samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Bwalya K E Ng’andu: The National Strategy on Financial Education for Zambia Remarks by Dr Bwalya K E Ng’andu, Deputy Governor (Operations) of the Bank of Zambia, at the launch of the National Strategy on Financial Education for Zambia, Lusaka, 12 July 2012. *  *  *  The Deputy Minister of Finance, Honourable Miles Sampa, M.P; The Minister of Education, Honourable Dr. John Phiri, M.P; The Chief Executive Officer of the Securities & Exchange Commission, Dr. Wala Chabala; The Registrar, Pensions and Insurance Authority, Mr. Martin Libinga; Your Excellencies, Heads and Representatives of Diplomatic Missions invited; Senior Government and financial sector industry officials; Distinguished Invited Guests; Members of the Press; Ladies and Gentlemen. Honourable Ministers, I am delighted to welcome you, on behalf of the three financial sector regulators, i.e. the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Pensions and Insurance Authority and the Bank of Zambia, to the launching of the National Strategy on Financial Education for Zambia. The launch is being done under the auspices of the Financial Sector Development Plan and represents a culmination of a wide range of activities which have been carried out within the scope of the Plan since 2002 with the objective of addressing challenges in the financial sector and strengthening and broadening access to financial services in Zambia.

On the regulatory side, the Fed has taken a number of steps to encourage banks to use their balance sheet to support borrowers. For community banks, for example, the federal banking agencies are implementing the part of the CARES Act to lower the community bank leverage ratio.3 4 In terms of liquidity provision, the Fed has actively encouraged banks to use the discount window to help meet the demand for credit from household and businesses.5 To make this more attractive, the Fed has lowered the borrowing rate, extended the term of these loans, and actively signaled support for discount window use. The Fed also implemented the Paycheck Protection Program Liquidity Facility (PPPLF).6 This facility is designed to support the effectiveness of the Paycheck Protection Program, created by the CARES Act and implemented by the Small Business Administration (SBA), by extending credit to financial institutions that make PPP loans. Supplying financial institutions with additional liquidity will help increase their capacity to make PPP loans. In term of eligibility for participation in the PPPLF, the Federal Reserve is working to expand eligibility to PPP lenders that are not depository institutions in the near future.7 Consumer Protection https://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/speeches/2020/sti200424  1/2  Panel Remarks: The Fed and Main Street during the Coronavirus Pandemic - FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK  The Fed has emphasized the importance of consumer protection during this period.
During the panels, formal Q&As, and sidelines of the conference, I encourage you to share your views on these topics and other changes that you are confronting, with a focus on the opportunities, risks, and mitigants. By sharing our perspectives, community banks can continue to play a central role in the sustainable provision of financial services to customers in the Second District. Moreover, by working together to address these changes, the New York Fed and the broader regulatory community will be better positioned to achieve its goal of creating safe, sound, and stable banking and financial systems that support the U.S. economy. Thank you for your attention. 1 Aggregate Second District data is based on Call reports and UBPR data from 114 firms. 2 Fintech Trends to Watch in 2018, CB Insights. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches

However, since four of the national central banks which form part of the ESCB continue to conduct their own autonomous monetary policies, one cannot accurately refer to the ESCB as the authority responsible for conducting monetary policy in the euro area. We must instead use the term “Eurosystem”, which comprises the ECB and the 11 national central banks of those countries which have adopted the euro, and which has been adopted as a “user friendly” expression to denote the form in which the ESCB performs its tasks and responsibilities. The Eurosystem is set up, like the Federal Reserve System, in a distinctively decentralised manner. At the same time, however, the Eurosystem disposes of marked centralised structures, since the definition and implementation of the single monetary policy are carried out under the exclusive responsibility of BIS Review 4/2000  2  the decision-making bodies of the ECB. These are, first of all, the Governing Council, which defines the single monetary policy for the euro area and takes all other decisions of fundamental importance to the Eurosystem. The Members of the Governing Council are the Governors of the 11 national central banks and the six members of the Executive Board of the ECB. Basically, all decisions are taken by simple majority, whereby each member has one vote. The other important decision-making body is the Executive Board of the ECB, which is basically responsible for the implementation of monetary policy in accordance with the decisions taken by the Governing Council.
This will require a level of resilience to be maintained that is at least as great as that currently planned, which itself exceeds that required by international baseline standards”. In other words: no bonfire. Market discipline  Another way we will preserve the progress that has been made is to recruit the forces of market discipline to our cause. The Treasury Committee has been right to highlight the potential for greater transparency around the capital adequacy of the banking system. Through our stress tests, investors can already see the detail of how individual banks would maintain lending through a severe downturn. But I think we may also be able to make progress in other ways. Next week we will launch a new quarterly statistical release which will show – on a consistent basis – levels of capital and risk-weighted assets for the UK banking sector, with breakdowns of the movements in different 4  tiers of capital and risk exposure types . I am also considering whether we can build on this over time. In particular, next summer we plan to publish a Discussion Paper seeking an open exchange of views on a disclosure framework for banks’ and insurers’ regulatory data. Conceptually, my bias would be towards firms publishing their regulatory returns, but I am 4  Further detail on this forthcoming release will be confirmed on 31 October. The first set of data – for Q1 2014 to Q2 2016 – will be published on 16 December 2016.

