samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Key issues confronting the financial sector in Malaysia Keynote address by Mrs Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the Financial Industry Conference 2009, Kuala Lumpur, 17 November 2009. *  *  *  It is my great pleasure to welcome you to our financial industry conference for this year. This conference takes place at a time when the global financial landscape is experiencing fundamental change. Even as we meet, events continue to unfold in directions that are likely to fundamentally alter the way in which financial institutions conduct their business. Reforms to strengthen the foundations of financial stability are wide-ranging to improve the supervision and regulation of financial institutions, and the institutional arrangements for coordination and cooperation in the area of surveillance and crisis management within and across jurisdictions. This Conference is organised by Bank Negara Malaysia to engage in constructive dialogue with the industry on developments affecting the international and domestic financial industry, focusing in particular on implications for financial institutions in Malaysia. Economic developments and outlook After a challenging beginning to this year, Malaysia is now gradually moving on a path of recovery supported by strong macroeconomic fundamentals and a sound financial sector. Economic activity has continued to show a marked improvement in the third quarter, with positive growth expected in the fourth quarter.

This is evidenced by the significant transformation of the financial system that is now more diversified with well developed financial markets and broadened product offerings, that is more competitive with home-grown regional players, that is more inclusive with higher levels of banking and insurance penetration, and with improved financial strength indicators as financial institutions are better supported by strengthened governance and risk management standards and practices. The development of Islamic finance has also made significant strides both in the domestic and international front as Malaysia evolves as an international Islamic financial hub. Enhancements to the payment infrastructure have also supported the increased use of epayment channels. With these building blocks in place, the financial system has also been progressively deregulated and liberalised. The more recent liberalisation to allow for greater foreign participation in the domestic financial markets and increased foreign presence will enhance further our financial and economic international linkages. As we move into the final phase of the Masterplan, we are confident of the strength and resilience of the domestic financial sector to face greater competition and benefit from the liberalisation measures recently announced. We have received strong interest in the new licences from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United Kingdom that bring with them strong value propositions that will add significantly to the depth and breadth of the financial sector in Malaysia. In the insurance sector, greater competition will emerge from the progressive deregulation of product rates.
MONETARY POLICY REPORT PRESENTATION BEFORE THE HONORABLE SENATE OF THE REPUBLIC  Mario Marcel Governor Central Bank of Chile 5 September 2018    The September 2018 Monetary Policy Report can be downloaded at http://www.bcentral.cl. The Spanish original prevails. Introduction Mr. President of the Senate, senator Carlos Montes, honorable senators, ladies, gentlemen, On behalf of the Board of the Central Bank of Chile (CBC), I am grateful for your invitation to present the Monetary Policy Report (IPoM). As usually in September of each year, this coincides with the report that, according to the Organic Law of the CBC, we must submit annually to the Senate. In compliance with this obligation, the Monetary Policy Report that I will be summarizing in a moment contains our view of the recent macroeconomic and financial developments in the Chilean and international economy, as well as their prospects and implications for the conduct of monetary policy. It also includes the Bank’s financial results of the first half of 2018, the results of the management of international reserves and a summary of the main decisions adopted by the Board this year to date. The Monetary Policy Report Incoming data this year has been showing greater than expected economic growth, and inflation consolidating its prospects of convergence to the target, in a context of positive surprises in several areas, an upward revision of potential growth and a faster closing of the activity gap.

