samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
To summarise, European banking supervision allows us to take a broader view, which gives us deeper insights and improves our analysis. At the same time, there are more views around the table, which helps to counter biases, including national ones, and leads to better decisions. Banking supervision improves. And if a bank should fail, European resolution helps to deal with this in a way that preserves financial stability and saves taxpayers money. 2/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  So, the banking union stands for more stability. It might thus enhance the trust markets have in banks, which in turn might lower funding costs. But there is more to it than that. The banking union also stands for consistency. We have harmonised many of the tools that we supervisors use, most notably our main tool, the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process. So when we supervise banks, we apply the same high standards across the entire euro area. And when systemic banks need to be resolved, this too is done in a consistent manner. In other words, the banking union helps to level the playing field for banks in the euro area in terms of supervisory practices and approaches. When banks operate across borders, they do not need to adapt to 19 totally different forms of supervision, for instance. At the same time, they can engage in fair competition. They need not fear that their competitors have an edge just because supervisors in another country are more relaxed.

Consequently, our optimism can only be conditional upon the continuation of the reforms. Finally, we must be patiently optimistic not only with the reforms, which need to be accelerated as much as possible, but also with their results. 2011 will continue to be another year of adjustment and it will even be one of the hardest years for the banking system. It is said that some marathon runners hit a “wall” in the final miles of the race. Even though they have completed most of the race, the finishing line seems far off to them and they need great mental fortitude not to give up. We, too, should ensure that the adjustment process and reform of the Spanish economy does not hit any “walls”. During the recession to date there has been a highly substantial correction in the real economy and in the banking sector, but now we need patience and perseverance to successfully conclude this process. Thank you very much  BIS central bankers’ speeches  7
The Yom Kippur War followed two years later, with the OPEC countries’ oil embargo and the first oil crisis. The sharp increase in oil prices led to a recession in Western economies. At the same time, inflation took root in many countries. In Norway, the welfare state was rapidly developed and transfers to the business sector increased considerably, partly because we were expecting substantial oil revenues in the future. Economic policy sought to build a bridge over what was expected to be a temporary downturn in the global economy. This resulted in a contest for economic resources between the business sector and the public sector and between the internationally exposed and the sheltered sectors. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were wide fluctuations in the Norwegian economy, with high and variable inflation. This also resulted in wide swings in output and employment. The absence of a nominal anchor was one of the main reasons behind the pronounced swings. With a policy of low interest rates and devaluations, inflation took root. Nominal interest rates were kept at a low level even though inflation and the value of tax-deductible interest rose. Frequent devaluations from 1976 were not able to prevent a decline in manufacturing. On the contrary, they proved to be selfreinforcing. The wide fluctuations culminated in a credit boom in the mid-1980s, followed by a deep recession and high unemployment towards the end of the 1980s. History shows that low unemployment cannot be achieved through high inflation.

Loans to the private sector have stabilised at growth rates somewhat above 5%, a rate of expansion which, in real terms, is broadly in line with the long-term average. Considering all the evidence relating to the first pillar, from a medium-term perspective, more liquidity is available than would be needed to finance sustainable, non-inflationary growth. However, given the current economic environment, we do not see the risk of this translating into inflationary pressure in the near future. Concerning the second pillar, recent short-term conjunctural indicators and survey data suggest that real GDP in the euro area has continued to grow only moderately in the third quarter of this year. This is in contrast to earlier expectations that a more pronounced upswing would occur in the course of this year. Obviously, the hesitant pace of economic expansion and current, lacklustre confidence reflect the significant degree of uncertainty that has been building up over recent months. This uncertainty is associated with geopolitical tensions, the evolution of oil prices and developments in stock markets. However, for the time being, the main scenario for the euro area remains that economic growth is expected to return to rates close to potential in the course of 2003. In fact, this expectation is consistent with all forecasts published by international organisations. Private forecasters, on the whole, also seem to share the same view. Moreover, financial markets have shown signs of stabilisation in recent weeks following a period of considerable turbulence.
With the king’s signature on 14 June 1816, the foundations of the monetary system were laid. A new currency was issued – the speciedaler. And Norway’s first bank was founded and named, not surprisingly, Norges Bank. Branches were established in the largest towns, and the Bank’s first headquarters was located here in Trondheim, a twelve-day journey from the government in Christiania (now Oslo), and even farther from Stockholm 1. This provided a geographical distance from king and government, in addition to the more important formal distance. The people’s elected representatives at Eidsvoll had taken responsibility for the monetary system, as stated in Article 75 c of the Constitution: “It devolves upon the Storting […] to supervise the monetary affairs of the Realm”. The Storting, the Norwegian parliament, and not the king, would be Norges Bank’s employer. The king would no longer have the authority to print money at will. Although bitter memories of the decline of the monetary system during the Napoleonic Wars lay behind this decision, it was also inspired by the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers. Absolute monarchy under the Danish king was to be replaced by the sovereignty of the people and the separation of powers. Institutions with clearly distinguished roles would foster confidence and prevent the arbitrary use of power. To restore confidence in the monetary system, the promise of a stable monetary value had to be supported by concrete values. There could be no more empty promises.

