samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Now these are immensely difficult judgements. They depend in part upon one’s perception about the starting position - that is how close we are to BIS Review 55/1998  -3-  full capacity utilisation to begin with. And they depend upon not just the direction, but the rate of change and the timing, of changes in the different components of aggregate demand. It is hardly surprising that the various members of the MPC should - within this common framework of analysis - reach, essentially marginally, different conclusions, reflecting their individual judgements as to the balance of risks. Indeed it would have been incredible if they had not reached marginally different conclusions. What is unusual - and what outside observers are I think still getting used to is that different possible interpretations of the data and different possible judgements are openly displayed in the minutes of our meetings, which also record the way in which each member votes. Some people now seem to find this open discussion of alternative views confusing. My own view is that it can only contribute to the effectiveness of monetary policy if the public at large better understand the nature of the issues and the uncertainties surrounding them. But our procedures have had one, by me at least, unforeseen, and I think regrettable, consequence, in that it has focused excessive attention upon the way in which individual members of the Committee vote leading to their over-simple categorisation as either hawks or doves.

Mr Yam discusses financial stability, region and international co-operation Speech by the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Mr Joseph Yam, at the 32nd Asian Development Bank annual meeting, in Manila, the Philippines, on 2 May 1999. Introduction I am delighted and honoured to have the opportunity to speak to this distinguished international audience. The theme of the forum is regional monetary and financial co-operation. From the point of view of time, venue, sponsors, and participants, it would, I think, be very hard to come up with a more appropriate topic than this. In terms of timing, our region is currently, we hope, moving through the final stages of a period of financial and economic dislocation that has taught us a number of lessons. The most important of these lessons, in my view, and one consistent with the aims of this forum, is that we need to intensify international and regional co-operation to reduce the risk of such crises occurring again. The venue for this forum, Manila, is one of the oldest international financial centres in Asia: it has also been the starting point for a number of important modern regional initiatives. Manila has given its name to the recently established Manila Framework, within which central banks and finance ministries in the region meet to promote regional co-operation on financial matters. The beginnings of systematic economic co-operation can also be traced to Manila, with the establishment here, in 1966, of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
I would like to cite the following legal maxim:  which means “the law on a matter depends on the perspective on the matter.”  states that “the law may change over time, place and background.” The application of this method is more evident in matters relating to ijtihad where the preservation of the benefit of the society is paramount. I always believe that when the contemporary environment and current reality are taken into consideration in any Shariah research, the ijtihad will be more substantive and mature while not compromising with the principles of Shariah. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  It is also important to stress on the need to document the decisions and resolutions of the Shariah in a structured and orderly manner, supported by the richness of the debates in arriving to the decisions. This is integral as a starting point to facilitate discussions among Shariah experts, either domestically and internationally to encourage greater understanding and clarity of this treasure of knowledge. It can also serve to provide guidance and culture of knowledge that can be inherited by future generations. And more importantly, opinions and justifications for a particular deduction must be documented. The spirit of mutual respect within the diversity of Shariah interpretations The third point that I wish to share is fostering mutual respect in dealing with diverse Shariah interpretations. Differences in views and opinions among scholars are inherent in the area of Shariah, particularly in fiqh.

Florin Georgescu: Challenging the status quo in management and economics Opening remarks by Mr Florin Georgescu, First Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Romania, at the Strategica International Academic Conference "Challenging the Status Quo in Management and Economics", Bucharest, 11 October 2018. * * * Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am glad to welcome you at the National Bank of Romania, as we host today the 6th edition of this prestigious international conference, together with the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, and the Romanian Academic Society of Management. The debates today will be held under a generous and timely topic: “Challenging the Status Quo in Management and Economics”. We couldn’t have a better moment to discuss challenges to the status quo than today, as we witness a whole range of economic, social and political forces pushing for change all over the world. If this change is in the sense of progress or not, that remains to be seen. I trust that your presentations and insights will shed more light on these trends. I confess that I had a look at the titles of the presentations in both days of the conference, and the word that appears most frequently in these titles is knowledge. And I realize that not less than 50 years ago, Peter Drucker, the philosopher and management guru, launched the concept of knowledge economy. Since then, economists and management specialists of all doctrines, put knowledge at the forefront of their views of the world.
It is the greater volatility of G-3 currencies that ultimately contributed to, if not caused, the volatility in smaller regional currencies. 33. There is yet another Asian monetary problem and this is one of a different nature. It concerns the effectiveness of financial intermediation in this region. Asia needs substantial investments in the economic infrastructure to prevent bottlenecks from hindering sustained growth. The World Bank has estimated that for East Asia alone, projected infrastructure investments amount to $ trillion between 1995-2004. If other forms of capital investment are included, the figure rises to a staggering $ trillion. At the same time, Asian economies also have very high savings rates, some as high as 30% to 50%. The aging population in Northern Asia, for example, will be ploughing increasing savings into institutionalized retirement funds, which are risk-averse and would need to be invested in markets generating, other things being equal, higher returns, lower risks and greater liquidity. Japan, for example, has an estimated ¥ trillion outstanding in private savings that must be invested. When the Hong Kong Mandatory Provident Fund comes into operation by the year 2000, about 4% of Hong Kong’s GDP would be added annually to institutional investments. But the question is why Asian savings do not seem to have been adequately and effectively channeled into Asian investments in a manner more conducive to ensuring monetary and financial stability. 34.

