samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
That Was The Week That Was was a popular TV programme which ran for two series in 1962 and 1963. That was the time when inflation was just starting to rise and although it averaged well below 5 per cent throughout the 1960s it picked up sharply in the early 1970s and didn’t fall back to below the MPC’s current 2% target until 1998 (Chart 10). Sources: ONS and Bank calculations. See The path to 2 per cent − speech by Silvana Tenreyro | Bank of England. See Shocks, uncertainty, and the monetary policy response- speech by Dave Ramsden I Bank of England 16 17  Bank of England  Page 16  2022 has been a very challenging year for the UK economy. Millions of households and businesses are experiencing great hardship as a result of the cost of living crisis. As a member of the MPC I am acutely conscious that our actions are adding to the difficulties caused by the current situation. The past history of the UK economy demonstrates the damage to households and businesses that would result if high inflation persisted. Unlike these earlier periods of high inflation, exacerbated by ineffective policy and policy frameworks, we now have a monetary policy framework which empowers us to take action. However challenging the short term consequences might be for the UK economy, the MPC must take the necessary steps in terms of monetary policy to return inflation to achieve the 2% target sustainably in the medium term.

Ajith Nivard Cabraal: Management Accountants – focusing on the repositioning of the profession Special address by Mr Ajith Nivard Cabraal, Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, at the Global Summit, organised by The Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India on “Repositioning the Management Accountant”, New Delhi, 12 January 2008. *  *  *  The theme of the Conference suggests that the Management Accountants of today are de facto doing something different to the traditional role of the Management Accountant. The new de facto role seems to be more of that of a strategist and a performance management specialist, rather than a historical “information supplying” or even a “decision facilitating” role of an accountant. If one were to drill down, we may perhaps note that the education and training of those who have become strategists and performance management specialists may not have necessarily been intended that way. But yet, it happened. How did this happen? •  Perhaps the training, although intended to create management accountants, was appropriate to create a strategist. •  Perhaps the training, coupled with business developments and public expectations, shaped management accountants to become strategists or the deliverers of outputs rather than contributors of inputs only. •  Perhaps the ability of the management accountant, as a result of his core disciplines, enabled him to respond effectively to unfolding developments and then deliver new outputs, and such abilities were recognized by the business community in the course of time.
Ben Broadbent: Central banks and digital currencies Speech by Mr Ben Broadbent, Deputy Governor for Monetary Policy of the Bank of England, at the London School of Economics, London, 2 March 2016. *  *  *  Accompanying charts can be found at the end of the speech. I would like to thank Robleh Ali, Victoria Cleland, Grellan McGrath and other colleagues at the Bank for helpful comments and suggestions. The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of England or other members of the Monetary Policy Committee. Introduction Hello! This morning I’m going to talk about money. This should be a routine topic for a central banker, particularly one whose job title includes the word “monetary”. It’s nonetheless ground on which one treads with a bit of trepidation. That’s partly because some of the big questions involved – what money is, why it exists, how and by whom its supply should be governed – seem to evoke very strong opinions. Even the great economist John Hicks, formerly of the LSE, confessed in the 1930s to some nervousness about expressing his views about the matter: “It is with peculiar diffidence and even apprehension that one ventures to open one’s mouth on the subject of money”. It’s also because my particular focus – so-called “digital” currencies, including the possibility of a central bank variety – is an area of active interest and research, including at the Bank of England.

