samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
West Bengal has been ruled by the Indian communists for almost 30 years. The Chief Minister wanted to promote foreign investments into West Bengal. His aim was to capture 25 percent of India's IT outsourcing market by 2010. He said that the Indian communists had drawn lessons from the collapse of the former Soviet Union and China's economic reforms. The choice was stark and simple: either perform or perish. 25. The recent bomb attacks in New Delhi have not affected India's growth trajectory. The Indian Government has responded swiftly and with determination. I have full confidence that it will be on top of the security situation. As India grows, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects that by 2010, India's exports will more than double, while imports will nearly triple. The consumer market could then be worth $ billion, making it one of the top five globally. To sustain an annual growth rate of 8 percent would require a huge injection of investments, both foreign and domestic, over the next decade. It is this immense demand for infrastructure, education, healthcare and consumer goods that will continue to draw foreign investors and businesses to India. A reinvigorated ASEAN 26. Let me now move on to ASEAN. 27. Prospects for Southeast Asia have brightened considerably. Regional economies have remained stable, despite the recent Bali bombings. 28. With China and India becoming big players in the international market, Southeast Asia has no choice but to respond strategically.

Looking ahead to the open waters, firms must ensure that they are prepared  Page 8  and well-equipped to face the challenges that lurk therein. Have banks fully considered their changing role in this new world defined by changing macroeconomic conditions, increasing digitalisation and climate change? The better they are able to understand that environment, the better they will be able to adapt. And do not get me wrong, there are some remarkable opportunities for investment banks in that new world. But seizing those will require honest introspection, hard work, and at times completely rethinking their future role in society. I also want to use this opportunity to emphasise that it is the role of the independent boards to kick those tyres and ask those tough (and sometimes existential) questions. How nimble and flexible is the current business model and cost base of the firm? What is the firm’s raison d’être and franchise in the new environment? Is the firm sufficiently prepared to react to different scenarios that might play out? The future won't accept excuses – now is the time to take action. Because although you might feel you have been doing well in the swimming pool, once you are in open waters you’d better truly be a good swimmer. I would like to thank Orfhlaith Sheehy, John Mears, Fatima Abukar, Chris Forster, Simon Stockwell, David Brighton and Kate Jewkes for their assistance in preparing these remarks. 1. Global Banks’ $ Billion Haul Marks Most Profitable Year Ever - Bloomberg 2.
The fact that, last summer, most banks came out with information on their positions in the sub-prime market only hesitantly, providing an incomplete picture, has made a significant contribution to the uncertainty in the interbank market. Consequently, we are reiterating our request that banks do a better job in making information available on their existing risks. In order to promote market discipline, it must be possible for outsiders to be able to assess a bank's resilience under both normal and stress conditions. Second, recent events highlight the limitations of risk-weighted capital adequacy requirements. The problems in risk management have made it clear that the modelling of bank risks will always remain imperfect. In interpreting capital adequacy requirements which are based on such risk models, we must therefore proceed with appropriate caution. This is particularly relevant in view of the new capital adequacy requirements that will also be introduced in Switzerland next year. The main change under these requirements, known as Basel II, is that capital adequacy requirements will rely more heavily on banks' own risk assessments. Bearing this in mind, the lesson learned last summer may well have come at the right time. This now begs the question as to whether – in addition to the complex, riskweighted capital adequacy requirements – other criteria, such as volume limits or the simple debt-equity ratio should not also be considered. The reason for this is that the higher this ratio, the greater the leverage effect of losses on the soundness of a bank.

