samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
But, above all, it has been a key tool for ensuring the maintenance of affected employees’ income and for improving the prospects of recouping employment once the restrictions on activity imposed by the state of alert are lifted. The particular characteristics of this shock, which temporarily shut down many workplaces, and the incentives approved for the use of this instrument after the state of alert was declared have contributed to a much greater resort to ERTEs than in past crises. Hence, if we focus on the arrangements available for permanent employees, at end-April the number of workers affected by an ERTE totalled 3.4 million. Since then, this figure has fallen significantly. Moreover, on the information available, only a very small portion of wageearners who have emerged from this situation have gone into unemployment or become idle, whereas most of those affected have returned to their pre-crisis job. These developments are qualitatively consistent with the objective pursued; namely, that ERTEs would be a temporarily used tool while the transitory shutdown in activity lasted. In late June, coinciding with the end of lockdown-easing, 1.8 million workers continued to avail themselves of an ERTE. This figure is almost half the end-April peak and accounts for close to 10% of total wage-earners, confirming that one of the characteristics of this recovery is its incompleteness. From the standpoint of the labour market, what we have is also an uneven recovery. This is because the reduction in the number of workers on ERTEs has been very uneven across the productive sectors.

7  The launch of the new ICO (Official Credit Institute) line of guarantees, recently announced by the Government and worth € billion, will significantly reinforce at a most timely juncture this important instrument for combating the economic effects of the pandemic. Against this backdrop, the findings of the latest Bank Lending Survey anticipate the possibility of a tightening of credit standards for European firms in Q3 this year. Should this be confirmed, prolonged or increased support measures for the financing of firms would be advisable, in order to sustain the recovery. In any event, in this second phase of the economic policy response, credit support mechanisms should focus on prioritising access to these funds for firms with sound viability prospects, with a view to providing for the necessary cross-firm and cross-sector reallocation of productive resources. Likewise, it is admittedly highly likely that a significant number of firms will emerge from this crisis with high debt levels and with diminished demand prospects, at least for some time. In this respect, it is also a pressing concern to review corporate restructuring and insolvency processes, with the aim of establishing pre-emptive, flexible and simplified administrative procedures enabling firms to pursue their business activity while they are still viable. The second decisive contribution of economic policies to alleviating the consequences of the crisis has been the use of furlough arrangements (ERTEs). This has also been a very important instrument for mitigating firms’ liquidity needs.
Such a view ran counter to that espoused by many central bankers, most notably Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who questioned the feasibility of addressing such financial imbalances with preemptive monetary policy; in his view, monetary policy should instead focus on minimising the fallout from any subsequent correction – the so-called “cleaning” approach. 4 While the logic of leaning against the wind is sound in principle, the key question is whether a monetary tightening of plausible magnitude is likely to be effective in attenuating an established credit boom. Even if policy rates may appear with hindsight to have been held too low for too long in the years preceding the crisis, particularly in the United States, the empirical evidence suggests that they would need to have been significantly higher to have had a meaningful impact on the rate of credit expansion. 5 It is a brave central banker who would deliberately induce a recession in order to head off the mere risk of a future financial correction. 3  For instance, William White (2006), “Is price stability enough?”, Bank for International Settlements Working Paper 205. 4  Alan Greenspan (2002), “Opening Remarks” in Rethinking Stabilization Policy, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas. 5  Charles Bean, Matthias Paustian, Adrian Penalver and Tim Taylor (2010), “Monetary Policy after the Fall” in Macroeconomic Challenges: The Decade Ahead, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas.

Looking back on my summer reading for inspiration – that list of the year’s top business books – I am reminded of the mission statements of two of the companies under scrutiny. One was Disney – whose aim is, famously, to ‘Make People Happy’. The other was Google – whose mission statement urges, somewhat austerely, ‘Don’t be Evil’. One thing is for sure: the MPC must not set out to rival Disney. So let Google be our guide, as we search for a way through the policy maze. 3/3
It is, however, clearly not the case that all banking is unprofitable or un-investable. The health of UK retail banking is almost certainly being masked by conduct costs, current and expected, and by outdated and costly business models that need restructuring, especially in relation to investment banking. But the returns expected by investors in banks may well be sticky and have further to fall to come into line with risk. The authorities may be able to assist this by giving greater clarity on the end point of the regulatory structure. 14  This figure excludes RBS which is majority-owned by the UK government. 15  See Baker and Wurgler (2013). 16  See Bank of England (2015). 17  See BIS (2016). 8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  On this last point, the stickiness in investors’ required returns may be part of a more general adjustment to a lower interest rate environment. We are unable to measure them directly, but there is some evidence that despite the very low market rates we are now seeing across the yield curve, hurdle rates for corporate investment – namely, the rate of return required by corporates on new investment – have not reflected lower risk-free rates but rather have been sticky and remained near pre-crisis levels. The Bank is doing more work on this. A recent Bank of England Discussion Paper looking at measures of finance for productive investment cites data on hurdle rates as a material data gap in assessing the availability of finance for productive investment.

A second thought is that the banks, when pricing loans, will look at the cash flow from the loan, which in this case can be equated with the company’s cash flow. In most cases, your companies have a large value in their properties as collateral and this will continue to be a positive thing for you, but as I said earlier, the banks today focus firstly on the customer’s ability to repay and then on the collateral offered. What is important to a company that has loans? •  Meticulous balance sheets and profit and loss accounts for the present time and going back a number of years. •  Low vacancy rates in the housing stock and rents that are paid on time. •  The banks will not merely evaluate the size of the cash flows, but also their stability. •  Orderly and well cared for property stock, i.e. property management is important. It is therefore important to have good knowledge of the bank’s actions and method of working. The difference in interest rate between borrowers of varying risk classes will be greater in future than it is today. It will therefore be important for companies applying for loans to present themselves as attractive borrowers to the bank or the capital market. If they want a low interest rate on their loans as a result of their negotiations with the bank, it is important to be able to demonstrate a company that has been stable and well managed for a number of years.
Examples include: • A more demanding framework for the capital, leverage, and liquidity of banks, prepared by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and known as the Basel III Accord since its initial exposition in 2010;  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  • Special regulatory treatment of systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs), such as additional capital (or in the Basel jargon, “loss absorbency”) requirements; and • Additional disclosure obligations for banks. On the other hand, entities or activities that until 2008 were mostly outside of the scope of regulators were made subject to a comprehensive regulatory framework: • Over-The-Counter (OTC) Derivatives, • Executive compensation, • Credit rating agencies, • Hedge funds, “shadow banking” (i.e. entities and activities that are not regulated as banks, but present bank-like systemic risk profiles) and, more recently, • Financial benchmarks (following the detecting of fraud in the setting of LIBOR, the London Interbank Offered Rate, and other similar reference rates). All those initiatives that were envisaged by the G20 are translated into regulatory changes in US and Europe. In the US, Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (or known as Dodd-Frank Act) implements changes that, among other things, affect the oversight and supervision of financial institutions. The Dodd-Frank Act creates the Financial Stability Oversight Council to oversee financial institutions.

Maja Kadievska-Vojnovik: Rules and regulation update Speech by Ms Maja Kadievska-Vojnovik, Vice-Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, at the Erste Group Bank workshop “Rules and regulation update”, Skopje, 1 December 2014. *  *  *  Dear Governor Bogov, Dear Guest Speakers from Erste Group Bank, Dear representatives from financial regulatory agencies, Dear colleagues, Please, let me thank you Governor Bogov for supporting the idea of organizing such an event that summarizes financial regulatory reform after six years of the global financial crisis and also I would like to give my appreciation to the guest lecturers from Erste Group Bank for their quick response to help us to better understand it. This workshop is distinctive, in my opinion, as it will point at numerous regulatory changes aimed at supporting the vision of a financial system that would be both globally integrated and adequately regulated over the medium-to-long-term. Why we are here today? Probably, some of you have already asked this question. Why? The subject and the presentations of today’s workshop are of great importance, having in mind that, we, the Central Bank with its unique foreign reserves management function, and other institutional investors (banks, pension funds, insurance companies) that are supervised by the regulators participating in this workshop, all of us, are investors on the European and global financial markets. In that regard, understanding of the regulations that are changing the financial markets landscape is of greatest significance for each market participant.
It may not be so much a question of purely economic aspects, but rather what is feasible according to social conventions and possible to create understanding for. During the period we have had a negative repo rate, individuals have not faced negative interest rates and thus not needed to pay for having money in the bank. 6 I assume here that –0.5 per cent, that is, the lowest level to which the Riksbank has ever cut the repo rate, is a  lower bound for how much the rate can be cut. This assumption can of course be discussed, and I shall return to this shortly. 4 [24]  But if the repo rate becomes sufficiently negative, this may happen. On a theoretical level, one can argue that the policy would then be more powerful and have a greater effect on the economy – that the so-called monetary policy transmission mechanism would function better. But this also risks leading to various types of problem. As I see it, the biggest problem is not the economic arguments usually raised, such as the general public wanting to empty their bank accounts and hold cash instead. Holding savings in cash is, when it comes down to it, troublesome and costly and given that most people in Sweden are getting used to living without cash it would not be a natural thing to do. The threshold would probably be relatively high here. The main problem, as I see it, is another one.

