samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Since the onset of the crisis, monetary policy has been strongly accommodating, more so both in 2013 and in 2014 to date. On the conventional front, official interest rates have been cut on three occasions since January last year. As a result, the main refinancing operations rate has reached, for practical purposes, its lower bound (0.15%). And the remuneration banks receive for their deposits in the Eurosystem stands, following the recent decisions adopted on 5 June, in negative territory (–0.10%), which should promote a greater and lasting injection of liquidity into the markets. As regards liquidity, moreover, it was resolved at the Governing Council meeting on 5 June to extend the current policy of fixed rate full allotment tender procedures at least until  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  December 2016. It was also decided to suspend the fine-tuning operation sterilising the purchases under the Securities Market Programme. The ECB thereby ensures the continuity and scope of the policy of generous provision of liquid funds adopted since what was practically the very onset of the crisis. Finally, regarding unconventional measures, and following the adoption last year of forward guidance, significant additional steps have been taken in June. Firstly, targeted long-term refinancing operations explicitly geared to promoting bank lending to households and firms were announced. Further, it was decided to step up the work under way to enable a framework to be designed for outright ABS purchases by the ECB.

BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  Completing the fiscal consolidation process must remain an overriding priority of Spain’s economic policy. This effort is necessary to maintain the confidence of economic agents, to continue to advance in the normalisation of financing and to restore the room for manoeuvre in budget policy. Meeting targets is crucial first for containing and, subsequently, reducing the public debt/GDP ratio. It will be difficult to curb the rising trend of public debt now the latter has reached high levels and the outlook for economic growth and inflation is moderate. If the interest on the debt is higher than the nominal growth rate of the economy, the public debt/GDP ratio grows inertially, even when public revenue and spending are balanced. This effect stems from the pressure generated by the interest burden, arising from high debt which cannot be countered by growth in real GDP and changes in inflation. In this situation, then, in order to avoid an increase in debt, it is not enough to attain an overall balanced budget (that is, net of the interest burden); rather, sizeable primary surpluses must be achieved and maintained, which is particularly difficult in a setting of low growth and low inflation. Furthermore, the short-term negative effects on economic growth of the fiscal adjustment should be considered, which contributes to the above-mentioned inertial increase in debt.
But the investor base for any particular issue will be that much larger if secondary market liquidity is assured. The significance of developing domestic debt markets has been widely recognised elsewhere in this region too. It is perhaps something that is of special importance for countries where there is a clear advantage in expanding domestic financial intermediation in order to reduce dependence on external debt. Hong Kong has contributed to the APEC Compendium of Sound Practices for the development of debt markets, which covers such topics as regulation, transparency, risk control and so on. This will help guide the establishment of best-practice infrastructure for these markets, but that in itself is no guarantee that markets will actually mature. In general, however, the prospects for the further development of bond markets in the region in the new millennium look promising. From the point of view of international investors, exchange rates may also, of course, be a crucial element of the investment equation. They are certainly so for the trader or short-term investor. For long-term investors, however, the swings and roundabouts may even out; it could be argued that much of the movement of exchange rates reflects nominal impulses, which should not unduly affect long-run real returns. If one tries to predict exchange rates in pursuit of a winning investment strategy, one is likely to be as often disappointed as elated.

Denny H Kalyalya: Expansion of Zambia’s banking sector Remarks by Dr Denny H Kalyalya, Deputy Governor-Operations of the Bank of Zambia; at the official opening of Bank of China’s new premises, Lusaka, 9 December 2008. *  *  *  • Honourable Minister of Finance and National Planning, Dr. Situmbeko Musokotwane, MP; • His Excellency – the Chinese Ambassador to the Republic of Zambia; Mr. Li Qiangmin; • Managing Director of the Bank of China (Zambia) Limited; Mr Du Qiang; • Distinguished Invited Guests; • Ladies and Gentlemen. I am greatly honoured for having been invited to speak on the occasion of the official opening ceremony of Bank of China’s new premises. Ladies and Gentlemen As part of the on-going Zambia-Chinese relationship, the Bank of China was established in 1997. Since then the Bank has recorded tremendous progress. Distinguished Invited Guests During the past 8 years, the overall financial performance and condition of the banking sector has been satisfactory. The sector has continued to expand and we anticipate increased economic and investment activity in the period ahead. Banks are expected to continue to provide the required level of finance to consolidate the economic gains registered so far. The Bank has achieved tremendous growth since its inception in 1997. During the last eleven years, total assets have increased by 325% to K507.9 billion in October 2008 from K13.8 billion in December 1997. Regulatory capital increased by about 1,000% to K41.9 billion in October 2008 from K3.8 billion December 1997.
This thinking process has culminated in a strategy that we call Fintech 2025, which I am pleased to share with you here. . All Banks go fintech 14. The first part of our fintech strategy is called “all banks go fintech”. In short, we want banks to go “all in” with fintech, and fully digitalise their operations, from front-end to back-end. 15. The future is full of uncertainties. This is something we have all witnessed first-hand over the past two years with the pandemic. Challenges and interruptions to day-to-day activities, including banking activities, can happen unannounced. The only thing certain and that has been a constant throughout these ups and downs is digitalisation. 16. Indeed, the banking industry also recognises the value of digitalisation. At least we like to think this is why banks have so positively embraced the HKMA’s fintech drive so far - rather than due to any regulatory pressure! Jokes aside, I trust the figures I quoted earlier are proof that the earlier Smart Banking initiatives have laid a strong foundation for our banks to take this next step in their fintech journey. 17. The HKMA is keen to support banks during this process. Under the Fintech 2025 strategy, we will be rolling out a Tech Baseline Assessment to help the HKMA identify those areas that we may be able to offer support. As part of this exercise, we will be inviting banks to submit a Three Year Plan for technology adoption within Q4 2021.

