samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In light of this, claims that the Riksbank is to blame for the loss of tens of thousands of jobs are rather questionable. Neither have our critics, despite requests, presented any convincing estimates to support this view. I think it’s a poor show on the part of government officials, trade union economists and trade union leaders to accuse the Riksbank of bringing unemployment upon tens of thousands of people. An interesting addition in this regard is that the most recent periods when inflation has been below target, at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of this decade, have been marked by unexpectedly high productivity and unexpectedly low imported inflation (which few forecasters had anticipated). So it’s not the case that the low inflation is a result of the Riksbank actively tightening monetary policy and dampening demand. On the contrary, these have been situations in which interest rates have been low. In spite of that, inflation has been weak owing to positive supply shocks. The impact of these shocks on employment differs from the effect produced by excessively tight monetary policy. Too low inflation due to high productivity growth and cheap intermediate goods stimulates growth, demand and employment. Consequently, the price of missing the inflation target has likely been lower in terms of  BIS Review 65/2004  3  growth and employment than if the cause had been a sharp monetary tightening that had caused demand to drop and inflation to fall.

2 I should be clear at the outset, to borrow a well-worn quotation, that “the map is not the territory”.3 The forecast summarises what is likely to happen on the journey, but it is the economy itself that we as monetary policy makers must navigate, using the forecast alongside many other inputs, including a wide range of data and intelligence from the Bank’s network of agents. And as can sometimes happen when walking in the mountains, different MPC members can interpret the territory in different ways, supplementing the use of a map with the equivalent of a compass and GPS as well as their own judgement.4  The job of economic forecasting has become increasingly tricky over recent years, as the economic territory underfoot has become less and less familiar. The 2007-09 financial crisis was characterised by very large impacts on the supply side of the economy, as well as complex financial sector interactions and new forms of monetary stimulus in response. That was followed the decade after by Brexit, which combined acute political and economic uncertainty with a multidimensional and shifting set of actual and anticipated impacts on demand, supply and the exchange rate. And most recently we have had the Covid crisis, a one-in-ahundred-year health and economic crisis, which has left monetary policy makers firmly in unknown territory. Of course the MPC have not been the only ones to find ourselves in this situation.
Fahad Almubarak: Brief review of financial developments in Saudi Arabia Speech by His Excellency Dr Fahad Almubarak, Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), marking the Seventh Anniversary of Blessed Allegiance Pledge to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, Riyadh, 17 May 2012. *  *  *  Saudis celebrate on the 26th of Jumada II 1433H (May 17, 2012) the Seventh Anniversary of the blessed allegiance pledge to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. The celebration is a true image of loyalty to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, who is faithful to his nation’s interests. It is based on well-established bases, in the forefront of which are the tributes of our wise leadership such as the great keenness on the welfare of citizens and the enhancement of the development process. It is difficult to enumerate the achievements of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in a few words, but, however, I will touch upon some of them.

In this regard, we recently announced the Education and Industry Forum on Financial Services Culture to support these efforts. The Forum, which kicked off in April, brings together business schools and industry representatives. Participants will research and design case studies for business school students. This will mean that students planning to enter the industry will have the tools to handle the ethical challenges that can arise in real-life work situations. 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  “Convene” means bringing together stakeholders to share best practices. And that’s where our Supervisors Roundtable comes in. The Roundtable brings together supervisors from around the world to share their jurisdictions’ approach and what they’ve learned from it. Participants have developed a shared set of tools for supervisors that can be leveraged in cultural assessments. Finally, let me turn to this principle of “catalyze,” and how we can use our position in the heart of the Financial District, to create change. As well as talking the talk—we’re walking the walk. This year, for the first time, this Bank is taking the Banking Standards Board (BSB) Assessment. The BSB Assessment measures the extent to which nine characteristics are demonstrated by an organization, and it includes things like honesty, accountability, and respect. The assessment started in the UK, and the Irish Banking Culture Board now takes a similar approach. I would love to see firms in the United States adopt an industrywide survey that can measure culture and benchmark banks against their peers.
And by continuously adapting and refining its systems Hong Kong seeks to retain its attraction as an international centre. In none of these projects was any huge injection of public money necessary. These developments also illustrate very clearly the "can do" culture of Hong Kong. Most were executed in a fraction of the time that similar projects required, or are projected to require, in other centres. For instance, from start to finish the US dollar payments system took only about twelve months to implement. And this "can do" capability extends much more widely than the few examples in the financial sector which I have mentioned. There are many characteristics of Hong Kong which may help explain the strength of its "can do" culture. Let me mention just four: •  One is the limited amount of red tape. I don't say "absence", but, even though the creep of bureaucracy may not have been held entirely at bay, it is certainly less intrusive here than in many other places. 2  BIS Review 33/2001  •  Secondly, geography has an influence. I am thinking in particular of the physical concentration of business within Hong Kong itself.

