samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Question: In your meeting today, could you describe what the mood was of the meeting and whether there was much debate about your move and much debate about the level of the move and also, whether it was an unanimous vote in the end. Duisenberg: The mood was good. We had a very long and, I must say, very interesting discussion today. There were a few who were not very inclined to do something about the rate - but here I talk about a very few - and a very large majority was inclined to do something and supported the proposal as we put it before the Council. And so, we had a very good discussion. For the final decision, I am afraid I have to tell you that we did not take a vote. But we know all the different views and so, finally, I could conclude as follows: the Governing Council decides that the main refinancing rate will be lowered from 3% to 2.5%. Question: You said there were no monetary risks of inflation at the moment. Can we infer from today’s decision that there were monetary risks of deflation or is it purely a growth-oriented decision that you have taken today? Duisenberg: No, we also see no risks of deflation emerging. We see that inflation has now remained, on a euro area-wide basis, constant at a rate of 0.8% four months in a row up to now. We see some risks on the upside, i.e.

mainly the impact of rising energy prices, but that is by definition, as it was when it was on the downside, a temporary factor. We see some risks deriving from some wage settlements here and there in Europe, those are the upside risks. We see some downside risks from a rather subdued outlook for general economic development in the entire euro area. But as such, the main thing is that we do not see the situation of price stability in which we entered the euro area, and which prevails until this moment, would be in any way endangered in the future. That gave us the leeway to take the measure I have just announced. Question (translation): Mr. President, would you say you have admitted today that you are pursuing a business cycle-oriented monetary policy, which would constitute a change in model, compared with the Deutsche Bundesbank, which has always maintained that it does not pursue a business cycleoriented monetary policy, but rather that “we have a monetary target or a potential-oriented monetary policy, which is geared to the medium term”. Are you not facing the danger that such an obvious relaxation of your monetary policy could, instead of stimulating reform in other areas of fiscal, tax and labour market policy, reduce pressure for such reforms? Duisenberg: With the greatest emphasis I am capable of, I want to deny that we have in any way switched our strategy or our approach to monetary policy. It is not a cyclically inspired policy.
The analysis and projections in this Report contribute to the understanding of how the Central Bank exercises its responsibilities, as well as the opportunities and challenges that we face together. We remain at your disposal to deepen this discussion. Thank you. ***  7  Figure 1 Quarterly GDP change (1) (2)  Imacec (1) (3)  (contribution, percentage points)  (quarterly change, percent)  2.0  2.0  2.4  1.5  1.5  1.8  2.4  Imacec  Other  1.8  non-mining GDP  1.0  1.0 EGA  0.5 0.0  Fishery  -0.5 2017Q1  2017Q3  1.2  1.2  No minero  0.5  0.6  0.6  0.0  0.0  0.0  -0.5 -0.6  -0.6  2018Q1  15  16  17  18  (1) Seasonally-adjusted series. (2) Other includes trade, manufacturing, financial and entreprenurial services, construction, agriculture, transport&communications, housing services, personal services, public administration, VAT and import duties. (3) Moving quarters. Source: Central Bank of Chile.

In Peru, the expansion of annual GDP in the first quarter was higher than in the previous year, but the continued decline in consumer and business confidence has reduced dynamism going forward. Activity projections are maintained for the other countries (Figure 9). 3  On commodities, the increase in the oil price stands out—the Brent rose to 80 dollars a barrel at some points in the second quarter—driven by geopolitical factors and changes in supply and inventory levels. The baseline scenario, in line with the market futures in the ten days prior to the statistical closing, supposes that the price will decline slowly with respect to its current levels. Thus, Brent and WTI will average 70 dollars per barrel in 2018, 68 dollars in 2019 and 64 dollars in 2020. This contrasts with prices of 63, 59 and 56 dollars that were considered for the same years last March. As for copper, the average price estimates for 2018, 2019 and 2020 are practically unchanged at 310, 295 and 285 cents of dollar per pound, respectively. Towards the statistical closure, the price of the metal climbed to about 330 cents per pound and, according to market reports, has been affected by the uncertainty surrounding possible labor-related downtime in some mines. In the baseline scenario, this increase is assumed to be temporary, so it does not modify the average price projections. Should a mine paralyze, it could be necessary to review both the projected copper price and other macroeconomic variables for Chile.
Data from the Bank’s sterling money market data collection showed that in the first quarter of this year there were on average only 9 deposits a day underpinning 6 month sterling Libor, with a total daily value of £ million. This lack of transactions means that panel banks have to use their expert judgement to make their submissions. And this means they have become increasingly uncomfortable about doing so. And if those panel banks stop submitting, there is no Libor benchmark. Given the pervasive use of Libor historically, this creates a fragility at the heart of markets – that financial markets are reliant upon an unsustainable piece of infrastructure1. This financial stability risk is something the Financial Policy Committee has therefore been closely monitoring.2  The FCA has secured a breathing space to enable the transition, but only until end-2021. The best way to make the most of the timetable set for Libor to end is for markets to focus on transitioning away from it, to new risk free rates. For sterling markets, to the new risk free rate is SONIA, an overnight benchmark provided by the Bank and underpinned by transactions worth about 40 billion pounds a day. The need to transition is a critical one for all involved. We impressed this upon firms in our Dear CEO exercise; a key objective of which was to ensure Board level responsibility for transition.