This point is particularly important because the Commission Bancaire's decision on whether to authorise the use of certain approaches may hinge on meeting these requirements, which, moreover, tie in with those in the new IFRS. It should be underlined that the Commission Bancaire carries out these activities in close cooperation with other European oversight authorities as a member of the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) whose objective is to achieve closer convergence of supervisors' regulations and practices. In this regard, CEBS has set up operational networks, known as supervisory colleges, for major cross-border banks. Composed of the home-country and host-country supervisors of Europe's largest banking groups, these networks make it possible to find pragmatic solutions to the main problems encountered when implementing Basel II. Likewise, convergence of supervisory practices must be also materialised by the filing of the first accounting and prudential reports in FINREP and COREP formats, respectively, which form a common framework for Europe. ** * Let me say in conclusion that over the past year the French banking system has demonstrated its ability to develop new activities and thus find the fresh sources of growth needed to diversity its revenues. But these positive results are not without certain vulnerabilities, given that margins are slim and some complex financings are exposed to both operational risk and model risk. It is therefore necessary to ensure that banks’ balance sheets remain robust. To achieve this, naturally, pricing structures must correspond to actual risk exposure, and risk management techniques must be strengthened.
Under a Single Point of Entry strategy, resolution actions will be taken in a single legal entity that is basically the parent company of the group, which will have to hold sufficient external TLAC. Additionally, a certain amount of loss-absorbing capacity should be pre-positioned in all material subsidiaries. This would ensure that losses are up-streamed to the resolution entity, thus avoiding putting the material subsidiary into resolution. By contrast, under a Multiple Point of Entry strategy, the application of resolution tools to different parts of the group is allowed under the assumption of limited interconnections between them. Therefore, in this model, loss-absorption capacity is primarily located in each resolution entity (subsidiaries and the parent company). This is the resolution model chosen by the global Spanish banks as it is a better fit with their business model. As I said, one of the most complex issues in the design of the TLAC standard was to find the correct balance between taking into account the particularities of each resolution strategy and ensuring consistent treatment between them. In this respect, the Bank of Spain welcomes the inclusion of certain elements that go in the correct direction towards achieving regulatory consistency between resolution strategies. Let me stress, when mentioning  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  consistency, that it is important that different jurisdictions also strive to achieve this objective when introducing the TLAC standard into their regulations. Crisis Management Groups (CMGs) will also play a crucial role in ensuring consistency.

