samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
After requesting and receiving the Government endorsement on this course of action, the Bank of Thailand is now entrusted with the oversight role of all credit card providers, including non-deposit-taking companies. Since November 2002, the Bank of Thailand has issued circulars to regulate the provision of credit card services. A minimum income requirement for cardholders has been set at 15,000 baht, and a cap on the maximum interest rate charged set at 18% per annum. This initial action has somewhat slowed the expansion of credit card businesses; however, further measures were needed. In April 2004, the Bank of Thailand revised regulations to raise the minimum amount of monthly payments from no less than 5% to 10% of outstanding debt, and shorten the term for debt payment from 20 to 10 months. The increase in the minimum monthly payment to 10% aims to prevent cardholders from spending more than their ability to repay, as well as help pace their purchasing of items in order to prevent an excessive debt repayment burden in the future. After the second regulatory revision, the annual growth rate of credit outstanding for installments of credit cards issued by commercial banks declined from 40% to 17 %, a rate which may be less likely to create problems. BIS Review 43/2006  1  With more stringent supervision in the credit card business by the Bank of Thailand, a new phenomenon has arisen: growth in the personal loan business, particularly since 2003.

The intimate and warm relationship between customer and shopkeeper, and sense of community has also disappeared with this new phenomenon. In its place are brightly-lit neon hyper stores, which while luxurious and comfortable, lack the human touch of familiar faced shop-owners. Throughout the nation, the livelihood of the owners of these family-run stores has been taken away, and profits accumulated with a few large chains and franchises. Shop owners who previously ran their own businesses have no option but to become employees of these large corporations instead. This situation has arisen because we have opened our society to Western culture and influence. We have stood by and watched small, family-run shops fight a battle against the large chain stores with incomparable financial standing – a battle they are sure to lose. If authorities recognize the importance of the distribution of income as well as the distribution of opportunities, these family-run businesses would be able to continue with their livelihoods, and large multinational corporations could be prevented from overwhelming these small businesses. The process of globalization will bring about access to new technologies, which will help improve the efficiency of our various economic sectors. But in the meantime, the process of globalization opens our economy to the possibility of large multinational corporations taking over local businesses. We should welcome globalization in as much as it helps us enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and improve competitiveness, in the business which has to compete in the international arena.
That should go a long way towards establishing market norms, testing the investor base, and creating healthy competitive tension between lenders. To support that process, and deal with market-wide issues, a new market-led ‘Loans Enablers’ taskforce has also been established under the Working Group to identify and deliver incremental tools in four main areas:  6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  6  -  Conventions – where the taskforce is working with sterling market participants and international counterparts to finalise key product conventions for new SONIA linked loans;  -  Infrastructure – where the largest providers of loan valuation and pricing systems now have SONIA-linked loan capabilities, and the taskforce is ensuring new conventions can quickly and efficiently be incorporated into those systems. The group is also identifying typical links across firms’ IT systems to ensure alignment across operations, treasury and risk management teams;  -  Documentation – where the task force is looking for ways to help share lessons learnt on documentation used in firms’ pilot loans, in what is largely a private market, allowing others to adapt quickly and standardise where possible. This will complement the important work already underway by the Loan Market Association to revise its own documentation;  -  Communications – where, despite good progress, there remains an urgent need to expand understanding of the substance and timetable for LIBOR transition to a much wider range of end-users of LIBOR across the UK economy.

The Executive Board described the background for the decision as follows: •  Underlying inflation has been lower than projected in recent months. Nevertheless, several factors point to higher inflation ahead. Capacity utilisation is high and there is little spare capacity in the Norwegian economy. Employment is rapidly rising and unemployment has exhibited a marked decline. There are signs of higher wage growth and expectations of rising inflation. At the same time, the krone exchange rate has depreciated from strong values. •  The interest rate path presented in Inflation Report 3/06 will provide a reasonable balance between the objective of bringing up inflation towards target and the objective of stabilising developments in output and employment, conditional on the information currently available to Norges Bank. •  Monetary policy influences the economy with a lag. Over several years, interest rates have been considerably lower than what Norges Bank considers to be a neutral level. The interest rate may gradually be raised to a more normal level at a somewhat faster pace than envisaged earlier, although it is unlikely that rates will be raised at every monetary policy meeting. Based on Norges Bank’s current assessment, the interest rate will thus continue to be raised in small, not too frequent steps if economic developments are broadly in line with projections.
Since its inception, the Board has issued three public recommendations.8 One of these addresses how macroprudential policy should be organised at the national level. The ESRB proposes that national legislation should be passed to appoint a body with responsibility for macroprudential policy and that this body could in turn consist of one or several institutions. At the same time, the ESRB stresses that the central banks should play a leading role in macroprudential policy. I think that there is a lot to be said for this, even from the point of view of the situation in Sweden. A lot of the analysis of macroprudential policy issues is already conducted at the Riksbank, and there are also clear links between monetary policy and macroprudential policy. While awaiting further guidance on how the work with macroprudential policy should be organised in Sweden, the Riksbank and Finansinspektionen have formed a temporary collaboration council. The idea is that this council should act as a forum for discussion and the exchange of information with regard to preventive work in the field of financial stability. The council should be seen a first step towards creating robust macroprudential policy. But talk alone is not enough; we must also show that we can take action. I am really looking forward to playing my part in this work together with my colleagues at the Riksbank.

