samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
According to the Federal Reserve Act, the US central bank should “promote effectively the  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Against this background, I have in recent years advocated a significantly lower policy rate and policy-rate path in order to attain an inflation rate closer to the target and an unemployment rate closer to a long-run sustainable rate. As unemployment has been high for a long time and is therefore becoming entrenched, a particularly expansionary monetary policy is now needed to bring unemployment down to a long-run sustainable rate. The inflation rate must therefore be temporarily allowed to overshoot the target. In the longer run, it is a case of conducting a monetary policy that provides an average rate of CPI inflation at or close to the target and of not repeating the policy that has led to unnecessarily high unemployment since 1997. I will now go on to discuss why a more expansionary monetary policy would not have any significant effects on the potential risks associated with household indebtedness, what the costs of the tight monetary policy are in the short and long run in terms of increased unemployment, what determines the long-run sustainable rate of unemployment, how we should view the arguments put forward that monetary policy cannot do very much about the high rate of unemployment and why a more expansionary monetary policy with inflation temporarily above the target is needed to bring unemployment down to a long-run sustainable rate.

Let us now see what it is like today: Growth is over 7%, and average growth from 2006 to 2012 has been 6.7%; Growth appears to be on course to reach around the 8% level from next year; Foreign reserves exceed $ 6.3 billion and around 4.4 months of imports; The country enjoys peaceful and stable conditions; Foreign investment inflows are strong and foreign Investment via international sovereign bonds and Government paper amounts to about $ billion; Unemployment is around 3.6%; Poverty is down to about the 6% mark; Inflation has been at single digit levels over the past 4 ½ years; GDP is at about $ billion; Per capita income is around $ 3,000; The economy is being diversified under a 5Hub + Tourism strategy to avoid the middle income trap; The Fiscal deficit has been limited to 6.4% in 2012, and on a reducing trend; The Debt to GDP level is below 80% and falling; The level of infrastructure has improved tremendously; The Doing Business global rank is at the 81st, and is poised to jump about 10 places this year; Regional development has made tangible progress and the Western Province share of GDP has dropped to around 43%; Regular foreign investment is flowing into banks and the stock market; Private remittances have reached nearly 10% of GDP, or about $ 6 billion in actual inflows; The banking system has been stable and even in the midst of very difficult global circumstances, the country enjoys favourable reviews from many influential international quarters.
Since then, the value of the fund has risen to almost three times mainland GDP. The value of the fund is now around NOK 8 000 billion (Chart 16).12 Its assets are invested abroad in equities, bonds and real estate. With the substantial capital accumulated in the fund, Norway has become a major investor in the global capital market. Chart 16 Government Pension Fund Global. In billions of NOK. To 2017 Q3 10000 Government’s net cash flow Return Krone exchange rate  8000  Economic perspectives 15 february 2018  10000 8000  Non−oil budget deficit 1) Value of fund  6000  6000  4000  4000  2000  2000 0  0  –2000  –2000 1998  2001  2004  2007  2010  2013  2016  1) Including discrepancies attributable to accounting differences between the central government accounts and Norges Bank’s financial statements. The cumulative discrepancy varies between NOK 5 billion and NOK 41 billion. Sources: Ministry of Finance and Norges Bank  During periods of substantial oil and gas revenues, large capital transfers have been made to the fund. The government’s total net cash flow from petroleum activities comes to around NOK 5 000 billion. The return on the fund has been solid. The cumulative return amounts to more than NOK 3 800 billion.13 Since 2014, the krone depreciation has also contributed to the considerable increase in the value of the fund in krone terms. This does not, however, affect the fund’s international purchasing power.

