samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Chart 3 Changing inflation outlook for 2011 Bank of England mean forecasts for CPI inflation in Q1 2011 4.5 4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 Feb-09 May-09 Aug-09 Nov-09 Feb-10 May-10 Aug-10 Nov-10 Feb-11 Outturn  Source: ONS and Bank of England  In my time on the Monetary Policy Committee I have earned myself a reputation as a “hawk” or even an “uber-hawk” because of my stance on interest rates. This reputation has been reinforced by my consistent minority votes since June last year to raise the UK Bank Rate. But I acquired my hawkish mantle much earlier, in my first year on the MPC, when I voted in  3  4  According to monitoring by TMF, an international tax consultancy, eight other European countries raised VAT rates at the beginning of 2011, including Switzerland, from 7.6% to 8%; Portugal, from 21% to 23%; Poland, from 22% to 23% and Slovakia, from 19% to 20%. Spain and Portugal also raised rates last year, along with Finland. In addition, the ONS estimate that UK CPI rose by 0.76% in January 2011 in response to the rise in VAT, whereas the difference between UK and euro area inflation in that month was 1.7%, and the gap with Swedish and Swiss inflation was 1.9% and 3.7% respectively. BIS central bankers’ speeches  a minority on a number of occasions to raise interest rates in response to the relatively strong growth and rising inflation we were experiencing before the financial crisis.

The Bank of Zambia therefore welcomes this Workshop as it bodes well with our strategic objective of increasing access to financial services to 50% of the population by 2015 from the current level of 37.3%. As I conclude, I want to assure ATI that the proposal for the Bank of Zambia and all Central Banks in the COMESA Region to relax the capital reserve rules, by considering applying a lower risk weight on transactions that banks and financial institutions have insured with ATI is receiving active consideration within the organs of the COMESA Central Bank Governors. Let me commend ATI for coming up with this innovative initiative which seeks to deepen our financial markets. Finally, I challenge all of you this morning, especially participants from commercial banks to explore ways on how you can improve your products and services to better serve the entire Zambian population with the products that ATI will present to you this morning. Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is now my pleasure to declare the African Trade Insurance Agency’s workshop for bankers officially opened and I wish you fruitful deliberations. I thank you for your attention. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
More fundamentally, the krone is influenced by the difference in activity at home and abroad and how fast the interest rate has to be increased in Norway to keep inflation low and stable. The economic geography of Norway will change over the next 10 to 15 years. The domestic cost level and the real economy crisis abroad will put pressure on jobs and businesses in manufacturing communities. And as mentioned, the most important, perhaps the only, instrument available to the authorities in addressing this challenge is to restrain petroleum revenue spending. Petroleum revenue investment Let me now turn to the Government Pension Fund Global. 2  6  See for example the National Budget for 2010, box 3.1, p. 53. BIS Review 44/2010  It took a generation from the time the first oil field was discovered in the North Sea until the government began to set aside economic rent. The Government Petroleum Fund was established in 1990 and the first transfer to the wealth fund was made in 1996. Each year since that time, as a savings plan, the government has set aside a portion of current income from petroleum activities as deposits in the Fund. Today, the value of the Fund is around NOK 2.6 trillion, or about 115 per cent of 2009 GDP in Norway. New transfers will likely be made to the Fund for perhaps a little more than another decade. The Fund will in that case continue to grow and may reach twice its current size.

The international order and Norway In recent years, increasingly assertive non-statutory bodies have emerged in the area of international economic and financial collaboration, most notably the G20.When the global financial crisis unfolded, the G20 4 rose to the task. Nevertheless, I believe that the role of non-statutory bodies and the statutory institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) 5, must be reconsidered to promote the necessary multilateral approach to global governance. Norway has a long-held tradition of participating actively in multilateral cooperation and institutions has actively backed the multilateral responses to the financial crisis. As a global investor with an open market economy, Norway has a strong and vested interest in the wellbeing of global financial markets. This interest is shared with most market participants, large and small. We have a common interest in a market-based international order, supporting a level playing field and sound economic governance. Lessons from the crisis A key lesson from the global crisis is the need for multilateral cooperation and collective action. It relates to the framework for polices on prevention, resolution, reform and implementation. It also relates to the institutional set-up. The IMF has played a pivotal role in presenting the initial lessons from the crisis, in providing finance to countries with temporary balance of payments needs, and in preparing the overall framework for the international policy response. When the good times return, we must avoid memory failure and remind ourselves of these facts of life.
To lend, to play their necessary role in enabling economic growth banks need to be healthy. So while it is right that we give banks time to transition to the end point of the new standards, that does not mean that we put off strengthening of capital and liquidity until the end of the process. We have needed in the UK to take action intended to restore banks’ capital positions to health. So that now they can move up to higher Basel III standards. On interconnectedness, we have agreed standards for the $ trillion of derivatives, including CDS, previously sold “over the counter”. This includes the requirements for trading to clear through “central counterparties”. So the risks in these contracts are transparent. So the risks are managed by ensuring that the parties to the contract back up their obligations to each other with collateral as the value of the contract changes. The US has implemented the new standards in law and is now implementing them in practice. In the EU, standards are expected to come into force in the next year or so. Between them, the US and EU account for 80% of this market. To be clear: Progress in this area has not been without setbacks. Although there has been now agreement on an international standard, implementation in the US and EU has differed in a number of key respects. At times these differences have threatened to balkanise what is now a global market.

