samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Essentially there is a risk that the single monetary policy - the single, one-size-fits-all, short-term interest rate - within the euro area, which is a necessary corollary of the single currency, will not in the event prove to be appropriate to the domestic needs of each of the euro-member countries. There is no doubt that such risks exists. They may result from cyclical divergence. They may arise from differences in fiscal positions even though these are to be constrained through the Stability Pact. Or they may result from economic shocks of some sort that have a bigger impact on some countries than on others. The rise in oil prices in the early 1970’s or German reunification are classic examples. So the risk of divergent monetary policy needs within the euro area is real. And the damage it could cause if serious tensions between member countries were to emerge is substantial, because alternative adjustment mechanisms, such as labour migration or fiscal redistribution, that exist within individual countries, and which help to alleviate the similar regional tensions that arise at the national level, are simply not well-developed at the pan-European level.

The crucial and unique advantage of monetary union is the exchange rate certainty it will bring throughout the euro area - not just the reasonable de facto stability that can result from each EU member state individually pursuing disciplined macro-economic policies in parallel, and which has in practice been achieved within much of Europe for quite long periods within the framework of the Exchange Rate Mechanism - but actual, and in principle permanent, exchange rate certainty. There is no doubt that this is a very real advantage. One can argue that exchange rate certainty is not an essential complement to the European single market - any more than exchange rate fixity is essential to achieving the benefits of free trade more generally. But there is no doubt that intra-European exchange rate certainty will - through the intensified competition resulting from greater transparency of prices and lower transaction costs, through broader and deeper capital markets, and through the associated improvement in economic resource allocation - substantially enhance the macro-economic benefits to be derived from the single market. Whether or not it is essential, therefore, exchange rate certainty is very desirable from this perspective. The potential drawback of monetary union can also be simply stated, though it is more difficult to assess.
Øystein Olsen: Monetary policy and interrelationships in the Norwegian economy Address by Mr Øystein Olsen, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the Centre for Monetary Economics (CME)/BI Norwegian School of Management, Oslo, 5 September 2011. Please note that the text below may differ slightly from the actual presentation. *  *  *  When Trygve Haavelmo was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1989 for his pathbreaking work to quantify economic interrelationships, the Nobel Committee summarised his contributions1. First, empirical science must be based on theories which reflect reality. Second, data and observations must conform to theoretical concepts. Third, a methodology is needed which can be used to quantify and test theoretical relationships on the basis of empirical observations. The interrelationships in the Norwegian economy serve as a backdrop for my address. The purpose of the Centre for Monetary Economics (CME) is to be a venue where researchers and economists in banking and finance can exchange views and gather knowledge about the Norwegian economy, perhaps with particular emphasis on monetary policy. My contribution today will be an analysis of relationships between some key economic variables and how Norges Bank utilises that insight when setting the key policy rate. As Haavelmo described, theories regarding economic interrelationships can never conform fully with empirical observations. Nor can economists carry out controlled experiments in the same way as in the natural sciences. Nevertheless, Haavelmo was an optimist.

Philipp Hildebrand: Globalisation and current developments in the financial markets Summary of a speech by Mr Philipp Hildebrand, Vice-Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Swiss Institute of International Studies, Zurich, 13 March 2008. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  Fundamentally, globalisation is not a new phenomenon, and yet the world has changed dramatically in the past twenty years. This is also evident in financial markets, where, since August 2007, a local event like the correction in the US residential property market has rapidly developed into a global event. We are now experiencing the first truly major crisis of financial globalisation. The longer the crisis lasts, the harder it will be – but also the more important – to keep in mind the advantages of financial globalisation and preserve them in the long run. There is a need for regulatory correction, and such a need will remain in the future. The existing system of regulation and supervision should be further improved. The regulation of liquidity and equity, in particular, needs to be fine-tuned, strengthened and adjusted to the latest developments in financial markets. However, it is possible that more will be needed than just the fine-tuning of regulations. The buffers in the financial system have to be strengthened. In simple terms, what is ultimately required is that international banks strengthen their capital backing. At the same time, bigger liquidity cushions are needed.
Lars E O Svensson: For a better monetary policy – focus on inflation and unemployment Speech by Mr Lars E O Svensson, Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, 8 March 2011. *  *  *  The views expressed here are my own and are not necessarily shared by the other members of the Executive Board of the Riksbank or the Riksbank’s staff. I would like to thank Joanna Gerwin, Karolina Ekholm, Pernilla Meyersson, Marianne Nessén, Lars Nyberg, Stefan Palmqvist, Cecilia Roos-Isaksson, Ulf Söderström and Staffan Viotti for our discussions and their views. Hanna Armelius, Hans Dellmo, Lina Majtorp and Pernilla Wasén have contributed to this speech. Sweden’s economy has grown dramatically following a severe downturn (Figure 1). GDP is now more or less back to the level it was at three years ago (Figure 2). Since the summer of 2010, the majority on the Executive Board of the Riksbank has tightened monetary policy by raising the repo rate. According to the Riksbank’s forecasts for the years ahead, CPI inflation will be higher than the target of 2 per cent over the next few years (Figure 3). However, the fact that CPI inflation is higher than the target is due to the Riksbank’s own repo-rate increases. If we instead measure inflation using the CPIF index, which adjusts for the effects of these repo-rate increases, the forecast is on average lower than 2 per cent.