Sources: Thomson Reuters, Jordà−Schularick−Taylor Macrohistory Database and Norges Bank  The economic downturn that followed the financial crisis stands apart from earlier recessions.2 It was both deeper and longer. Potent measures were deployed to address the crisis, but it has still taken time to get the world economy back on its feet. The financial crisis has taught us important lessons. First, low and stable inflation was not enough to guarantee economic stability. A complex financial sector, insufficient capital in the banking industry and substantial debt among some groups created risks that were underestimated. Second, we have been given a stark reminder of how severe the impact of a financial crisis can be. A credit crunch, high uncertainty and falling 1 Rygg, N. (1948): “I økonomisk stormvær” [Weathering the economic storm]. Festschrift for Joh. H. Andresen, also published as an annex to the periodical Statsøkonomisk tidsskrift nr. 3/4 1948 (Norwegian only). 2 Data are from Jordà, O., M. Schularick, and A. M. Taylor (2017): “Macrofinancial History and the New Business Cycle Facts” In: M. Eichenbaum and J. A. Parker. NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2016, volume 31. University of Chicago Press. 2  demand set the stage for a downward spiral. Businesses failed and unemployment soared. Third, there were few signs of an unaided return to economic stability. Without powerful economic policy measures, there was a risk of a self-reinforcing recession. Monetary policy had to take on substantial responsibility. Norges Bank Economic perspectives 15 february 2018  In the past few years, advanced-economy growth has steadily strengthened.
Although Asia’s potential growth remains higher than in other regions, recent studies pointed to a possible reduction in trend growth since the 2008 financial crisis.1 In my reading of anecdotal evidence and through policy discussions, two common drags to long-term growth among emerging Asia are the labor shortage and the decline in productivity growth. Let me explain the labor market issue using the case of Thailand as an example. The problem of labor shortage has been deep rooted in Thailand for many years but has not received much attention until recently. This could be partly due to favorable economic expansion during the past years that has masked this problem and also because of the ability on the part of firms to employ immigrant workers. But now with protracted external demand slowdown coinciding with recent weakening in domestic demand, long-standing weakness of the labor market has emerged as an important bottleneck hampering potential growth. Leaving aside the demographic aging problem that has yet to reach its peak, pervasive skills mismatch has been identified as a main cause of labor shortage. In particular, workers with vocational training needed by manufacturing industry, is in much shorter supply relative to university graduates. This has been one of the major holdbacks on manufacturing capacity.

Chart: 3 Lending interest rate and the adjustment* Interest rates on enterpise loans, in %  18  Interest rates on household loans, in %  18  2015  SLO  2014  SRB  2013  ROM  2012  POL  2011  MKD  SLO  SRB  ROM  POL  MKD  LIT  0  LAT  2  0  HUN  4  2  EST  6  4  CZR  8  6  CRO  10  8  BUL  12  10  BIH  12  HUN  14  2015  EST  2014  CZR  2013  CRO  2012  BUL  2011  BIH  14  LIT  16  LAT  16  Change 2016 - 2007 in pp 0  -1 -2 -3 -4 -5  Policy rate  Lending rates  -6 -7 -8  Source: Central Banks’ internet pages. *Policy rates in Baltic countries are approximated with the ECB interest rate, while for Bulgaria, where currency board is in place, the interbank rate is used as a proxy. The ease of the lending rates, was probably important, but not sufficient prerequisite for enabling stronger credit financial flows in the region. Although in the last couple of years signs of credit recovery are visible in many of the countries, it is still tepid, and in some of the countries deleveraging of the private sector continues.
This is why it is important not to give the wrong incentives to capital flows. This reminds me of my days as a child when, being asked what I want to become when I grow up, I confessed that I wanted to be a firefighter. It turns out that I am now a central banker, which is not far from being a firefighter in these uncertain times. National Bank of Romania has started the tightening cycle of the monetary policy, to contain the higher inflation and inflation expectations. Although most of it is supply-side and temporary, and fighting fiscal loosening with monetary tightening is a sub-optimal policy mix, we considered that the 3 rate hikes we implemented this year were warranted to preserve a hard-fought public good: price stability. Coming to an end of my intervention, I would like to express a few thoughts on one of the most important remarks of the REO. It states that “the recovery provides an opportunity to move faster to deepen the Economic and Monetary Union”. The report details three lines of action in this regard: completing the Banking Union, creating a central fiscal capacity, and advancing with the Capital Union. Too much financial innovation, deregulation and the blind, theological belief in self-regulating markets have brought us here, back to the era of re-regulation; but coordination is needed for that, and Glexit is threatening this coordination. It is however undeniable that the completion of the Banking Union is of paramount importance.