If banks cannot use deposits for that purpose, how would their lending then be financed? And without a supply of bank credit, how would the real economy, in particular the part of it that cannot easily access securities markets, itself be funded? There is no easy answer to these questions. As far as the non-financial economy is concerned, it’s clear it would be hard seamlessly to replace bank loans with securities issuance. There are good reasons why it’s difficult for young firms, in particular, with little invested capital, to sell shares or bonds13. The same goes for households. If bank lending became scarcer, or more expensive, it’s likely that investment and economic activity would suffer. Furthermore, several economists argue that there’s a degree of complementarity between making loans, on the one hand, and issuing liquid liabilities on the other14. If so, you’d naturally expect to find the same institutions doing both – banks don’t exist in the form they do simply  10  Ricardo, writing at a time when money was held largely as physical cash, argued the note issue should be separated and protected from commercial lending (Ricardo (1823)). The specific proposal in the Chicago Plan was 100% reserve requirements on demand deposits of commercial banks (Simons et al., (1933)). The postcrisis case has been put by Pennachi (2012) and, amongst others, by Martin Wolf of the FT (Wolf (2014)). Lainà (2015) describes how calls for full-reserve banking tend to intensify after financial crises.
Discernible rises in living standards are a very recent phenomenon. If the history of growth were a 24-hour clock, 99% would have come in the last 20 seconds. Technological roots of industrial revolution So what caused this phase shift in growth? Explaining even historical growth patterns is far from easy. Even now, there remains an active debate among economic and social historians about the deep sources of growth. Without doing it justice, let me offer some reflections based on that literature. Linking them is a common theme: patience. Neo-Classical economics explains why patience matters for growth. It supports saving which in turn finances investment, the accumulation of capital. That capital accumulation, in combination with great leaps forward the efficiency of its use, is what Neo-Classical growth theory tells us drives growth. Today’s investment is tomorrow’s growth. 19 Growth in the Neo-Classical model is “exogenous” – determined by external forces. The two key such forces are, first, the patience of individuals which is assumed to be fixed over time and across states of nature. And, second, by technological progress, which is assumed to vary over time but in unpredictable ways. Innovation arrives as manna from heaven, a surprise gift that keeps on giving. On the face of it, this simple story does a decent job of explaining the phase shift in growth after the Industrial Revolution.

40 The invention of the printing press by Guttenberg in around 1450 led to an explosion in book production. It is estimated that there were more books produced in the 50 years after Guttenberg than in the preceding 1000 years. What followed was much more than a technological transformation. Books contributed to a great leap forward in literacy levels, boosting human capital. More speculatively, they may also have re-wired our brains. Nicholas Carr argues that the changes brought about by the printing press, and other information media, may have re-shaped our minds. 41 Books laid the foundations for “deep reading” and, through that, deeper and wider thinking. Technology was, quite literally, mind-bending. It has been argued that this re-wiring stimulated the slow-thinking, reflective, patient part of the brain identified by psychologists such as Daniel Kahneman. If so, it will have supported the accumulation of intellectual capital – creativity, ideas, innovation. Technology will have first shaped neurology and then neurology technology, in a virtuous loop. Slow thought will have made for fast growth. 36  For example, Clark (2009). 37  Wang et al (2011). 38  Mullainathan and Shafir (2014). 39  Bannerjee and Duflo (2012). 40  Carr (2011). 41  Carr (2011). 8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  It is possible to construct a quasi-neurological explanation of much-earlier shifts in growth. The world’s growth journey appears to have commenced, in earnest, around the time modern homo sapiens replaced Neanderthal man. Maybe that was no accident.
Having said this, I do not mean that there is no hierarchy between the two objectives. I call for strong complementarity, not for a merging of objectives. To be more explicit, I consider that a monetary policy strategy that targeted asset prices would be a mistake. As central bankers, we need to avoid confusing economic agents; our role is to anchor expectations and ensure business continuity. 4. – There are still challenges to be addressed to provide authorities with the necessary policy toolbox for financial stability For it to be more effective, we still face a number of challenges in order to achieve an optimal macroprudential regulatory framework. First, we have to complete the regulatory framework for banks, by finalising the Basel III reform: I strongly wish and hope that we can reach a fair and 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  reasonable agreement soon. A revision of the European Macroprudential Framework is currently underway at the European Commission level. Moreover, decisive progress should be made to better provide macroprudential authorities with policy tools properly designed to address financial risks beyond banking. Market financing, shadow banking, Fintechs, pension funds, financial innovations are all part of the scope of macroprudential policy, insofar as they have the potential to pose a financial risk to our economies. Our next issue is less the solvency of banks than the liquidity of non-banks.

