samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Some people even went as far as predicting that before long wages would be paid in euros. Shops, hotels and restaurants would rapidly be forced to accept euros, so that visitors from abroad would no longer see the need to convert their euros into francs. Eventually Swiss consumers themselves would follow suit, so that Switzerland would be de facto integrated into the eurozone. More than national pride would be hurt by such an “euroization” of the Swiss economy. For one thing, such a development would entail the loss of seigniorage income. With a monetary base of about 40 billion francs (26 billion euros), that is about 5’700 francs (3’700 euros) per person, seigniorage in our case is far from trivial. But even more seriously, the loss of monetary autonomy caused by a displacement of the Swiss franc by the euro would prevent the SNB from creating liquidity in case of need. To a large extent, the fears that we had reflect the more fundamental debate about fixed versus flexible exchange rates. Which foreign exchange regime is appropriate for a given country at a particular time? Although this view is not universally shared, many economists argue in favour of a corner solution: either purely flexible exchange rates, or rigidly fixed ones. Intellectually, I tend to share this view, except that I would like to take it one step further: either purely flexible exchange rates, or monetary union. Rigidly fixed exchange rates do not constitute a polar case. In fact, they accumulate many drawbacks.

More generally, there is nothing to be gained in having more than one currency for transaction purposes. Much of the benefit that allows one to get around the double coincidence of wants gets lost if several currencies circulate simultaneously. “Dollarization” only occurs in those countries where hyperinflation threatens. This is not about to happen in Switzerland which has a long established record of price stability. The fear of losing our monetary independence was clearly misplaced as well. Over the past six years the SNB has repeatedly demonstrated that it can act decisively and independently, often well before the ECB. Given its openness, Switzerland was badly affected by the world slowdown a couple of years ago. The situation was made worse by the fact that our main trading partner, Germany, was itself severely hit, and to compound our difficulties, the worldwide capital overhang had a very adverse effect on our exporters, many of whom specialize in the production of capital goods. Exceptional circumstances require extraordinary measures. From March 2001 to April 2003, the SNB cut interest rates aggressively, lowering the target range for our reference rate, the three-month Libor, by 325 basis points, from 3.5% to just 0.25%. And earlier this year, the improved performance of our economy has allowed us to take some of our interest-rate easing back, even though the ECB did not budge. What about the stability of the external value of the Swiss franc?
She was in succession: Principal Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson (1985–1986), then Deputy Secretary at the Treasury and then Deputy Chief 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  Economic Adviser (1990–1994). In 1994 she was, for one year, head of the Economic and Domestic Secretariat of the Cabinet Office. From 1995–1996 she was Vice President of the World Bank and Chief of Staff to the President of the World Bank, James D. Wolfenshon. During her tenure there, Ms. Lomax negotiated development programs in Romania on behalf of the World Bank. Her Romanian counterpart in the negotiations was Mr. Florin Georgescu, our First Deputy Governor who was Minister of Finance at that moment. I can also see in the audience some of the people who were on the Romanian negotiation team, me included. From 1996–2003 Ms. Lomax was, in turns, permanent secretary at four government departments: the Welsh Office, the Department of Social Security, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Transport. Then, in 2003 Ms. Lomax became Deputy Governor at the Bank of England, where she served for five years on its Monetary Policy Committee. In 2005, she assisted us in preparing the implementation of a new monetary policy. Ms. Lomax joined the Board of Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) at a time of great challenges for the global banking sector, in 2008, and served there for nine years.

