samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Confidence may also improve more quickly, the labour market deterioration may be less marked than previously expected and foreign demand may prove to be stronger than projected. On the downside, concerns remain relating to a stronger or more protracted negative feedback loop between the real economy and the financial sector, renewed increases in oil and other commodity prices, the intensification of protectionist pressures and the possibility of a disorderly correction of global imbalances. With regard to price developments, annual HICP inflation stood at -0.1% in October, according to Eurostat’s flash estimate, compared with -0.3% in September. The current negative inflation rates are in line with previous expectations and reflect mainly movements in global commodity prices over the last year. In the coming months, annual inflation rates are projected to turn positive again, also relating to base effects. Thereafter, over the policy-  BIS Review 136/2009  1  relevant horizon, inflation is expected to remain positive, with overall price and cost developments staying subdued reflecting ongoing sluggish demand in the euro area and elsewhere. In this context, it is important to re-emphasise that inflation expectations over the medium to longer term remain firmly anchored in line with the Governing Council’s aim of keeping inflation rates below, but close to, 2% over the medium term. Risks to this outlook remain broadly balanced. They relate, in particular, to the outlook for economic activity and to the evolution of commodity prices.

The outcome of the monetary analysis confirms the assessment of low inflationary pressure over the medium term, as money and credit growth continues to slow down. Against this background, we expect price stability to be maintained over the medium term, thereby supporting the purchasing power of euro area households. Let me now explain our assessment in greater detail, starting with the economic analysis. Available data and survey-based indicators continue to signal an improvement in economic activity in the second half of this year. In particular, the euro area should benefit from the inventory cycle and a recovery in exports, as well as from the significant macroeconomic stimulus under way and the measures adopted to restore the functioning of the financial system. Taking into account all available information, in the second half of this year, quarterly real GDP growth rates could be back in positive territory. However, uncertainty remains high as a number of the supporting factors are of a temporary nature. Looking through the volatility of incoming data, the euro area economy is expected to recover at a gradual pace in 2010, as it is likely to be affected over the medium term by the process of ongoing balance sheet adjustment in the financial and the non-financial sector, both inside and outside the euro area. In the view of the Governing Council, the risks to this outlook remain broadly balanced. On the upside, there may be stronger than anticipated effects stemming from the extensive macroeconomic stimulus being provided and from other policy measures taken.
In addition, we monitor various cyclical indicators and acquire information from our regional network.6 There is uncertainty associated with the estimation of both trend growth and the output gap, but the correspondence that seems to exist between the different methods of indicating pressures in the economy makes us confidant that the output gap, as we calculate it, provides useful information. The output gap provides an overview of the overall pressures in the real economy. If there are no substantial economic disturbances - or shocks - there will be no conflict between stabilising inflation and stabilising output and employment. A positive output gap will over time result in inflation that is above target, while a negative output gap will result in inflation that is too low. Nor will demand shocks in a closed economy result in a conflict in the short term between price stability and stability in the real economy. A positive demand shock will result in higher inflation, and an appropriate monetary policy response would be to increase the interest rate as much as is necessary for output to return rapidly to its potential level. In an open economy, however, a conflict of objectives could arise in the short term following a demand shock. Although a higher interest rate would contribute to stabilising both output and inflation, there might be a conflict with regard to the “dosage”.

8  BIS Review 6/2004
This is explained in the Riksbank’s clarification of monetary policy, published in 1999. It is important that we communicate clearly when we intend to deviate from the ordinary time horizon. This type of flexible application of monetary policy assumes that there is considerable confidence in the policy and that it does not decline. If this were to happen, we would be forced to act more forcefully without having the same opportunity to take into account, for instance, growth and employment. It does not appear likely that such a situation would arise in the present climate. Inflation expectations are securely anchored around our target and everyone knows we take our objective of price stability very seriously. 4  BIS Review 8/2006  There has recently been a debate on the objective of monetary policy. Some have said that we should have several objectives, while others have considered that we already strive to achieve too many. This indicates that we have not quite succeeded in explaining how we work, despite the fact that we are considered one of the most open central banks in the world. Let me therefore now be extra clear – there is one objective for monetary policy and that is to maintain price stability. However, this objective does not rule out taking into account the real stability of the economy. This possibility is allowed by the legislation on the Riksbank’s activities and is something we always bear in mind.

