samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
It will be followed around a year later by a polymer £ note featuring Jane Austen. The decision to move to polymer for these notes follows a three-year review and a broad public consultation exercise. Our research has shown a compelling case for polymer notes. Polymer notes bring three main benefits: •  They stay cleaner than paper banknotes because they are resistant to dirt and moisture;  •  They are more secure because they incorporate advanced security features that make them difficult to counterfeit;  •  And they are more durable, lasting at least 2½ times as long as paper banknotes, ensuring that notes in circulation remain of high quality. Because replacements are needed less often they are both cheaper over time, and more environmentally friendly. These advantages mean that a switch to polymer is a natural step in the evolution of banknote design. But you don’t have to take our word for it. Nearly 13000 people have told us what they thought, in surveys and at over 40 events up and down the UK, and 87% – the vast majority – were in favour of polymer notes, especially once they had a chance to see and handle prototype notes. After that public consultation, we’re confident that the switch to polymer will have broad public support.

The enhanced savings intermediation could, to a large extent prompt the development of a more diversified financial system which would be less reliant on banks and consequently help reduce the overall risk of contagion. The past decade has underscored the importance of pension systems to the economic stability of countries and the security of their ageing population. The experience with reforms has also shown that no one size fits all, that countries have different combinations of the elements of an effective pension system to consider depending on their individual circumstances. However, what remained relevant are the two broad aims of any pension system, that is to reduce poverty and eliminate the risk of rapidly falling living standards in retirement. In this regard, The Multi-pillar Pension Framework as advocated by the World Bank would be a good guide to mobilize both the Government as well as the insurance industry to develop a sustainable pension system. The application of the reform framework nonetheless requires a combination of measures that include effective fiscal policy and incentives as well as the development of the capital market so that the collective outcome is effective in its entirety. On that note, I wish you all success and may you have a productive and fruitful conference. Thank you. 4  BIS Review 137/2007
6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  Chart 2: Different types of financial constraints experienced over the past five years  0  2  4  % of businesses  All firms - with too little investment 6  8  10  12  14  16  18  20  All firms - with the appropriate level of investment  90  All firms - all investment levels  80  Small firms - with too little investment  70  Small firms - with the appropriate level of investment Small firms - all investment levels  60 50 40 30 20 10 0  Received full amount  Expected rejection  Cost of funds  Maturity  Collateral  Source: Bank of England Finance and Investment Decisions Survey. a) Constraints are identified from the following questions: Question 19: “If your business applied for any form of external finance for investment over the past year, what was the outcome? External finance refers to bank loans, equity issuance, debt securities and other financial liabilities.” (Received 100%) Question 22: “Looking back over the past 5 years, how far do you agree with the following statements?” Expected rejection: I do not want to apply for external finance as I believe I would be turned down (agree). Cost of funds: I do not want to apply for external finance as I believe it is too expensive (agree). Maturity: I am able to borrow at the maturity I need (disagree).

We, here in Cyprus, know what a challenge is and how to overcome it. A country at the edge of the Mediterranean sea, has managed to place itself to the political and economic core of the European continent. A small island with a part of it under occupation, thrives thanks to its extroversion and its people, who despite having been put to the test so many times in the past, have never stopped creating, evolving and moving forward. I have no doubt that together with our European partners we will take all the necessary actions to overcome this challenge as well, guided by our common core values and principles. As the great French novelist Victor Hugo said, "Changez vos opinions, gardez vos principes; changez vos feuilles, gardez intactes vos raciness" "Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots". Here in Cyprus we often say that "a captain is proven capable when she is in a storm". And hence, I consider ourselves lucky since our ECB captain steering us through both the Covid and geopolitical storms is Christine Lagarde, a leader of undoubted capacity and experience, whom I thank again for being with us today and would like to invite her to the podium to share her thoughts with us. 3/3  BIS - Central bankers' speeches
The Board assesses the key rate at monetary policy meetings within these four months on the basis of the approved strategy. The Bank thus gives the market some indication of the upcoming monetary policy decisions. As from last November, we took this process one step further and published our own forecast for the interest rate three years ahead. This means that we have now in a sense “assumed ownership” of the interest rate in our projections. Chart 3 shows the interest rate forecasts in the previous Report, published a few weeks ago. BIS Review 26/2006  1  Forecasts for inflation, output, the interest rate and other variables are based on an assessment of the current situation and a perception of how the economy works. There is substantial uncertainty associated with future interest rates, as illustrated in the fan charts. 1 While we assumed the interest rate to be constant through the forecasting period in 2001 and 2002, our projections were based on market expectations in 2003 and up to November last year. On some occasions we stated that it was our view that the interest rate would move on a different path than that indicated by market expectations. For example, in June 2004 we stated that “the most appropriate alternative now seems to be that the interest rate should be kept unchanged for a longer period than indicated by market expectations”.