However, as Professor Alan Blinder reminds us, we need to pay attention to the transition costs of the reforms and not only their long-run effects, and to analyse the redistributive implications, as well as the impact of policies on efficiency.8 The fact that economists and economic policymakers have underestimated the importance of communicating and mitigating the adverse effects that the transition to a more globalised economy were going to have on certain sectors of the population has been decisive in the emergence of movements opposing this process. This error, the consequences of which we are still suffering, should not be repeated in the case of economic sustainability. The role of the financial sector The process of transformation into a sustainable economy is somewhat similar to an industrial restructuring. Some firms and sectors will have to reduce their size and be restructured, while others will expand. For this to be possible, productive resources, including financing, need to be reallocated. As a result, the financial sector has a fundamental role to play in this process.9 Indeed, the sooner resources are reallocated, the lower will be the costs of the transformation. To put some figures on the table, the European Green Deal Investment Plan presented by the European Commission10 aims to mobilise one trillion euro of sustainable investment over the coming decade. It is worth asking if the financial markets are ready to contribute such a large amount of funds.
Luis M Linde: Economic recovery in Spain Opening remarks by Mr Luis M Linde, Governor of the Bank of Spain, at the XXII Meeting of the Financial Sector, organised by ABC, Deloitte and Sociedad de Tasación, Madrid, 8 April 2015. *  *  *  Let me first thank Bieito Rubido, the Editor of ABC, Yolanda Gómez, the Deputy Editor, Fernando Ruiz, the Chairman of Deloitte and Juan Fernández-Aceytuno, the General Manager of Sociedad de Tasación, for their invitation to the opening of this Encuentro del Sector Financiero forum. In my address I shall briefly set out the situation of and outlook for the Spanish economy in the European setting; I shall review monetary policy developments in the euro area; and I shall conclude with some thoughts on the connection between political tensions and the functioning of the Monetary Union which, today, as a legacy of the crisis dating back to 2007, are evident and significant. The Spanish economy I shall begin with the situation of the Spanish economy. Recent figures confirm the momentum and strength of our economic recovery, against a background in which the correction of the macroeconomic imbalances and the improvement in the external environment continue. The policies deployed at home and in Europe are underpinning this sound performance.

These projections, which do not appear to be overly optimistic given the figures – published on Monday – for the decline in unemployment and the rise in Social Security registrations in March, highlight the need to continue pursuing policies geared to boosting competitiveness, investment and exports, the only foundations suitable for sustainable job creation. Price developments in 2015 and 2016 will be greatly influenced by oil prices. Consumer prices might fall by 0.2% on average in 2015, and rise by slightly more than 1% in 2016. Stripping out the energy component, consumer prices are expected to rise modestly, in line with the scenario of growing household expenditure, the lessening of surplus capacity in the economy and the depreciation of the euro. The risk of deflation appears to have been clearly averted in the Monetary Union and, consequently, in Spain. Recent monetary policy conduct Let me turn now to recent monetary policy conduct. Monetary policy in the euro area has been progressively adapted to medium- and long-term inflation expectations, in a setting marked by the weakness of economic growth in the area. The armoury of instruments used by the ECB includes conventional or standard measures – such as interest rate movements and the provision of liquidity in its ordinary refinancing operations – together with non-standard or extraordinary measures, among which the setting of negative interest rates on the discount facility, and long-term liquidity-provision and assetpurchase programmes. The need to keep the deflationary risk at bay, i.e.
Consumers with substantial student debt may not be able to meet the stricter debt-to-income (DTI) ratio standards that are now being applied by lenders, particularly on mortgage loans. We believe that student debt growth among new graduates has been higher in the most recent years than growth in their incomes. In addition, delinquency in repayment has become more prevalent among student borrowers, and those with past delinquencies are likely to find it much more difficult to borrow. This decline in credit accessibility is also captured by credit scores. During most of the first decade of the 2000s, those with and without student loans had comparable average credit scores at ages twenty-five and thirty, but since 2010, student loan borrowers have had significantly lower average credit scores. As a result of tighter underwriting standards, higher delinquency rates, and lower credit scores, consumers with educational debt may on average have more limited access to housing and auto loans and, as a result, more limited options in the housing and vehicle markets. This disadvantage may compound the difficulties of young people who enter a depressed labor market; in addition to facing a spell of unemployment that may lead to reduced earnings for a considerable period of time, they may also face tighter future credit constraints as a result of delinquencies on their student loans.