As we speak, the Parliament of Romania is holding a solemn plenary meeting dedicated to the before mentioned event. The National Bank of Romania had an important contribution during the First World War. Therefore it chose to acknowledge the historical moment by issuing a set of numismatic coins in gold, silver, coppered tombac and brass dedicated to this Union. On the obverse, in the foreground, there is an image of the building of the National Council in Kishinev where, on the 27th of March 1918, the union of Bessarabia with Romania was voted, while in the background, there is an excerpt from the Union Act; the inscription “ROMANIA” in an arch, the face value “100Lei, 10LEI, 1LEU, 50 BANI”, the coat of arms of Romania and the year of issue “2018”. On the reverse there are the portraits and the names of the three cosigners of the Union Act, i.e. Ion Inculeţ, Chairman of the National Council, Vice-Chairman Pantelimon Halippa and Secretary Ion Buzdugan; the inscriptions “100 ANI DE LA UNIREA BASARABIEI CU ROMANIA” and “27 Martie 1918”. Ladies and gentlemen, Allow me to say a few words about/ introduce Ms. Rachel Lomax. She is back to Romania after a decade or so and ready to share her valuable 40 years’ experience and expertise in policy making and financial markets. After obtaining a Master’s degree from London School of Economics in 1968, she joined HM Treasury.
This is, for the Bank, the next rung in our ascent of the engagement ladder. I am confident our view of the economy, and our setting of economic policy, will be greatly enhanced by this wider panorama. It will give 9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  9  the Bank a new lens on the economy’s hidden corners, a new set of often-quieter voices to listen to and learn from. It is an example of what the Bank, and I hope others, will be doing much more of over the period ahead: listening to a much wider audience, digesting their narratives, and then using this information to support the economy and the citizen stakeholders that make it up. 10  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  10  References  Arnstein, S (1969), ‘A Ladder of Citizen Participation’, Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 216-224. Botsman, R (2017), Who Can You Trust? How Technology Brought Us Together – and Why It Could Drive Us Apart, Portfolio Penguin. England, D, Hebden, A, Henderson, T and Pattie, T (2015), ‘The Agencies and ‘One Bank’’, Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, 2015 Q1. Geertz, C (1998), ‘Deep Hanging Out’, The New York Review of Books, 22 October 1998 Haldane, A (2017a), ‘Everyday Economics’, speech available at https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2017/andy-haldane-speech-during-regional-visit Haldane, A (2017b), ‘A Little More Conversation A Little Less Action’, speech available at https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2017/a-little-more-conversation-a-little-less-action Haldane, A and Turrell, A (2017), ‘An interdisciplinary model for macroeconomics’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Vol.

On that view, and given the recent moderate decline in sterling's effective exchange rate, it is reasonable to look forward to a gradual improvement - and I emphasise gradual improvement - in the external environment which would clearly be very helpful from a UK perspective. I don't deny that there are downside risks to this scenario. The Eurozone has for example recently put back its projected expansion until later this year. And financial markets, and both business and consumer sentiment, have recently been severely affected by uncertainty over Iraq - though financial markets, certainly, now that the war has started, have factored in its rapid conclusion. I hope they prove to be right - for more than purely economic reasons. Notwithstanding these risks, I still think that the most likely outcome is that we will see a gradual pickup in the pace of global recovery over the next year or two - which is the view shared by the Monetary Policy Committee in our February Inflation Report and by most other economic commentators. On that basis we would also expect to see a gradual recovery in domestic business investment as we go through this year and into next. And, while fiscal prudence is clearly important for the stability and efficiency of the economy over the medium term, the Chancellor's projected increase in public spending is in my view positively welcome in the immediate situation confronting us.
Of course, these measures will eventually have positive effects on inflation in Sweden as they provide welcome stimulus for an important Swedish export market. But, by weakening the euro, the ECB’s measures risked exerting price pressure on a significant portion of Swedish imports over the short term. In addition, the price of oil had fallen sharply in 2014 and continued to fall in 2015. The international development of the price of oil directly influences inflation in Sweden via the price of fuel oil and, not least, the price of petrol. Over time, it can also have effects on other prices, as it affects companies’ energy and transportation costs. It is true that, in normal cases, a fall in the price of oil has a brief effect on the actual inflation figures. But as the price of petrol in particular is so very visible for so many people, it may have a disproportionately high impact on how inflation is perceived and thereby possibly also on inflation expectations. 2  See, for example Andersson, B., Corbo, V. and Löf, M., “Why has inflation been so low?”, Sveriges Riksbank Economic Review 2015:3, Sveriges Riksbank. 3  “Sweden needs its inflation target”, published 13 October 2015. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  We have also had a year characterised by a large degree of uncertainty over international developments in general. Greece’s membership of the single currency and possibly, therefore, the entire European monetary union was, at moments, on the ropes.