If an issue is on the FPC agenda, given they are responsible for the financial  3  www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/news/2018/november/boe-and-fca-appoint-new-chair-of-the-sterling-risk-free-referencerates-working-group.pdf 4 https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/events/2019/june/last-orders-calling-time-on-libor 3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  3  system as a whole, then we would generally assume it should also be on the agenda of the senior governance committees of the firms who make up that system. To make sure this was the case, the UK regulators – the PRA and FCA – took a decision to send a “Dear CEO” letter to our largest banks and insurers requesting sight of their Board-approved plans for managing the risks around Libor cessation. The Bank and FCA have already responded to the individual firms involved and, this morning, we published thematic findings from the exercise. I encourage all Libor users whatever their size and position in the system - to look at this: the emerging themes from the exercise apply to a wide range of firms, not just those who received our letters. I’ll make a few observations:  i. The letter has achieved one of its original objectives of helping to focus senior minds on this topic. Each firm written to now has a dedicated Senior Manager under the Senior Managers regime with responsibility for overseeing the transition – I can see many are here this morning. ii. The responses to the Dear CEO letter highlighted much of the good work that is already underway; how some firms have mobilised themselves to meet this challenge.
Wage growth last year was the highest since 2011, with a further rise expected this year. The outcome of this year's wage settlement so far suggests that annual wage growth will be slightly higher than we projected in March. Higher wage growth means higher business costs and could lead to higher prices for domestically produced goods. The krone depreciation will generate higher costs for imported goods ahead. Chart 6: Further rate rise likely in June The Committee assesses that a higher policy rate is needed to dampen inflation. Since the publication of our March projections, overall economic activity has been broadly as expected. Excluding energy prices, consumer price inflation has also moved as projected. Higher wage growth and the krone depreciation will contribute to keeping inflation elevated ahead. If the krone remains weaker than projected or pressures in the economy persist, a higher policy rate than envisaged earlier may be needed. The future policy rate path will depend on economic developments, but we will most likely raise the policy rate again in June, at which time we will also present updated forecasts for the Norwegian economy. 2/2  BIS - Central bankers' speeches

CPI inflation had risen quite sharply, but was – and, I should say, still is – also expected to fall back quite sharply towards the 2% target. Provided that broadly “humped” path for inflation materialised over the coming months, the upside risk to medium-term inflation expectations seemed likely to subside. It was not a matter of my wanting to avoid surprising the markets in some narrow sense, which in the greater scheme of things is neither here nor there. Rather, I was concerned that an immediate move might, on balance, cause unnecessary confusion about the Committee’s view of the medium-term outlook for inflation and about monetary strategy. In the event, subsequent speeches by colleagues, and the medium-term perspective of the February Inflation Report, helped to keep that genie in the bottle. In February, I was strongly in favour of widening the width of the Inflation Report “fan chart” for inflation during the coming year, to underline the near-term uncertainty about, and the great difficulty in forecasting, the path of utility prices. It was vital to convey the medium-term prospect, and also that we stand ready to act if the risks warranted it. More recently, with Bank Rate at 5.25% and a modestly upward sloping money market curve, I have characterised monetary conditions as “edging towards restrictive”, so long as inflation does as expected fall back in the near term. That has been appropriate given the degree of pricing power apparently emergent in conditions of relatively high capacity utilisation amongst firms.
Chart 9: Sectoral components of debt and portfolio liabilities, change in p.p. of GDP Other debt liabilities  Portfolio Liabilities, debt securities  15.00 10.00 5.00  0.00 2007-2005  2012-2008  2015-2013  -5.00  9.00 8.00 7.00 6.00 5.00 4.00 3.00 2.00 1.00 0.00 2007-2005  Banks  General Government  Other  Banks  2012-2008 General Government  2015-2013 Other  Source: International Monetary Fund, Balance of Payments Statistics. If we observe the dynamics of capital flows though international investment position lenses, conclusions change somewhat. The IIP data also points to a notable slowdown of the capital inflows and even to a decline in liabilities across all sub–regions in the most recent period. When dissecting the structure of the international labilities, similar to the BOP data, a decline in the debt component in the last three years is noticed. The strongest intensity has been recorded in the CEE countries, but also in the other two regions as well, which was not the case to the BOP data where a very mild increase in the other two sub-regions is observed. According to the IIP data, deleverage refers to all three sectors, not only to the banking system, and it has been present in the last 3 years, with the exception of the banks where the deleveraging started since the emergence of the crisis. Same conclusions on portfolio flows, derived from the BOP data, can be also drawn from the IIP position.