In conclusion, allow me to reiterate the importance of the effective participation of all stakeholders involved in each stage of claims management to ensure high claims service standards and fair treatment of customers. Both insurers and loss adjusters must play their respective roles in value-adding to the claims management process for the effective functioning and positive image of the insurance industry in the long term. 2  BIS Review 53/2010
They have translated into a substantial easing in borrowing conditions for euro area companies. Since June 2014, the cost of borrowing for businesses has fallen by 80 basis points. Without non-standard measures, we estimate that we would have had to lower key rates by around 100 basis points in June 2014 to achieve a similar effect on bank interest rates. This has also helped to stimulate lending to the real economy: in the euro area, outstanding loans to businesses have gone from a contraction of -2.5% in June 2014 to growth of 0.6% in January 2016. The impact is even more marked in France, where outstanding business lending grew by 4.8% year-on-year in the first month of 2016 - the highest pace of growth in the euro area and, what’s more, with the lowest rates of interest. Convergent estimates from the ECB and the Eurosystem indicate that, all other things being equal, the measures introduced since June 2014 should add 1 percentage point to inflation over the period 2015-2017, with a similar impact on growth. In France, they helped to boost 2015 growth by 0.3 percentage point, and estimates from INSEE even put the  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  impact slightly higher at +0.4 pp. That represents about 80,000 additional jobs for the economy - although only structural reforms can generate lasting gains for a country’s growth and employment.

This has been the ECB’s objective since 2003, when it was proposed by the German former chief economist, Otmar Issing. It may appear paradoxical that price stability is not zero, but there are good reasons for this. First, the “Boskin effect”, named after the US commission that showed in 1996 that the price indices used to measure inflation  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  tended to overstate inflation, by underestimating the substitution towards products whose prices increase less quickly, and product innovation. Therefore, the inflation objective can never be too strictly observed since it is necessary to keep enough leeway to ensure that the economy doesn’t sink into deflation in the event of negative shocks. Also, low inflation facilitates structural adjustments in an economy where there are downward nominal rigidities of certain prices, in particular wages. c) In the euro area, however, like in most advanced economies, inflation remains too low, despite the historically low interest rates: the harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP) indeed returned to negative territory, standing at -0.2% in February 2016, and underlying inflation, i.e. excluding energy and food, is only 0.7%. Does this mean the Eurosystem can no longer achieve its price stability mandate, or will have to change its objective? I don’t think so. Current challenges do not call into question our mandate, but they change the way in which we fulfil it.
th  The 11 anniversary of the start of the global financial crisis But I couldn’t give a speech in September 2018 without marking an anniversary – though the one I’m most th  interested in is an 11 anniversary – the year before the collapse of Lehman Brothers – which I will use to frame my comments today. th  On 9 August 2007, BNP Paribas froze three of its investment funds, citing lack of liquidity in sections of the US securitised debt market. Fear spread. First the cost of interbank funding spiked, and then the interbank funding markets effectively froze, as credit concerns and liquidity hoarding spread amongst firms. Northern Rock, with a business model depending on its ability to access funding markets, experienced what started as an electronic run. In September 2007 the Bank announced it was providing emergency financial support to Northern Rock, and shortly after that we saw the first physical run on a bank in the UK in over a century. There are two key strands evident in these events, both related to the increasing interconnectedness of the financial system. The first was the valuation of the underlying assets in many derivatives and securitisations. The US subprime mortgage market, we now know, was overvalued. It might have been a containable problem, had these mortgages not been packaged up into ever more complicated transactions, distributed around the banking system, allowing a domestic US housing crash to become a global problem of the first order.

