samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Although we have seen significant improvements in the macroeconomic indicators, the levels of interest rates still remain high. This is a major concern to the Bank of Zambia and we have continued to engage banks through the Bankers Association of Zambia on this issue. Ladies and Gentlemen, it is worth mentioning here that one of the challenges that banks continue to face is the high levels of non-performing loans due to poor credit culture amongst some borrowers. It is therefore important that credit worthy customers are distinguished from  BIS Review 30/2010  1  high risky borrowers in the banking sector. The Bank of Zambia through the Financial Sector Development Plan has in this regard established the credit reference bureau. The credit reference bureau will enable lenders to make decision based on information specific to each borrower ensuring that risk assessments of potential borrowers are not affected by the habits of other borrowers. Therefore, the pricing of risk will be more reflective of borrower’s particular circumstances. Further, the Bank of Zambia has made it mandatory for banks and other financial service providers to use the credit reference bureau before a loan is provided to any customer. Consequently any loans approved without passing through the Credit Reference Bureau will attract regulatory action. The Bank of Zambia also places great importance on the need to have knowledgeable consumers who play a key role in creating a competitive and fair business environment.

22 As in most central banks, interest rate decisions in Norges Bank are entrusted to a committee. Committee deliberations are informed by advice given by the governor and deputy governor of Norges Bank. Norges Bank’s Executive Board has seven members. The number of committee members at other central banks varies between three and 22. 23 A committee of many members can draw on an ample supply of varied backgrounds and opinions, but a larger number will then also have to have a say in the final decision. While research has yet to determine the optimal committee size, Anne Sibert, one of the experts in this field, has said that the committee should be “dinner size”. 24 5. But groups are no guarantee for good decisions  Norges Bank’s Executive Board can be described as a collegial committee. The committee seeks consensus through deliberations and its members stand behind the final decision. The deliberative process does not necessarily lead to a better decision. When the group members share the same world view and thinking, groupthink can lead the members astray. There is typically little dissent in discussions where participants think alike. The group can therefore be convinced that their common standpoint must be right. 25 Nor is it unusual for independent thinking to be lost in a group setting. At an internal conference, the research department at Norges Bank was divided into three groups tasked with answering three sets of questions.
Overall, although, from an empirical standpoint further analysis is needed, it is difficult to reject the view that the policy of low interest rates contributed to the steady credit dynamics in the period preceding the crisis. Certainly, this is a theme that should be studied further in the economic literature in the next few years. 3. The new steady state  Given that the financial crisis has demonstrated the excesses in credit developments in the past, it is necessary to identify a new, sustainable equilibrium point. To reach this steady state, important measures are needed in various areas, many of which are already in  7  Eventually, this required a clean-up programme with an estimated cost of USD 150 billion. 8  See, for example, A. Ashcraft and T. Schuermann. 9  Ben Bernanke, “Monetary Policy and the Housing Bubble”, a speech delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 3 January 2010. 10  T. Adrian and H.S. Shin, “Money, liquidity and monetary policy”, American Economic Review, P&P, vol. 99, No 2, pp. 600–605, 2009; J.B. Taylor, “The financial crisis and the policy responses: an empirical analysis of what went wrong”, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series, No 14631, 2009. 11  M.K. Brunnermeier, “Asset pricing under asymmetric information – bubbles, crashes, technical analysis and herding”, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001; R.G.

But in another sense one can say that this is not the case, if the Riksbank – as an independent central bank – says that the purchases are made for monetary policy purposes. Monetary financing does not entail the purchases themselves. Under certain circumstances, purchases of government bonds can be monetary financing, but under other circumstances they are not. This is what makes it difficult to define the concept. It is important to understand that the Riksbank's government bond purchases do not mean that the state's costs of issuing bonds disappear. If the Riksbank purchases some of the government bond stock, then part of the state’s debt will be financed by private agents and another part by the Riksbank with central bank reserves. The state costs of the private part of the debt is the yield on the government bonds. The cost for the part the Riksbank has purchased is different however, and not as obvious. The state’s interest payments on the government bonds purchases by the Riksbank fall to the Riksbank. But the Riksbank is a public authority whose income and expenditure is a part of the state's total budget constraint. The interest the state pays to the Riksbank in other words falls to the state itself, the net cost to the state is therefore zero. However, the Riksbank pays interest – that is, the policy rate – on the central bank reserves that have financed the government bond purchases.
That is less than the average growth rate of nearly 3% in the decade before the crisis but around the average growth rate in the last 60 years. It will, according to the OECD, be the fastest growth rate among G7 economies this year. Over the period, inflation has been pushed down to around zero by the strength of sterling and by the very sharp fall in the oil price. I hesitate to describe the oil price fall as an “unfortunate event”. Much of the fall is the result of an increase of supply, the product of the oil investment cycle that accompanied oil prices staying at over $ per barrel for much of the last ten years. That will have boosted consumption and supported growth in oil-consuming countries like the UK. But the speed and size of the fall has made the shock to inflation very abrupt and exposed weaknesses in oil-producing economies. And more worryingly some of the fall over the last 18 months has been due not to an increase in supply but rather to slowing demand in emerging markets especially China. This will have had an adverse effect on world growth. There are continued signs of strength in the UK economy. Consumer confidence is near record levels and business investment intentions are strong. Housing market transactions and investment are picking up. Credit has picked up and is growing around the rate of GDP. On pre-crisis metrics, there are signs of tightening in the labour market.

The general improvement in the availability of foreign exchange necessitated the Bank of Zambia’s participation in the market. In this regard, the Bank recorded a net purchase of US $ million compared with net purchase or sale of US $ million in the third quarter. Balance of payments 35. Preliminary data show that Zambia recorded an overall balance of payments (BoP) deficit of US $ million during the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to the surplus of US $ million recorded in the third quarter of the year. This was largely due to the unfavourable performance in both the current account balance and the capital and financial account. 36. During the period under review, the current account surplus declined to US $ million from US $ million recorded the previous quarter, largely on account of a decline in the merchandise trade surplus and widening of the net income deficit. 37. The merchandise trade surplus declined by 9.2% to US $ million in the fourth quarter of 2010, from US $ million recorded in the third quarter, following an increase in imports, which outweighed the rise in exports. Merchandise export earnings, rose by 5.2% to US $ million from US $ million recorded in the previous quarter. This was due to an increase in metal exports earnings by 7.3% to US $ million from US $ million in the previous quarter. 38.
Opening remarks at the £ note launch Speech given by Mark Carney Governor of the Bank of England  Winchester Cathedral Tuesday 18 July 2017  1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  I would like to express my gratitude to Dean Catherine Ogle for her generosity in hosting this event in the magnificent Winchester Cathedral. There can be no better place to unveil the new £ banknote, featuring Jane Austen, and there can be no th  better time than today, the 200 anniversary of her death. This building, admired by Austen herself, commemorates her legacy and has become a place of pilgrimage for her admirers. The inscription on her grave, in the north aisle of the Nave of the Cathedral, attests to her character: “The benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her and the warmest love of her intimate connections”. A brass plaque on the wall alongside recognises her many writings. And the memorial window above them all, paid for by public subscription, testifies to the popularity and enduring appeal of her work. An appeal which draws a regular procession of tourists from all over the world. Banknote character 1  £ would have meant a lot to Jane Austen – about the same as £ would mean to us today. £ was half the annual allowance she received from her father while he was alive.