One of the most important lessons of the financial crisis is the need for macroprudential policy. Important work lies ahead of us here, at the European level and in Sweden. Several important steps have already been taken. The Riksbank’s possibilities to influence factors that are important to financial stability must be improved, and I think there are good reasons why the Riksbank should play a major role in the work with macroprudential policy. New instruments within the framework of macroprudential policy can complement monetary policy and traditional micro supervision in order to promote financial stability. I am really looking forward to continuing to work with monetary policy and financial stability at the Riksbank. BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  12  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  13  14  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  15
It is acknowledged that digitalisation comes together with the favourite topic of any supervisor- risks, and especially cyber risk. This has been duly recognised by all European institutions and authorities and is very high on the supervisory agenda. Pivotal role in the efforts to address cyber risk, is the enactment of the Digital Operational and Resilience Act. I expect that this will be a cornerstone in the efforts to improve operational resilience of the banking sector. Cyber-attacks have increased significantly over the last couple of years with though a limited number of incidents, both in numbers and impact, in the Cyprus banking sector. Nevertheless, banks should gear up their resilience to withstand the anticipated incidents, while also ensuring that a robust disaster recovery plan and business continuity plan are in place for possible such incidents. At the same time, the banking sector faces the challenges of the adverse macroeconomic developments, which may deteriorate asset quality, leading to an upward pressure on impairments and provisions. Prudent provisioning policies and the provision of fast and viable restructurings to customers is the appropriate way to address effectively the consequences of the adverse economic environment. The Russian invasion in Ukraine has elevated further the importance of climate risk due to its interconnectedness with geopolitical risk. The ongoing effort to reduce the dependence on Russian energy frontloaded the need to reduce carbon emissions and move promptly towards a greener economy.

I am aware that taking the climate and environment into consideration is quite new for the banks, but it is equally so for us. However, adapting to climate change has no alternative. As Bob Brown once said – “The future will either be green or not at all". 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
It is my personal opinion that the Fed has bought time for fiscal authorities to get their house in order, but four years later I am not sure we are much closer to that goal. It is true that Washington politicians stopped bickering long enough in December to pass a budget, the first budget in four years. And the projected budget deficit is just 3 percent of GDP this fiscal year, down from 4.1 percent in 2013 and 7 percent in 2012. After five years of outsized deficits, the U.S. is finally on par with Mexico, whose deficit throughout the recovery never exceeded 2.8 percent of GDP. You might think that agreeing on a budget means the U.S. government can go about its business, taxing and spending and keeping the monuments open to tourists. But in the U.S. we have another obstacle, the debt ceiling. This ritual battle, which we have fought at least 87 times since the end of World War II, does not address the underlying imbalances at the root of our fiscal situation. Nevertheless, we revisit it regularly and did so in February when Congress actually approved raising the debt ceiling without a big fight. Last time, you may recall, things did not go so smoothly. The stock markets wobbled, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued warnings, and one of the credit rating agencies downgraded U.S. government debt.

BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  A second was to pass regulatory reforms to lessen the risk of future financial-market crises and ensure too-big-to-fail entities never again place the U.S. in a position where taxpayer funds must be used to bail out bad private-sector actors. A third was to restructure government debt while long-term rates are at historic lows. Within the next four years, 58 percent of U.S. government debt will mature. And though short-term rates are low now, they won’t be low forever. When the existing debt matures, rates are sure to be higher and servicing the debt will take a bigger share out of the budget, leaving less to spend on everything else. One sobering statistic is that net interest payments on the debt are scheduled to nearly triple by the end of the decade, rising from $ billion in fiscal year 2013 (1.3 percent of GDP) to $ billion in fiscal year 2020 (2.8 percent of GDP). I would say that this era of cheap money is one of missed opportunities on all three of these fronts. To add insult to injury, there are increasing signs quantitative easing has overstayed its welcome: Market distortions and acting on bad incentives are becoming more pervasive. Stock market metrics such as price to projected forward earnings, price-to-sales ratios and market capitalization as a percentage of GDP are at eye-popping levels not seen since the dot-com boom of the late 1990s.
The market response to the reinvestment decision at the August FOMC meeting seemed largely in line with the estimated effects from the earlier round of asset purchases, once we account for the size of the surprise and the anticipatory pricing that occurred ahead of its announcement. And the increased expectations for balance sheet expansion in response to the September FOMC statement also generated a sizable market response. To be sure, I think it is fair to say that this is an imperfect policy tool. Even under the estimates noted earlier, the Federal Reserve had to increase its securities holdings considerably to induce the estimated 50 basis point response of longer-term rates. In addition, there is a large degree of uncertainty surrounding the estimates of these effects, given our limited experience with this instrument. Lastly, it is reasonable to assume that the effects of balance sheet expansion would diminish at some point, especially if yields were to  6  The duration of our Treasury purchases are modestly higher than the duration of the MBS that are being produced in the market. 7  See “The Outlook, Policy Choices and Our Mandate,” October 1, 2010. 4  BIS Review 128/2010  move to extremely low levels. Nevertheless, the tool appears to be working, and it is not clear that we have yet reached a point of diminishing effects. Some observers have argued that balance sheet changes, even if they influence longer-term interest rates, will not affect the economy because the transmission mechanism is broken.

- Green bond issuance saw the largest increase, comparing with the previous quarter and with the same quarter a year earlier. Financials and governments remained the largest issuers with a share of over 73 percent in 2023 Q1. Indeed, new sovereign issuance increased sharply in 2023 Q1, the European Commission issuing € billion of NextGenerationEU green bonds in its fourth syndicated transaction for 2023. 1  See IMF (2023). Climate Finance Monitor Q1 2023. May. 1  - Conversely, the issuance of most other types of bonds declined. For example, sustainability-linked instruments saw slower growth in the first quarter of the year, which, according to the IMF, “may reflect market participants’ perceptions around greenwashing and the credibility of the asset class to drive companies to meet sustainability targets”. Focusing on the euro area, according to the experimental indicators on sustainable finance developed by the Eurosystem: - The outstanding amount of sustainable debt securities issued in the euro area has more than doubled in the last two years. Securities designed to finance green and social projects, which account for the majority of the market, have seen a particularly strong increase. - Over the same period, sustainability-linked bonds recorded the highest growth rate. However, the relevance of these instruments in the overall debt securities market remains minor. Another interesting aspect highlighted by these experimental indicators is holdings. Since the beginning of 2021, euro area holdings of sustainable debt securities have grown continuously, following a similar trend to the one observed for euro area issuances.
We and the FCA[11] plan to consult later this year on the regulatory frameworks we will apply to stablecoins. The Bank of England’s regulatory framework, in line with the legislation, will cover the issuance of stablecoins which are used for payments at systemic scale, the systems for transferring the coins, and also extend to systemic service providers such as custody wallets that are an intrinsic part of the stablecoin arrangement. It will give effect to two expectations for systemic or likely to be systemic stablecoins that have been set by the Bank’s Financial Policy Committee. First, that payment systems that use stablecoins should be regulated to standards equivalent to those applied for traditional payments. And second that stablecoins used as money for payments should meet equivalent standards to those provided by commercial bank money. It will follow the guidance on the relevant international standards set last year[12], including the requirement that the coins should be redeemable from the stablecoin arrangement, in fiat money, at par value and on demand[13]. This matches the requirement for commercial bank money and is crucial both to ensure confidence in the coins and their uniformity with other sterling money. Systemic stablecoins will need to be backed with high quality and liquid assets to be able to meet these expectations and standards, as set out by the Financial Policy Committee. [14] These could include either deposits at the Bank of England or very highly liquid securities, or some combination of the two.