Much of Asian savings, in particular official sector savings and private sector savings that have been institutionalized, are still invested in assets of OECD countries, although the trend has been a gradually falling one. I cannot speak for other economies, but insofar as Hong Kong is concerned, in excess of 95% of our $ billion of foreign reserves are invested outside Asia. Specifically, in the management of our foreign reserves, we work against a preferred neutral position of about 75% in US dollar assets, mostly in US Treasury securities. I understand also that more than 80% of total Asian foreign exchange reserves amounting to $ billion are invested largely in North America and Europe. At the same time, there has been much foreign direct investment and foreign portfolio investment from OECD countries in Asia. It can be argued therefore that Asia is financing much of the budget deficits of developed economies, particularly the United States, but has to try hard to attract money back into the region through foreign investments. And the volatility of foreign portfolio investments has been a major cause of disruptions to the monetary and financial systems of the Asian economies. Some have even gone as far as to say that the Asian economies are providing the funding to hedge funds in non-Asian centres to play havoc with their currencies and financial markets. 35. This comment is perhaps a little unkind, given the important role that is being played by the international financial community in the globalized financial environment.
The crucial frictional costs, it seems to me, are those associated with a sharp fall in output and employment following an abrupt adjustment in the current account, whether brought about by a sudden movement in exchange rates or the collapse of a financial system. They reflect distortions of the price signals for inter-temporal saving and financing decisions. Both the Asian and the recent financial crisis were vivid illustrations of how large those costs can be. Central to any solution is a problem that has not been resolved since the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, namely the asymmetric pressures on, and responsibilities of, deficit and surplus countries to adjust their spending patterns. In trying to deal with this central question, we should not get sidetracked by issues such as changing the composition of the SDR basket. The SDR is a reserve asset, not a reserve currency, and as such has rather little to do with the emergence of unsustainable levels of spending and interest rates. Our predecessors were well aware of the central issue. At Bretton Woods, both American and British officials presented proposals for schemes to impose more symmetric obligations on both surplus and deficit countries. For the United States, Harry Dexter White, an alumnus of Stanford, put forward the idea of a “scarce currency” clause for the Articles of the IMF.