This year, for example, we have in six cases voted against the re-election of directors on the grounds of poor climate risk management. This may not sound much, but we will be working on making greater use of this tool in future. We have begun to publish our voting intentions five days in advance. This means that the way we vote attracts more attention. Another option is filing shareholder proposals, on our own or with others. In the past year, we have supported 19 climate-related shareholder proposals. One led to a large multinational starting work on reporting its Scope 3 emissions. We will also consider filing our own proposals in future. Risk-based divestments A last resort, when our ownership activities do not have the desired result, is divestment. We will not automatically divest if active ownership fails, but it may be the outcome in some cases. Norges Bank can exit a company for financial reasons. This is what we refer to as risk-based divestment. These are companies that we believe are managing climate risk particularly poorly, resulting in increased financial risk. It is a matter of avoiding companies whose business models we do not consider sustainable. Chart: More than half of divestments have been climate-related Risk-based divestments are active investment decisions by Norges Bank and draw on the fund’s limit for deviation from the benchmark index. From 2012 to 2020, we made more than 300 such divestments, more than half of them related to climate change. We are ready to do more of this in future.
2/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  In the exercise of their supervisory mandate, central banks can contribute to this by reconciling the need for openness and support for innovation, which is inherent to an economy integrated into world trade for the benefit of consumers, with their fundamental mission as guarantors and promoters of sound risk management. But they can also contribute through their two other traditional channels, namely as a catalyst and a provider of settlement services in central bank money. A- I believe that this catalyst role is important in the field of retail payments. Commercial bank money is the predominant settlement asset in France, even though the use of banknotes and coins remains significant in this country, as in most of the European Union. This variety of means of payment, based on settlement assets that can be exchanged at any time at par, is an advantage that I believe should be preserved for several reasons: on the one hand, because of the financial inclusion responsibility, since the most vulnerable populations are also the least banked; but also with a view to diversifying risks, in the event of a widespread failure of electronic payment systems. However, it is commonly believed that in Europe there is a risk of a fragmentation of cashless means of payment and a dependence on dominant foreign players that benefit from the effects of global networks.

By placing its initiatives within the framework of the Eurosystem’s discussions on an “e-euro", the Banque de France will continue and enhance its investment and expertise in the area of innovation in payment infrastructures and means of payment. To this end, it has recently created an Infrastructures, Innovation and Payments Directorate. This Directorate will enhance its resources in this area and will, I hope, participate in the work carried out within the BIS Innovation Hub. On an operational level, this  commitment will soon lead the Bank, in close cooperation with market professionals, to conduct experiments with a view to integrating a CBDC into the procedures for exchanging tokenised assets. In this respect, a call for projects will be launched at the end of March 2020. Conclusion It is indisputable that the digitisation of the economy has been a source of progress in the field of payments and other areas, as it has diversified and streamlined the services offered to the consumer. However, despite this positive assessment, we must not overlook the growing interdependence of economies, and the sovereignty risks that this greater intermediation is likely to pose in a context of trade tensions. At the Banque de France and the ACPR, we are ready to assist the market in the transformations necessary to preserve and develop a robust and resilient European ecosystem, capable of ensuring the continued sovereignty of our monetary and financial system.
This is an important area which will provide all those of us involved in financial sector oversight with major challenges for years to come. Increasingly active players are the hedge funds, employing alternative investment techniques and attracting a multitude of investors searching for higher yields. They often operate globally on the strength of the derivatised and securitised world. There has been a dramatic growth in hedge funds: data suggest that the past eight years alone have seen the value of assets rise by nearly 450%. Many of them are unregulated in a prudential sense, and are typically characterised by large proprietary positions, sometimes with an emphasis on unconventional assets and arbitrage positions. The complex and diverse operations of hedge funds can help to arbitrage away pricing mistakes, and to integrate financial markets. But they also raise new questions for financial stability oversight. The areas we need to look at are quite wide. There is of course the opacity aspect - what are the underlying concentrations hedge funds hold? But there are also other questions. How leveraged are they? Do lenders to them understand the risks that they are taking? And what is the potential impact of confidence and liquidity if they don’t? And what would happen if the new investors in hedge funds became disillusioned by their performance. Would it trigger an exodus and cause markets to go “one way”?