And, we must continue to devote sufficient attention and resources to complete the efforts. At the same time, though, it is important to take stock of the changes made over the past few years – for two important reasons: first, to assess the impact of those changes, both intended and unintended; and, second, to understand the contours of the “new” financial system operating under the range of new rules and regulations, both national and global in nature. Such a stocktaking is important to  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  ensure that we collectively understand how the “new” financial system is operating. Firms and supervisors will continue to face challenges and competing demands as we press, in the months and years ahead, on implementing necessary changes and assessing the “new” financial system. What the future holds One of the topics that I feel will compete for, and will deserve, a lot of attention in the foreseeable future is cybersecurity. I am often asked about my list of “things that keep me awake at night,” and I think it’s fair to say that cybersecurity is at the top of that list – as I’m sure it is for many of you in this room. In fact, I think cybersecurity is one of the topics that should be on everyone’s list – from the most senior managers and boards of directors, all the way down to line managers.
There is undoubtedly a case to answer in that area, as both the SIB and the SROs would acknowledge. But the legislation we have explicitly dictates a two-tier structure. It is also true that institutions now tend to be involved in a variety of different businesses. Banks own securities houses, fund managers, and insurance companies. Insurance companies are diversifying into banking, and so on. So that even though there should always be a lead regulator, looking at the overall position of the business, institutions still face the costs of complying with the requirements of several regulators. BIS Review 21/1997  -5-  But the question underlying these arguments about complexity and overlap is more fundamental. Should regulation be based around institutions (it is institutions which fail, after all) or around functions or types of business which call for specialist regulatory knowledge? The UK system is organised neither along wholly functional nor wholly institutional lines. In today’s markets, where firms are a mass of subsidiaries and business units, no major market participant deals with a single regulator across all its businesses. Similarly, no regulator has unique responsibility for regulating one function of each business. The insurance operation of a firm, for example, is covered by separate prudential and conduct of business regulators. Most people involved in financial regulation would recognise this description of the problem. But determining how to resolve it is not straightforward, as evidenced by the wide variety of proposals for change which have been advanced.