Mario Draghi: IMFC Statement Statement by Mr Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, at the thirty-sixth meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, Washington DC, 13 October 2017. * * * The euro area’s economic expansion, supported by the ECB’s monetary policy measures, continues to be firm and broad-based across countries and sectors. The economy has now expanded for 17 consecutive quarters, and at a faster than expected pace in the first half of this year. Over this period, employment in the euro area has increased by almost seven million. Youth unemployment has declined from its peak above 24% in 2013 to just above 19% recently, but still remains above its pre-crisis level, and especially high in some member countries. The ongoing recovery is being largely driven by domestic forces, with both consumption and investment contributing to growth. Private consumption is fostered by employment gains and increasing household wealth. Investment continues to benefit from very favourable financing conditions and improvements in corporate profitability. Also, the broad-based global recovery is increasingly supporting euro area exports. The latest ECB staff projections foresee annual real GDP increasing by 2.2% in 2017, 1.8% in 2018 and 1.7% in 2019. Risks to the growth outlook are broadly balanced, with downside risks stemming predominantly from external sources. In this context, preserving openness underpinned by multilateral cooperation and effective financial regulation will decisively contribute to fostering a favourable external environment. While headline inflation has increased markedly over the past year, this is largely reflecting energy and food inflation.
Before I continue, let me give the usual disclaimer that the views I express are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) or anyone else in the Federal Reserve System. The Final Countdown I’ve spoken about the LIBOR transition many times before,1 but the message bears repeating, especially now that we’re only about six months away from moving off of LIBOR, once and for all. During this critical time, it’s important to focus on building a strong and robust foundation for the future so that we never have to go through a transition like this one again. That’s why when it comes to choosing a LIBOR replacement, you need to be confident that the rate you use is appropriate and will hold up even under stress. At the Financial Stability Oversight Committee (FSOC) meeting earlier this month, FSOC members highlighted risks around reference rates that share many of LIBOR’s shortcomings, such as being based on thinly-traded markets.2 The Alternative Reference Rates Committee (ARRC) studied this issue carefully and consulted thoroughly with the public, and recommended the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) as the main U.S. dollar reference rate for the post-LIBOR world.

In addition, we have seen surges in demand for certain goods that have outstripped available supply. The clearest example is used cars, which are in very high demand, reflecting factors such as the needs of a remote workforce, stimulus payments, and demand from rental car companies. At the same time, the supply of vehicles has been held back by earlier production cutbacks and shortages of semiconductor chips. This imbalance in supply and demand has caused used car prices to soar. Looking forward, supply will slowly come back online, and I therefore expect car prices to stabilize and then decline over time to more normal levels. 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  We have already seen this type of dynamic play out in some sectors. The latest data show growth in wholesale used car prices slowing in the first half of June.4 And lumber prices, which soared during the pandemic as housing demand surged and supply struggled to keep up, have declined sharply in recent weeks. I expect that as price reversals and short-run imbalances from the economy reopening play out, inflation will come down from around 3 percent this year to close to 2 percent next year and in 2023. It goes without saying that there is a great deal of uncertainty about the inflation outlook, and I will be watching the data closely. The Fed’s Policy Response It’s clear that the economy is improving at a rapid rate, and the medium-term outlook is very good.
They then resorted to a further type of measure, known as 8 See Billi and Vredin (2018) for a discussion. 9 [25]  ‘quantitative easing’, which means pushing down long-term market rates on various markets through direct purchases of financial assets. A further measure introduced by both the Bank of England and the ECB was ‘funding-for-lending’ programmes. The idea behind these is that the banks can borrow money at a low cost for the explicit purpose of increasing lending to households and companies. These measures were introduced when a credit crunch threatened to hamper growth. Sweden, as a small open economy, was hit hard via trade with other countries, despite the financial problems in our country being much milder than in many other countries, although there was initial unease over the Swedish banks’ exposures in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The repo rate was cut by more than four percentage points to alleviate the effects on the Swedish economy. In addition, several measures were implemented with the purpose of supporting the Swedish financial system. The Riksbank lent SEK 400 billion to Swedish banks and also lent the equivalent of almost SEK 200 billion in foreign currencies to help the Swedish banks with short-term liquidity problems. During 2010, the Swedish economy grew strongly and the Riksbank and many other analysts forecast a global economic upturn and a rapid recovery in the Swedish economy.