Yves Mersch: Medium to long-term priorities of Capital Markets Union (CMU) for the ECB/Eurosystem Panel remarks by Mr Yves Mersch, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at the Eurofi conference, Luxembourg, 10 September 2015. *  *  *  While the Green Paper has set the right overall objectives of CMU and identified priorities for early action and the measures for the medium- to long-term, CMU needs to be pursued through a higher level of ambition to achieve greater capital markets development and deeper financial integration. 1. To bring about its expected benefits, the CMU should foster and result in a high level of financial integration in capital markets across the EU based on an adequate legal and regulatory framework. This would imply more steps towards greater harmonization of 1.  bankruptcy law,  2.  company law and  3.  taxation of financial products  that pose great political challenges. The aim is to ensure that investors have the same costs and equal access to finance irrespective of where they are located in the EU. Ultimately, the supervisory architecture will also warrant revision. The final destination in the path towards CMU will need to include the development of a single rulebook. These elements are key if we are to attain what has been ambitiously coined as CMU. 2. A schedule with clear milestones and deadlines in the upcoming action plan would facilitate implementation. 3. Market-led initiatives to promote capital markets are important but insufficient.
If these problems materialise, they can have major contagion effects and negative external effect on the economy. Therefore, legislators and authorities need to try to change the current regulations. The aim should be to ensure that banks have sufficient buffers to prevent problems from arising. The aim should also be to limit the channels through which the problems – if they do occur – spread to other banks and financial actors. This means that the regulations need to be reviewed. I have highlighted a few issues here: the deposit guarantee, the resolution framework and banking regulations. I believe that a review of all three is needed. However, it is too early to state today exactly what should be changed and how. It is also important when reviewing regulation that it not only solves "yesterday's" problems but also addresses the incentives for risk-taking in the future. Then, authorities all over the world also have to agree on it. All this makes the review extra complicated. Regardless of what exactly comes out of this work, the review will affect the global regulatory standards and thereby the rules that apply in the EU and thus also in Sweden. I believe that we both need to see changes in the regulations and will see such changes. Central banks have a responsibility for financial stability – not just in times of crisis During the 1970s and 1980s, inflation was high and variable and growth was weak.

The insufficient volume of external safety nets as well as the underdeveloped nature of financial markets in EMEs made financial crises unavoidable. In addition, inability to implement countercyclical policies made EMEs suffer from larger damaging effects of financial crises on their real economies than otherwise. It is noteworthy that despite the lack of capacities in avoiding financial crises, EMEs mostly managed to recover swiftly from their acute past financial crises succeeding severe economic recessions. Likewise, most EMEs survived the – a once in a century event – GFC of 2008 in spite of its profound impacts on the financial systems of AEs with the subsequent “balance sheet recessions”. EMEs again largely escaped the great recession though some of them had brief economic recessions. With lessons learned from previous episodes and improvements over the years EMEs are, on average, better positioned to withstand financial turbulences, both now and in the near future, than in the past. First of all, they embarked on extensive structural reforms aimed at overhauling financial regulatory and supervisory systems, strengthening public finances and fiscal discipline, granting central banks independence, and adopting flexible exchange rate systems. These reforms enabled them to implement more prudent and countercyclical policies as well. EMEs solidified their post crisis reforms by accumulating adequate foreign exchange reserves as an alternative to the IMF provided financing, which carries strong conditionality, as well as further deepening and broadening their domestic financial markets.
With monetary union soon to be launched, moreover, the agenda has more room for other matters. The Stability and Growth Pact is one example of earlier initiatives in connection with EMU. Various processes have likewise been started to bring the problem of unemployment into the limelight. 4. There are strong grounds, in the fields I have discussed, for keeping decisionmaking essentially at a national level. The effects of the policies, for instance in the labour market, mostly occur in the country in question. There are also considerable country differences in such matters as the premises for fiscal policy, the structure of government finances, labour market regulations and so on. Still, the ongoing integration of markets, which monetary union may stimulate, is presumably exerting increased pressure for reform. The process that monetary union is now driving onwards is, in fact, fairly typical of EU cooperation in general. The European Union is a highly decentralised organisation. Power and political legitimacy are essentially located at the national level. The joint budget is limited. Matters move forward in a process where external events, for instance in the global economy, and political initiatives modify the agenda. Problems are often managed with arduously negotiated compromises between sovereign states. Each new initiative and decision forms a platform for the next phase. Monetary union, which is now leading to the appearance of new items on the agenda, is after all largely a consequence in its turn of earlier decisions, for instance on the internal market.

We are very pleased to note collaboration by all parties in particular the financial industry has brought positive result with the declined number of ATM robberies being reported last year compared to 2013. I am also very pleased to note the industry continues to collaborate to enhance ATMs’ security. Today, marks another significant milestone in our payment system progression with the launching of an ink staining technology for our ATMS. ATMs fitted with this technology are protected by a security device containing a special ink that will smear the currency note. When there is an attempt to temper the protected ATM, the security device will be triggered to release the ink, staining the currency notes on all corners. This ink is indelible and can be traceable to a particular financial institution that dispensed the currency notes; thus it can assist the police more effectively in their course of investigation. More importantly stained currency notes will lose their legal tender. Stained currency notes are valueless to the criminals but the owner of the currency notes (the financial institutions) can exchange the currency notes with the Central Bank. These stained currency notes cannot be brought back to circulation as they are not a legal tender anymore. To make the initiative effective and our ATMs safe, members of the public also have a civic duty to play. They must be vigilant when receiving stained currency notes, which most likely are stolen currency notes.
In autumn 1997 the Riksbank accordingly presented its first more cohesive public analysis of financial stability. The new report was intended to signal the importance the Riksbank attached to work on stability and it also helped to focus and develop the internal efforts. The experience of work on the Inflation Report had been encouraging, so it seemed natural to build up the work on and communication about issues to do with stability in the same way. By launching the Financial Stability Report or, as it was called initially, the Financial Market Report, the Riksbank was the first central bank to issue a public account of its appraisal of financial system stability. Its example has been followed to date by about thirty other countries. Recurrent financial crises have made it clear that there will always be problems which the authorities are obliged to address in some way and it may therefore be of some assistance to have a clear, structured presentation of the approach to financial stability. This has led the International Monetary Fund, for example, to pay growing attention to these issues. Since 1999 the IMF and the World Bank are engaged in joint evaluations of national financial systems in what is called a Financial Sector Assessment Program. Matters to do with stability are also on the agenda almost every time I meet my colleagues from other countries. BIS Review 53/2003  1  Principles for financial system oversight First I should perhaps reiterate what we mean by the financial system.

The Treaty states that for two years before the examination the national currency is to have been inside the normal fluctuation margins provided for by the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). The process by which the initial group of participants was selected suggests that the criterion could be interpreted somewhat more freely. Finland and Italy were both approved in May 1998 even though their currencies had then been participating in the ERM for only around eighteen months. The other countries may also have reasons for not insisting too strongly on a strict interpretation of formal participation by outsider countries. Considering the apparent strength of British opposition to a fixed exchange rate arrangement, such an attitude might obstruct a British membership of the euro area. It seems to me that in this respect the United Kingdom is in a more difficult position than Sweden. Our Government and the Riksdag have stated that participation in ERM II can be seen as a direct preparation for joining the monetary union; the Riksbank has noted that we do not see any problems with that. In a future situation where a referendum or a general election has resulted in a positive attitude to the monetary union, it is difficult to envisage Sweden’s participation in ERM II as posing any major political problems. Regardless of the formal requirements that may apply at the time of the examination, the assessments in May 1998 indicate that a central factor in the evaluation will be how the exchange rate has actually developed.
6 Instead, through its statements and its September 2014 Policy Normalization Principles and Plans, the FOMC indicated its intention that, in the longer run, the Federal Reserve will hold no more securities than necessary to implement monetary policy efficiently and effectively, and that it will hold primarily Treasury securities.The FOMC also communicated its intention to reduce the Federal Reserve's securities holdings in a gradual and predictable manner, primarily by ceasing to reinvest repayments of principal on its securities holdings. Starting in its December 2015 statement, when the FOMC first started to raise its federal funds target range away from zero, the FOMC also indicated that it anticipated continuing reinvestment until normalization of the level of the federal funds rate was well under way. The FOMC’s strategy of waiting to begin reducing the balance sheet until normalization of the federal funds rate was well under way has had several advantages. Most importantly, it reduced the likelihood that an unexpected adverse shock to the economy would have necessitated a return to the zero lower bound on the federal funds rate and potentially a reversal in balance sheet normalization. Second, the FOMC’s approach promotes the use of the federal funds rate as the active monetary policy instrument, an instrument with which the FOMC has much greater experience.