A major part of a bank’s regulatory capital is held against credit risk. By contrast, securities houses invest primarily in liquid, marketable assets which can be readily sold, with illiquid assets typically a small BIS Review 21/1997  - 11 -  proportion of the total, generally 2% or so, and the bulk of a securities firm’s regulatory capital tends to be maintained for market risk purposes. It is therefore not obvious that we need to set the same detailed rules for banks and securities houses. That is not to say that we should entirely ignore differences in supervisory regimes, but rather that we should focus on areas where those differences are on a scale which seriously distorts competition. In other words, we should spend rather less of our time discussing risk weights, and rather more discussing risks. Globalisation and the Regulatory Response How far do these general principles, which I have discussed so far in relation to the UK, apply to regulatory structures in a global environment? One issue for supervisors is increasing globalisation. The biggest institutions now span 50 or more countries and may have 300 or more entities within the group. This is not new; globalisation in this sense has been a feature of banking certainly since the 1970s. What is rather newer is the way in which the firms are centralising the controls for all these far flung entities.
The differences in this respect in relation to the United States, for instance, are fairly striking. The United States has had a more favourable development in unemployment, but quite a lot of this can be explained by the fact that labour force participation in the States has actually declined (see Figure 6). Of course, the relatively good development is not solely due to the monetary policy conducted by the Riksbank. Economic policy in general plays a large role, as does the fact that Sweden was not hit so hard by the crisis, for reasons not necessarily related to the policy conducted. It is also possible to have different views regarding exactly how good one thinks developments have been. But at a very minimum, it should be clear that it is difficult to find support in actual figures for an overly tight, “aggressive” monetary policy having sent the economy into a state of deflation, driven by poor development in the real economy. If one looks ahead, then? Could it not be the case that the Swedish economy has managed fairly well so far, but that things will go badly in the future, as a result of the policy conducted? Of course, one cannot make any guarantees with regard to the future, but one can in any case note that the National Institute of Economic Research, the Ministry of Finance and the Riksbank are all currently forecasting growth of around 2 per cent this year and around 3 per cent in 2015–2016.

But there are a couple of Covid-related distortions that have been pushing up on this growth: there is a large base effect from the fall in average earnings last year, and a compositional effect from the pattern of impact of Covid on activity across the economy and how that relates to typical pay rises by type of job[2]. All of that said, we think the rate of growth of earnings in an underlying sense is probably around the 4% level – higher than we saw before Covid, and somewhat higher than we would expect to see in these economic conditions. But, there is another interesting development. The dispersion of pay growth has risen quite markedly – so for the high numbers we read about, there are also low ones. I am going to come back to this point. The final piece of the economic picture I want to cover is inflation. Having been well below target last year and into this year, it has risen above rapidly, to 3.2% in August. Much of the latest rise reflects base effects from last year, but we have also seen unusually strong rises in some items, including some foodstuffs, used cars and accommodation. Our forecast in August had inflation rising to 4% by the end of this year, and developments since then mean that inflation is likely to rise to slightly above 4%. The major contributors to the further increase are not base effects but rather the strength we are now seeing in goods and energy prices.
Lowering the limit to 80 per cent would lead, over a 10-year period, to about the same effect as the proposed amortisation requirement, and even lowering it to 75 per cent would result in a smaller effect looking 10 years ahead than a debt-to-income limit of 600 per cent. It is clear from what I have said so far that it is hard to find an individual measure which could prevent indebtedness from increasing from a 10-year perspective. A combination of measures may therefore be needed. One example of a “package of measures”, which I have discussed on previous occasions, includes an amortisation requirement, halved tax relief and a debt-to-income limit of 400 per cent. A summary of the effects of these measures offers a very rough estimate of the total effect, and indicates in this case that indebtedness would level out to around the level seen today (see Figure 14).

One of our colleagues did not meet these high standards recently. Our newly appointed Deputy Governor for Markets and Banking, Charlotte Hogg had previously not disclosed a relevant family relationship, as was required under our staff Code of Conduct. For those who have questioned whether we “get it”, we do. We know this honest mistake was also a serious mistake – one that was compounded by the fact that Charlotte Hogg had overseen the development of our new Code. We were clear upfront that there must be consequences for both her and the Bank. Our minimum response would obviously be what we would expect to see in the firms that we supervise. Let’s be absolutely clear about this baseline. In analogous situations in the private sector, we expect:   Evidence that the firm is taking the matter seriously;    Proportionate consequences for the individual, including some form of disciplinary warning and possibly some impact on remuneration; and    A wider review of lessons learned if there was any evidence that there was a systemic problem. 9  See page 16, Financial Reporting Council (FRC), “Corporate Culture and the Role of Boards: Report of observations”, July 2016. See Footnote 7 for details. With appropriate modifications to reflect the fact that it has a very different range of functions to a commercial bank and is accountable to a different range of stakeholders, including Parliament.
The failure of this Fund has not made major ripples all on its own. Why? I would argue because there was no obvious lack of clarity around the assets, and this is a reminder against the re-appearance of opaque instruments and complex tranching. The second condition to meet is that there is no illusion about the liquidity of the assets. It is critical that investor expectations are well adjusted to the prevailing liquidity conditions. A lot of work is under way to assess the market liquidity implications of the expansion of assets under management, and this is important for our remit in financial stability. An important part of this work is to do all we can to ensure that investors understand the characteristics of the assets they hold, and that the liquidity promised by funds to their investors mirrors the market liquidity of the underlying investments. Conclusion In conclusion, the objective of the financial reform programme is clearly not to return to the unstable pre-crisis years, however attractive some of the statistics of that period look in isolation. The response has been to strengthen the loss absorbency of the banking system but also to enable greater clarity between the different forms of bank liabilities consistent with the economic terms of the contracts. This may seem like dry balance sheet stuff but the benefits are major.