(4)  Given the restrictions in the convertibility of RMB, Participating AIs are required to limit their RMB net open positions (whether net long or net short) to 10% of their RMB assets or liabilities. Participating AIs’ credit risk exposure to the Clearing Bank In their letter to the HKMA in November, the Hong Kong Association of Banks raised the issue of credit limit against the background of an increasing amount of RMB deposits being placed by Participating AIs with the Clearing Bank as the RMB business in Hong Kong continued to expand and deepen. The HKMA and the PBoC have held discussions about this issue, and it is considered that the issue could in principle be resolved by the Participating  2  BIS Review 175/2010  AIs establishing custodian accounts with the Clearing Bank. This means that the RMB funds will be placed with the PBoC Shenzhen Branch through the Clearing Bank as a custodian to overcome the issue of credit limit. We will further discuss with the PBoC, the Clearing Bank and Participating AIs on the details of such an arrangement including the related legal documents and operational procedures. It is hoped that the arrangement can be implemented soon early next year. Conclusion I believe that next year will be a crucial year for the development of offshore RMB business in Hong Kong. We have made very good progress this year.
One possibility the Riksbank and other central banks have made use of to make their monetary policy more expansionary when the policy rate is at or close to the lower bound is to buy government bonds on the secondary market. This affects market rates and other financial prices through various channels. 15 What one normally talks about are the signalling channel – which works through the purchases signalling that monetary policy will be expansionary and the repo rate will remain at the lower bound a long time, the portfolio balance channel – which means that the purchases will have contagion effects on prices of other assets and the premium channel – that works through purchases reducing the supply of bonds, which pushes up bond prices so that interest rates fall. As this is a new monetary policy tool, it has given rise to extensive academic research that attempts to estimate its effects. The most common conclusion is that the policy has functioned more or less as expected and complemented the policy rate cuts in a useful way. 16 One problem for Sweden is that it will become more difficult to use government bond purchases as a tool in the next economic downturn as the Riksbank already owns a large share of the outstanding stock of government bonds, just over 40 per cent. These are not then available for trading on the market, which contributes to making the market less liquid and means it takes longer to make transactions.

Groshen, Erica L. 2011. “Temporary Layoffs during the Great Recession.” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics Blog, April 6. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches
In the real world, however, departures from the M&M assumptions - such as taxes, bankruptcy costs and agency costs - may influence the capital decision of any firm; capital may after all be costly. But banks differ substantially from most other firms because their soundness and safety is crucial to maintaining systemic stability; without capital requirements some will exploit this fact by taking large risks with little of their money, in the hope that the taxpayer will bail them out. In other words, some may believe that they are (partially) insulated from potential market discipline. From a regulatory perspective, banks must therefore be required to have capital to absorb the possible losses that result from risk-taking and still remain solvent. BIS Review 21/1997  - 10 -  What is our position in this debate? It is tempting to conclude that the only problem is a perception of a government-funded safety net for large banks; remove that and our problems will be solved. But systemic risk cannot be wished away as easily as that, even though we in the UK have demonstrated by our actions that we do not rescue every bank which gets into problems. So, while we try to stay clear from ever more detailed rules, we do not believe everything can be left to the market; certain minimum ‘regulatory’ capital standards are in our view necessary. Of course, we must aim for a credible and comprehensible regime which does not require constant updating and elaboration, is not immensely costly, and is reasonably consistent.

Secondly, my prejudice is to believe that regulatory structure should follow market structure, rather than the other way round. Regulators should seek to respond to changing markets which, in turn, respond to changing customer demand and new product availability, rather than seeking to dictate either. So we should always ask ourselves whether the regulatory framework we adopt makes sense to market participants, rather than requiring them to structure their business to fit in with some governmentally imposed view of the way product delivery should be organised. But I recognise that, in practice, we cannot avoid constant attention to the maintenance of the regulatory framework. Firstly, because while good structure will not necessarily generate effectiveness, a faulty, out of date framework will certainly make it very hard for regulators to do their jobs well. And, of course, the market is not in an ‘original condition’. The financial markets we have now are heavily conditioned by the legislative and regulatory framework within which they have grown up. That is particularly true in the United States. It is hard to imagine that, absent Glass-Steagall, regulation Q and all the rest, the financial landscape in North America would look as it does today. So I conclude that the debate on regulatory structure should be a constant dialogue between the markets and the regulators, but with a prejudice in favour of the former. Our ultimate task as regulators is to ensure that markets work efficiently, and in the interests of consumers.
The public debt to GDP ratio of 83% compares favorably with that of other advanced economies and competitors such as the US and Japan, respectively at 103% and 230%. EU is one of the core areas of global innovation. In terms of Research and Development expenditure it is not far behind the US, while in terms of number of researchers and patent application actually outperforms it. Europe and the EU offer a mature legal environment, with adequate protection for investors and intellectual property. Its macroeconomic policies remain stability-oriented and its financial system is both mature and sound. Five out of the ten highest ranked countries in the latest Global Competitiveness Index are EU countries. Furthermore, I would like to emphasize, apart of Eurozone, there are other countries in the Eastern and Southeastern Europe which offer a qualitatively different picture. Up to 2008 they included some of the fastest growing emerging economies. These are fast growing economies, with better demographic trends. They offer untapped growth potential, in terms of qualified work force, business friendly environment and stable institutions. European integration process has been the main anchor and major driving force of growth and convergence. Therefore, I strongly urge countries of the SEE region to dedicate substantial efforts towards a closer regional integration in infrastructure, markets, education and legal framework. Deeper economic regional integration will increase the competitiveness of the region from European and global perspective.