If there is no conflict with the price stability target, the Riksbank should as an authority under the Riksdag (parliament) support the general economic policy objectives of sustainable growth and high employment. At the same time, of course, it is not possible to accept large deviations if the inflation target is to retain credibility. In an attempt to clarify further, monetary policy is guided by a principle that when there is a deviation from the target, the aim is normally to bring inflation back to the target level within two years. This also gives the Riksbank some scope to take into consideration other factors than the path of inflation when setting interest rates, such as growth and employment, while the principle is based on the idea that the deviations will only be temporary. We thus endeavour in normal situations to meet the inflation target within a two-year perspective. We have chosen this because we would otherwise be forced into substantial interest rate adjustments to keep inflation exactly at target level in the short term, which could subject the economy to considerable strain. In certain cases, however, we may need to have greater flexibility than the two-year perspective allows. If the economy were to suffer a very large supply shock – for instance, in the form of soaring energy prices, or during extreme situations such as wars or natural disasters – the adjustment of inflation could need to be even more prolonged. Otherwise, the strain on the real economy could become unacceptable.
The initial portfolio was provided by the government, but since then, Temasek’s funds have come mainly from the investment growth of its own portfolio. Compared to MAS and GIC, Temasek is further out on the risk-return spectrum. How are the OFR managed? Let me now move to the third question: how are the OFR managed? This is the portion of the reserves that MAS is responsible for. There are three prongs to MAS’ approach to managing the OFR robust risk management; balanced asset allocation; and efficient investment process Robust risk management The starting point to MAS’ approach to managing the OFR is its risk management framework, which sets out the liquidity and risk tolerance levels of the OFR. These relate to: the ability of the portfolio to meet liquidity needs under stress conditions; and the maximum loss of the portfolio under tail risk scenarios. These liquidity and risk tolerance levels are determined on the basis of what is minimally required to meet the objectives of the OFR in supporting MAS’ conduct of monetary policy. They are factored in the construction of the MAS portfolio and closely monitored on an ongoing basis. MAS employs a comprehensive range of stress tests to assess the risks to the portfolio on an ongoing basis and establish whether the portfolio remains resilient to potential tail risk events over the medium term.

They helped underpin confidence in Singapore in the throes of the Asian Financial Crisis. And during the Global Financial Crisis, the reserves were drawn down to finance a package of measures, to preserve jobs by subsidising employers’ wage bills and to help viable companies stay afloat by sharing the risk of bank lending. A second purpose of the reserves is to serve as an endowment. This purpose has grown in importance – and salience - in recent years. The income from investing the reserves provides an increasingly important source of revenue to fund government expenditure. The size of government in Singapore is small. Government spending – comprising both operating and development expenditure – is just about 16% of GDP. But tax and non-tax revenues are even lower, at 15% of GDP. In other words, Singapore runs a structural deficit on its primary fiscal balance. This is where the investment income from the reserves comes in. The Constitution of Singapore bars the government from borrowing to spend or to spend surpluses accumulated from previous terms of government. Instead, it allows the government to spend up to half of the expected long-term real returns from the net assets invested by MAS, GIC, and Temasek. This is known as the Net Investment Returns Contribution (NIRC). The NIRC is already the largest single contributor to revenues in the government budget, accounting for about one-fifth of revenues.
And, while pausing to enjoy the view, it has also found it possible to look beyond through the mist to the taller peaks gleaming in the distance. WTO and Hong Kong 3. The most prominent of these peaks – at least among those visible to us now – is the prospective accession by China to the WTO. It is still not clear when exactly this event will take place, although the latest predictions seem to put it at some time during the second quarter of next year. Nor is it entirely clear how extensive an impact the event will have on China, on the world, on the region, or on Hong Kong – or how fast or slow the impact will be to take effect. 4. Some initial assessments about the impact on Hong Kong of China’s WTO accession were, in fact, quite negative. A few were even alarmist. The trend of analysis now seems to be more positive. It is, however, qualified by a recognition of the challenges that Hong Kong faces, and of the standards we need to maintain, and improve on, if we are to make the most of our uniquely advantageous position. The Chamber’s own detailed analysis of the implications (which has provided a solid basis for the discussion at this summit) is, in my view, an excellent example of what we need to help us understand this historical turning point in world trade relations: a rational, balanced, informed approach to a complex issue.