One of the key questions going forward is where the potential for financing might come from. The potential of capital markets is usually determined by the domestic institutional investor base. Traditional institutional investors (pension funds, investment funds and insurance companies) are present in all CESEE countries, but mostly in the government bond-market segment. However, their role in the CESEE region is smaller, compared to the EU as a whole, and there is a lot of variation across countries. For instance, assets of insurance undertakings and pensions, as a share of GDP, stood roughly at 33% in Croatia, compared to 6% in Romania. Chart 15: Banking sector assets and assets of institutional investors (pension funds, insurance corporations and investment funds) in CESEE countries, as % of GDP Banking sector assets, as % of GDP  Assets of institutional investors, as % of GDP  80  400  2012  60 300 200  40  2013  20  2014  0 Baltics  CEE  SEE  Pension funds  Eurozone  Source: ECB, OECD statistics. 13  Insuruance corporations  Eurozone  SEE  CEE  Baltics  Eurozone  SEE  CEE  Baltics  Eurozone  SEE  100  CEE  Baltics  0  Investments funds  2015 2016  Another aspect linked to the potential of institutional investors and relevant in the context of capital markets development are household saving preferences. Large part of financial wealth of households in CESEE countries is invested in bank deposits.
I also have a direct set of prescribed responsibilities under the Bank’s application to itself of the Senior Managers Regime – a framework developed to improve accountability at the top of financial services firms. As a key part of that accountability, over the coming years I look forward to giving many talks and speeches such as this one to set out the thinking behind decisions and their delivery across the full range of my and the Bank’s responsibilities. The Bank has quite rightly placed emphasis on the role of communication as a policy tool in its Vision 2020 strategy; describing our work to as diverse a range of people as possible. Of course I start this new role at an interesting point in time. It is nearly 17 months since the UK voted to leave the EU, and just over 16 months until that decision takes effect in March 2019. In the period since the referendum we have learned that while Brexit was at one level a binary decision, there are many potential outcomes, and paths to those outcomes. Perhaps reflecting this multidimensionality, uncertainty about Brexit seems to be increasing rather than diminishing over time (Slide 1). In the Bank’s Decision Maker Panel Survey (which is run jointly with Nottingham University), the share of firms who placed Brexit among the top sources of uncertainty rose from 35% in a survey taken in September 2016 to 40% in August this year.