Thus, by working to ensure price stability as well as maintenance of a safe, sound and efficient financial sector, the Bank is contributing to the achievement of sustainable economic growth and, ultimately, poverty reduction. In a nutshell, following the amendment of the Bank of Zambia Act in 1996, the Bank’s main responsibilities comprise price and financial system stability. The Bank ensures financial system stability by licensing, supervising and regulating the activities of banks and non-bank financial institutions so as to promote the safe, sound and efficient operations and development of the financial system. BIS Review 74/2004  1  Ladies and Gentlemen, I trust that, as members of UNZABECA, you have actively participated in these series of lectures and expanded your knowledge of the functions of the Bank of Zambia. On our part as Bank of Zambia, we strongly encourage investment in education, which has been demonstrated by the sponsorship of these Lectures. In this regard, I wish to take this opportunity to call upon other institutions to support our university by either sponsoring a series of lectures, like the Bank of Zambia has done, or rendering any financial assistance. As many of you may be aware, most of the companies in Zambia have benefited, in one way or the other, from the services offered by our universities. As for the Bank of Zambia, most of its management members of staff, including myself, are graduates of this university and were members of UNZABECA.
Isabel Schnabel: Interview in Die Zeit Interview with Ms Isabel Schnabel, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, in Die Zeit, conducted by Ms Lisa Nienhaus on 16 March 2020 and published on 18 March 2020. * * *  Ms Schnabel, where are you speaking from at the moment: your home office? No, I’m in the main building of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. As the board member responsible for market operations, I need to be on site. But many of us, including other members of the ECB’s Executive Board, are indeed working from home. And I am also keeping at a safe distance from colleagues. Indeed, it would not be good if you were absent from the ECB. Market prices are collapsing, loans are defaulting, firms are threatened by bankruptcy if they don’t get help. Is the virus crisis now turning into a financial crisis? We are living through turbulent times: stock markets are showing exteme volatility, equity prices have fallen dramatically. And the events are gradually being reflected in the data that we receive from the real economy. We know that production in China collapsed in January and February. All that will also have an impact on the banking system, but there is no acute banking crisis at present. We are, however, carefully monitoring the current situation so that we are able to respond swiftly to new developments should that become necessary. Which indicators are you looking at?

Hillman A L and O Swank: (2000): Why political culture should be in lexicon of economics, European Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 16, No.1, pp. 1-4. Kornai, J (2000): What the Change of System From Socialism to Capitalism Does and Does Not Mean. Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 14, No. 1. pp. 27-42. Larosière, J de (1999): Transition Economies. Fifth Dubrovnik Conference on Transition Economies, June 1999. Lucas, R E (1993): Making a Miracle. Econometrica, Vol. 61. No. 2, pp. 251-272. Škreb, M (1998): Economic Transition in Croatia: An Insider’s View. SAIS Review. Vol. XVIII, No. 2., pp. 71-88. Wolf, M (2000): Kicking down growth’s ladder. Financial Times, April 12, p. 15. Wyplosz, C (2000): Ten Years of Transformation: Macroeconomic Lessons. The World Bank. Policy Research Working Paper 2288, February. 9  BIS Review 43/2000
As our economy becomes even more financialised, it is important that banks strike a balance between legitimate profit-seeking goals, and their responsibility to provide the public with full and fair access to financial services. Some banks today are still falling short of expectations to offer basic banking services to the people who only need such services. We have observed poor communications by the front-line staff of such banks on the basic banking products which must be offered by all banks. In some cases, prohibitive conditions are attached to the opening of basic banking accounts in clear violation of Bank Negara Malaysia’s requirements. This must change. In offering basic banking services, banks should also leverage on technological advancement that can support inclusive finance initiatives. These include adopting more innovative delivery channels, leveraging on big data to reach a wider community and to offer suitable products that are priced affordably. Concluding remarks The world as we know it is set to change dramatically just as it had over the last few decades, except that future changes will happen at a much more rapid pace, and in sectors where we least expect it. The ability of banks to adapt will be critical to its relevance. More likely than not, banks that are agile and have absolute clarity on their value proposition for their customer, society and wider economy, will be the ones that will endure. Banking as we know today will no doubt change in form as the future takes shape.

In addition, banks are being offered the opportunity to borrow an unlimited amount of money each week against collateral at three months’ maturity at an interest rate of 0.20 percentage points above the repo rate, which is at zero per cent. In addition to this, the Executive Board has decided that the Riksbank will extend its purchases of securities by up to SEK 300 billion up until December. The Riksbank normally buys government bonds. In these exceptional circumstances, however, it is important to ensure that all major markets continue to function. For this reason, the Riksbank has now also begun to purchase mortgage bonds and will purchase municipal bonds. In the last few days, corporate bonds and commercial paper issued by Swedish non-financial corporations have also been included in the asset-buying programme. These bond purchases increase the access to credit in the economy in general and future purchases of corporate bonds and commercial paper will provide additional support to Swedish companies in particular. Just like the Riksbank’s previous purchases of government bonds, the new purchases will also help to keep monetary policy expansionary and to stimulate activity in the economy. Given the global nature of the crisis, it is also important to ensure that there is access to US dollars (USD) in the Swedish financial system. To strengthen access to one of the most important currencies for Swedish companies, the Riksbank has announced that we will lend up to USD 60 billion.
In short, the hot air is cooling. But some big challenges remain: -  On disclosures, to reach the goal of securing a fully consistent, decision useful and forward looking set of metrics requires standard setters to agree on a single framework; for it to be made mandatory; and for corporates to measure, model and disclose;  -  On instruments, we need to see a further scaling up in the range and depth of tools providing credible incentives for green investment and more effective transparency for investors on performance against climate goals. That will drive broader-based price discrimination between climate-positive and climate-negative assets, which in turn will provide powerful incentives for further adjustment; and  -  On asset allocation strategies, we need to coalesce more around terminology and approaches, providing a clear and credible choice for clients and investors, on that journey towards full integration. And we need more research on what works and what doesn’t! Many of the actions here are for the financial markets themselves to resolve – and rightly so, because we want the power of markets working to deliver climate change. But there are important priorities for the public authorities too: to ensure externalities are properly internalised, so markets can do their job; to help co-ordinate and set market-wide standards, and where necessary to make them obligatory; and to use our strength and influence as market participants in our own right to drive change, where doing so is consistent with our mandates.

