samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
This was fueled in part by concern that the counterparty claims on failed institutions would be frozen and unable to be realized quickly. Not only did some core firms have inadequate capital and liquidity, they also faced conflicting incentives as to how to manage their capital resources. For example, many firms that came under stress were slow to cut their dividends or to raise new capital because of fears that such actions would signal their underlying weakness. Obviously, the failure to conserve capital made these institutions weaker rather than stronger. The crisis also underscored severe deficiencies in the international dimension of the regulatory environment. Financial institutions, flows and activities are global, but the vast majority of regulation and information sharing is contained within national boundaries. Where resolution regimes existed, they generally existed only for banking entities and were not set up to handle the orderly resolution of a large internationally active bank holding company or non-bank financial firm. This cross-border problem persists to this day. The interconnectedness of the financial system also caused shocks to spread quickly. For example, the failure of Lehman Brothers led to losses at the Reserve Fund, which precipitated a widespread money market mutual fund panic. It also led to actions by U.K. bankruptcy authorities that had the effect of freezing the assets owned by hedge fund and other clients of the firm and this encouraged such investors to pull assets from other institutions perceived to be weak.

Actually, I would like to point out that the Albanian banking system left the crisis in healthy condition and that it guarantees growing stability. Our banking system, during this period, has carried out a considerable amount of work, which has served to consolidate each bank’s position prior, during and after the crisis. Hence, the banks are now able to use again their full lending potential. For the truth’s sake, it must be underlined that the latest figures speak of growth in the order of 10 per cent in annual terms, a figure which should not go unnoticed or be considered as inadequate. I would suggest the same philosophy to the business community. For objective reasons, the concept of free money belongs to the past. By that I mean that a bank loan should be earned, which means unconditional and honest cooperation within the legal and regulatory framework approved by the country’s authorities. Of course, banks are established to lend money, but first and foremost we need to bear in mind that the public deposits’ stability is more important than an individual business loan or bank portfolio. Moreover, the business community needs to recalibrate its position in relation to recent developments both in the national and global economy context. It must aim a higher productivity, primarily through identifying comparative advantages in the framework of global changes. In that regard, it is necessary to adopt new business administration philosophies on capacity building and investment in human resources, governance, internal control, financial and legal expertise, and risk management.
Indeed, after inflation had moved on a markedly rising trend in the first half of 2008, prices slowed sharply in the closing months of the year as a result of the abrupt turnaround in oil and food prices and of the marked sluggishness of demand. This deceleration has become more pronounced in 2009 to date, with the annual rate of change of the CPI falling in March, April and May (-0.9% in this latter month). While the CPI trajectory reflects the correction of some price rises in the most volatile components in the opening months of 2008, the ongoing recession, which is severely affecting consumption, is prompting an adjustment in prices and margins that is beginning to impact services and the other less volatile components. And this means that the price growth differential with the euro area has turned negative, and will foreseeably remain so in the coming months. The CPI is expected to continue to temporarily post negative rates of change in the coming months and, once the statistical effect linked to higher oil prices in the first half of 2008 is stripped out, inflation should resume positive although very moderate rates of change. This price behaviour is in line with the improvements in competitiveness required to lessen the scope and costs of the recession, to prompt the necessary adjustments and to embark on a sound recovery.