A second potential explanation for how the supply side data have evolved is that since the referendum workers have responded to uncertainties about the outlook by showing even more flexibility in their wage demands. People’s willingness to accept lower real wages would encourage firms to hoard labour, and shift away from capital expenditure toward more labour input for a given unit of output. Such a further increase in labour market flexibility would imply that part of the recent renewed weakness in productivity growth is cyclical, meaning there is a bit more room for the economy to grow without generating above-target inflation in the medium term. I attach some weight to the idea that workers have responded to the changing outlook by showing greater flexibility in their wage demands. This would be consistent with a trend I have observed throughout my career and in successive cycles in which peaks and troughs in unemployment have been lower in each cycle since the 1980s. Since the crisis, real wage flexibility has been particularly notable, and it may have intensified further since the referendum as the unemployment rate has fallen further to 4.3%. As supporting evidence I would point to the fact that the weakness in private sector real wage growth relative to the MPC’s May 2016 forecast has been greater than would be required just to match the weakness in productivity 3  growth , and that is in spite of the additional pressure on real income growth from higher import prices over 4  the same period .
These two legislation provides  BIS Review 85/2009  3  explicit and appropriate powers for our law enforcement agencies to conduct investigation, obtain relevant evidence for prosecution, share and exchange information with the relevant law enforcement agencies (both local and overseas), as well as provide mutual assistance to other jurisdictions on criminal matters. We have established a Money Laundering Prevention Task Force which comprises of the Attorney General, the CEOs of the Ministry of Revenue, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Samoa International Finance Authority, the Ministry of Police and myself as Head of the Money Laundering Prevention Authority. We have also established a Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) within the Financial Institutions Department of the Central Bank, directly responsible for coordinating and undertaking the implementation of our AML/CFT regime. Our FIU has powers under the Money Laundering Prevention Act 2007 to receive and analyse all Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) from all financial institutions or any person(s) suspicious of money laundering offence in Samoa. Get rich-quick operators in the region I want to talk briefly about the so called “get rich-quick schemes” that have emerged recently in the Pacific Region. Pacific Island Countries, including Samoa, recognize the critical role that domestic and overseas private investors as well as the inflow of capital, knowledge and technology have played and will continue to play in the development of the region. Genuine investors are of course welcomed.

The Internet and other applications of information technologies have made us all too aware of the potential for information overload, a circumstance in which relevant information is theoretically available, but the time and expense of retrieving it or transforming it into a usable form make it unhelpful in practical  BIS Review 16/2010  15  terms. Collection of more data just for its own sake also can raise systemic costs associated with moral hazard if investors view data collection from certain firms, products, and markets as suggesting implicit support. It is thus particularly worth emphasizing the importance of having data available readily and in a form that is appropriate for the uses to which it will be put. With these considerations in mind, we have derived a number of guiding principles for a system of new data and analytical tools for effectively supervising large institutions and monitoring systemic risk. First, the priorities for new data efforts should be determined by the nature of regulatory and supervisory missions. In particular, the data need to be sufficiently timely and to cover a sufficient range of financial institutions, markets, instruments, and transactions to support effective systemic risk monitoring and macro-prudential supervision, as well as traditional safety-and-soundness regulation. The events of the past few years have painfully demonstrated that regulators, financial institutions, and investors lacked ready access to data that would have allowed them to fully assess the value of complex securities, understand counterparty risks, or identify concentrations of exposures.
Economically, high oil prices have given many Middle East countries an unprecedented opportunity to diversify their economies and invest in capacity-building for the future. Indeed the Middle East today stands on the threshold of a new era of unprecedented infrastructural development and economic activities. Asia and the Middle East have concurrently become aware of each other’s dynamism and the mutual benefits of closer ties, frequent interaction and a stronger partnership. Some observers have dubbed the flourishing trade and business linkages between the Middle East and Asia as a “New Silk Road”. But the ties between the two regions will surely become much more multi-dimensional in the years to come. How Singapore is remaking itself How is Singapore responding to these dramatic changes in its external environment? We have used the last 10 years to remake Singapore, strengthen our competitiveness and expand our economic space. We have progressively restructured and diversified our economy. Manufacturing will continue to play a key role but we are also moving into more technology- and knowledge-intensive manufacturing. Fostering cutting edge scientific research and strengthening Singapore’s attractiveness as an R&D (Research and Development) hub is a priority. In the services sector, we have strengthened the key areas of tourism, healthcare, education and financial services. More of Singapore’s growth will come from innovation and knowledge. We are also looking outward towards the rest of Asia and beyond. Singapore is located at the heart of Southeast Asia, with China to the East and India and the Middle East to the West.