It also raises questions about the operation of anti-money laundering and other regulation to prevent illicit finance. An alternative to allowing tokenised deposits to circulate freely and be directly transferable would be to require transactions on new forms of ledger, for example transactions in smart contracts involving tokenised deposits, to be settled ultimately by the adjustment of bank ledgers as happens now. In other words a transfer of tokenised deposits on one set of ledgers would trigger the adjustment of individuals’ bank account balances and be settled by a transaction between the banks involved. In that case, deposit money issued by a bank could only ever be held in an account at that bank. It is important that as we develop the regime for payment stablecoins, we also develop the approach for tokenised bank deposits. This will allow, banks and non-banks alike, that want to develop payment solutions using new technologies to understand clearly what is possible and what is required in the respective regulatory regimes. The PRA intends to set out its approach in this area alongside the Bank’s consultation on the payment stablecoin regime. It is of course possible that commercial banks might wish to offer payment stablecoins as opposed to tokenised bank deposits. In such cases, I think we will need to be very alive to the risks of confusion on the part of customers as to protections they are entitled to and confusion of business models within the bank itself.
The first one has to do with the defense of the financial customer. It clearly needs strengthening. 1  A household is defined to be in financial risk when debt service amounts to 75 percent of its annual income and its expenditures are 20 percent greater than income. This is estimated at the survey, so it includes households that may be going through temporary difficulties or facing a solvency problem. The data presented here correspond to households in the Metropolitan Region. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Reinforcing the financial area of the Consumer Service Office (SERNAC) and the implementation of standardized credit contracts – with very clear rules for reprogramming and forbidding abusive practices – point in that direction. The second such flaw refers to investor protection; it is necessary to ensure that investors receive reliable information and are spared the deceptions that seem to have occurred in this case. The Bank is readily available to cooperate in these discussions. Another important aspect of the operation of the retail industry is safeguarding the normal functioning of the payment system, in as much as there are stores that will accept credit cards from retail stores as a means of payment. In concrete, what is sought is to ensure that businesses associated the credit card receive what is due them at the right time. This aspect is regulated in the bylaws of the Central Bank.

The most outstanding development of the past several months has been the attenuation of some of the  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  inflationary risks then identified. International commodity prices ceased to increase and the propagation of specific price shocks has been limited. This and monetary policy decisions have collaborated to ease fears of a further inflationary acceleration that we felt in March. Accordingly, private inflation expectations show a decline in the last two months, although some remain above the target (figure 2). First-quarter data showed a fast expansion of domestic output and demand, exceeding March’s expectations. Partial indicators for the second quarter reflect an economy that continues to grow strongly but shows some recent moderation. Worth noting is the strong dynamism of private consumption and, to a lesser extent, the machinery and equipment component of investment. Consumption evolves in line with fundamentals, particularly the increase in household income, given that both employment and wages continue on the rise. Financial conditions are still favorable. The baseline scenario assumes that GDP will grow this year between 6 percent and 7 percent. This range is higher than foreseen in March, consistently with the upward bias then identified. This higher growth forecast is based on actual first-quarter figures that exceeded estimates. For the rest of the year, the pace of expansion of demand will moderate as forecast in March. In particular, the speed of growth in the GDP of sectors other than natural resources will quickly approach the trend rate, which is still estimated at five percent.
All of this evidence points in one direction: the global monetary system operates in a similar fashion to all other tightly-knit networks – it is robust yet at the same time fragile. It is driven by potent – increasingly potent – spillover effects and common global factors. In short, global finance can only be understood and managed as a system. Characteristics of the global financial network The next obvious question is what mechanisms are in place to underpin the resilience of this tightly-woven web? Let me highlight some key characteristics of the global financial network which are useful in assessing its robustness. And let’s start with the good news. One positive trend in the international flow of funds is their changing composition. Table 1 breaks down these flows of funds into their foreign direct investment (FDI), portfolio and debt components, for advanced and emerging markets, over the periods 1980–1994 and 1995–2012. Two features stand out. First, the declining share of debt-based finance and second, as the counterpart to this, the rising share of portfolio and in particular FDI investment. For example, since 1995 the dominant source of emerging market capital has switched dramatically from debt-based finance towards FDI. Equity and FDI together now account for two-thirds of emerging market financing. That is significant from a stability perspective. Empirical evidence strongly suggests that FDI and, to a lesser extent, equity is a far more stable source of external financing than bank debt (Kose et al (2009)).

The SNB will carefully monitor implementation of the reform proposals for foreign exchange benchmarks and provide support, if necessary. In the case of interest rate benchmarks, the FSB’s work will continue with the further participation of the SNB. 2  Swiss Average Rate Overnight. 3  Tomorrow/Next Overnight Indexed Swap. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches