samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
It is important to recognise the important role that Asia can have in contributing to rebalancing global growth and in so doing contribute towards global adjustment of the imbalances. In terms of economic growth, the region has consistently recorded performance that is, one-and-a-half times higher than the global average. On demographics, Asia is home to more than half of the world's population, with a young and growing workforce, and expanding middle-class in a number of countries. Robust domestic consumption and rising investment have therefore become important sources of growth. This has been supported by the rising income and increased productivity and the expansion of intra-regional trade. The increasing importance of intra-regional trade, which accounts for more than 50% of Asia's total trade, makes the region the next most integrated region after the European Union in trade. This has positioned Asia as the largest and fast-growing market in the world. In addition, the Asian region has also embarked on measures to spur its economic openness by forging free trade agreements, which would contribute to increasing the capacity of the region and the potential of the region, in addition to improving prospects for contributing towards the rebalancing of global growth and the global adjustment process. Combined with the region's traditionally high degree of economic openness with a total trade averaging 95% of GDP in the region, it reflects Asia's potential to be a self-sustaining and mutually reinforcing the region's growth.

Refinements in the structure and content of the GLDP are expected to be introduced in the subsequent sessions and will include, among other things, new areas such as geopolitical and economic trends, corporate entrepreneurship and innovation, diversity and inclusiveness, culture and corporate social responsibility. The US part of the Summer program will also be changed. The change will bring participants closer to distinguished faculty from such renowned institutions as Stanford, UC Berkeley and UCLA. 2  BIS Review 11/2006  Let me now conclude my remarks. Leadership is all about a vision for the future, setting the strategic direction for the organization and having the ability to translate the vision into results. This involves having the ability to promote the shared vision and energizing the organization to produce the results. As I have earlier mentioned to one of the groups of the GLDP program "The quest for leadership excellence is a journey and not a destination." When we talk about enhancing leadership capability, we are talking about leaders who are continuous learners, who strive for cutting edge excellence, leaders who have strong convictions and beliefs and yet having humility and recognizing the need to reinvent themselves and in doing so become dynamic leaders pushing the frontiers of excellence and having the courage to take on the new challenges. Thank you. BIS Review 11/2006  3
As regards funding, our banks have a relatively reasonable wholesale funding maturity structure, with nearly half of the maturities after 2013. Around 20% of the debt issued on markets matures this year. The recent measures to reinforce solvency should, along with headway in restructuring, allow our banks to re-fund when the foregoing maturities fall due without excessive strains, although probably at still-high costs. Evidently, there was a bout of tension last year in the funding of Spanish banks when the wholesale markets practically shut down following the Greek sovereign debt crises. Spanish banks – inevitably – resorted to a greater extent to the ECB. Once the tensions began to evaporate, Spanish banks immediately returned to the wholesale market to place covered bonds, senior debt and guaranteed debt. This response by Spanish banks is very positive and shows their willingness to cut to the full the resort to the ECB. Indeed, our ECB funding levels are currently slightly below our relative weight in the euro area. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  I have so far talked about those areas where we have risks and concerns. I would not wish to wrap up without mentioning an area where we do not have problems. This is, namely, banks’ and savings banks’ exposure to households via mortgage loans for house purchases. Other countries have serious problems with their mortgages, but in Spain the doubtful assets ratios ended 2010 at levels below 3% in this lending portfolio segment, which accounts for more than one-third of the total portfolio.