Rather, it may be dangerously procyclical. So in the immediate aftermath of the referendum, we invited – indeed encouraged – firms to apply for transitional measures to smooth the impact of the risk margin during a time of market turbulence, and I also very much welcome the European Commission’s request for EIOPA to review the risk margin’s role more broadly. Take the leverage ratio as another post-referendum example of steps we are taking to put a smoother finish on the reforms. The framework was originally introduced to mitigate the risk to financial stability of excessive leverage. In August we decided to exclude central bank reserves from the exposure measure. They do not expose a firm to additional risks: as the ultimate settlement asset, central bank reserves are a unique asset class. Leaving reserves in scope would have obstructed the effective implementation of monetary policy. But neither did we want to take them out only to see a reduction in the nominal amount of capital required to meet the UK leverage ratio standard. So in making the change, we made clear that we will recalibrate the standard to offset this impact. The policy intent of our framework is preserved, while the unintended consequence is addressed. In a similar vein, let me say a quick word on the reforms currently being discussed in Basel – specifically the review of the use of firms’ own internal models for calculating risk-weighted assets and therefore their capital  7  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  7  requirements.
When an AI trading algorithm went amok and caused the failure of US hedge fund Smart Money, AI traders across America, Europe, and Asia went into a massive risk-off mode, causing turbulence not only in equities but also fixed income, commodity, and currency markets. Herd behaviour has always been a characteristic of financial markets. But herds of robots have proven to be far more deadly than herds of humans. The International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) has since mandated that exchanges have in place mechanisms to manage extreme volatility. And securities regulators have themselves started to use AI – to provide early warning of potentially disruptive AI-based trading patterns and trigger appropriate circuit-breakers. But more generally, the increased use of AI by financial institutions has created the risk of “black boxes” in decision-making. Boards and senior management of financial institutions are struggling to validate AI-based models which use continuous learning and adaptation as distinct from fixed parameters and 6/9  BIS central bankers' speeches  historical back-testing. The application of AI in financial services has also created issues of financial exclusion which regulators cannot ignore. Regulators have begun to detect cases where AI-based decision-making has led to systematic exclusion of certain demographics.

While strong cryptography is a feature of DLT systems, they are not immune to cyberattacks through the widely distributed network of participants. 4/9  BIS central bankers' speeches  And old-fashioned risks like not having enough liquidity to settle transactions can potentially lead to gridlocks in DLT systems which could, in turn, cause systemic risks. The trigger for a co-ordinated regulatory response to DLT came in the cross-border payments space. In 2020, the Bank of Canada and Monetary Authority of Singapore successfully piloted a cross-border DLT-based system that achieved almost real-time fixed income securities trading and settlement. Under the Global Payments Accord of 2024, central banks agreed to upgrade their real-time gross settlement systems to a DLT-inspired infrastructure with a view to connect these systems for safer, faster, and more efficient cross-border payments and settlements. This called for internationally accepted standards for DLT-based payment systems. The FSB and standard-setting bodies worked closely with the newly-formed International Organisation for Distributed Ledger Standards to design a supervisory framework for DLT. DLT networks that performed key market functions like clearing and trade reporting were required to meet specified standards for settlement finality and the security of digital asset custody. Making cloud computing services safer From about 2015, financial institutions increasingly began to use the cloud. With cloud computing, financial institutions could efficiently integrate customer data across platforms to enable sharper consumer insights. The cloud provided scalable storage solutions to meet the real-time demands of trading and analytics processes.
Consequently, the interest rate differential between investments in foreign currencies and those in Swiss francs had declined to almost zero towards the end of last year. This made the Swiss franc even more attractive for investors. The Swiss franc is equally attractive to both domestic and foreign investors. The upward pressure on the Swiss franc is not only due to the fact that foreigners want to invest in the Swiss franc, but also because Swiss residents invest less abroad or repatriate their international investments. Allow me to explain this in more detail. For a long time, Switzerland has had a current account surplus, in other words, it exports more goods and services than it imports. In addition, the high level of international investments earns significant investment income. Due to the current account surpluses, Switzerland has built up considerable foreign assets over time. These asset holdings abroad were largely invested in foreign currencies, partly because of the more attractive returns. 1 The net revenue earned with the current account surpluses has to be “re-exported” in the form of foreign securities purchases or investments abroad. In the years before the financial crisis, inflows attributable to the current account surplus were more or less balanced by outflows in the form of private capital exports. Following the financial crisis, the situation changed completely. Risk appetite in Switzerland reduced sharply. Investment of the proceeds from the current account surplus abroad by the domestic private sector has become increasingly restrained.