And, even more important, HLIs play no role in traditional financial intermediation, i.e., they are not involved in the savings and loans business. Hence, the failure of one or more important HLIs would not directly encumber the real economy. HLIs do not represent a direct threat to financial stability. The main concern with regard to financial stability is that the failures of one or more large HLIs could have a severe impact on systemically important banks and, as such, constitute an indirect threat to the financial system. We see two channels through which such a shock could be transmitted to the banking sector. 6 First transmission channel: banks as counterparties and creditors By providing leverage, acting as counterparty or serving as prime brokers, large international banks are directly exposed vis-à-vis HLIs. When a HLI incurs losses, this has a direct impact on the bank. Depending on the size of the open position vis-à-vis the HLI, this might threaten the bank's solvency in an extreme case. The effective risk emanating from HLIs depends primarily on the margin and collateral requirements set by the banks. These requirements help not only to constrain losses but also to determine the amount of leverage HLIs are allowed to use. Moreover, banks can partially hedge their risk and diversify their exposures. In general, we do not see a substantial difference between banks’ exposures to HLIs and other risky exposures, such as, for instance, derivatives.
The last condition points to the restricted use of interest rates for the purpose of bursting a bubble, since the level of interest rates has a bearing not only on decisions taken by entities directly engaged in the process of forming a bubble but in fact on all the entities operating in the economy. To evoke a vivid picture, the use of interest rates to this end may be compared to the use of an atomic weapon in the battlefield – for an atomic bomb makes no distinction between friend and foe. Donald Kohn’s conditions are not easy to meet. Therefore, the opinion now prevails that supervisory authorities must enhance their macroprudentail activities 5 . Consequently, one of the conclusions is to take recourse to supervisory instruments with a view to bearing on decisions of those market participants which are primarily responsible for bubble formation and report to supervisory authorities. By way of illustration, although the supervisory authorities do not interact with financial institutions which extended a large part of subprime loans or with arbitrage funds which purchased instruments backed on those loans, they continue to oversee the process of credit risk management and liquidity at banks. Banks played an important role in the process of spreading the crisis. as investors and providers of liquidity to companies – intermediaries in the sale of assets and companies investing in those assets, as well as by organizing the securitization of those assets. The role of good supervisory policies cannot be underestimated 6 .