In reaching our decisions, the MPC always looks not just at the central projection for the economy but at the risks on either side. That will require not just difficult judgements but careful explanation in the months ahead. Chart 1: ABS CDO issuance  Chart 2: Prices of US sub-prime mortgage credit default swaps(a) $ billion 225  CDO^2  200  Mezz ABS CDO  175  HG ABS CDO  150  $ 110 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Jan 2008  125  AAA AA A BBB BBB-  100 75 50 25  Jan 2007  2007  2006  2005  2004  2003  2002  2001  2000  1999  0  Apr  Jul  Oct  Source: Citi  Source: Bank calculations. (a) ABX.HE 2006 H2. Each index references 20 home equity loan (HEL) ABS of indicated rating issued in 2006 H1. Subprime loans form the vast majority of the collateral backing HEL ABS. Chart 3: 3-month LIBOR spreads over expected policy rates  Chart 4: RMBS issuance by all UK resident issuers  Basis points  £ blns (three month rolling sum) 60  120  (b) Sterling  100  50  US dollar 80  Euro  40  60  30  40  20 10  20  0 0 Apr 2007  Jul  Oct  Source: Bloomberg. (a) 3-month LIBOR spreads over 3-month overnight index swap (OIS) rates.
(2010), Ball (2014), Krugman (2014) and Rosengren (2015). 24  See Rachel and Smith (2015). BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  alternative index, which is not affected directly by changes in the policy rate either, is the HICP (harmonised index of consumer prices), which is used by, among others, the ECB as the target variable. In terms of the latter index, one advantage is that it is often used in international comparisons of inflation, but the differences compared with the CPIF in terms of actual figures are not particularly major. Interval around the target? Another question is whether the target should be surrounded by some form of interval. This is quite common internationally and previously there was also a so-called tolerance interval of 1 percentage point either side of the Swedish inflation target. It was introduced at the same time as the inflation target in 1993 and its main purpose was to explain that the Riksbank is not able to control inflation precisely in the short run, but that it aims to limit deviations from the target. However, the interval proved to be far too narrow in relation to how CPI inflation varied in practice. When the interval was abolished in 2010, CPI inflation had more often been outside the tolerance interval than inside it.

Importantly, the merger will further strengthen the alignment of strategies and priorities for the development of Malaysia’s payment systems. It is also expected to significantly reduce the time to market for delivering improvements. As a shared utility, PayNet will operate with a public interest objective to support and develop safe, reliable and efficient payment systems in Malaysia. PayNet will provide the necessary common infrastructure, and the banks will compete on providing financial products and services. In the long run, we should expect that the merged entity should venture abroad and strike foreign alliances to further expand network and reach. Over the next 12 months, PayNet will move forward with plans to develop and implement a Realtime Retail Payments Platform (RPP) that will facilitate interoperable mobile payments. A central feature of the RPP is the national addressing database that will allow payments to be made conveniently through the use of mobile phone numbers and National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) numbers, instead of referencing bank account numbers. In line with principles of fair and open access, the RPP will be open to both banks and eligible non-bank payment service providers. Besides making the technology roadmap for the RPP publicly available, PayNet will actively engage with the banking industry, FinTech community and other relevant stakeholders in the development of the RPP. PayNet will also direct its focus to promoting MyDebit, which is the domestic debit card network, as a low-cost alternative to displace the use of cash.
Nevertheless, many developed countries seem to have been experiencing increases in their long- and short-term immigrant workforces, both skilled and unskilled - notably the US, where the foreign-born work force is now around 15% of the total, and a number of Southern European countries. Italy and Spain both had increases in their foreign-born workforces of over a million in the five years to 2004. There have been smaller, but still sizeable, increases, in Germany, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the UK. 1 It is too soon to assess the full impact of these developments on the performance of industrial countries. A few obviously important effects have been identified but they may not turn out to be the most significant in the long term. Most comment has focused on the direct effects of the emergence of China on relative prices, especially the price of manufactures relative to other goods and services. The emergence of an economic superpower with abundant supplies of labour and a relatively poor natural resource endowment has probably had several effects. First, it has pushed down on the price of manufactured goods over a long period of time. Across the world’s industrial countries the real price of goods (adjusted for general inflation), fell by over 10% between 1995 and 2005. Second, in the last couple of years it has helped to fuel a sharp surge in world prices for energy and other commodities.