They have undertaken structural reforms to liberalize their economies, to increase their competitiveness and to coordinate their policies. EU efforts should concentrate in aiding and speeding the convergence process in the design of markets and institutional frameworks while minimizing the related short term costs. This would be to the mutual benefit of both the EU and the region. I would like to add that in realizing such an agenda, the policy-makers need to pay special attention to the time dimension. Reforms that need to be made should be made in time. Furthermore, such reforms have to be made with the whole of the EU project in mind. Individual countries have much work to do, but a lasting solution to the challenges will be a comprehensive reform that looks beyond specific borders and aims at raising the competitiveness and sustainability of the EU as a whole. Europe in the future Ladies and gentleman, to conclude my address allow me to restate my belief in the future of Europe. A brief glimpse at some figures would illustrate this point. EU comprises roughly 7% of world population but accounts for a quarter of global GDP. It has a mature social and economic model, which in spite of long-term challenges remains a viable paradigm of economic development. The external position of both EU and Eurozone is broadly balanced, with current account deficits of less than 1% of GDP.
Euroland officials should perhaps consider how much a problem there is of substance and how much of perception, and address each as appropriate. Another factor that may contribute to scepticism over the euro concerns monetary policy. But there is not a lot that I would wish to say on the subject. You will appreciate that central bankers are not anyway the sort of people to make public assessments of one another! On the whole, I sense a feeling of some sympathy for the European Central Bank. In the technical sense it appears to have done most things right, in terms of keeping inflation under wraps and so preserving the internal purchasing power of the euro, but it has nevertheless had to preside over a substantial decline in the euro’s external value. Given that Euroland as a whole is a relatively closed economy, the decline of the euro may have caused more concern to outsiders than to insiders. It has certainly influenced international investor perceptions. My own observation, perhaps slightly cynical, of businessmen and investors is that they are less concerned about the technical content of monetary policy - provided that it is seen to be reasonably disciplined - than they are about the conviction with which it is delivered. Thus, the so-called “strong dollar” stance of the United States is clearly stated. It is not contradicted from anywhere within the administration.

The individual responsibility to have in place a sound long-term retirement income strategy, that integrates private savings, contributions to the Employees Provident Fund and supplementary private pension and annuity plans, has therefore become important. Ladies and Gentlemen, This is not the first time that Bank Negara Malaysia has issued such bonds. The second and third series of the Malaysia Savings Bonds, which were issued in November 1999 and February 2002 respectively, had the same underlying objective. Each time, the features of the bonds have been enhanced. The Merdeka Savings Bond is for retirees who are 55 years old and above, and who do not have a full-time job. Armed Forces personnel who opted for mandatory retirement below the age of 55 are also eligible to purchase the bonds. The Merdeka Savings Bond, which will be based on the Islamic principle of Bai' Al-Inah, has several new features. Firstly, the bond will be issued on a regular basis over the next two years. Following the first issuance on 4 February 2004, there will be three other issuances on 1st April, 1st July, and 1st October in 2004. This will be followed by similar quarterly issuances in 2005. It is hoped that this regular issuance would provide interested investors, who may have their savings locked in other assets with the flexibility in the future to purchase the Merdeka Savings Bond. A total issuance of RM 2.25 billion has been planned for 2004 and 2005, with the first issuance amounting to RM 500 million.