In our region, the cooperation between the Nordic and Baltic countries is also important in the effort to discover and manage systemic risks. This cooperation also covers plans and preparations for dealing with potential crises. A summary in three reflection Let me conclude where I started. Palmstruch discovered the benefits of a financial system, but also experienced the individual temptations associated with irresponsible lending and how dependent banking operations are on public confidence. Palmstruch also lived to see how the state – rather drastically – learned the lessons of this experience. In this speech I have provided an introduction to banks and financial regulation – why banks are needed, but also the risks they entail. I have argued that the differences between a cost-benefit calculation at the social and private levels justifies a strict regulation of the financial sector and declared that such regulation will always meet with resistance. I have spoken about the global financial crisis, how it was met and how it became a debt crisis in the euro area. I have also spoken about the course we should take in the future, and why. If I were asked to sum up my speech in three reflections they would be as follows:   We have to distinguish between the economic costs of financial regulation at the social and private levels.   Problems in the banking sector cannot be resolved unless we do something about them.
There are two main reasons for the pressures affecting the internationally-exposed sectors: the synchronised economic slowdown over the past year or so in all major industrial countries, on the one hand, and the puzzling persistent weakness of the euro in foreign exchange markets not just against sterling but even more against the dollar, on the other. What that has meant for the UK manufacturing sector is that output in the year to November (the latest month for which we have internationally comparable data) fell by 5.7% and employment fell by 153,000 people, or by nearly 4%. For what it's worth, we were not alone. Comparable figures show that manufacturing output fell by over 13% in Japan, by 6.7% in the US and by 4.3% in Germany, while manufacturing employment fell by 5% in Japan, over 6½% in the US and around ¾% in Germany. The frustrating thing is that, with the best will in the world, there was not much that either we at the Bank or the UK Government could have done to ward off the pressures on UK manufacturing, which had their origins abroad. That's fairly obvious where we are talking about the global slowdown - with negative growth last year of about 1¾% in Japan (fourth quarter on a year earlier) and roughly zero growth in the US and Germany. We can go to international meetings and encourage the respective authorities there to stimulate their economies, but there is nothing that we can do about it directly ourselves.

Over the same period, to the fourth quarter of last year, GDP growth averaged just under 3% a year which is well above most estimates of our trend rate of 2¼%-2½%. GDP has in fact grown for 38 successive quarters which is the longest period of sustained quarter-by-quarter growth we have enjoyed since quarterly records began in the UK in 1955. BIS Review 10/2002  1  Employment has increased steadily from a low point of 25 ½ mn people in the Spring of 1993 to its current level of 28 mn. And the rate of unemployment fell from a peak of over 10½% on the LFS measure to around 5% last summer; while on the claimant count measure it fell from some 10% to just over 3%, which meant that the number of people claiming unemployment benefit, at under 950,000, was the lowest for 26 years. Now some of you - given what's happening to your own businesses - are probably thinking that I must come from a different planet. And yes, we do have a problem. Once you look beneath this apparently benign surface of the economy as a whole, you find very substantial differences between many internationally-exposed sectors of the economy - including particularly many manufacturing businesses - which have recently been having a really tough time, and other businesses largely serving our domestic market which have been doing pretty well.
Our transition into the flexible regime with China allowed for us to achieve it without being destabilised by the financial markets. Bank Negara Malaysia also became one of the first Asian Central Bank to be accorded the QFII status in 2009 as we took steps to diversify our reserves into Chinese and other Asian denominated papers. While China in the current environment is being confronted with challenges as it addresses its areas of vulnerabilities and as it takes steps to rebalance and reform its economy and financial system, it is these very actions that will provide the ground for a more sustainable China that will in turn become a source of stability for the region and for the global economy. Looking ahead, there is much to be done by all of us. I have said that the business of Central Banking is an unfinished business. In view of the highly dynamic environment, there will always be new challenges on the horizon. For Asia, it is the future challenges that we now need to be concerned with. And it is what we do now that will prepare the ground for us for the future. There has been too much focus on the present. In Asia, while we have successfully prepared ourselves for the current environment, we now need to prepare ourselves for the future.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Collaboration and challenges of the central bank community Dinner address by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Bank for International Settlements Closing Dinner, Shanghai, 29 February 2016. *  *  *  It is my honour to be invited to speak tonight at this distinguished gathering of Governors. In my 35 years as a career Central Banker, it has been my privilege to have been associated with the BIS for 20 of those years. The BIS had in the mid-1990s initiated a move to have a greater interface with the emerging world. This translated into an expansion of the membership of the BIS in 1996 and then again in 1999 and 2003, when several Central Banks in emerging Asia became members of the BIS. Today, almost half the membership of the BIS is from the emerging world. This initiative by the BIS under the leadership of the late Sir Andrew Crockett has proven to be highly prescient given the growth of the emerging world in significance and influence in the global economy. The BIS has evolved to become an international organisation that is truly global. The BIS has not only focussed on the important issues on financial stability emanating from financial systems of the developed world but has also surfaced the issues that are important to the emerging world.
Firms countered the pressure on profits by rationalising in an attempt to cut production costs rather than by investing in new products. The diminishing profits simply did not provide the stimulus that was needed for a prompt renewal of the capital stock in response to the pressure for change. A process of change involves shedding, but development is equally important. Most things still looked good to begin with. The 1960s was a fantastic decade for growth. But the strategy proved to be defensive and stagnation set in during the 1970s. Rationalisation has its limits as a means for growth. Without renewal, growth normally slows sooner or later. Measures are called for in periods of growth but it is easy to be deceived and lean back to enjoy the fruits. The long-term growth trend did indeed begin to turn downwards more markedly than in other countries. Economic policy responded with a series of devaluations in an attempt to maintain growth in the traditional industries. The latest devaluation was invariably described as the last, but the cycle of rising wage costs and a devaluation was repeated time and again. The endeavour to compensate for the lack  BIS Review 118/1999  4  of change in Sweden’s corporate sector, which had its roots in the 1960s, simply did not work. If anything, the devaluations meant that the problems persisted and were accentuated.

ASEAN has made a strategic decision to strengthen the organisation politically. It is finalising a Charter that will lay out a bold and visionary future for ASEAN. This will provide an institutional framework for the grouping and transform it into a more effective and efficient rules-based organisation. The Charter will be signed at the Singapore Summit in November. Asia is evolving its architecture for regional cooperation. Today, there are already several overlapping fora and groupings: the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and Shangri-La Dialogue which discuss sensitive security and defence issues, the ASEAN + 3 framework and the recently formed East Asia Summit (EAS). Countries in Asia understand that they must work together to strengthen regional cooperation. These structures complement one another and help to deepen regional integration and build an East Asian community. Building relationships with other regions While the final shape of the regional architecture will not be decided for some time to come, what is clear is that it will be an inclusive and forward-looking one. This was clearly demonstrated in the way participants in the EAS were determined. Instead of going by narrow and outmoded geographical and ethnic notions, the leaders in Asia wisely decided to adopt a forward-looking, inclusive and open definition. Asia will therefore continue to remain open in engaging external players on the understanding that in today’s context, what defines a “region” are ties, connections and interdependency, rather than physical boundaries and ethnicity. The US will continue to play a vital role in Asia’s stability and prosperity.
This is obviously the description of the policy-mix at the current juncture. Moreover, in a context of low R*, fiscal policy is more effective and gains policy space thanks to the accommodation provided by the central bank (as r < g). In turn, the effects of monetary policy, which is constrained by the effective lower bound (ELB), are reinforced by fiscal policy, which becomes today one of its main “transmission channels”. But in the longer run – and in the years to come –, the greatest risk is of course that monetary policy could become subordinated to fiscal policy. If and when inflation reappears, central banks must be able to normalise their stance and increase the interest rates paid on debt. Acting too late or too little, for short-term or political reasons, can be very costly for long-term interest rates and inflation. The best way to foster the current policy-mix congruence while preventing the risk of future fiscal dominance is to establish clear and credible reaction functions for monetary and fiscal policies: For the central bank, the mandate provides a clear guidepost. Forward guidance will of course be very useful in this process, to ensure a smooth and predictable exit. For governments, policy commitments and forward guidance are perceived as less credible because of the well-known time inconsistency problem.

The Bank of Albania has assessed that, driven also by a large global market “drought”, 2008 has recorded reduced foreign currency inflows and increased current deficit. During two last months a moderate foreign exchange rate depreciation was noted. However, we should take into account that Albania is in a more favourable position than other  BIS Review 30/2009  1  economies of the Central and Eastern Europe. Our advantage stands on the fact that unlike other countries of the region, we have not financed our current and trade deficits with shortterm foreign capital inflows, otherwise referred to as “hot money”. The Bank of Albania has prohibited lending to the economy with the so-called “exotic currency”, which once upon a time represented funds of a very low cost, ready to penetrate even to our economy. Let me remind you that many developing economies have fallen into the trap of those funds, suffering now gravely from their flight. Furthermore, we have adopted a flexible exchange rate, unlike fixed or managed exchange rates. The Bank of Albania has assessed that current developments, particularly those of our main partners, will bring about tendencies which are generally different from those with which we have been working over last ten years. Actually, the euro area is in crisis. Economic growth is negative; the euro is loosing terrain versus the dollar; unemployment is increasing; and prices are going down.
William C Dudley: Remarks at the 2015 US Monetary Policy Forum Remarks by Mr William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the 2015 US Monetary Policy Forum, New York City, 27 February 2015. *  *  *  Jonathan McCarthy, Paolo Pesenti and Joseph Tracy assisted in preparing these remarks. It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to comment on this year’s Monetary Policy Forum paper, “The Equilibrium Real Federal Funds Rate, Past, Present and Future.” Let me preface my remarks with the reminder that what I have to say today reflects my own views and not necessarily those of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) or the Federal Reserve System. I think this is a timely topic because it is relevant to several questions that are particularly important in the current environment. First, if one were to use a Taylor-type rule as a guide to assess the stance of monetary policy, what equilibrium real federal funds rate would one currently use in the formula? Given the performance of the economy in recent years, I think it would be very hard to justify the typical assumption of a 2 percent rate. Second, what will this equilibrium real rate be in the future? This is particularly germane right now given that short-term forward interest rates derived from the Treasury yield curve have come down sharply since late 2013.