Ravi Menon: Stepping up the Chongqing-Singapore connection Keynote address by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Singapore-China (Chongqing) Financial Conference, Singapore, 4 September 2017. * * * Vice Mayor Liu Guiping, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. More than 2000 years ago, the Silk Road connected, by land and sea, the major economies of the time, enriching the lives of many people along its routes. And now 2000 years later, Chongqing, one of China’s “super-cities”, is part of the effort to revive this great heritage. Chongqing is strategically placed. It is a pivotal node on the One Belt, One Road, connecting the growing economies of South and Southeast Asia with the rest of China It is also an important city along the Yangtze River Economic Belt and a key player in the overall development of the Western Region. In short, Chongqing is a cornerstone of regional connectivity. Singapore is proud to be a partner to Chongqing in this historic project, through the Chongqing Connectivity Initiative, or CCI. And so, I am happy today to welcome you to the second Singapore-China (Chongqing) Financial Conference, to take stock of the progress we have made together and to set new goals for the future. China and Singapore – a vibrant economic relationship The backdrop to CCI is, of course, the larger China-Singapore economic relationship – one of the strongest in Asia. China is Singapore’s largest trading partner. Singapore is China’s fourth largest trading partner in ASEAN.
These reforms bore more than a passing resemblance to the solutions complexity scientists might have proposed. A new word emerged to capture these reforms - macro-prudential regulation. The macro signalled two important ideological shifts from the past. First, banking needed to be managed at the level of the system as a whole, like any other eco-system. Second, as important as the resilience of the financial system was its interaction with the macro-economy to avoid adverse feedback effects between the two, such as credit crunches. Finance was to be servant of the economy, not master. This, truly, was a regulatory revolution. 21  See https://www.bis.org/bcbs/basel3.htm. 13  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  13  Not all proposals for international regulatory reform found universal favour. In a paper prepared for the Jackson Hole central banking shindig in 2012, I questioned whether the very complexity of financial regulation might have contributed to the increasing fragility of the financial system. As you did not fight fire with fire, you did not fight financial complexity with regulatory complexity. That risked making a bad situation worse, a complexity problem squared rather than halved. To be honest, had I not called the paper “The Dog and the Frisbee” I doubt anyone would have read it. But I did, they did and the result was a sharp intake of collective breath among my colleagues around the Basel Committee table - and beyond.

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There is a large degree of uncertainty among market participants about the magnitude and the timing of climate change, and about likely policy responses. This type of uncertainty may be a source of market failure. Climate risk is a complex topic covering a broad field of issues being to a large degree outside the remit of central banks. Climate change is a global challenge. The prime responsibility and the most effective tools to mitigate climate risk lie with governments and with fiscal policy. It is important to use the market mechanism by pricing emissions to reflect the true costs of greenhouse gas emissions. However, the financial system must adapt to climate risk. Central banks and financial supervisory authorities can, within their mandates, promote financial stability by ensuring that financial institutions appropriately includes climate risk in their risk management. Climate risk is not fundamentally different from other risks facing the financial sector. Other types of risks may also be systemic and characterized by historical data having uncertain relevance for future risks. Both financial institutions and authorities must consider how a changing climate will affect financial risks. This must be integrated in the risk assessment and hence in the overall assessment of the capitalization and funding of financial institutions Uncertainty with respect to the magnitude and impact of climate change can lead to simplified assessments of its risks. Authorities, including central banks, may contribute to a knowledgebased debate and reduce uncertainty by strengthening and refining reporting requirements.

While some future moderation can be expected in the light of tightening financing conditions and slower economic growth, bank borrowing by euro area non-financial corporations grew  2  BIS Review 57/2008  at an annual rate of 15.0% in the year to March 2008, and the flow of loans in recent months has been strong. For the time being, there is little evidence that the financial market turbulence seen since early August 2007 has strongly influenced the development of broad money and loans. Continued strong loan growth to non-financial corporations suggests that the availability of bank credit to euro area firms has not been significantly impaired by the financial turmoil thus far. Further data and analysis will be required in order to obtain a more complete picture of the impact of the financial market developments on banks’ balance sheets, financing conditions and money and credit growth. To sum up, a cross-check of the outcome of the economic analysis with that of the monetary analysis clearly confirms the assessment that upside risks to price stability prevail over the medium term, in a context of very vigorous money and credit growth and with no significant signs of supply constraints on bank loans. The economic fundamentals of the euro area are sound, and incoming macroeconomic data continue to point to moderate but ongoing real GDP growth. However, the level of uncertainty resulting from the turmoil in financial markets remains high.
And growth may even have contributed to the incidence of global conflicts and wars having fallen to their lowest levels, perhaps in human history. 3  That makes growth a gift, one necessary (if not necessarily sufficient) to deliver secular improvements in living standards. And it is what makes a good understanding of the determinants and drivers of growth so crucial for societal progress. By understanding the forces driving growth, past, present and future, we can begin to devise and implement economic policies that support improvements in society. I thought I understood the story of economic growth, its drivers and determinants. But recently I have changed my mind. I have a new story of growth. I think this story carries important implications for understanding the future challenges of technology and for devising the future policies and institutions necessary to meet them. That might require, among other things, a repurposing of successful institutions like this one, turning them from universities into multiversities. The Story of Growth  The story of economic growth often begins with a chart like this one (Chart 1). This plots the path of global economic growth, measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per head, over the past 1000 years. And what a story it tells. It is a tale of two halves – or, more accurately, a tale of three-quarters and a quarter. 4  For the first three-quarters of the past 1000 years, the global economy stood still in growth terms.