xii  x, xi  This is particularly  important in a rapidly changing world, where information is super abundant and certainty is absent. Indeed, almost all decisions in finance are taken under uncertainty. This makes it especially important that decision makers are exposed to a range of views, with open debate that includes perspectives that challenge the prevailing wisdom. For those central banks with regulatory responsibilities, biases in supervision can be countered by considering a variety of perspectives and debating within diverse supervisory teams. xiii  Diversity must be supported by the right structures for its benefits to be realised. For example, research on central bank committee design shows how diverse decision making benefits from:   Having a clearly defined policy objective;    Having relatively small policy committees, with external members;    Publishing policy decisions, and allowing for external scrutiny of decision-making processes. xiv  These features are integral to the MPC, FPC, PRA Board and Court of the Bank of England. In recent years, we have reinforced them by implementing the recommendations of the Warsh review, including publishing transcripts and putting all policy committees on an equal footing with clear remits. More effective communication  Being diverse can help us to craft communications that people can actually understand. The past few decades have seen enormous strides in central bank transparency – minutes are published, interviews given, speeches rendered, blogs posted. Now it is high time that greater emphasis is placed on how central banks communicate.
There are already many ongoing initiatives, for instance, promoting the usage of local currency in the region, the ASEAN Banking Integration Framework, the Asian Payment Network, and the Asian bond and capital market initiatives. Despite progress made thus far, financial institutions and policymakers in the region could step up our joint efforts in various ways. Let me now turn to immunity, which is equally important under the increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world in order to keep the financial system resilient throughout and thus be able to continue to support their clients and the real economy. 4  As the financial system is the blood vessel of the economy, immunity needs to start from safeguarding against blood infection. We will need to ensure that banks have adequate capital and provisioning cushion to be able to withstand swings of economic cycle and financial volatility. The Bank of Thailand welcomed the post GFC’s regulatory reform addressing concerns on systemic risks including the conservation buffer, the countercyclical buffer, G-SIBs and D-SIBs, as well as the recovery and resolution plan to further strengthen financial safety net. To complement these rules, and build a better immune system that is strong and resilient through any cyclical or structural shocks, I believe we need to target the underlying factor contributing to immunity, namely, the culture and behaviour of banks. Fundamentally, an organisation is predominantly defined by its behaviour and culture.

According to the Accenture study, 48% of customers said they wanted relevant advice and product information from their banks as they go about their daily lives. They also want banks to play a supporting role in the purchasing process for products such as a house or new car, and even related services such as insurance. Banks need to focus on providing long-term value for customers, rather than viewing them as a short-term opportunity for sales. We have already seen the harmful impact of this ‘short-term’ outlook that led to the subprime-mortgage crisis, as banks sold mortgages to customers who couldn’t afford them. Banks’ profits surged in the short term, but everyone suffered in the end; not only customers and the broader economy but also the banks. Banks therefore need to revisit their value propositions towards their customers in order to ensure that they are truly providing the products and services their customers need while keeping the interest of their customers and the society in Central Bank of Kuwait - Public ‫ عام‬- ‫بنك الكويت المركزي‬  - 11 -  mind. It will be helpful for the industry to reflect upon its ultimate objectives – to ensure inclusive prosperity and put the welfare of society on a sustainable footing. iii. Battle for Efficiency To win over customers and provide value, banks must operate in an efficient and intelligent manner, with their limited resources optimally deployed. The battle for efficiency is the third of the battles that banks need to win.
Further changes are also being discussed along the same line, including shorter working hours. Furthermore, the age structure of the population is becoming less advantageous from a labour perspective (see Chart 5). In a country like Sweden, where the costs of an ageing population have such a strong impact on the public sector, the supply of labour is particularly important. It is only if more people work and pay tax, and fewer make use of transfers, that it will be possible to notably relieve the pressure on the public budgets. And this will be necessary if we are to be able to maintain our current commitments in terms of nursing, health care and pensions. So it is high time that we put the labour supply in particular in the focus of the public debate. We should have learned from the crisis of ten years ago the importance of dealing with problems in time. If this does not happen, they could become seven times worse in a matter of years, when the population trend has become more markedly negative. This could then require greater, more painful changes under less orderly circumstances. Thank you! 4  BIS Review 42/2003  Chart 1.

The internationally exposed sectors of the economy were already confronted last year with an exaggeratedly strong exchange rate, particularly against the core European currencies - which could only be partly explained by cyclical and monetary policy differences. It appeared to have a good deal to do with market scepticism - I would argue misplaced scepticism - about the prospective strength of the euro. The internationally exposed sectors faced a further battering as a result of the economic impact of the developments in Asia and elsewhere - which I mentioned earlier. These pressures have had - and are having - a seriously depressing effect on demand and output in the exposed sectors of the economy - particularly large parts of manufacturing industry and agriculture - which is contributing to a sharp deterioration in our balance of payment and a fall in the net external component of aggregate demand. At the same time, the strong exchange rate, and the weakness of world commodity prices, is having a direct dampening impact on costs and prices in this country - particularly at the wholesale, producer, level but also affecting retail prices. Meanwhile the domestic economy has been unsustainably strong. Private consumption, in particular, was growing at an annualised rate of over 5% last summer, and still growing at an annualised rate of 4% by the first quarter of this year. This compares with a longer-term trend rate of some 2½%.