Finally, with somewhat stronger growth of output, I expect inflation to gradually rise toward the Federal Open Market Committee’s objective of 2 percent as measured by the PCE deflator. This forecast is based on the projected gradual increase in the levels of resource utilization, which would lessen downward pressure on firms’ marginal costs and prices, a firming in global demand, and the continued upward pull exercised by stable inflation expectations on actual inflation. Underpinning the latter assumption is the broad stability of long-term inflation expectations across different financial and survey measures, combined with ongoing moderate growth of wages and unit labor costs, all of which are consistent with well-anchored inflation expectations. As mentioned above, the key development behind the firmer tone of consumer spending over the second half of 2013 is the significant strengthening in household balance sheets. One aspect of that improvement is that from mid-2008 through mid-2013, total household liabilities declined significantly after a period of quite rapid debt growth over the preceding decade. The reduction in household debt is an extremely rare event for the U.S. economy. In fact, this has been the only period of sustained declines in nominal household indebtedness over the period since the early 1950s. The household sector In the remainder of my remarks, I’d like to focus on the finding, made public in our most recent Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, that for the first time since 2008, households increased their borrowing on a year-over-year basis, at least in nominal terms.
Jesper Roine, professor at the Stockholm School of Economics has divided them up in a useful manner.3     Automation – a machine doing the work of a person. Digitalisation – converting information to a digital form. Technological advances – broader concept that covers the other two but also other things. The concepts are of course related. Digitalisation can enable automation and is an example of technological advances. In this speech I focus on digitalisation, but will also touch on the automation that follows on from digitalisation. I wish to include in the concept of digitalisation here machine learning, artificial intelligence, 3D printers and the use of cloud services and Big Data. A common collective name often used for several of these technologies is Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Will productivity increase? How far have we come with regard to the digitalisation of the business sector? One hears an awful lot about technological developments in the media and in business journals. From what is written one might easily gain the impression that we can do more and faster. But official data on productivity does not confirm this. The fact that statistics and reality sometimes appear to be disconnected from one another is nothing new. In 1987 economist Robert Solow wrote “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics”, when describing the emergence of information and communication technology (ICT) and the relatively low productivity growth in the United States in the 1980s.

SPEECH DATE:  26/03/2019  SPEAKER:  Deputy Governor Cecilia Skingsley  VENUE:  Entreprenörskapsforum, Stockholm  CLASS:  SVERIGES RIKSBANK SE-103 37 Stockholm (Brunkebergstorg 11) Tel +46 8 787 00 00 Fax +46 8 21 05 31 registratorn@riksbank.se www.riksbank.se  The effects of digitalisation on the economy* Thank you for the invitation to come here and speak at Entreprenörskapsforum. I cannot imagine a better place to talk about digitalisation and its potential effects on the economy. One example of technological advances and the effects of digitalisation is right here – in our mobile phones. Four out of five Swedes in the age range 16-85 had access to the internet via a mobile phone in 2018.1 It is difficult to imagine, but today's smart phones actually have greater processing power than the computers that enabled the Apollo moon landing in 1969!2 Smart phones also give us access to inconceivable amounts of information and entertainment that did not even exist in 1969. The answer to a question is only a few clicks away. As a consumer it is easy to see the value of these technological advances, although we do not in our daily lives use the capacity for anything comparable to the giant leap for mankind the moon landing entailed… The new technology provides us with entertainment, but not only that. It also affects our working lives and the economy in general.
By much the same logic, it is plausible that the recent move higher in both Eurozone and gilt yields is an unwinding of some of the initial price effects that followed the commencement of ECB quantitative easing. 6. Conclusion  Long term yields have always been the product of big global macroeconomic forces. Their structural decline in the thirty years prior to the crisis, for example, reflected the adoption of inflation targeting by many countries, global demographic trends, and the imbalances of the early 2000s in which a “glut” of savings flowed from emerging economies to advanced economies. Large forces have also played a role in the aftermath of the financial crisis, a period during which long yields have declined further. It seems likely that this move has been driven by factors including a persistent-but-not-permanent drag from deleveraging, increased weight being attached to downside risks, and the ongoing impact of quantitative easing programmes across the globe. These are legitimate reasons for long yields to be low, but should not be mistaken for a gloomy prognosis of long-term growth and inflation prospects in the UK. That is not to say that we should ignore the potential signal from long yields. There is a risk that the nominal and real effects of the financial crisis prove more persistent than this central case, and monetary policy has an important role to play in reducing the probability of such an outcome.

Let me add a final comment to this important issue. It is clear to me that we could also do more, beyond the strict solvency standards, and study how other regulations, such as those related to provisioning, can contribute to reducing pro-cyclicality. 8  BIS Review 8/2005  7. Basel II impact on global competition. Another broad concern that the Committee has worked to address is Basel II’s impact on global competition. In particular, some have asked whether banks that choose Basel II’s advanced approaches will enjoy benefits over those that choose simpler approaches or remain on the 1988 Accord. Basel II reflects also the existing diversity of banks and jurisdictions and the sense that no singlepolicy approach, and no single hard-and-fast rule, could be applied to all banks of all shapes and sizes. Consequently, the Basel Committee sought something bolder than a single, universal rule. The so called “menu approach” of Basel II offers different alternatives to different kinds of banks and jurisdictions, but in developing this approach significant efforts were made to ensure that the level playing field is maintained. We should understand that adopting an advanced approach requires significant investments and does not automatically reduce a bank’s capital requirements. In a more risk-sensitive capital framework, capital requirements for an advanced bank may actually rise relative to the current rules if the bank’s exposures are actually riskier than the measures under the 1988 Accord would have suggested.