Use of CRA ratings in regulatory regimes We will also need to revise the extent to which we as a regulatory community use rating agency ratings. The official sector can’t express concern – at times indignation – about the performance of rating agencies, valid concerns, and then at the same time continue to build rating agencies ratings umbilically into our regulatory regimes. Over the past few months, I have been chairing a working group of the FSB developing proposals on that, which will go to Ministers and Governors shortly. I think Ministers in Europe are attentive to it as well. Changes in this area will take time and will not be easy, but they are being planned. The underlying purpose of securities markets regulation Going beyond that, the final thing I would say in this area is that the conceptual framework for securities regulation, especially in the USA, has over the past 30 years or more  1  For more information, see the report of the Securities Review Committee (1988), “The Operation and Regulation of the Hong Kong Securities Industry”. BIS Review 145/2010  3  essentially made a distinction between public markets and private markets, public issuance and private issuance. That is basically because it has taken an investor protection approach to securities regulation. The investor protection objective remains valid of course.
Instead it is probably the labour market that should be focused when analysing resource utilisation. Another reason for doing so is that in a price analysis at macro level, the weightiest item in costs is wages: total wage costs are equivalent to over two-thirds of GDP. The level of unemployment, although it has been reduced, is still high, particularly compared with the post-war period up to the early 1990s. Seen from that angle, some might say that the Swedish economy has plenty of unutilised resources. Experience from other European countries has taught us, however, that when an economy has been through a severe shock, as happened in the early 1990s, unemployment tends to stick at a high level, at least for a while. This structural or equilibrium unemployment cannot be reduced by means of expansionary economic policies. Attempts to do so simply lead in the end to a higher inflation trend and probably an economy that functions less efficiently. This is because wage costs tend to adjust upwards as the expansionary policy acts on the economy and higher long-term inflation expectations are established. Viewed in this way, unemployment could be divided into two components, structural and cyclical. If the level of structural unemployment could be identified with some precision, it would be easier to gauge how much room the Swedish economy still has for expansion above its potential growth trend. As always when one turns from theory to practical policy, things immediately become much more difficult.

You have to make do with estimates, which in the nature of things are uncertain and therefore have to be interpreted with caution. Still, the available estimates do suggest that in Sweden the equilibrium level of unemployment rose in the early 1990s and is somewhere in the interval 4.5 to 7.5%, expressed in terms of registered unemployment.1 The OECD also concludes that the level has increased markedly in the 1990s and judges that in Sweden equilibrium unemployment is around 6%.2 Not everyone agrees, however, that equilibrium unemployment is markedly higher than before.3 But even though we cannot be certain about its exact level, an increase is indicated by the fact that 1  2 3  See e.g. Calmfors, L (1995), Will high unemployment in Sweden become persistent?, Swedish Economic Policy Review 2:1. Economic Surveys – Sweden 1999, OECD, Paris. See e.g. Åberg, R (1997), Är stigande jämviktsarbetslöshet huvudproblemet på arbetsmarknaden? (Is rising equilibrium unemployment the principle labour market problem? ), Ekonomisk Debatt 25:1. BIS Review 106/1999  4  otherwise the currently high unemployment would be acting as a strong restraint in wage formation. Instead, the wage level in Sweden is still rising somewhat faster than in our main competitor countries. Considering that the rate of registered unemployment is currently around 6% and thus inside the estimated interval for structural or equilibrium unemployment, this might suggest that the Swedish economy is relatively close to full capacity utilisation.
‘Commodity’ means any goods of a fungible nature that are capable of being delivered, including metals and their ores and alloys, agricultural products, and energy such as electricity; 10 ‘Electronic money token’ or ‘e-money token’ means a type of crypto-asset the main purpose of which is to be used as a means of exchange and that purports to maintain a stable value by referring to the value of a fiat currency that is legal tender; 11 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/BG/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52020PC0594 12 Directive 2014/65/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 May 2014 on markets in financial instruments and amending Directive 2002/92/EC and Directive 2011/61/EU 9  5  909/201413. Only an entity authorised under Directive 2014/65/EU or an entity authorised under Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 as a central securities depository may apply for permission to establish a DLT market infrastructure. The Regulation provides that the new regime may only be applied to shares, the issuer of which has a market capitalisation or a tentative market capitalisation of less than EUR 200 million; or convertible bonds, covered bonds, corporate bonds, other public bonds and other bonds, with an issuance size of less than EUR 500 million. Sovereign bonds are explicitly excluded from the scope of this Regulation. 13  Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 on improving securities settlement in the European Union and on central securities depositories and amending Directives 98/26/EC and 2014/65/EU and Regulation (EU) No 236/2012  6