Such a communication would be reminiscent of the reverse situation, when the central bank is concerned about fiscal dominance – a situation where an unsustainable fiscal policy makes it impossible for the central bank to restrain inflation – and communicates this. 16 Personally, I do not think that an independent monetary policy presumes a total lack of dialogue between the Riksbank and the political system on such matters. The second question concerns the effectiveness of various measures and the risks they entail. For example, assume that the Riksbank can make monetary policy more expansionary by purchasing certain financial assets. This could increase the risks on the Riksbank’s balance sheet considerably and lead to future losses for taxpayers. Assume now that it had been possible to achieve an equivalent effect by means of mild fiscal policy stimulation measures. This would probably be possible in a situation where monetary policy is at its lower bound. The Riksbank would then not have to raise the interest rate as economic activity rises and fiscal policy would thereby become more effective than normal. 17 In this case, there should be conditions for holding a discussion over which policy mix would be most appropriate. In addition, Blanchard (2019) makes the point that, if the real interest rate is lower than the growth rate in the economy, the cost for debt-financed public investments will be very low.
6 See, for example, the boxes on pages 18-20 of the February 2017 Inflation Report and page 29 of the May 2014 Inflation Report. The solutions to these puzzles are also likely to involve some factors unrelated to globalisation. For example, one explanation put forward for missing dis-inflation is that companies facing liquidity constraints maintained prices at higher levels than they would otherwise have done in order to preserve cash flows and remain in operation (see Gilchrist, S, Schoenle, R, Sim, J and Zakrajšek, E (2017), ibid). Consistent with this, analysis by Bank staff found that UK businesses with weaker balance sheets increased their margins by more at the height of the crisis than those with healthier balance sheets). 4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  4  Chart 3b: Core inflation rates exhibited little co-movement post-crisis  See notes and sources to Chart 3a. Central banks have (thus far) been able to maintain their monetary sovereignty, achieving their mandates by offsetting the secular disinflationary forces from global integration. None of this, however, is to downplay current challenges of maintaining price stability in the face of global forces. The combination of the growing contestability of markets and prolonged synchronised weak demand may be restraining wage expectations. Moreover, technological changes, particularly those which could globalise markets for many services, may extend and deepen trend global disinflation. And, the global financial cycle could exacerbate the challenges of returning domestic inflation to target, particularly given the proximity of interest rates to the effective lower bound.