We need to solidify our confidence that our ultimate exit from the zero lower bound will occur smoothly – and in a way that sustains our escape from it. A corollary to this is we should not shy away from policy prescriptions that generate forecasts of inflation that moderately overshoot our 2 percent target for a limited time. Such a policy strategy more properly balances expected costs and benefits. And it would leave me with much more confidence that inflation will not stall out below target once we start raising rates. I agree with Atlanta Fed President Lockhart in thinking that we ought to be “whites of their eyes” inflation fighters. 15 The last thing we want to do is regress back into the ZLB. Indeed, such a relapse would be a sign there was something else going on that was preventing the economy from being as vibrant as we thought possible. To summarize, I am very uncomfortable with calls to raise our policy rate sooner than later. I favor delaying liftoff until I am more certain that we have sufficient momentum in place toward our policy goals. And I think we should plan for our path of policy rate increases to be shallow in order to be sure that the economy’s momentum is sustainable in the presence of less accommodative financial conditions. References Aaronson, Daniel, Luojia Hu, Arian Seifoddini and Daniel G. Sullivan, 2014, “Estimating and forecasting trend labor force participation,” Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Vol. 38, forthcoming.
But the risk of inflation staying above the target into the medium term needs to be weighed against the downside risk to growth and the prospect of a persistent margin of unused resources in the economy. Allowing inflation to come back gradually towards the target would allow the margin of spare capacity to close more rapidly, and would be in line with our remit that tells us that temporary deviations of inflation from the target are permissible if they help to avoid excessive volatility in output. I hope my remarks today have given you some insight into the issues that the MPC is presently grappling with. You will be aware that the spread of opinion on the Committee is unusually wide right now. That is in large measure a reflection of the substantial challenges and uncertainties facing the UK economy at the current juncture. Indeed, given the extreme nature of recent events, it would be surprising if the Committee were entirely at one in its assessment of the outlook and its judgement of the appropriate policy response. But the Committee is united in its objective of meeting its inflation mandate in the medium term and playing its part in restoring the economy to a high and stable level of activity. Thank you!

As already announced, the remaining denominations in the series will be issued at half-yearly or yearly intervals, with the next one being the 10-franc note. The appearance, design elements and other information relating to this denomination will be communicated on 11 October 2017, and issuance will begin a week later, on 18 October. I’d like to thank everyone who helped prepare the ground for the successful launch of the new 20-franc note – as well as those involved at all other stages of the process – for their hard work. Page 3/3
Particularly notable was the higher inflation in components relating to expenditure on transport, household equipment and maintenance and, especially in Spain, recreation, hospitality and tourism.4 The economic projections for the euro area have undergone significant revisions, with growth revised down and inflation revised up The recent escalation in the energy dispute with Russia has cast a shadow over the economic picture. This leads us to believe that the inflationary episode will be more intense and longer lasting, and that the economic growth outlook for the euro area will continue to soften. These circumstances have led to a significant revision of the economic outlook for the euro area in the ECB’s latest projections exercise. These forecasts include the surprises in terms of inflation and activity, and also the potential impact of the escalation of the energy dispute with Russia, as well as a revision of other technical assumptions, such as a greater depreciation of the euro. In this respect, one of the main changes in the ECB’s September projections exercise compared with that published in June are the assumptions relating to gas prices. First, the outlook for gas prices is revised up in accordance with gas futures prices. Second, and for the first time, a degree of gas rationing, albeit moderate, is assumed. This would be more significant in the countries that are most heavily dependent on Russian natural gas imports, which could even see some production cuts in the winter.

