-rate setting is also assessed in the light of developments in property prices and credit. Norges Bank forecasts inflation, output and the interest rate simultaneously. There is considerable uncertainty associated with the estimates of capacity utilisation in the economy (the output gap), and there is no simple relationship between developments in capacity utilisation and developments in inflation. It cannot therefore be argued with great conviction that it is possible to identify one particular interest rate forecast that provides the indisputably “best” trade-off in monetary policy.
Ravi Menon: FinTech in its element - water, metal, fire, wood, earth Speech by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2022, Singapore, 3 November 2022. ***  Good morning, and welcome to Day 2 of the Singapore FinTech Festival. It's great to be able to meet in person after three long years. Pandemic and lockdowns notwithstanding, FinTech innovation has marched on briskly. If anything, digitalisation has gathered pace and become more pervasive. Yes, in the realm of a crypto assets, a harsh winter has set in, even fears of an Ice Age. But I believe it is an overdue cleansing of unsustainable business models, highly risky practices, and unviable use cases. The digital asset industry will emerge leaner and stronger. But more of that later. FinTech in Singapore has continued to push new frontiers. There has been a surge in collaborations across businesses, financial institutions, FinTech start-ups, and even central banks. In 2021, FinTech investments in Singapore hit a high of $ billion, compared to $ billion in 2019. I will focus my remarks today on five key problems that FinTech collaboration in Singapore is trying to solve. These problems will resonate with many industry players as among the biggest pain points crying for a solution. But before we get into the problems, some wisdom from ancient China. According to the Chinese philosophy of Wu Xing, there are five fundamental elements that function as cosmic agents of change: Water, Metal, Fire, Wood, Earth.

Senders will have upfront certainty of fees due and an immediate update on transaction status. High security. The central platform leverages on the strong security and risk mitigation protocols built into national faster payment systems. The ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, have a shared vision of a multilateral network of payment linkages across ASEAN by 2025. MAS believes that Project Nexus can be a key enabler towards realising this vision. ASEAN is well placed to be a first-mover on this multilateral solution. In fact, as this network expands, we hope to see more countries coming onboard as we build connectivity from ASEAN to the rest of the world. STRONG LIKE METAL - ATOMIC SETTLEMENT (PROJECT UBIN PLUS) The second desired outcome is atomic settlement. Real-time cross-border payments does not mean real-time settlement. Let me explain. Project Nexus solves the clearing problem. The sender's bank account is debited and the recipient's bank account is credited instantaneously, based on the payment instruction sent through the network; and the recipient can spend the money. But it does not solve the settlement problem. The actual movement of funds between the banks is not instantaneous. It involves many intermediaries, goes through different ledgers, and takes two to three days to complete. This potentially creates multiple points of failure and higher costs. We want a real-time settlement system that is strong and secure like Metal. We want atomic settlement. Atomic settlement is the simultaneous exchange of two linked assets in real-time.
Now I too share the privilege of speaking in the Kirk where Gordon Brown’s father used to preach to the people of Kirkcaldy. Double trouble, you might think. I am particularly mindful of the controversy which Greenspan’s lecture stirred in the world of Smith scholars: “an unseemly battle is being fought over the soul of Adam Smith”, as one remarked. It is a sign of the resurgence of interest in Adam Smith that at almost every point on the political spectrum one can find people who claim Smith as their own. But, in a lecture in 1926 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations, the economist Jacob Viner wrote, “Traces of every conceivable sort of doctrine are to be found in that most catholic book, and an economist must have peculiar theories indeed who cannot quote from the Wealth of Nations to support his special purposes”. 2 My intention today is certainly not to propose “peculiar theories”, but to examine the importance of social institutions in a market economy. Self-interest explains many economic decisions. But a market economy also requires social institutions. 3 They represent collective agreements about how to constrain our actions. Some social institutions constrain our individual actions. For example, a market economy cannot flourish in a world of anarchy in which we suspect that everyone else will cheat. If I lend you money it is in both our interests that there be some mechanism by which repayment can be enforced.

Smith explained that “when the division of labour first began to take place, this power of exchanging must frequently have been very much clogged and embarrassed in its operations.” 13 He was referring to the absence of what economists call a ‘double coincidence of wants’: the hunter wants arrows and the arrowmaker wants meat. Without that double coincidence exchange cannot take place through barter. Promissory notes, or ‘IOUs’, can act as promises to deliver in the future. And they could, in principle, circulate – we could then exchange with people whose own produce we don’t actually want. Imagine Smith’s primitive arrow-maker doesn’t want meat. He can still exchange his arrows for a promise of meat from the hunter. But he will do so only if he is sure that others, whose output he does want, will accept the hunter’s IOU. And that depends on whether the arrow-maker believes that others will trust the hunter’s promise to pay. Once future delivery is part of the exchange, trust is essential. So we need to be able to trust in the promises of others to pay. In large commercial societies, where the ‘I’ is remote from the ‘U’, relying on our own human “sympathy” is unreliable – debtors would be tempted to default with those they have never met. We recognise that we need a social institution. One such is a legal system that can be used to enforce IOUs. But enforcement is costly. These problems encouraged us to build another institution – money.
That be as it may, like in many other developing countries the financial sector in Zambia still faces a number of challenges. The Financial Sector Assessment Programme (FSAP) Report of 2002 highlighted a number of these including limited access to financial services by the rural and peri-urban population and doubtful sustainability of financial services in Zambia. In light of these findings, and in recognition of the strategic importance of the development of the financial sector in contributing to sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction, the Government of the republic of Zambia developed and launched the Financial Sector Development Plan (FSDP) in 2004. The FSDP is a comprehensive five year strategy to build and strengthen the financial sector infrastructure to enable it to support economic diversification and sustainable growth. In addition, and in furtherance of the objectives of the FSDP, the BoZ Strategic Plan for 2008 – 2011 has made financial inclusion as one of its key strategic objectives. Under the FSDP two important studies, the FinScope™ Surveys of 2005 and 2007, on the demand for and supply of financial services in Zambia have been completed. These studies have augmented the earlier findings of the FSAP with respect to the key developmental challenges for the financial sector in Zambia.

The Board of directors shall consist of not less than 5 members (Section 30(2);  iii. Every financial service provider must have a Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer who shall not qualify to hold office unless it is shown that they are fit and proper persons, above 21 years old, have not been convicted of a felony or offence involving dishonesty, are not mentally incompetent, have never been removed from office under the BFSA, have not managed a company that has gone into liquidation or entered into a composition with creditors (Section 31);  iv. The majority of directors must be from outside the bank (Section 32(1);  v.  Directors, Chief Executive Officers and Chief Financial Officers are expected to act honestly, in good faith and in the interest of the company whilst exercising due care, diligence and skill (Section 33);  vi. A director is required to declare in writing to the board annually, the names and addresses of the director’s associates and full particulars of every material interest (Section 35);  vii.