samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Money supply rise by about 8 percent is based on money creation in the economy from the public sector and from private sector borrowing, mainly in ALL. Loan portfolio grew moderately, by ALL 7.5 billion or about 5 times less than as of the same period of the previous year. Reduction of bank funds source and increase of uncertainty in the country influenced the significant deceleration of credit growth rates. However, credit to economy increased along the first months of the year, while the banking system has signalled no further tightening of the lending terms in the third quarter of the current year. The private sector’s demand for Lek-denominated loans is faced with an increasing willingness from banks, thanks to stabilization of liquidity situation and easing of monetary conditions at start-2009. Restraint of foreign currency money supply has resulted to contraction of foreign currency component of money structure, even on the demand for money side, bringing about shifting of money supply structure towards the Lek. In the first half of 2009, the financial market situation was influenced by increased uncertainty and revaluation of risk premiums that associated the liquidity constraint, consequent to deposit outflows and lending activity reduction. Ongoing intervention of the Bank of Albania in the money market, combined with measures that aimed at relaxing the market and encouraging the interbank market activity, as well as the maintaining of sound financial system indicators, made the end of the period record stabilization of liquidity positions and of interest rates.

Lim Hng Kiang: Meeting the challenges of the globalised economy Opening remarks by Mr Lim Hng Kiang, Deputy Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the 36th SEACEN Governors' Conference, Singapore, 31 May 2001. *  *  *  Honourable Governors Distinguished Guests and Delegates Ladies and Gentlemen  Introduction It gives me great pleasure to bid you a warm welcome to the Annual Conference of the Governors of the South-East Asian Central Banks. This is the 36th Conference and reflects the close ties and strong co-operation that central banks and monetary authorities in the region have forged over the last 30 years. SEACEN economy/Recent financial developments This year's Conference is held amid concerns of a global economic slowdown. After expanding by an average rate of 7.3% in the year 2000, prospects for regional economies are set to slow this year. 1 Average real GDP growth for the East Asian economies is projected to fall to around 4.5% for 2001. The slowdown will be due largely to the cyclical downturn in the US economy, as well as the global electronics industry, both of which will hurt regional exports. Due to its very open nature, East Asian economies are susceptible to the current global downturn in external demand. The US is the largest export market for most of the SEACEN economies, with export shares averaging 20%. In terms of goods structure, electronics accounts for over 20% of total exports in all East Asian economies.
One cause may be the large-scale investment in IT undertaken by companies at the end of the 1990s. But it is also possible that the continued economic upturn will be followed by a rapid decline in productivity growth. Our assessment today is that the high growth in productivity will last somewhat longer than assumed in the previous Inflation Report and the forecast for average productivity growth therefore has been revised up slightly over the forecast period. 1  The comparison refers to the forecast based on the assumption that the repo rate evolves in line with implied forward interest rates, which in the previous Report was presented in a box. 6/7  Inflation rising but still low Inflation has risen somewhat recently but remains low. In September this year, the annual CPI and UND1X inflation rates stood at 0.6 per cent and 1.0 per cent, respectively. That is slightly higher than we forecast in June, owing mainly to the unexpectedly high oil price. In the coming years, mounting domestic cost pressures are anticipated to contribute to a rise in domestic inflation. However, the rate of this increase is estimated to be modest due to both continued fairly strong productivity growth and stiff competition. That imported inflation in recent years has been contained is due, among other things, to the strengthening of the krona and the fact that there has been a substitution in favour of cheaper imported goods.