It is not that I intend to question the concept of risk-weighted requirements in any way. Rather, it is my wish to possibly strengthen these requirements by introducing supporting measures. For example, compared with risk-weighted requirements, volume limits or the debt-equity ratio have the advantage that such key figures are basically very transparent and are not based on complex models. Moreover, they calculate the only element that is relevant in a crisis, and that is the size of the buffer that a bank needs to absorb losses. Third, it is a striking fact that, to date, hedge funds have not been a focus of the current crisis. To a considerable extent, this is attributable to a much improved management of counterparty risk in recent years. It is my view that banks should strengthen their risk management as regards their own refinancing decisions and risk allocation and not just with respect to external customers such as hedge funds. The kind of internal subsidising of refinancing costs for individual business areas observed in some cases creates false incentives. In future, the refinancing costs that a bank charges its internal risk centres should constitute an integral element of its risk management approach. To sum up, I would like to state that it is certainly true that the current situation in the credit markets is very serious. At the same time, I want to stress that, fundamentally, the earnings capacity of our international banks is high, thanks to their diversified business model, and this increases their resilience.
The rate of unemployment will also continue to be high in the years ahead (Figure 4). Is increasing the repo rate and tightening monetary policy therefore the right thing to do? It means that CPIF inflation will be lower and further from the target and that unemployment will continue to be unnecessarily high compared to what it would be with a lower repo rate and a more expansionary monetary policy. In this speech I would like to talk about three subjects. The first is that in my opinion the existing framework for monetary policy could be improved if monetary policy consistently focused on stabilising inflation measured in terms of the CPIF at around 2 per cent and on stabilising unemployment around a sustainable rate. This would make monetary policy simpler, clearer and more robust. In line with this I have entered a reservation in favour of a lower repo-rate path and a more expansionary monetary policy as this would lead to CPIF inflation increasing and coming closer to the target and to unemployment falling towards a sustainable rate. Second, I believe that it is important that the Riksbank’s decisions and communication in the future do not give the impression that monetary policy is focused on anything other than inflation and resource utilisation. There has been an intensive discussion in the media and in market newsletters about a new focus for monetary policy, for example on stabilizing house prices and limiting household indebtedness.

In my opinion, making the monetary policy framework more specific in this way would make monetary policy, simpler, clearer and more robust. The preparations before each policy meeting could focus on calculating forecasts of CPIF inflation and unemployment for different repo-rate paths. These forecasts, together with an assessment of the sustainable rate of unemployment, would summarise all the information the members of the Executive Board would need to make their decisions and choose between the various repo-rate paths. The decisions would be easy to explain and the explanations would be clear. This would also make it easy to evaluate monetary policy. It would become more robust because all the information and all the assessments that affect the forecasts and the sustainable rate of unemployment could be incorporated into the decision-making process in a systematic way. In order to avoid monetary policy being unclear in the future, I believe that the Riksbank’s decisions and communication should not give the impression that monetary policy has any objectives other than stabilising inflation and resource utilisation. On this basis, I entered a reservation at the latest monetary policy meeting and advocated leaving the repo rate unchanged and then a lower repo-rate path than the path in the main scenario, as such a lower path would better stabilise inflation measured in terms of the CPIF and resource utilisation measured in terms of the unemployment gap. References Barro, Robert J., and David B. Gordon (1983), “A positive theory of monetary policy in a natural rate model”, Journal of Political Economy 91, 589–610.
Overall, one cannot rule out that investors’ buy and sell strategies will have an effect on the high short-run volatility of prices, but it is difficult to blame on them the high and persistent levels we see today. The worst nightmare in terms of high inflation and low output has been the price of oil, which has broken all the records. After standing at $ per barrel in 1999 as a consequence of the Asian crisis, it started climbing throughout the 2000s in tandem with world growth. By mid-2006, when the oil price was approaching $ per barrel, the question was why the world economy was so insensitive to it. Researchers tried to explain why such a heavy price increase had been so mild on inflation and output (De Gregorio et al., 2007; Blanchard and Galí, 2007). Fingers pointed at the usual suspects: good monetary policies and less intensive use of oil around the world. In sum, the world economy was more insensitive to the oil price. However, if oil demand continued to rise without a corresponding increase in supply, a large enough price rise was necessary to begin having an effect on the demand. The levels of a couple of years ago were not enough to restrain the demand, and precisely because of that, researchers found little effects from the shock on output and inflation.