Policy rules, especially those with fixed values for r*, cannot capture all of the information that is relevant for policymaking. In particular, such rules do not capture the fact that the linkage between the federal funds rate and both financial markets and global conditions can be very loose and shift over time. This is a critical shortcoming because this looseness affects the stability of the relationship between monetary policy and economic outcomes. If the relationship between monetary policy, financial conditions and the real economy were tight and stable over time, then following a relatively simple and unchanging policy rule would likely generate acceptable results. However, if the transmission of monetary policy to the real economy is more variable and uncertain, as I believe it is, then monetary policy cannot be put on autopilot guided only by a fixed policy rule. As an example, one significant conundrum in financial markets currently is the recent decline of forward short-term rates at long time horizons to extremely low levels – for example, the 1-year nominal rate, 9 years forward is about 3 percent currently. My staff’s analysis attributes this decline almost entirely to lower term premia. In this case, the fact that market participants have set forward rates so low has presumably led to a more accommodative set of financial market conditions, such as the level of bond yields and the equity market’s valuation, that are more supportive to economic growth.
Unfortunately in reality what may seem to be a perfect match does not exist in Asia. A large part of the savings in Asia have been channelled through the banking and other financial market channels to the advanced markets and then part of these savings are channelled back to Asia. This pattern of flows has created several problems. Most importantly, with the implementation of Basel III, banks no longer find it attractive to lend to long term infrastructural projects because of the higher capital charge required to hold these assets on their books. More specifically, many European banks, which were very active in infrastructural financing in Asia in the past decade, have reduced their exposures in this area and will continue to do so in the future. So many infrastructural projects in Asia are now finding it increasingly difficult to secure the necessary finance. At the same time, many bankers and fund managers have said that there is still ample supply of funds looking for investment opportunities, but lending or investments in Asia’s infrastructure has been greatly hampered by the shortage of “bankable” projects. So on the one hand Asia has a huge funding need for infrastructural projects but on the other bankers and investors sitting on huge amounts of savings complain that they cannot find sufficient “bankable” projects. Clearly there is a big gap here. There are many reasons why such gap exists, involving factors relating to legal, governance and political risks for investing in Asia’s infrastructure.

9 The global financial market enables business entities, including banks, to raise funds for business development from a larger number of investors than it would have been possible on domestic markets. For instance, in many smaller EU countries, a significant number of bank transactions is carried out with foreign partners. 10 Access to the international capital market for banks and other financial institutions translates not only to the possibility of development, but also to the pressure on improvement of efficiency. The growing  4  Galati G. “Settlement risk in foreign exchange markets and CLS Bank”, w: “BIS Quarterly Review” December 2002, Bank for International Settlements, pp. 55-65. 5  “CLS - purpose, concept and implications”, in: “ECB Monthly Bulletin”, January 2003, European Central Bank, pp. 53-65. 6  Rajan R. “Has financial development made the world riskier?”, Working paper 11728, NBER 2005. 7  Stulz R. “Globalization of equity market and the cost of capital”, Working paper 7021, NBER 1999. 8  Mishkin F. “Is financial globalization beneficial?”, Working paper 11891, NBER 2005. 9  Hardouvelis G., Malliaropulos D., Priestley R., “The impact of globalization on the equity cost of capital”, CEPR Discussion paper 4346, 2004. 10  Schoenmaker D., Oosterioo S. “Cross-Border Issues in European Financial Supervision”, in: Mayes D., Wood G. (editors) “The Structure of Financial Regulation”, London 2005. 8  BIS Review 60/2006  efficiency and better risk management improves the security of deposits placed with banks. Foreign competition is also an important catalyst for dissemination of financial innovations.