•  Honduras is developing a land title registry system based on distributed ledgers  •  Other potential applications talked about include registry of intellectual property rights, supply chain management, electronic voting systems, medical records, etc. Fourth, cloud computing. Cloud computing is an innovative service and delivery model that enables on-demand access to a shared pool of computing resources. It provides economies of scale, potential cost-savings, as well as the flexibility to scale up or down computing resources as requirements change. There is a view among some quarters that “MAS does not like the cloud”. This is an urban myth, not true. •  Well, MAS did have concerns about cloud computing previously. •  This was because cloud services were at the time not sufficiently secure to safeguard the sensitive information that FIs held. •  But cloud technology has evolved considerably and there are now solutions available to address these concerns. •  –  For example, FIs can now implement strong authentication and data encryption to protect their data in the cloud. –  MAS has been in dialogue with both FIs and cloud service providers  –  Providers have now become more aware of our security considerations while we have gained a deeper understanding of the safeguards they have put in place. I am pleased to say that several FIs in Singapore have successfully rolled out cloud solutions in the past two years. Fifth, big data. The world is exploding with information.
But it goes wider than that to encompass the possibility that reactions to Brexit, or indeed other forces, could lead to more general restrictions and to moves to manage risk and to ring-fence business activity at the jurisdictional rather than the international level. To be clear, that this is not primarily a concern about economic activity in the UK following Brexit. Important though that is, it is not an issue for regulators. And despite perceptions in some quarters to the contrary, the UK’s role as the leading international financial centre does not rest or depend exclusively on the EU single market in financial services. The UK has the largest asset management industry in the EU. But this is not built primarily on the management of the pool of European savings. Well over 50% of the roughly $ assets under management in the UK are pensions, insurance and investments of UK citizens. Another 20% comes from the rest of the world beyond the EU. Less than 20% of assets managed in the UK, are domiciled in the rest of the EU. 20  Looked at another way, estimates suggest that UK located asset managers manage around 10% of the $ of assets of funds domiciled in the rest of the EU. Asset managers domiciled outside the EU – many in the US – manage a much larger proportion, at least some 20%, of non-UK EU assets. 19 20  21  Hoggarth et. al. (2016) Based on Investment Association 2016 data.

The task is to make the best forecast we can of how the economy and inflation pressures will evolve and to adjust policy to ensure the outcome is consistent with monetary stability. Financial stability by contrast is more about the tail of the probability distribution than the central probability – about what could happen rather than what is likely to happen. Our task is to ensure the financial system avoids very bad outcomes. Or, if they cannot be avoided, that the system can weather them without breaking down and without acting as an amplifier of stress. Though infrequent and unlikely, the events we lived through 10 years ago demonstrated that such breakdowns not only can happen but are also extremely costly when they do happen. So although it may appear gloomy, we are always looking for the downside risk, always asking what risks could the financial system generate, what risks could it withstand, what risks could it amplify? And, by extension, whether it is worth insuring against those risks crystallising. The past of course gives us some guide. We know many of the things that have caused financial crises in the past that we need to prevent causing problems in the future. But our job is not just about preventing the last war; it is also about anticipating and assessing new risks as the financial system grows and evolves. And, where justified, taking action to address them.
Jean-Pierre Roth: Review of the Swiss economy in 2006 and the outlook for 2007 Speech by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, at the General Meeting of Shareholders of the Swiss National Bank, Berne, 27 April 2007. *  *  *  Mr President of the Bank Council Dear shareholders Dear guests One hundred years ago the Swiss National Bank opened its counters and conducted its first transactions. Year for year, the Chairman of the Governing Board has had the privilege of outlining the economic situation to you and setting out the SNB policy approach. It is a great pleasure for me to continue this tradition today, and all the more so in view of the fact that the year 2006 was a particularly favourable one for our economy: Growth accelerated to reach a level higher than the longterm trend, while employment improved, bringing about a gradual reduction in unemployment. Meanwhile, the rise in prices remained restrained and distinctly below the level of 2% that we equate with price stability. Moreover, for the current year, the outlook for growth, employment and monetary stability remain very favourable. Vigorous foreign trade The healthy state of the Swiss economy has surprised many observers accustomed to the meagre results of the 1990s and nervous in the wake of the events of the early 2000s.

Svante Öberg: My view of monetary policy 2006–2011 Speech by Mr Svante Öberg, First Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at Handelsbanken, Stockholm, 18 March 2011. *  *  *  I have now been at the Riksbank for over five years and my appointment as Deputy Governor of the Riksbank expires at the turn of the year. I will have celebrated my 65th birthday by then and I have informed the General Council of the Riksbank that I will not be seeking reappointment. This makes it natural for me to look back at the conduct of monetary policy over the last five years and, in the light of this experience, discuss the direction of monetary policy in the years ahead. The three theses that I will argue for in this speech are:   Monetary policy was too expansionary before the financial crisis    Monetary policy worked well during the crisis    The repo rate needs to be raised at every meeting this year (and perhaps next year too)  Monetary policy was too expansionary in the years before the financial crisis My first thesis is thus that monetary policy was too expansionary in the years before the full force of the financial crisis hit the world in September 2008. This applies both in Sweden and abroad. I will present arguments to support this thesis in this section. Abroad Monetary policy was expansionary in the years before the financial crisis in both the United States and the euro area.
The Eurosystem has provided – and is still providing – support to those national banking systems which face liquidity needs. I would like to underline that the key precondition for such a support is that the country concerned sticks to the EU/IMF adjustment programme and are on track. In other words, the responsibility for ensuring the conditions for the Eurosystem to support the banking system of the countries under stress is with the authorities of the countries themselves. There should be no doubt about it. 5  For further details, see Trichet, J-C. (2009). “The ECB’s enhanced credit support”, address at the University of Munich, http://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2009/html/sp090713.en.html. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The support provided to the banking system has been substantial. It is reflected in financing conditions at the euro area level, which have become more favourable of late, amid an ongoing gradual normalisation. Recent euro area bank lending surveys show signs of improvement in credit conditions compared with the peaks recorded during the apex of the financial crisis. While in most euro area Member States we have seen broadly unchanged or slightly loosened credit standards over the past few quarters, in a few others the bank lending surveys point to constraints remaining in the supply of bank loans to firms and households.