Andrew Bailey: Post crisis reforms – the lessons of balance sheets Speech by Mr Andrew Bailey, Deputy Governor of Prudential Regulation and Chief Executive Officer of the Prudential Regulation Authority at the Bank of England, at the International Financial Services Forum, Dublin, 27 January 2016. *  *  *  Thank you for inviting me to speak this morning. We are approaching the ninth anniversary of the beginning of the global financial crisis. And we are still talking about it; but not just talking, also publishing books, reports, holding conferences and of course releasing films. There is no doubt more than one reason for the continued interest in the crisis, but as public officials charged with putting into place the measures to prevent a repeat and thus produce a more stable financial system, the work is still in progress and thus for us very much a matter of debate. Today, I want to put that work into perspective, looking at banks and the wider financial system. I am going to organise my comments around something very basic to the system, the balance sheets of banks. It is a striking fact, that the combined balance sheet of the major UK banks increased by around fourfold between 2000 and 2007. That’s a stark fact: yes, there was an accounting change in that period, but still this was a massive change. And other countries often matched that change – the story of Ireland is sadly well known.
Gent Sejko: Bank of Albania's achievements in 2022 and challenges for 2023 Address by Mr Gent Sejko, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the end-of-year meeting with journalists, analysts and media representatives and the Governor's Award ceremony, Tirana, 20 December 2022. *** Dear ladies and gentlemen, I feel honoured and privileged to welcome in the historical hall of the Bank of Albania, media representatives and talented students who are brave in competing for "Governor's Award for the Best Diploma Theses". In the last year event, I emphasised that we experienced an unusual 3-year period, with the hope that 2022 would be different, more vivid and more optimistic. Nevertheless, the end of 2022 is proving a really challenging one, mainly due to the huge shock on commodity prices of energy, oil and gas, in particular. The increased prices - mainly engendered from the outbreak of the Russia's war in Ukraine - has generated strong inflationary pressures worldwide, triggering a difficult time for consumption and economic growth globally. Albania is facing the same challenges as well. In November, inflation stood at 7.9%, somewhat lower than in the previous month, though a high level which is the main threat to both the macroeconomic stability and to the sustainable and long-term growth of Albania. In this context, I would like to point out that the latest forecasts at the Bank of Albania show that inflation is expected to progressively reduce during 2023, and return to target in the middle of 2024.

The dynamic of current developments in the global economy coerces both, the Bank of Albania in one side and the media on the other one, to be more responsible and more devoted in informing the public in a prompt, transparent and open manner. I wish that our cooperation, which is at the service of best public interest, will continue to follow the same model in 2023 as well. You will find that our institution remains a loyal and transparent partner, which is available to share the necessary information and clarifications. Our policies and decisions and their impact, as well as the situation regarding the financial soundness of the banking system and the financial sector, overall, will be at the heart of our ongoing communications. Honourable participants, Financial literacy and research are at the focus of the Bank of Albania's undertakings. They help us to successfully draft, implement, and convey policies and decisions in order to safeguard price and financial stability in Albania. Education and scientific research are conducted to understand economic events, as well as to enhance Bank of Albania's trustworthiness and expand communication with the economy, financial market, and the public. In a broader sense, researching, comprehending and interpreting the economic and financial events are a precondition to ensure the socioeconomic prosperity of Albania and increase the well-being of its citizens. The universities and academia play a key role in both these fields.