For many years already, significant action has been adopted on the EU level with a view to establishing an efficient and safe European market, where those transactions will be executed with similar effectiveness both on domestic and cross-border levels. Those activities, undertaken both by the public authorities and by the market, are aimed at achieving: 1.  legal harmonization,  2.  systemic standardization and harmonization,  3.  subjective consolidation,  4.  systemic integration, and  5.  technical integration. It is extremely difficult to predict future developments in each of those domains. Apparently, the harmonization and integratory action which I have just mentioned and which has been undertaken recently, will lead to a situation that can be predicted to some extent. What changes will the future bring in comparison to what we have now? As regards the securities settlement system, a new large player is about to appear in a couple of years. TARGET2-Securities operated by the European Central Bank will integrate the settlement function which is now executed by domestic systems of securities settlement. It may also be assumed that owing to consolidation processes, the number of central depositories in the EU will diminish. I would venture the claim that in the context of the development of TARGET2-Securities and CCBM2, the number of deposits maintained at central banks is going to decline 15 . As regards the payments systems, in a month, the TARGET2 system will be established to take over RTGS systems in individual EU Member States.
This is defined by stipulating that the annual inflation rate, measured in terms of the consumer price index (CPI), should be two per cent with a tolerated deviation of plus/minus one percentage point. Monetary policy should thus be conducted to keep the purchasing power of the krona stable with regard to the basket of goods bought by an average Swedish household. This means that when central wage agreements are signed, the average wage-earner should be able to be fairly sure of what a nominal wage increase will entail in terms of purchasing power. A predictable rate of inflation can also serve as a rudder when domestically-oriented companies set their prices. Low and stable inflation expectations reduce uncertainty concerning the real effects of borrowing and saving in krona for households and companies with their costs and income in Sweden. This means that the resources within the economy can be allocated in a better way that if the consumer prices vary. A monetary policy that is credibly aimed towards an inflation target can thereby create good conditions for growth. Moreover, a monetary policy that it conducted with the aid of a symmetrical inflation target often has a counter-cyclical function. This means that it has a stimulating effect on the economy during a downturn in economic activity, as the inflation rate is normally low then, and vice versa. That, in a few words, is the philosophy behind the Riksbank’s inflation target.

The Sveriges Riksbank Act also establishes that the Riksbank shall be autonomous, which means that we six members of the Executive Board, who make the decisions on the steering interest rates, may not seek or receive instructions from the government or parliament. The idea is that we are thus free to maintain price stability and will not be tempted to concentrate on short-term considerations when making our decisions. It may appear that this target forces the Riksbank to give lower priority to the development of the real economy. We only have a target for monetary policy. However, the preparatory work on the Riksbank Act stated that we shall “without setting aside the price stability target, support the objectives of the general economic policy with the aim of achieving sustainable growth and a high level of employment”. In any event, the assessments of the future path of the real economy play an important role in our decisions, as developments in economic activity are an important component in determining inflation. However, what is even more important is that there is no contradiction between good growth and price stability in the long term, quite the contrary. If we look at developments during the 1990s, growth after 1992 was on average 3.0 per cent a year, despite the fact that inflation had been below the target level for several years. Unemployment had at the same time declined from 9 per cent to around 4 per cent.
At the level of monetary measures, the Central Bank of Kuwait cut the interest rate several times in March 2020 down to all-time low 1.5% to reduce the borrowing cost and ensure that the temporary liquidity issues at the CBK-regulated units would not turn to permanent issues to their solvency. This step was followed by a series of measures related to financial stability including activation of its emergency plans and those of the banking sector to address the requirements of the pandemic, as well as taking a package of measures within the macroprudential policy to ease the regulatory requirements upon the outbreak of the crisis, the most important of which was releasing the prudential capital buffers of 2.5%, facilitating liquidity requirements to provide a wider lending space for banks, and reducing the risk weights related to exposures to small and medium enterprises, thus supporting the vulnerable sectors. As regards, the financial stability, the measures included payment moratoriums for the affected customers, obligating banks not sell or seize the collateral, and instructing banking sector units to conduct a comprehensive review of their credit and investment portfolios. To mitigate the economic and financial damages, and maximize the benefits from the aforementioned monetary and financial measures, the Central Bank developed and implemented a clear plan to follow up on the situations during the pandemic, in light of the data on the conditions and spreading infection.

Ivan Iskrov: Bulgaria and the Francophonian movement Speech by Mr Ivan Iskrov, Governor of the Bulgarian National Bank, at the opening of the 13th Annual Meeting of the Governors of the Central Banks from the Francophonian countries, Sofia, 12 May 2006. *  *  *  Dear Governors, Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to Bulgaria, one of the oldest countries in Europe! It is a pleasure and honour for me to open the 13th Meeting of the Governors of the Central Banks from the Francophonian countries. I am also very much flattered by the fact that this meeting is for the first time held in a country from Central and Eastern Europe and it is precisely the Bulgarian National Bank's privilege to host such an event. This is also the year of the centennial anniversary of the birth of Leopold Cedar Senghor - the founder of the Intergovernmental Francophone Agency and the conceptual father of the Francophone Movement (La Francophonie). Tomorrow, the conceptual father of our gatherings and ECB honourable President, Jean-Claude Trichet, will join us. The fact that the BNB hosts this meeting is not only the result of the formal acceptance of Bulgaria to the Francophonian community in the early 90-ies of the past century. The French language and culture made their way into the country already in the first half of the XIX century when we were still part of the Ottoman empire.