Current challenges therefore do not call into question the primacy of the ECB’s objective of price stability. On the contrary, it is precisely in this challenging environment that the benefits of price stability for Monetary Union as a whole will be reaped. The credible achievement of price stability reduces overall uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment and thereby keeps risk premia embedded in financial yields lower than would otherwise be the case. In turn, this will foster growth, and thus provide support to those countries facing financing difficulties. At the same time, price stability is a crucial element in restoring stability to financial markets and improving market access for distressed sovereigns and banks. That said, we must be careful not to overburden monetary policy, in both its standard and non-standard incarnations. Obviously, monetary policy cannot take up the slack where fiscal or other authorities fail to live up to their responsibilities. While central banks can, should and do provide liquidity support to financial markets, they cannot provide solvency support. That would represent an encroachment upon the domain of  6  See the analysis presented in Giannone, D., M. Lenza, H. Pill and L. Reichlin (2011). “Non-standard monetary policy measures and monetary developments,” ECB Working Paper No 1290. 7  See the framework developed in Ciccarelli, M., A. Maddaloni and J-L. Peydró (2010). “Trusting the bankers: A new look at the credit channel of monetary policy,” ECB Working Paper No 1228.
Although this remains a significant risk, my reading of the available evidence to date is that inflation expectations remain relatively well anchored. Measures of households’ short-term expectations have picked up over the past year or so, but so have the MPC’s projections for nearterm inflation. Indeed, the MPC’s own revisions to its central inflation projection over the past year have been similar to that implied by a majority of survey measures (Chart 3). And measures of households’ medium-term inflation expectations have remained broadly stable, as have expectations of professional forecasters. Indeed, the surprising strength in inflation during the recession may partly stem from inflation expectations being more firmly anchored than in the past, so helping to offset the downward pressure from spare capacity. This may reflect the different role played by monetary policy in this recession from that in the 1980s and 1990s. In those earlier recessions, policy was designed to reduce trend inflation. As such, expectations about future policy and the emerging spare capacity reinforced each other in bearing down on prices. In contrast, the aim of monetary policy during this recession has been to work against the downward pressure on inflation from excess capacity in order to avoid a prolonged period of belowtarget inflation. Where does all this leave us? To my mind, there is no great puzzle or mystery surrounding the period of above-target inflation seen over the past few years.

At the same time, I believe this would presuppose a reasonably balanced economic situation in Sweden, with strong confidence in economic policy, as well as broad political support for ERM2 membership. While there may be some cause for concern about conflicts between an exchange rate target in ERM2 and the direct inflation target, this risk should not be exaggerated. The broad bands for the exchange rate mechanism, together with experience in other countries in the run-up to the monetary union, show that no serious conflicts need arise. If market players are confident that the central rate in ERM2 will be chosen as the conversion rate for participation in the euro area—as they have every reason to be in that this was the case for each of the 5  BIS Review 48/1999  eleven countries that currently make up the monetary union—then the krona’s market rate is unlikely to deviate all that much from its central rate. This was clearly the case for the currencies that have already been converted into euro. Once it was clear, for example, that Finland would be joining the euro area, the markka remained stable and very close to its central rate. In practice this would mean that during ERM membership, Swedish interest rates with relatively long maturities would converge on the levels that apply in the euro area. As the date for joining the union approaches, the very short market rates would be increasingly affected.
The 8 Qualifying Offshore Banks will be given priority in the upgrading. Existing Offshore Banks as well as banks that do not yet hold a banking licence in Singapore are encouraged to apply. After these 20 licences are granted, we will review the pace of upgrading the remaining Offshore Banks. Enhancing competition in retail banking In retail banking, we will maintain the momentum of liberalisation by improving on the first package of measures. We will take applications for the two outstanding QFB licenses. We will also expand what a QFB is allowed to do: a. With immediate effect, they will be permitted to establish up to 15 locations (previously 10), of which up to 10 (previously 5) can be branches, and the rest off-site ATMs. BIS Review 61/2001  5  b. From 1 July 2002 QFBs will be allowed to provide debit services on an EFTPOS network. QFBs can negotiate with an existing EFTPOS network such as NETS, Visa or Mastercard, for access on fair commercial terms. QFBs will then be able to provide debit services such as debit cards, and cashback at retail outlets. Using the Visa network alone to provide debit services will open up more than 23,000 terminals to the QFBs. With cashback services, each EFTPOS terminal, whether run by NETS or a credit card company, becomes a potential cash withdrawal point.