Any shift in inflation objectives at times of economic stress invites the charge of opportunism: if you are willing to raise inflation objectives from 2% to 4%, then why not 6% or 10%? Such thinking puts at risk the hard-won credibility of the existing monetary policy frameworks. To the extent such shifts are motivated on public finance grounds, they suggest that monetary policy is subordinate to fiscal concerns. And concerns about deflation risks should be addressed by refining the conduct of monetary policy, rather than redefining its objective. In particular, it is crucial that the objective of price stability is pursued symmetrically. Of course, asymmetries may exist in the structure of the economy. Examples include: any lower bound on nominal interest rates; and an aversion to falls in nominal wages. These need to be taken into account in policy making. But this does not imply that monetary policy should demonstrate greater aversion to deflation rather than inflation (or vice versa). An excessive and asymmetric fear of deflation explains in part why interest rates may have been kept “too low for too long” prior to the financial crisis. Pursuing price stability in a symmetric manner would guard against the danger of repeating this mistake. To sum up, I believe that the recent financial crisis has not challenged the principle according to which the goal of monetary policy should be price stability. In practice, this is recognised  7  See: e.g. S.S. Roach (2010).
In Italy, for instance, output fell by more than 5% in 2009, while unemployment peaked at almost 13% in 2014. These figures are alarming, but they tell us little about the people who lost their jobs, their homes and their future. Taking all this suffering into account, the crisis turned into a tragedy. As for its causes, I admit that the story I’ve just told is far too simple. Of course, it was not the failure of a single investment bank that caused all this mayhem. The full story is much longer and much more complex. However, no one can deny that banks played a crucial role. It became obvious that they can pose a huge risk to financial stability and the economy. But at the same it’s an inescapable truth that we need banks. Or, to be more precise, we need the services they provide. Why we need banks Who does an investor turn to when she needs money to start or expand a business, when she needs to hedge risks or wants to acquire another company? Who does a saver turn to when he wants to deposit money? Who does a family turn to when it needs a loan to buy a home? Here in Europe, all of them would most likely turn to a bank. Banks provide a vital service to the economy. Without them, the economy would not work. All this leads us to a crucial question: how can we ensure that banks reliably serve the economy?

If each country were to go its own way, the market for the relevant financial instruments would become too fragmented. The ECB welcomes current proposals which foresee the introduction of non-preferred senior debt instruments and a general depositor preference rule. This would further facilitate bail-ins. The second question is: what happens if the Single Resolution Fund runs out of money? What if there’s a major crisis, and the € billion is not enough to cover the losses? Well, in such a situation we would need a common European backstop for the SRF. And we need it quickly, and in any case before 2023, which is when the SRF will reach its target volume. European leaders committed to this when setting up the SRF, and they should stick to their commitment. The backstop could take the form of a direct credit line from the European Stability Mechanism to the SRF. The important thing is that it can provide both solvency and liquidity support. And now to the third and final question: has public support for failing banks really become a thing of the past? “Almost” is the answer to this question. And the rules are now such that any public support for a bank in fact triggers a “failing or likely to fail” decision. There are a few exceptions, however. One of these is known as precautionary recapitalisation. It allows governments to recapitalise banks using public funds. But the scope for this kind of state aid is very narrow.