After rising initially with the substantial costs associated with bank recapitalization programs, in recent years public debt ratios have generally been declining as a share of GDP. Monetary policy regimes have become more mature, with some progress toward greater de facto independence for central banks, with clearer mandates for price stability. Exchange rate regimes in the crisis countries have become somewhat more flexible, providing greater scope for monetary policy to sustain the domestic conditions for price stability. Financial systems are substantially stronger. Bank capital ratios now provide a significantly larger cushion against potential losses – though capital ratios in Asian banking sectors are still generally lower than those in other emerging economies. The quality of bank assets has improved. Nonperforming loans, estimated to have peaked at between one-quarter and three-quarters of total loans in the crisis countries, are now under 10 percent of total loans. Financial institutions that required government intervention have largely been restored to private ownership. Domestic capital markets  2  BIS Review 65/2007  are an increasingly important channel of intermediation in financial systems that had historically been dominated by banks. These are impressive achievements by any measure. And the changes that have taken place provide a strong foundation for future growth and they make it much less likely that these economies will be vulnerable to the type of crises of a decade ago. This progress is reflected in a broad range of financial market indicators of risk. Risk premia in domestic interest rates markets are low.
The recent international crisis showed that at the time of continuing financial integration and economic globalization, small economies like Albania’s or other countries’ in the region, should not count only on some natural protection coming from less developed financial markets and a much lower level of indebtedness from the households and businesses, to compensate over time for potential risks coming from less diversified economic growth, overreliance in remittances, insufficient culture of risk management in financial institutions and other economic agents – in particular for the exchange rate and liquidity risk, and very  BIS Review 139/2009  3  limited space from the public authorities to introduce anti-crisis financial measures similar to those in the developed countries. Hence, policy measures should address these and other deficiencies to find a proper solution in the medium-term. Such measures should reflect the preference for preventive approaches. In fact, over the last 4 to 5 years the Bank of Albania was vigilant over time to point out areas of the banking activity that required attention from the industry. We have expressed our concern regarding the rapid increase in lending, as we believed that this could negatively affect the credit quality. The composition of the loan portfolio, which is dominated by the euro-denominated loans, has also been identified as a point of concern.

The borrowing in the international markets by the financial institutions was also affected by increasing fiscal and current accounts deficits, arising due to wrong policies that created imbalances in the saving-consumption behavior of most important economic players in the economy, including the households. It is now a question, whether some of these issues could be addressed by a more powerful role of the monetary policy. Financial integration, among other things, has also contributed in the rapid expansion of the financial activity, and many financial institutions have become too big for a single country. This has occurred at a time when, for the same reason, the “de facto” power of regulation has shifted away from the local supervisors toward their host counterparties. Hence, despite a steady trend of convergence between financial legislation in many countries, there are still marked differences that, particularly at a crisis situation, create strong tensions between public authorities in different countries. A very strong effort by the public authorities in the world to address the abovementioned issues in order to improve the supervisory standards and superstructure is now underway. Both in the United States of America and in the European Union, the creation of special institutions is being envisaged, whose role will be to identify and control systemic risk through a different supervisory approach for financial institutions with systemic importance. At the same time, such financial institutions are expected to become subject of a more stringent regulatory framework in terms of capital and liquidity requirements, balance sheet composition and expansion, and governance relationships.
We have no foreign exchange controls and do not impose tax on offshore income, capital gains, dividends, estate or sales. There is free movement of capital, talent and goods. It is a combination of many factors including political stability, a  2  Sources: Islamic Financial Services Board; IFSL Research. 3  Source: Chatham House report on “The Gulf as a Global Financial Centre”. 2  BIS Review 146/2008  strong legal and regulatory regime, and a pro-business market environment which makes Hong Kong a popular city for international business in Asia. Given these core values, there are no barriers to entry and no obstacles to mobility for financial and human capital from local and overseas financial institutions planning to engage in Islamic or conventional finance in Hong Kong. The second aspect is the unique role Hong Kong plays in the economic development of China. In the past three decades when the Mainland was achieving economic liberalisation, Hong Kong has capitalised on its strong cultural and geographic links to become the gateway connecting the Mainland market to the world. Our close and increasing economic cooperation with the Mainland undoubtedly makes Hong Kong the natural choice for anyone wishing to tap into China’s high savings rate and huge growth potential. Hong Kong is the premier capital formation centre for the Mainland and hence a global investment platform for enterprises from around the world wishing to gain exposure to China’s growth.