European Central Bank: Press conference – introductory statement Introductory statement by Mr Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, Frankfurt am Main, 8 March 2007. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice-President and I are very pleased to welcome you to today’s press conference. Let me report on the outcome of our meeting, which was also attended by Mr Steinbrück, President of the ECOFIN Council, and Commissioner Almunia. At today’s meeting, we decided to raise the key ECB interest rates by 25 basis points. This decision was taken in view of the upside risks to price stability over the medium term that we have identified through both our economic and monetary analyses. Today’s decision will contribute to ensuring that medium to longer-term inflation expectations in the euro area remain solidly anchored at levels consistent with price stability. Such anchoring is a prerequisite for monetary policy to make an ongoing contribution towards fostering sustainable economic growth and job creation in the euro area. After today’s increase, given the favourable economic environment, our monetary policy continues to be on the accommodative side, with the key ECB interest rates moderate, money and credit growth vigorous, and liquidity in the euro area ample by all plausible measures. Therefore, looking ahead, acting in a firm and timely manner to ensure price stability in the medium term is warranted. The Governing Council will monitor very closely all developments so that risks to price stability over the medium term do not materialise.
José De Gregorio: The Great Moderation and the risk of inflation – a view from developing countries Keynote speech by Mr José De Gregorio, Governor of the Central Bank of Chile, at the 10th Geneva Conference on the World Economy “Low inflation? Testing times for Central Banks", organized by the ICMB (International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies), Geneva, 6 May 2008. I am very grateful to Christopher Neilson and Andrea Tokman for their great contributions and suggestions. *  *  *  It is an honor to be a keynote speaker at this important gathering. Personally, this is a special meeting as I contributed, together with Barry Eichengreen, Takatoshi Ito, and Charles Wyplosz, to the writing of the first report for this series of conferences back in 1999. It was lots of fun and an intellectual pleasure to work with such a great team of colleagues, and in such an important issue. In that first Geneva Report we wrote about the need to reform the IMF giving it independence, such as what we praise for central banks, and accountability, an essential element to make independence effective. In the future I would like to develop further on those issues; however, today I will focus on an even more pressing debate in the recent macro juncture: monetary policy, stability and the current risks of an outburst of inflation around the world, which is precisely the subject of this conference.

Nor Shamsiah Mohd Yunus: Value based intermediation - beyond profit Keynote address by Ms Nor Shamsiah Mohd Yunus, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Global Islamic Finance Forum 2018 (GIFF) "Value Based Intermediation - Beyond Profit", Kuala Lumpur, 3 October 2018. * * * Henry Ford, credited with revolutionising the American transportation industry in the 20th century, once remarked that “Business must be run at a profit, else it will die. But when anyone attempts to run a business solely for profit and thinks not at all of the service to the community, then also the business must die, for it no longer has a reason for existence”. Nearly a hundred years since, these words of wisdom remain true. Perhaps, even more so now than ever. Indeed, we have witnessed time and again, episodes of excessiveness, and the sole and unchecked pursuit of profits, that have led to global financial crises. The theme of this conference, “Value Based Intermediation – Beyond Profit”, is therefore a fitting reminder of the role of finance, and Islamic finance in particular, in helping build a more resilient and sustainable future. In the past half century, the world economy expanded sixfold, despite experiencing the worst and most expensive financial crisis. Average per capita income more than doubled to about USD11,000, compared to only about USD5,000 in 1967. People are living longer, with better quality of life, greater access to basic necessities, improved health and medical care, and better education.
We do not wish to act in a way that may trigger a game situation in the foreign exchange market. Foreign exchange intervention rather than a change in the interest rate may give ambiguous signals to foreign exchange operators and a game situation may arise. Chart 11. Real krone exchange rate Deviation from average. Per cent  15  15  10  10  5  5  0  0  -5  -5  -10  -10  -15 1970  1980  1990  2000  -15 2004  Source: Norges Bank  Although the krone may fluctuate in the short term, it will generally stabilise over time. When inflation has been higher in Norway than among our trading partners for a longer period, the krone has generally depreciated. When inflation in Norway is expected to be broadly in line with that of other countries, the exchange rate will normally also return to its normal range following periods when the krone has been particularly strong or particularly weak. This provides a basis for stable exchange rate expectations. The advantage of a flexible exchange rate is perhaps most evident when the economy is sluggish. If the krone were to remain at a level that is too strong, nominal wages would have to remain unchanged over a longer period or fall in order to bolster companies and jobs. This only occurs when unemployment is very high. With a flexible exchange rate, a depreciation of the krone can also boost competitiveness.

Nevertheless, developments in the krone are of considerable importance to interest-rate setting because exchange rate developments have an impact on inflation and output. When there are prospects of moderate economic activity, low wage growth and low inflation, Norges Bank will reduce the interest rate. This will normally result in a depreciation of the krone. Prices for imported goods and services will increase. A weaker krone strengthens the competitiveness of Norwegian enterprises and indirectly leads to higher output, employment and inflation. Themes in foreign exchange markets shift. In periods, investor focus on stock returns feeds through to exchange rate movements. During periods of political and economic unrest, investors may choose individual currencies as a safe haven - often the Swiss franc. In the autumn of 2002, the Norwegian krone was probably also perceived as a safe haven. Wide fluctuations between major currencies have a tendency to result in a weaker krone. In the past 12-18 months, developments in the interest rate differential between Norway and other countries appear to have had a particularly marked impact on our currency. Norwegian interest rates have been pushed down to the level prevailing abroad. Chart 10.