2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Subsequently, on 6 September 2011, we decided to introduce the minimum exchange rate as an exceptional and temporary measure. Through the minimum exchange rate, the massive overvaluation of the Swiss franc was partially corrected. In this way, the SNB countered the acute threat to the Swiss economy and the risk of a deflationary development. The minimum exchange rate served the Swiss economy well. It helped to see it through the turmoil of that period and bought some time so that the economy could adjust to the new conditions, at least to some extent. Production and employment recovered faster than in many other countries. Over the past two years, GDP has grown by approximately 2% on average. The Swiss economy is now better placed than it was in 2011. New parameters for the economy: assessment and outlook What is our current assessment of the economic outlook, given the changed situation? Before discontinuing the minimum exchange rate, the SNB was expecting growth of some 2% for this year as well. We now anticipate GDP growth of just under 1%. With the end of the minimum exchange rate, Switzerland faces more difficult times ahead. Overall, the Swiss franc is once again significantly overvalued. The sharp, and above all abrupt, appreciation of the Swiss franc represents a major challenge. Our economy has time and again demonstrated how adaptable and innovative it is, and it can certainly handle a gradual, longterm appreciation in the real exchange rate.
Mexico has many problems, not the least of which is declining oil production, low school graduation rates and drug-induced violence. But on the fiscal front, the country is outperforming the United States. Mexico’s government has developed and implemented better macroeconomic policy than has the U.S. government. Mexico’s economy contracted sharply during the global downturn, with real gross domestic product (GDP) plummeting 6.2 percent in 2009. But growth roared back, up 5.5 percent in 2010 and 3.9 percent in 2011, with output reaching its prerecession peak after 12 quarters – three quarters sooner than in the U.S. Mexico’s industrial production passed its prerecession peak at the end of 2010; ours has yet to do so. Now hold on to your seats: Mexico actually has a federal budget! We haven’t had one for almost three years. Furthermore, the Mexican Congress has imposed a balanced-budget rule and the discipline to go with it, so that even with the deviation from balance allowed under emergencies, Mexico ran a budget deficit of only 2.5 percent in 2011, compared with 8.7 percent in the U.S. Mexico’s national debt totals 27 percent of GDP; in the U.S., the debt-to-GDP ratio computed on a comparable basis was 99 percent in 2011 and is projected to be 106 percent in 2012. Imagine that: The country that many Americans look down upon  6  6  “California Auto Parts Company Moving to Texas,” by Steve Brown, Dallas Morning News, Feb. 4, 2012.

Manufacturing – which accounts for approximately 8 percent of total Texas employment – added over 27,000 jobs. All told, the private sector in Texas expanded by 266,400 jobs in 2011, while the public sector contracted by 54,800, due primarily to layoffs of schoolteachers. In sum, Texas payrolls grew 2 percent, significantly above the national rate of 1.3 percent. This performance is not unique to last year. As you can see from this graph of nonagricultural employment growth by Federal Reserve district going back to January 1990, the Eleventh District has outperformed the nation on the job front for over two decades. Note the slope of the top line, which depicts job growth in the Eleventh District compared with each of the other districts and, importantly, relative to employment growth for the U.S. as a whole – denoted by the black line, the seventh one down. As was pointed out in high relief by the media when a certain Texas governor was briefly in the hunt for his party’s presidential nomination, we do have some serious deficiencies in the Lone Star State. We have a very large number of people earning minimum wage; we have an unemployment rate that, while trending downward, is still too high, abetted by continued inflows of job seekers from less-promising sections of the country.
See G. Afonso, A. Kovner, and A. Schoar, “Stressed, Not Frozen: The Federal Funds Market in the Financial Crisis”, Journal of Finance, Vol. 66, No 4, 2011. 6  See International Capital Market Association, “European Repo Market Survey”, No 23, June 2012, available at http://www.icmagroup.org/assets/documents/Market-Info/Repo-Market-Surveys/ICMA-ERC-European-RepoSurvey-June-2012.pdf. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  December 2012 with 172 banks participating shows a similar development. 7 The Money Market Study also compares the development of the secured with the unsecured market. And indeed, while the unsecured money market has steadily contracted since 2007, the secured money market has held its ground over the same period. Another, more recent and troubling development in the functioning of the money markets is the on-going investigations into manipulations of key money market reference rates. The ECB is closely following this development and is supporting the attempts to reform reference rates, given the role they play in the transmission of monetary policy. In our response to the European Commission’s public consultation, while stressing that reference rates should remain private market initiatives, we have called for short-term governance reforms to restore and uphold the credibility of these reference rates, associated with longer-term measures involving changes in the calculation methodology. In the short term, governance reforms and increased supervisory and regulatory scrutiny can help to restore the market’s confidence in the integrity of the benchmarks and to ensure their continuous viability.