They mean that the Bank’s balance sheet is a key part of the infrastructure for securing monetary and financial stability for the good of the people of the UK. And that infrastructure is future-proofed. We regularly execute a variety of operations. We test facilities that we are not actively using, and encourage firms to be sure of their operational capability to use them. We have banks’ collateral pre-positioned with us so we stand ready to lend at short order, if needed. And we support all of this with the appropriate risk management framework, to ensure that as well as supporting firms and markets, we aren’t unduly jeopardising public resources. And all this means that our balance sheet is fit for purpose to underpin whatever policy decisions, covered by the Bank’s remit, are made in the future. 30  See also Carney, M. (2018), “New Economy, New Finance, New Bank”, Mansion House Speech 2018, available at https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/speech/2018/new-economy-new-finance-new-bank-speech-by-mark-carney.pdf. 31 The Discussion Paper is available at https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/paper/2018/boe-future-balance-sheet-and-framework-forcontrolling-interest-rates. Comments should be sent to balancesheetDP@bankofengland.co.uk by 31st October 2018. 11  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  11
To some extent, the resulting amount was taken as guidance for successive allotments carried out in the format of variable-rate tenders, which were reduced in size, in parallel with a temporary easing of tensions at the shortest end of the money market term structure. More generally, at times of market stress, a central bank has to operate in an environment characterized by an extreme level of unrest, in which interest rates are much more volatile than usual, and the martingale property loses its power to tie interest rates to the desired level. In such conditions, central banks can act quickly only if they have access to timely and accurate information. Indeed, differences in the speed, frequency and magnitude of interventions by central banks during financial turbulences can be due not only to structural distinctions in the banking sectors or in the operational frameworks and policy principles of the central banks, but might more simply reflect differences in information sets. Let me at this point briefly recall some of the main sources of information of interest for the Eurosystem in the current turmoil. Market intelligence. Over the last few months we have extensively used market information and activated our regular communication channels with the banking and financial industry. Particularly useful in this context has been the work of the Money Market Contact Group, a discussion forum on issues related to euro money market gathering representatives of the central banks of the Eurosystem and of the commercial banks from all over Europe.

Between December 2002 and March 2004, the interest rate has moved from a high to a low level. The real interest rate is now lower than a real interest rate that implies balance in the economy in the long term – the neutral real interest rate. A real interest rate that is lower than the neutral rate will stimulate activity and fuel pressures in the economy even after the effects of the interest rate fall have been exhausted. Calculations may indicate, on an uncertain basis, that the neutral real interest rate for Norway is between 2½ and 3½ per cent. It has probably fallen somewhat in recent years. Real post-tax mortgage rates and deposit rates at banks are also very low. Household debt is higher than household deposits in Norway. The fall in interest rates pushed up house prices. Higher housing wealth provides increased borrowing opportunities that are used. Household debt has risen by around 11-12 per cent over the past year. Household debt is now more than one and a half times as high as disposable income. The accumulation of debt partly reflects structural adaptation over time to a deregulated credit market and partly low interest rates. The higher debt burden has made households more vulnerable. A gradual normalisation of the interest rate will probably contribute to curbing the rise in house prices and gradually bring down debt accumulation. Conclusion Two and a half years after we started to lower interest rates it would appear that inflation is moving up, albeit slowly.
François Villeroy de Galhau: Climate change – the financial sector and pathways to 2°C Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, at the Conference COP21, Paris, 30 November 2015. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, This conference organised by the 2°C initiative, the Oxford Martin School and France Stratégie for the opening of the COP21, is a major event in which I am delighted to participate. I would like to make some comments on a topic that has steadily gained ground in the climate change agenda, namely the way central banks and prudential authorities take account of climaterelated issues. This is in fact a relatively new question. We were already committed as both citizens and public policy-makers, but monetary and prudential authorities are today concerned by three broad categories of risk: –  Direct physical risks, related to the increase in both the frequency and the magnitude of extreme climatic events, which raise questions in terms of insurance costs. –  Liability risks, related to the financial impacts stemming from compensation requests from those who have suffered loss or damage due to climate change. –  Macroeconomic risks related to the transition between two production models, which can result in disorderly adjustments in sectors too heavily exposed to global warming or that become unviable due to the governments’ climate change commitment. In practice, we already observe some financial imbalances in carbon-intensive industries facing rising costs, disruptive technologies, and regulatory uncertainties.