Naturally, the Turkish Competition Authority and the Central Bank are among these public institutions. Strong relations among public institutions including the last two are critical for the Central Bank to reach price stability and for Turkey to attain a higher level of prosperity. Before ending my speech, I would like to reiterate my belief that the Turkish Competition Authority will further contribute to the level of prosperity in Turkey in the upcoming years. I would like to thank everyone who had a hand in the organization of this conference and for your attention. BIS Review 37/2008  3
This means that energy prices are included but they have considerably less weight than in the CPI. Of the measures that we use for underlying inflation, the CPI-ATE has tended to be lowest. All four measures indicate that inflation has been moderate in recent years and have implied an expansionary monetary policy. The rise in prices we have recently observed could affect inflation in the period ahead through compensation for earlier inflation, the pass through of costs to selling prices and through expectations of future price inflation. By using various measures of underlying inflation, we seek to capture the portion of the rise in prices that may influence future inflation. It is always difficult in real time to determine which price movements will persist and which will only have a short-term effect on the CPI. An assessment of underlying inflationary pressures should probably be based on several different indicators and developments in these should be followed up by discussion and interpretation of the underlying causes. Allow me to conclude. Developments over the past 40 years have illustrated that the most important contribution monetary policy can make to sound economic developments in the long term is low and stable inflation. This provides the economy with a nominal anchor. In its conduct of monetary policy, Norges Bank operates a flexible inflation targeting regime, so that weight is given to both variability in inflation and variability in output and employment.

In view of the short time available to me - plus the fact that you cannot contradict me - I shall be brief. You may perhaps feel that I am being dogmatic: if so, please bear with me. I should like to make four observations. 1. There is not doubt whatsoever that monetary policy can bring inflation under control. When monetary policy is not flanked by the appropriate budgetary policy, and when labour markets - but also goods and services markets - are not flexible, bringing inflation under control will take time. It will take time, and it can also entail costs - which could otherwise have been avoided. But even so, these costs would still be less than the (very high long-term) cost of not dealing with inflation. Let us not forget that while the rich and the powerful can protect themselves from any loss of purchasing power of their money - and in many cases can even benefit from such a loss - the weak and the not-so-rich will always be the losers. Inflation has always been a major source of social iniquity. In addition, it prevents the economy from functioning properly, by falsifying the signals which are given by prices. The speculative boom in the real estate markets in some of our countries at the end of the 1980s caused serious damage - and we are still paying the price. 2.
But as I mentioned earlier, confidentiality and privacy should not be compromised. Part of future-proofing our payment systems is to enhance the efficiency of cross-border payment services. In this globalised world, there is a growing demand for faster, reasonably priced and more transparent cross-border payments. This will become even more important as international trade and investment linkages deepen, such as through the growth of e-commerce. Yet, cross-border payment services still pale in comparison to domestic payments, which are increasingly real time and zero cost. PayNet and the payment system operators in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to link their respective real-time payment systems. This will give rise to great opportunities for the region to forge closer economic and financial integration. The industry should capitalise on such developments to enhance their cross-border payment offerings to better serve their customers, reduce costs and enhance safety. Harnessing greater efficiencies of cross-border payments can be a lucrative area and those who can innovate will certainly benefit most. Embracing digital disruption that redefine payments This brings me to my second point. Technology, as you know, is fundamentally changing the way we live. Many industries have redefined themselves and embraced digital disruption to remain relevant. Unlike previous disruptions that came from within the industry, we now see enormous interest in mobile payments and the proliferation of non-bank payment providers. Data collected showed an increase in the number of non-bank e-money issuers from 26 in 2016 to 41 as at the end of last month.