The main externalities in today’s international monetary system are most visible in the interaction between the advanced and emerging economies. The rising importance of the emerging economies has perhaps been the most important development since the Bretton Woods framework of fixed exchange rates was abandoned in the early 1970s. China and India alone have brought 2 ½ billion people into the world trading system, with many more in other countries such as Brazil and Russia. And over the next five years, emerging economies are expected to account for almost three quarters of total growth in world output. Trade has promoted development in China and other emerging markets, and has benefited the rest of the world as the costs of a range of traded goods and services, particularly manufactured goods, have been driven down. But the emergence of the accompanying imbalances in current accounts had huge effects on the global pattern of spending. Between 1998 and 2006, annual output in high-saving economies expanded by around $ trillion – $ more than the growth in domestic demand in the same economies. The rise in  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  output relative to demand in the high-saving countries was only possible because there were matching capital flows. Capital flowed “uphill” from many of the emerging markets to advanced deficit economies, not an obvious sign of capital moving to exploit profitable investment opportunities.
The current set-up does also lead to some odd results, such as a group of assets sitting on insurers’ balance sheets today for which the capital banked up-front (in the form of MA) was in fact greater than the entire cost of the assets themselves. Further, data provided by firms suggests that over 20% of BBB exposures have an MA benefit that exceeds a reasonable estimate of a 1 in 200 year capital requirement, resulting in firms effectively creating capital by taking on more risk. [10] We need to learn from our experience over the last six years and make changes to get this part of the regime onto a firmer footing. We have also looked at this question top-down, by reviewing the literature on what portion of asset returns may be a “liquidity premium” that can be earned without risk by investors who are willing  Page 8  and able to tie up their funds for long periods, which is what insurers can do and what the MA attempts to identify. There is wide disagreement on this amongst academics, but if you plot the MA against the range of views we have seen then you find that the MA is either towards the most generous end of that range or well outside it. This is a topic on which reasonable people can differ, but given the very important role the MA plays it is concerning that the regime is not more consistently well within the range of views offered independently by others.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Further strengthening of the institutional structure for Islamic banking business operations Speech by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the launch of RHB Islamic Bank Berhad, Kuala Lumpur, 1 March 2005. *  *  *  "Building on the strong foundations of a well-developed, comprehensive Islamic financial system and strengthening its international inter-linkages and thus its global integration, has enhanced Malaysia's potential to be an international centre for Islamic finance. Our first Islamic bank, established in 1983, marked the beginning of the Islamic banking and finance chapter for our country. The opening of Islamic banking windows by financial institutions in 1993 paved the way for a more effective and efficient distribution channel for lslamic banking services to achieve the critical mass on a nationwide scale. These developments have been reinforced by the progress achieved in the establishment of the Islamic financial infrastructure, including the money and capital markets, the regulatory and supervisory structure, and most importantly, the legal and shariah framework. Today marks the emergence of a new era, with the establishment of an Islamic subsidiary of a banking group as Islamic banking in our financial system enters into the third strategic phase of the institutional development of Islamic banking and finance in Malaysia". Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my pleasure to be here this morning on the occasion of the official launch of RHB Islamic Bank Berhad. Indeed, today, we are witnessing the first transformation of an Islamic banking window to an Islamic subsidiary.
An important principle established by Exter has been that the principal use of OMO was to offset the effects of surpluses and deficits in the balance of payments. Since the surpluses of BOP raises money supply and deficits would do the opposite, it is necessary to counter their effects by an equivalent change in the domestic assets of the Bank. Hence, any OMO to siphon off the additional liquidity created by the Bank by increasing its domestic assets first, i.e., by investing in primary market Treasury bills, is contrary to the wisdom expressed by Exter in his report. Can Exter be faulted for permitting the Central Bank to lend to the government? Though it is completely contrary to the principles of responsible central banking advocated by him elsewhere in the Report, he should be viewed as a pragmatic person. He argued that “if the Government were determined, even in the face of opposition by the Monetary Board to make excessive use of Central Bank credit, legal limitations could be relaxed” by the government. In such a situation, “the Board being a Government agency would have no  BIS Review 92/2007  5  alternative but to comply”. Thus, legal provisions are not of any use if governments do not function responsibly and the civil society is weak in resisting such dangerous moves by the governments.

When the net foreign assets are negative, it exerts pressure for domestic assets to increase in a compensatory manner, for otherwise, there would be a huge liquidity crunch in the economy adversely affecting all the economic activities. Such a sudden and rapid increase in domestic assets would reduce the ratio of capital and reserves to the domestic assets to unacceptable levels. The corollary would be that both the foreign assets and reserves would fail to back the Bank’s monetary liabilities. To mitigate this risk, it may be necessary to maintain the reserve level greater than the value of the domestic assets of the Bank. In other words, capital and reserves of the Bank should be higher than 100 percent of the domestic assets of the Bank. The independence of the central bank Central banks have been created by societies to issue the medium of exchange and preserve its value. The power given to central banks as sole issuers of currency is similar to nationalization of money supply. This is an extraordinary monopoly power vested with a central bank. Hence, there is the possibility that this power can be abused by the masters who have given the power to a central bank. Since the history is full of examples of governments’ abuse of this power, the question of the independence of central banks has come to the focus.
We, at the Banque de France, are therefore quite open for  experimenting, together with the ECB and other central banks of the Eurosystem, in particular with regard to a wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency. Finally, a third area for change is our contribution to the prevention of inequalities of treatment. With the emergence of new forms of inequalities associated to the digital age, there is a central role for supervisors to be further developed here. I mentioned AI earlier and the risk of it becoming a “black box”. It is therefore essential that AI algorithms remain explainable and  with adequate governance – to justify why and how a financial decision has been taken, and make sure that no combination of variables will serve as a proxy for a model based on a discriminatory approach. And this is what ACPR is currently doing by experimenting with voluntary financial firms on specific use cases of their AI algorithms. In terms of market conduct, we also need to make sure that our supervisory priorities are adequate to the challenges raised for all those who may be on the wrong side of the “digital divide”. For example, I’ve mentioned our current focus on older customers. Seniors are of course more and more at ease with digital tools and this will be increasingly true as more generations are digital “natives”.