As representatives of international banks, I know that consistent cross-border implementation of Basel II is a high priority not only because you want supervision to reflect as much as possible the manner in which your organisations are managed, but also because you may be concerned about supervisory burden. Let me assure you that it is also in the best interest of supervisors that we try to minimise as much as possible any duplication of effort and make the most of our limited resources. Having said that, I should also be clear that Basel II will never be implemented with 100% consistency across borders, just as Basel I is not currently implemented with 100% consistency. There are important differences in laws, financial markets and supervisory practices, among others, that make it impractical to expect that Basel II will look exactly the same in every country. The role of the AIG, then, is to share information and promote—not mandate or enforce—consistency in implementation of Basel II. It is clear that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to implementing the new Framework. Rather, implementation should be tailored to the specific circumstances of a bank and the jurisdictions it operates in. It seems to me that to enhance consistency we need to work on improving vertical co-operation, namely home-host issues, and also horizontal co-operation, that is to say convergence of practices. We think that the bottom-up approach is the most efficient and less prescriptive method of achieving these goals.
Yet, it should be kept in mind that these effects may be temporary and do not have an evident impact on the basic trend of inflation. After assessments on inflation, monetary reform and the risks, I would now like to share with you certain points I consider significant with respect to growth. As you all know, the Turkish economy has been enjoying high rates of growth for three consecutive years. The GNP growth rate was realized as 9.9 percent in 2004. Accordingly, the real growth rate compared to 2001 was 25.5 percent. A growth rate of 5 percent is forecasted for 2005. Thus, positive growth rates will be attained for a period of four years owing to a determined and sustainable stability program, as well as the gradual increase in the role of the private sector. Whereas in the past, in an environment of high inflation and uncertainty, the Turkish economy displayed a rather unstable growth performance. At this point, I would like to draw your attention to the changing dynamics of growth: High growth rates were achieved while inflation was in decline. Now, the growth process is driven by productivity increase, the private sector and exports.

This means that it must offer suitable, cost-effective and quality financial products and services for all segments of society. It must also respond to the changing demographics and structure of the economy. For example, as we move towards becoming a digital economy, the financial sector must accord adequate support to innovative SMEs, such as those involved in e-commerce. Equally important, we must remember that this imperative is not only for banks, but extends to the other parts of the financial sector. Non-banks such as venture capital and private equity firms, as well as alternative financiers such as factoring and leasing companies, have an equal stake in this and should also play a more active role in financing the needs of businesses. The need to bridge the gaps between 20th century finance and the 21st century economy is both compelling and urgent for the whole financial sector as conditions remain challenging for the economy domestically and abroad. This is also certainly not the only time that we will face such challenges. To be safe, finance must not sow the seeds of its own destruction and not serve as an amplifier of risk to the economy. The ability of finance to mobilise capital, create leverage and distribute risk allows it to be a powerful force for good. But excessive and unbridled risk taking creates instability which is harmful not only for the particular firm, but the economy and society at large. There is also a greater need for finance to be socially responsible.
Part 2: The Eurosystem’s vision for 2020 •  To deal with the technological and strategic challenges to its market infrastructure, the Eurosystem has developed three key action points it will work on in the run up to 2020;  •  The first is to explore synergies between TARGET2 and T2S, potentially even merging them into a single platform in the future, with the goal of achieving a consolidated market infrastructure for large-value payments and securities settlement;  •  The enhancements envisaged for Europe’s financial market infrastructure will benefit users by providing access to all available services via a single gateway;  •  Moreover, these enhancements will provide an opportunity to further increase the resilience of the system, which is also beneficial from a financial stability perspective;  •  The second action point is to consider new service opportunities that the closer integration of TARGET2 and T2S would bring;  •  in particular, the Eurosystem is considering enhancing the TARGET2 services with instant payments, at least in the settlement layer;  •  Third, there are plans to review the harmonisation of Eurosystem arrangements and procedures for collateralisation;  •  The three action points are currently in the design phase, and it is expected that decisions on the actual implementation of the projects will be taken over the summer;  •  For all three action points, the Eurosystem will continue to work closely with the market in order to benefit from its knowledge and experience as well as to ensure that Europe’s future financial market infrastructure fully meets the needs of its users.

Therefore, I call upon all participants to openly debate this draft Act and share opinions which the Bank can benefit from in its effort to develop a comprehensive law. With these words, I declare this Stakeholders Workshop open and wish you a fruitful debate. I thank you. 2  BIS Review 128/2010