Issue of certificate of solvency: The new Companies Act strictly looks at the company’s ability to meet the solvency test at the time of a distribution. Distribution does not only refer to dividends but also to the transfer of property, incurring of debt to or for the benefit of shareholders. An auditor needs to issue a Certificate of Solvency assuring compliance with the solvency criteria. This is something new in the new Companies Act and it is specially relevant to finance and leasing companies which deal in depositors/lenders’ funds with fiduciary responsibilities. Also, before the board of a company resolves to reduce its stated capital (as companies have the option of buying back its own shares), the board shall obtain the auditors certificate of solvency. 3. Determination of fair value: The new Companies Act enables a company to purchase its own shares provided an auditor opines that the consideration given is a fair value (i.e. market value). If a company is to alter the Articles to reflect a removal or an addition of business activity or to carry out a major transaction or an amalgamation, minority shareholders could request the company to purchase their shares. Auditor has to make a fair judgment on this, which is introduced as a facility to minority shareholders. Unlike in the previous Companies Act, the external auditor is given a specific responsibility in making the judgment. There may be several other clauses in the new Companies Act which casts additional responsibility on the external auditor.
35  Beyond age 18, there was in parallel a rise in both numbers and attendance at universities. For over six hundred years from 1209, England had only two universities – this one (Oxford) and the other one (Cambridge). It was not until the formation of University College London in 1829 that their duopoly was th  broken. And it was not until the 20 century that some of the other main cities – Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham and Sheffield – established their own universities. 36  Today, there are around 130  universities in the UK as a whole. Participation rates in higher education have also undergone a secular rise and, latterly, a revolution. The share of young people attending university has increased from just over 3% in 1950 to over 8% in 1970, over 19% in 1990, 33% in 2000 and 49% by 2016. 37  Having been less than 5,000 in 1920, the number of first  degrees obtained at UK universities had increased to over 365,000 by 2016. 38  Through the rapid rise in school and university attendance, there was a revolution in cognitive skills in the workforce. That provided the human capital necessary to turn new technologies and machines into higher levels of productivity among companies, higher wages among workers and, ultimately, higher living standards among societies. Put differently, higher cognitive skills reduced the odds of a lengthy recessionary period of technological unemployment for many individuals and societies.

Immediately prior to the Industrial Revolution and running chronologically, these included the th  th  th  windmill in the 12 century, the mechanical clock in the 13 , the cannon in the 14 , the printing press in the th  th  th 17  15 , the postal service in the 16 and the telescope and microscope in the 17 . It will surprise no-one that waves of innovation, big and small, have been lapping the shores of society for the entirety of human civilisation. In other words, while ideas and innovation may well be a necessary condition  14  Van Reenen et al (2010), for example, document the economic impact of ICT. See Bughin et al (2017) and Haldane (2018), for example. Flohr (2016), for example, discusses innovation in Roman society. 17 Clark (2009). 15 16  5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  5  for economic growth, the historical record suggests they may not themselves have been sufficient. Other forces appear to have been at play, translating these ideas into sustained growth in living standards. What might those forces be? I want to provide two different, but complementary, lenses on the growth story. The first focusses on a rather broader set of “capitals” – not just physical capital (plant and machines) but human (skills and expertise), intellectual (ideas and technologies), infrastructural (transport and legal systems), social (co-operation and trust) and institutional (national and civic, private and public) capital.
The potential tokenisation of money and development of new ways of transferring it in transactions has major implications for the Bank of England. It is not just that we are responsible for ensuring that payment systems work seamlessly and without disruption in the UK, crucial though that is for financial stability. It is also, and more fundamentally, because we are ultimately responsible for ensuring that each of the monies circulating in the UK – and at present we have around 800 private banks, building societies and credit unions issuing money[8] - are both robust and uniform. By robust, I mean that users can have confidence that the money will be useable and accepted in transactions. By uniform I mean denominated in the same currency unit – Sterling – and seamlessly exchangeable for any other money in circulation on demand and without loss of value. Against that background, I want to look at four areas where the tokenisation of money is now being explored. The first is stablecoins used for payments, the second is the tokenisation of commercial bank deposits, the third is the next stage of the Bank of England’s work on issuing a Digital Pound and the last is the Bank’s work to ensure to ensure these new forms of money are robust and uniform. The emergence, in the world of crypto assets of so-called stablecoins is at the forefront of developments in the tokenisation of money.