If the local banks stay small and weaken over time, we will be worse off for it. In the longer term, stronger and larger local banks offer far better assurance of Singapore’s interests. MAS’ approach to consolidation While MAS welcomes the process of consolidation, it will remain strictly neutral, and will not seek to influence the outcome. We have made it known to all the participants that we will allow the local banks to bid for one another. The new configuration should be determined by the free play of the market. MAS will leave the banks and their shareholders to decide whom they should merge with or acquire, subject to five conditions being met: a. First, the banks should have the capability to achieve effective integration following the merger. The management of the acquiring bank must understand the financial, operational, and cultural issues involved in integrating two entities and have a credible plan in place. b. Second, the merger must not impair the bank's financial soundness. In particular, the bank must meet MAS’ capital adequacy requirements at all times. Consolidation should not compromise the safety and soundness of the bank. c.  Third, we will consider the impact of the merger on competition. Consolidation should not lead to the emergence of one or a small group of overly dominant banks, which are in a position to engage in monopolistic or other anti-competitive behaviour.
More fund-based schemes will generate a positive stimulus to the Norwegian securities market, even if an appropriate risk diversification would imply that a large portion of the capital in pension funds is  8  BIS Review 48/2002  invested abroad. A rising share of fund-based schemes in other countries will also increase investment in Norway. The statutory regulation of pension fund investment will also be of importance. For example, today most countries have relatively stringent restrictions on the equity portion in pension funds’ portfolios. However, a proposed new EU directive would make it possible to increase this portion, which may have an impact on demand for securities. Recent developments in financial markets have shown that a substantial measure of uncertainty is associated with the return on such investments. This uncertainty is related to future economic developments, which will also apply to the pay-as-you-go system. It is true that Government can influence this through tax changes. Adverse economic developments will, however, put the ability and willingness to increase taxes in order to honour pension obligations to the test. This uncertainty will be even greater in a country like Norway that is highly reliant on one or a small number of industries. Government finances are, for example, still vulnerable in the face of a sustained decline in oil prices. The uncertainty about future developments is continuously reflected in a fund-based system. An essential question associated with a fund-based system is who is to bear the risk related to returns.

95  5 4  Ja n . 9 7  Ja n . 9 9  Ja n . 0 1  Source: Ecowin SG Kommunalbanken, 30.august 2002  The interest rate on private debt securities is heavily influenced by the interest rate on comparable government securities. Private issuers have to pay a somewhat higher interest rate than the government because they have a lower credit rating. Another factor is the liquidity of the debt instruments. The rate differential between government securities and private debt securities therefore consists of both a credit risk premium and a liquidity premium. Normally, the larger and more developed the market is, the lower the liquidity premium is. The financial position of local government in relation to the central government ensures that there is little or no credit risk linked to the bonds issued by Kommunalbanken or municipalities. Because of the liquidity premium, however, Kommunalbanken and the municipalities would benefit from a more developed and more liquid bond market in Norway. 6  BIS Review 48/2002  I can find several reasons why the Norwegian economy would benefit from a larger portion of credit being channelled through the debt securities market. • A well developed debt securities market: - Enhanced risk management - Continuous pricing of risk reduces the possibility of shocks  - Provides the financial system with two legs to stand on  SG Kommunalbanken, 30.august 2002  a)  Enhanced risk management  Bonds and short-term issues are traded in the secondary market.