In formal terms, the General Council may only severe a member of the Executive Board from his or her appointment if “…he no longer meets the requirements which are made on him to be able to carry out his duties or if he has been guilty of serious misconduct.” 2 The legislation strengthens the Riksbank’s independence and credibility for monetary policy. For example, it should not be possible for those in power to be able to groundlessly dismiss a member of the Executive Board for the purpose of appointing their “own” decision-makers. As the question of accountability is stated in law, it is not actually the Riksbank’s task to take a stand on how this should be achieved. However, what we can do – and also strive for – is to create the best possible conditions for accountability. We do this by being as open and clear as we can. This makes it easier for outsiders to critically examine how monetary policy is conducted and how well we live up to our principles. 1  Sveriges Riksbank Act (1983:1385), Chapter 8, Article 1. 2  The Instrument of Government, Chapter 9, Article 13. 4  BIS Review 62/2007  There are also certain formal requirements for providing information to our principal. Our tasks include, for instance, presenting a written report on monetary policy to the Riksdag Committee on Finance at least twice a year. In connection with this, the Committee also holds a hearing with the Riksbank Governor.
Given the heightened importance of remittances in national economies and the promotion of smooth remittance flows between countries by the international organizations, the formal financial sector has now begun to pay greater attention to the initial point of remittance collection (capturing). This means that the institutional mechanisms are focusing on both capturing as well as disbursing of remittances. The international cooperation and coordination is very important at the point of capturing because the banks and formal financial institutions in the country of origin should facilitate cross-border transfers of remittances without placing prohibitive rules and regulations and pricing on the remitter. Payment system and technological advances As you are aware, technological advances, partnerships and improvements in the payments infrastructure have significantly contributed to enhance remittances on a worldwide basis. In that sense, the payment system improvement is a key to the enhancement of remittance transfers. The  BIS Review 3/2007  1  technology advances are intended to facilitate automation, reduce costs, provide additional delivery channels and mitigate risks involved in cross border transfers. However, the reduction of costs and the introduction of additional delivery channels are yet to be developed to a satisfactory level by the formal institutional network, not only by introducing enhancements to the payment infrastructure, but also by making a concerted effort to reduce cost on remittance transfers. Several international banks and money transfer systems such as Eurogiro, Western Union have taken the initiative to target both blue and white collar workers at reduced transfer prices.

And fiscal prudence has brought not just a proportional, but in some countries an absolute, decline in the amount of private savings absorbed by government debt. That has left room for a rapid expansion and diversification of the corporate debt market to accommodate increasing demand, as the role of the private sector has increased. And the sovereign debt market, too, has diversified to include those emerging markets and transition countries that have succeeded in accessing the increasingly free international flow of capital. These are big, long-run, changes which, are for the most part likely to continue. So your job - as investors and investment managers, won't get any easier! I have the impression that the investing public is still coming to terms with the lower nominal returns that they can expect if we really are in a world of sustained low inflation. So they may be demanding quite a lot from you. It's true that in an environment of sustained monetary stability you might not see the very large and unpredictable swings in interest rates that I grew up with.
23  In an effort to control debt levels incurred during the war, the British government ran huge primary surpluses during the 1920s, averaging 7% of GDP, with all the social and industrial unrest that entailed. Yet ratios of government debt to GDP didn’t fall, remaining at over 160% of GDP throughout that decade. Just as rapid inflations can eat up debt so deflations can increase it. The short-lived reinstitution of the gold standard (it was then abandoned for good in 1931) was heavily criticised at the time by Keynes. 24 The question was only formally considered – and a return to the pre-war parity recommended – by the Cunliffe Committee in 1918. 18  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  18  Chart 13a: To the extent fiscal variables matter for inflation government demand more important than debt  Chart 13b: Debt higher in wars than in 1970s but residual monetary credibility may have contained inflation, bond yields  Average debt/GDP; changes in central government expenditure less interest payments over nominal GDP; and average inflation. Sources: Thomas and Dimsdale (2017), Mitchell (1988), Feinstein (1998), O'Donoghue et al (2004), ONS and Bank calculations. Average bond yields based on consols/ long-term bonds. Sources: Thomas and Dimsdale (2017), Capie and Webber (1985), Neal (1990), Klovland (1994), Feinstein (1998), O'Donoghue et al (2004), ONS, DMO, and Bank calculations.

In the meantime, the success of the SLGS has garnered a consensus to develop a sustainable, market-oriented platform to cater for the ongoing SME financing needs upon the phasing out of SLGS. Taking this opportunity, the Government-owned Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation launched a new SME Financing Guarantee Scheme (SFGS) on 1 January 2011 to facilitate a smooth transition from the temporary SLGS to a sustainable market-based mechanism. Operating based on prudent commercial principles, the SFGS does not require government subsidy and the scheme size can be flexibly adjusted to respond to changes in market demand. The SFGS also provides a broad range of options on the product features such as tenor, facility type, loan amount and guarantee coverage to fit the different needs of banks and SMEs. Initial market response to the SFGS has been positive, with a good participation  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  rate from banks and an encouraging number of applications received from a broad variety of SMEs. It is expected that the SFGS will over time play an important role in helping SMEs obtain stable and sustainable financing while assisting banks in managing their risks, in particular when market conditions become volatile and uncertain. I am happy to share this experience of Hong Kong, China of how the “exit” of an extraordinary government measure has facilitated the “entry” of a long-term market-based solution for sustainable SME financing.