4  BIS Review 157/2008  Observed inflation December 2008 2005 Q1  I nflation  2006 Q2  Q3  Q4  Q1  2007 Q2  Q3  Q4  Q1  2008 Q2  Q3  Q4  Q1  Q2  Q3  2005  2006  2007  1.2  1.1  0.7  Q4  1.35 1.06 1.18 1.10 1.23 1.33 1.22 0.46 0.09 0.52 0.63 1.68 2.50 2.70 3.00  Inflation forecast of September 2008 with Libor at 2.75% and of December 2008 with Libor at 0.50% 2008 Q1  Forecast September 2008, Libor at 2.75% Forecast December 2008, Libor at 0.50%  BIS Review 157/2008  2009 Q2  Q3  Q4  Q1  2010 Q2  Q3  Q4  Q1  2011 Q2  Q3  Q4  Q1  Q2  Q3  2.96 2.69 2.32 2.00 1.70 1.54 1.42 1.35 1.30 1.27 1.27 1.28  1.66 1.17 0.73 0.59 0.99 0.80 0.45 0.40 0.38 0.43 0.54 0.64  2008  2009  2010  2.7  1.9  1.3  2.5  0.9  0.5  Q4  5
In the first, Wilbert van der Klaauw will provide an overview of fourth quarter and full year 2012 developments in household debt and credit; much of what Wilbert will describe is covered in our Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. The quarterly report has documented the enormous rise in consumer delinquencies and defaults as the housing bust and the Great Recession unfolded, and, over the last several years has provided an in-depth look at a very large reduction in household debt – the largest we have ever witnessed. Since the third quarter of 2008, its peak, household debt has fallen by $ trillion – about 10 percent – mostly because of declining mortgage balances. This morning we are releasing our latest quarterly report – for the fourth quarter of 2012. The report shows some clear signs of healing in consumer debt markets. First, and perhaps most interesting, the data indicate that the recent improvement in the housing market was accompanied by a slight increase in the level of household debt. While it is too soon to conclude that a trend has been established in which households are beginning to increase their debts again, there are signs that the four-year long contraction is slowing. Consumer delinquency rates continue to slowly recover as well, with overall delinquency rates now back to pre-recession levels – around 8½ percent – but still well above the 3–5 percent rates that prevailed in the first half of the 2000s.

After falling by 3.1 percent in 2009, growth in real GDP averaged 2.4 percent in 2010, 1.8 percent in 2011 and 2.2 percent in 2012, a consistent but sluggish pace. This sluggishness has been quite evident in the labor market. After falling by 421,000 per month in 2009, payroll employment grew by 85,000 per month in 2010, 175,000 per month in 2011, and 181,000 in 2012. To put these numbers in perspective, the trend rate of growth of the civilian non-institutional population is around 200,000 per month. The unemployment rate has declined from a peak of 10 percent in October of 2009 to just under 8 percent recently, due largely to the fact that the labor force participation rate has declined by considerably more than would be suggested by underlying demographic trends. Fortunately, long-term unemployment, defined as those unemployed for 15 weeks or longer, has declined from nearly 9 million in the first quarter of 2010 to about 6.6 million in recent months – a decline of 28 percent. The median duration of unemployment has declined from 23 weeks in the second quarter of 2010 to 16 weeks recently. Nonetheless, as of January there were still about 3.2 million fewer jobs than at the end of 2007. The unemployment rate remains elevated, despite a significant decline of the labor force participation rate. And the ratio of employment to population in January was lower than it was at the end of the recession, indicating that employment growth has not kept pace with population growth.