People experiencing such issues can go to the local branch network of Banque de France all over the country. Along with other stakeholders, we help them finding solutions to their financial difficulties. In 2018, more than 180.000 such situations were examined. Also, through our financial institutions supervisory arm, the ACPR, and in relation with the financial markets authority AMF, we make sure that banks and insurers have effective procedures in place to detect fragile clients and provide adequate solutions to them. This means for them proposing the specific banking offer I mentioned earlier to all those who might need it. But also ensuring that financial products are not sold to people who do not understand or cannot afford them – it can be a new consumer loan that would lead to overindebtedness, or an insurance policy that clearly does not fit the clients’ needs. In an ageing world, we need to make sure that older customers are not taken advantage of by abusive or deceptive practices. This part of our market conduct role is increasingly important for us and other authorities internationally – the 2019 Japan G20 Presidency has put it forward. Finally, to help improving financial literacy, Banque de France is the national coordinator of the involved stakeholders in that area. This is of course especially important for those at risk of financial exclusion. In that role, we notably provide specific tools, resources and training for social workers who are in touch with these people.
Interest rate assumptions in Central Bank forecasts Various changes have been made to the exchange rate and interest rate assumptions behind the Central Bank’s forecasts in recent years. In the early years of inflation targeting, forecasts were based on the assumption of an unchanged exchange rate and unchanged policy rate over the forecast horizon. By showing how developments would unfold if the Bank left the policy rate unchanged, they indicated whether it needed to be changed. In December 2004, the first alternative scenarios to the baseline forecast were presented which assumed changes in the exchange rate and interest rate over the forecast horizon. In December 2005 the same baseline forecast was used, but in the alternative scenarios, the policy rate path followed financial market analysts’ forecasts and the exchange rate was extrapolated from uncovered interest rate parities. These approaches were developed further in 2006 and the baseline forecast in July and November was based on a policy rate path calculated from forward interest rates and analysts’ expectations. The alternative scenarios assumed, respectively, an unchanged policy rate and a policy rate path that would bring inflation to target within the forecast horizon. Earlier forecasts based on an unchanged policy rate across the horizon, in an environment where there was an obvious need for a sharp hike, produced a misleading picture. They presented developments that the Bank had to explain would never materialise. The baseline forecast in Monetary Bulletin in November 2006 represented an enhancement insofar as it was based on market expectations about policy rate changes.

The growing importance of balance sheet considerations in monetary policy only reinforces the importance of transparency in central bank communication. 5 Finally, let me make an obvious but nonetheless crucial point, even if it goes beyond today’s topic. Transparency is a valuable good in its own right. For good reasons, central banks are powerful and for the most part politically independent institutions. Moreover, the officials who run central banks are typically appointed for lengthy terms and are difficult to remove from their positions. Transparency is a crucial element in creating democratic legitimacy for politically independent institutions whose actions can have wide-ranging consequences for a country’s citizens and its elected government. As former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (1996) said ten years ago, it “cannot be acceptable in a democratic society that a group of unelected individuals are vested with important responsibilities, without being open to full public scrutiny and accountability.” Transparency is of little use if markets and the public do not believe what a central bank says. Credibility is therefore a condition that is a sine qua non for a successful monetary policy. How can credibility be established? Alan Blinder (1998) summarises credibility as a "painstakingly built up history of matching deeds to words". A long history of actually matching deeds to words, of honest communication and a reputation for delivering price stability will therefore ensure central bank credibility.