In such a world the right of the holder and the obligation of the issuer to be able to convert all private money into Bank of England digital money at par and on demand would secure the anchor currently provided by cash. The second consideration is to ensure that there can be competition and innovation in the development of new functionalities using tokenised money. Given the network externalities around money and the likely cost of developing robust and risk managed private tokenised money like stablecoins, it is possible that the development of digital settlement assets will converge on a few large players who will dominate and perhaps control innovation in payment services. We have seen a similar dynamic in the emergence of large internet platforms and marketplaces[18]. The Bank and Treasury consultation paper proposes a ‘platform’ model of the Digital Pound in which the Bank would provide the digital settlement and central transfer mechanism and the private sector would provide the wallets and consumer facing payment services. The Digital Pound would therefore be available to a wide variety of private sector innovators who wished to develop tokenised payment related services but do not wish or are not able to issue their own tokenised settlement asset. There are many other extremely important considerations, such as privacy and financial stability, around the possible introduction of the Digital Pound. These are discussed in the consultation paper and I do not want to detail them today.
The key questions here are related to amount and velocity -- that is, (1) how would digital bills or notes, or digital coins, be represented on the books of a bank or depository institution; and (2) how many times would this electronic coin or bill circulate in the general economy without somehow being processed and recorded by a bank? In this regard, the October 1996 Bank for International Settlements report “Implications for Central Banks of the Development of Electronic Money” states “E-money could lead to shifts in the velocity of money which might temporarily reduce the usefulness of the monetary aggregates, especially narrower ones, for countries that rely on them as targets or indicators.” In a June 1996 speech before a cyber-payments conference, Governor Edward Kelley of the Board of Governors stated that, with respect to a bank’s liabilities incurred through issuing stored-value cards, such liabilities should be included in the statistical reports that banks must currently submit to the Board of Governors.3 It is difficult to argue that bank liabilities resulting from the issuance of electronic “coins” or electronic “bills and notes” should be reported any differently. A more problematic question arises when considering the matter of nonbank issuance of electronic coins or bills. Currently, the largest nonbank issuers of travelers checks are not required, but do volunteer to the Fed, the outstanding balances of their travelers checks, so that this information can be statistically recorded and reported in United States monetary aggregates by the Fed.

Being a modern bank, it conducts business principally on the Internet. IIB has a series of quite attractive Internet pages where its products are offered. These pages spell out the products, deposit terms and interest rates, and loan terms and interest rates. All agreements are governed by the law of Atlantis. All deposits are deemed received over IIB’s “counters” in Atlantis, and all loans are paid out of Atlantis. Atlantis has an enjoyable ambiance even exceeding that of Nice and Saint Paul de Vence; therefore, I see no need to leave the island. I do receive and entertain customers when they visit Atlantis. I do place telephone calls to customers who have responded to my Internet page, but I do not make cold calls to customers. Communications with customers over the Internet are state-of-the-art secure. Customers receive account statements over the Internet, issue payment instruments to IIB over the Internet, and request loans over the Internet. All payments to and from accounts are made by wire transfer to IIB’s correspondent account maintained on the books of Atlantis Bank, the only bank chartered under Atlantis law authorized to engage in banking transactions with Atlantis residents. Customers may instruct IIB to make payments for their account. These too are consummated by means of payments out of IIB’s account at Atlantis Bank. Loans are disbursed and paid the same way. The question presented is whether IIB is violating the law of the countries in which its customers are located.