This suggests that there is still ample room for growth on the supply side in the provision of Islamic financial products. On the demand side, the potential of Islamic finance is often linked to the 1.4 billion-strong Muslim population worldwide, and some people appear to believe that this obviates the need for further development of Islamic finance. But population is not the only factor: economic development in Islamic regions also has to be taken into account. The IMF has estimated that there are some $ billion worth of investment projects under way or in the pipeline in countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) over the next five years, with major projects in the oil and gas sectors, infrastructure and real estate. According to a UK research report, the annual investment rate in the range of $ billion to $ billion in the GCC is about half the annual rate of India and one-tenth that of China. 3 As some of the deals may be of a scale that requires financial risks to be spread internationally, global banks are already geared up to tap this market through the formation of Islamic bank subsidiaries and Islamic banking windows. With the increased participation of global and regional players, project financing opportunities will increasingly attract interest from investors worldwide and that project finance will need to be delivered in forms that comply with the principles of Islamic finance. This in turn will fuel the demand for Islamic finance.
This would mean that last year's results were good, but no more than that. To hope that the SNB could distribute considerably more than CHF 1 billion in profits over a sustained period is tantamount either to forcing it to take more risks in managing its reserves, or to cutting back the level of funds set aside as currency reserves. In other words, its position on the markets would be weakened. Given our current level of reserves, this would be unwise. Dear shareholders Dear guests The Swiss National Bank must retain the confidence of the population and the markets if it is to conduct its policies effectively. The Cosa initiative is playing with fire. It constitutes a permanent  4  BIS Review 34/2006  invitation to press never-ending financial demands. It places the SNB at the centre of a permanent political debate which threatens both its credibility and the effectiveness of its policies. That is why good sense dictates that it be rejected. The SNB needs the support of everyone in this tricky phase and, in particular, the support of its shareholders. I would like to thank you for your attendance today, and for your continual interest in our activities. BIS Review 34/2006  5

And those same AI systems and processes are being used today across the financial sector to bring benefits to consumers, to firms, and to the UK financial system as a whole. AI-driven online platforms may, for example, help customers manage their money and savings more effectively, as well as make the processing of loan applications or insurance claims easier, quicker, and more transparent. Financial firms may, in turn, benefit from AI in making efficiency and productivity gains, in tailoring products to customers’ needs, and in more effective ways of combating financial crime. AI may also boost the overall efficient functioning and resilience of financial markets and the wider economy. Clearly, the world is a very different place today from the one we started this year with; and while the COVID crisis has had, and will continue to have, a profound impact on the economy, and on the households and businesses that drive it, it has also increased and focussed interest in the potential uses of AI in tackling some of the many immediate problems and challenges precipitated by the crisis. For example, many businesses, including financial firms, are looking to use AI, sometimes combined with alternative data sources, for enhancing customer engagement, for driving more automation of internal processes, and for improving virtual working environments.
Ladies and gentlemen, We find ourselves, today, at a juncture where governments and central banks alike have promptly stepped in globally to counter the negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic through social, economic, fiscal and monetary policies. The unprecedented mobilisation of the authorities 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  in a complex and determined manner has largely ensured the proper functioning of markets, and of the economic and social mechanisms. In this regard, enhancing the response capacity to adverse situations is essential, and this goal can also be achieved by strengthening corporate governance, supervision, and risk management in the financial sector. These are the key coordinates of the new twinning programme as well. The twinning project we are launching today has a wide scope, not only for the banking sector, but also for the entire financial market in the Republic of Moldova. It aims to be beneficial for both the National Bank of Moldova and the National Commission for Financial Markets of the Republic of Moldova, by strengthening institutional capacity and governance, as well as developing the regulatory, supervisory and operational frameworks for enhanced functionality. From my perspective, the National Bank of Romania has gained over time, after 1990, with the support of its partners in the European Union – including the support of De Nederlandsche Bank, which I would like to mention explicitly – a solid experience and expertise.

The survey revealed that 90% of the respondents recognize the need for digital innovation in the financial sector and 72% are already in the process of implementing some form of  2/3  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  digital transformation. There is an agreement among respondents that regulation can sometimes be a barrier for a swifter innovation. To eliminate regulatory barriers, a new Law on Payment Systems has been prepared and is currently undergoing a parliamentary procedure. We have already drafted the First National FinTech Strategy, which will soon be shared with other stakeholders. Tomorrow, under our initiative, all financial regulators will sign a Memorandum for setting up a FinTech Committee with a view of promoting digitalization in the financial sector. To recap, there are no doubts that faster and inclusive income convergence calls for strengthened efforts to lift the growth potential, and perhaps even more importantly to lift the quality of growth. In this context, we would like to express our gratitude to EBRD for supporting us for almost three decades with more than EUR 2 billion total investment to date aimed at supporting competitiveness, trade integration and green transition. Despite the current headwinds which put economic growth at risk and require immediate policy focus, we should not lose sight of a longer term structural agenda, including digitalization. As Andy Rooney said, "Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it." So, let us keep climbing. Thank you.