An overly fast redemption flow of Treasuries could also create challenges in the government’s management of public debt auctions and result in communication challenges.12 Rapid portfolio declines also could have unforeseen impacts on overnight money markets, for example by creating significant shifts in dealers’ demand for overnight repo financing. We have seen such impacts in the past. This sort of volatility did not, and would not now, pose a major problem to markets or policy implementation, but it is something worth avoiding if possible. Rapid portfolio runoff could also make it more likely that bank reserves become scarce unexpectedly or more quickly than policymakers had anticipated. Finally, overly fast portfolio runoff could introduce undesired noise into financial conditions. This could complicate policymakers’ economic forecasting and make it more challenging to determine and communicate the appropriate monetary policy stance. Predictability Predictability complements gradualism by promoting stability in market estimates for the future size of the balance sheet, and confidence that the FOMC will not unintentionally create market stress. It involves assuring the public that the flow of balance sheet reduction remains gradual across a range of economic scenarios, including ones quite different from our central forecast. Achieving predictability is complicated by uncertainty about agency MBS principal repayments, an issue I’ll summarize briefly. To an extent, unexpected changes in the pace of existing home sales contribute to uncertainty about MBS repayments. But by far the greatest source of aggregate uncertainty relates to refinancing.
BIS Review 138/2009  5  Figure 6. GDP with uncertainty bands, annual percentage change, seasonally-adjusted data 6  6  4  4  2  2  0  0  -2  -2 90%  -4  -4  75% 50% O utcome  -6  -6  Forecast  -8  -8 04  05  06  07  08  09  10  11  12  Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  I and my colleagues on the Executive Board want the growth curve to look like a “v” when the economy recovers after the recession, as in the figure with our forecast for GDP growth, and not a “w” (see Figure 6). Having said that, let me just briefly comment on my own view of monetary policy as expressed in the minutes of our most recent monetary policy meeting. As I see the situation with regard to the Swedish economy, it is more important to allow some safety margin for a weaker outcome than for a stronger outcome. In my opinion, it would be more problematic if the recovery ground to a halt because we had provided too little stimulation than if we were later forced to put the brakes on a little harder than expected. So where do we stand with regard to the financial system? Where we stand in terms of the economic cycle is to some extent connected to developments in the financial markets.

The mechanism is largely the same for the loans in Swedish kronor at longer maturities, which are offered at the repo rate plus a certain premium. By regulating the premium the Riksbank determines how attractive the loans will be compared to the conditions prevailing in the market. The diagnosis that a measure is no longer needed may be difficult to make. Although, for instance, the demand for a particular type of loan may have disappeared, the fact that there is still a possibility to borrow may have a stabilising effect. We will not be in too much of a hurry. And there are at least two items we need to be able to cross off the list before we begin phasing out the measures. We must be able to say with a good degree of certainty that the situation in the financial sector is stable and that it can function normally without support. We must also be in a situation where we expect to be able to attain the inflation target and stimulate the economy sufficiently without the unconventional measures. 8  BIS Review 138/2009  There are other measures that require more active decisions by the Riksbank to be phased out. For instance, the number of counterparties allowed to participate in fine-tuning operations and the list of securities accepted as eligible collateral for credit from the Riksbank. However, it is not self-evident that these measures will actually be phased out.