In addition to the practical issues I have mentioned, behind dynamic provisioning there lied a conviction, resulting from many years of supervisory experience and, more recently, also from empirical evidence, that credit risk appears in bank balance sheets at the time lending is granted. Risk is an ex ante concept, and default is no more than the ex post manifestation of this credit risk. As I just mentioned, banks commit lending policy errors in upturns, when there is excessive optimism and it is believed that the business cycle has disappeared and that recessions are a relic of the past that will not return, and when bankers, caught up in this wave of exuberance, relax their credit granting standards. By contrast, and as we are all experiencing at the moment, a reaction in the opposite direction occurs in recessionary phases. Banks, pressured by high default rates, which impact their income statement and their level of capital, contract credit significantly, granting financing only to those borrowers whose solvency is beyond all doubt. The end result is as follows: an overly expansionary credit cycle during the upswing and, by contrast, overly contractionary credit growth during the downswing. In addition, there may be a perverse effect on institutions’ income statements and levels of capital. During upswings, the failure to recognise risk through loan loss provisions results in very high profits.
Jaime Caruana: The New Basel Capital Accord: why we need it and where we're at Remarks by Mr Jaime Caruana, Governor of the Bank of Spain and Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, at the Fifth Meeting of the Asian Program of the Institute of International Finance, Beijing, 17 November 2003. *  *  *  I’d like to thank the Institute of International Finance and the Bank of China for hosting this discussion on the outlook for banking and finance in Asia. For many reasons, it seems especially appropriate to discuss this topic here in Beijing. The tremendous growth of China’s economy, its recent accession to the World Trade Organisation, and the wide scope of change that is occurring here has made China a reference for the world. I am very pleased to have this opportunity to discuss with you some of the efforts of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to promote financial systems better able to sustain growth and more resilient during periods of distress. It is an honour to address this forum, but I must confess that I have come to listen and to learn. The message I am consistently hearing is on the one hand one of strong support for the principles of the New Capital Accord and on the other a desire for the best standard for financial systems in each country. Too many examples have illustrated the economic costs and social unrest that weakly capitalised and poorly managed banks can inflict on an economy.

Then I will discuss the implications for Thailand, before moving on to policy navigation of the Bank of Thailand. Financial volatility has manifested itself throughout 2015. Let me briefly recap some of them: •  Only a few months ago, the Chinese equity market recorded one-day steepest loss of 8.5 per cent and trillions of dollars were wiped off from the global equity market within a day. The fluctuations in the Shanghai stock index perfectly exemplify the market volatility where from the beginning of this year the index rose by 60 per cent up to June, before collapsing to 10 per cent loss by August. •  There have also been sharp capital outflows from Emerging Markets, resulting in large Emerging Market currency depreciations. Indeed, the Institute of International Finance expects that capital flows to Emerging Markets will turn negative for the first time since 1988. •  On the commodity front, Brent Crude Oil price plunged below 50 dollars per barrel this year, having peaked at over 110 dollars just one year ago. Against this backdrop, market participants have been increasingly concerned about investment and business implications. So what brought about heightened volatility in the global markets? I will attempt to answer by highlighting two key sources of volatility. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, unconventional monetary policies – most notably successive rounds of Quantitative Easing – were implemented by major advanced economies. This abundant global liquidity contributed largely to strong asset price gains and higher risk appetites.
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Mr. Davies looks at whether contemporary forces are eroding distinctions between central banks and pushing them towards some common model Text of the London School of Economic and Political Science Annual Lecture on Central Banking delivered by the Deputy Goveror of the Bank of England, Mr. Howard Davies, on 4/3/97. Central bankers are famous for their obsessive concern about credibility and consistency. By that token, I should be drummed out of the club I have only recently joined. Because when the Governor stood here a little over a year ago, he assured the audience that he was delivering the fourth and last in the series of LSE Bank of England lectures. But, in keeping with the usual practice of successful television shows, I am here tonight to open a new series. The LSE seemed to think you would prefer that to filling the schedule hereafter with repeats. This new series picks up where the last left off. In 1996 the Governor noted there is nowadays a broad consensus that the raison d’être of central banks everywhere is the pursuit of monetary and financial stability; but he observed that once you go beyond that level of generality, each central bank is unique - in terms of its constitutional position, the range of its activities, its size, structure and organisation. Many of these differences are the result of history. The question I plan to address tonight is whether contemporary forces are eroding these distinctions between central banks and pushing them towards some common model.