Therefore, the existing rules should be applied, and they should not be stretched to a point where they would lose their credibility. There is built-in flexibility in the Stability and Growth Pact to account for the cost of major structural reforms – but it cannot be based on empty promises. The sequencing should be clear. First, reforms need to be adopted and implemented. Then,  3  Euro area GDP is expected to recover at a pace of 1% in 2014 and 1.7% in 2015 according to the latest ECB staff projections. 4  Total investment in the euro area has shrunk by almost 20% since the peak in economic activity in 2008. In addition, total factor productivity has also been disappointing in the euro area since 2000: it grew by 0.45% annually from 2000 to 2007 before receding by 0.47% annually between 2007 and 2012 (source: Ameco database, European Commission). 5  See Barroso, J.M., “Remarks by President Barroso on the Country Specific Recommendations 2014”, speech given in Brussels on 2 June 2014. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  the cost of such a reform, independently assessed, could be taken into account under the Stability and Growth Pact, with due attention to the limited fiscal space provided by the high debt levels. Economic stability is a necessary condition for growth, but is not sufficient alone. For our economies to grow out of high debt and unemployment, and thereby ensure social stability, we need to do more.
When evaluating whether the interest rate level is appropriate, one must consider the quality of the analyses of developments in the Norwegian and international economy, as well as the trade-offs that have been made. When we look back and assess interest-rate setting, we must also take into account the reasons for the deviations from the target. For the average annual rise in consumer prices over time to be the same as the inflation target, the disturbances that affect the economy must be fairly symmetrical. Price inflation has been lower than the inflation target for a longer period and the interest rate is being set with a view to gradually closing the inflation gap. The aim is not for inflation to overshoot the target to the same extent a few years ahead. Therefore, when we in retrospect assess interest-rate setting, we cannot solely look at average CPI inflation. Monetary policy must also be seen in the light of historical inflation. In the 1970s and 1980s, inflation was very high and volatile. The economy did not at that time have a nominal anchor. Since the beginning of the 1990s, inflation has been low and stable, both internationally and in Norway. While inflation in the 1970s and 1980s varied between 4 and 15 per cent, inflation has generally remained in the interval 1½ - 3½ per cent since 1990. The economy now has a nominal anchor.

Many big European banking names might not still be with us had it not been for the USD swap lines granted to the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of England (BoE), and the Swiss National Bank (SNB). So the financial crisis revealed a major fault line in cross-border banking in the form of large foreign currency balance sheets featuring significant maturity mismatches, but with limited LOLR facilities in terms of foreign currency. Maturity mismatches are, of course, the bread and butter of banking, and we know how to deal with the risk in a domestic setting: with central bank LOLR operations and deposit insurance complemented by regulation and supervision, partly to deal with the moral hazard issues created by this safety net. This process is facilitated by two factors. First, and abstracting from leakages through the FX market, the funds withdrawn from banks during a domestic run flow in one form or  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  another to the central bank, which can then redirect them back to the banks. Second, central banks have a very large short-run capacity to expand their balance sheets. In the current setting, it is far from guaranteed that this process can be replicated at the international level. In normal times, of course, managing liquidity across currencies from countries with free movement of capital and relatively developed capital markets is not much of an issue.