Going forward, the policy mix will centre on the fiscal prudence and public investment in basic infrastructure and the Bank of Thailand’s commitment to maintaining economic and financial stability. These together should translate into moderate long-term cost of investment financing and sustained economic expansion for Thailand. We live in the global economic and financial environment that is highly uncertain. Policymakers need always to be aware of what is in store for us so that we use the policy room available to craft the right and flexible macroeconomic policy mix that is best suited to changing circumstances. At the same time, with the collaboration of our trade and investment partners, we must remain firmly committed on the national goal of enhancing the economy’s productivity and competitiveness. Thank you for your attention. 6  BIS Review 54/2008
It limits the range of activities that branches can undertake, but not I think in ways that undermine the ability of such branches to undertake safer forms of wholesale banking, which is the preference of most banks in that position. We  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  have a clear policy framework for taking these decisions and our approach to all branches will be consistent with our objectives of safety and soundness. Our stance is sensibly cautious, but not I think restrictive. And, let me reiterate that it is a general policy, not a China policy, and it is consistent with promoting the benefits of an open world economy. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches

While assuring the progress of the financial system and well-established infrastructure in Thailand, we also recognize the importance of consumer empowerment in our financial sector. As a consequence, we established the Financial Consumer Protection Center or FCC in 2012 to promote consumer protection. One of the FCC’s key tasks is to improve financial literacy of consumers. Over the past few years, the FCC has continually been delivering financial education within its capacity through creative tools and communication channels. The FCC has been sending messages that would help shape consumers’ behavior towards responsible finance practices, which would consequently lead to financial discipline of the entire nation. Nevertheless, the attempt to improve people’s behavior to save and spend wisely has not yet been fully accomplished. Household debt is still high at 70 to 80 percent of GDP for the past two years. Crucial financial information and knowledge provided at Point-of-sale were often ignored by customers. Moreover, people still seek loans from alternative sources such as from the informal sector where interest rates are incredibly high and debt collection practices are sometimes abusive and unethical. We also have to admit that the demand side evidence is partially influenced by supply side factors. Intense market competition and countless innovative products and services nowadays could also encourage careless spending behavior. Therefore, effective measure to prevent such situation is truly in need. The potential root causes or threats that influence people to make an adverse decision on their saving and spending manner might consist of these three following factors.
Luis de Guindos: Interview with El Mundo Interview with Mr Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, and El Mundo, conducted by Mr Pablo Rodríguez Suanzes on 25 November 2019 and published on 2 December 2019. * * *  How are you finding life in Frankfurt? Frankfurt is a nice city, I like it. The ECB is the most important institution in the framework of the EU, and of the euro area in particular. Exposure to the public is very different to when you’re in government. Here, the relationship is mainly with the European Parliament, through hearings, and with the public, through speeches. Is my life better? It’s different. How do you feel about not being able to speak as freely as before? I can keep speaking normally. I still attend the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN); each week, we have discussions in various forums on issues around monetary and economic policy and financial stability. So I have something to offer, but my contributions aren’t political. Do you miss it? I don’t miss anything. That was my job for six years. I’m not at all bored here. When and why did you decide you wanted to try to become the Vice-President of the ECB? I wanted to leave the government at the end of its first term. I spoke to President Rajoy and we said it could be a possibility, and it was very attractive to me. It’s the most important institution in the euro area, very prestigious.

From a journalistic standpoint talking about Japanification is attractive, but there are actually many differences. While European demographics are not brilliant, they cannot be compared with Japan. The situation facing banks here is not as bad. No real estate bubble has burst here the way it did there. The parallels are in low inflation, low interest rates and low growth. But the outlooks are different and I don’t think that the term really applies to the European economy. Will EDIS be complete when you leave office? 4/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  Yes, I think it will, and quite a few years before that, in fact. One of the German proposals is to limit the amount of sovereign debt held by financial entities. Spain has experienced precisely that, with only national entities continuing to buy public debt at the same rate. Does that seem reasonable to you? It’s a starting point. Completing EDIS is crucial. But we also have to take measures simultaneously to limit how much risk is generated by certain countries. In my experience with Banco Popular and the savings banks, the problem wasn’t public debt. The underlying problem was other types of loans that led to solvency problems. Does the issue with Popular, Villarejo and BBVA bother you? We do not comment on specific situations. Of course, European banking supervision and risk surveillance is on the lookout for anything that might have an effect on financial stability, but so far we have not seen anything. 5/5  BIS central bankers' speeches