That said, it is equally important for policymakers to ensure that mechanisms for swift NPL resolution remain appropriate, not only to prevent an accumulation of legacy NPLs in the banking sector but also to provide borrowers impacted by this pandemic an opportunity to bounce back once the crisis abates. Such a balanced approach helps to preserve the value and productive capacity of borrowers in turn limiting long-term damage to the economy. For Malaysia, work is underway to strengthen legislation which will expand the coverage of businesses that can benefit from court-sanctioned recovery mechanisms. This will help flatten the insolvency curve and avoid more permanent scarring, if NPL cases were to spike. Admittedly, this is an area where there are opportunities to do more and one where all of us can potentially learn from each other. Concluding remarks Let me conclude. Looking ahead, we are cautiously optimistic that the tide may be finally turning in this crisis. However, we certainly can’t conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic is firmly behind us. We humbly admit that the virus has wrong footed us several times. The hallmark of good policymakers is to, as the saying goes, “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst”.
Trends which have been ongoing in the past decade, such as rising inequality in AngloSaxon countries and the current financial crisis, could determine, however, a shift in the preferences of the US population in favour of greater State intervention in sectors such as education and health care. This is, at least, what seems to come out from the election of the new US president. The reduced importance of the public sector as an automatic stabiliser could increase US business cycle variability and create the scope for more discretionary fiscal stabilisation measures. The preference for discretionary interventions is enhanced by the low tolerance in the US for protracted slowdowns of economic growth. This may hinge, inter alia, on the impact that economic slowdowns may have on social cohesion in an environment with fewer automatic stabilisers. Another reason may have to do with the frequency of the electoral contests, not only in the executive but also and especially in the legislative branch, where elections take place every 2 years. It is well known, in fact, that the economic situation has a crucial importance for voters. Ricardian equivalence is one widely debated aspect of the discretionary component of budget policy. It is worth pointing out that a financial agent adopting a Ricardian approach is capable of looking ahead and of understanding that higher government spending today will entail higher taxes tomorrow. Thus a Ricardian consumer does not easily alter his spending in response to fiscal injections.

Conclusions  In conclusion, if monetary and budget policies appear to be different on the two shores of the Atlantic, and indeed have been in terms of gradualism and activism, the reason does not necessarily lie in differences of conduct on the part of the economic policy authorities, but in differences in the way the economies are structured and in how they function. Let us take a look at the current monetary policy stance in the two economies, where the policy interest rate has been brought to 1% in the US, 350 basis points below the level one year ago, while in the euro area it was reduced to 3.25%, just 75 below the levels of one year ago. Anyone who, in comparing the different stance of monetary policy between the US and the euro area, fails to take into account the differences in economic structure and in the shocks hitting the two economies is making an error of judgment. In particular, the US economy has been hit by a major slump in the real estate market, which in Europe is restricted to only a few countries. The financial crisis, that started on the other side of the Atlantic but it has propagated rapidly on our side, is having a bigger impact on the US banking system’s capability to convey financing to non-financial firms on account of the different financial structure.
I trust that in taking part in the competition you have been able to find out more about what we do at the ECB, why we do it, and how our monetary policy works. It seems obvious that you should know what we do at the ECB or what people do in their national central banks. But as a matter of fact, if you do polls, you would be surprised by the amount of confusion that people have. For example, lots of people, about one-third, think that central banks are like other banks, that they are by and large not very different from what other banks do. Now, you will be the selected category that will know that the ECB is a central bank and that central banks are different from banks. And even more importantly, through this exercise, you actually got to have, at a very young age, a European perspective. You understood what is still really missing from lots of people, who still think in terms of national borders. It is very important, of course, but it is not the only reality that we are living through. In fact, the European perspective becomes much more important as time passes. Why is that? Well, because there are many challenges that are in fact supranational by their very nature. That is to say, you can’t really respond to these challenges, and you can’t really address the problems at national level if they are supranational.

For the advanced economies, it is the uncertainty about the timing of exit policy, and whether the commitment to fiscal consolidation by the major economies can be sustained given the adverse implications for growth. For emerging markets, there is uncertainty about the policy approach that emerging markets will use to manage large capital inflows particularly in Asia. This involves the policy choice between exchange rate management, monetary policy, and the use of macro-prudential and capital control. In my view, uncertainty about policy has been of most concern for financial markets, resulting in increased volatility and a constant shift in investor sentiment between risk aversion and risk appetite. As for Thailand, in addition to the global uncertainties, we also have our own home-grown uncertainty linked to domestic political developments, which have added another dimension of risk to economic recovery and to the prospect of Thailand’s growth in the longer-term. How has the Thai economy performed so far amidst all this risk and challenges? Today, an important decision was made by the Bank of Thailand’s Monetary Policy Committee to begin a process of policy normalization by raising the policy interest rate by 25 basis points to 1.50 percent. The decision represents the first increase in fifteen months since the policy rate was reduced cumulatively by 2.5 percentage points to cushion the economy from the global recession. But more importantly, it also marks an important turning point in our assessment of the economy’s growth and inflation outlook, taking into account the impact of the political situation.
More recently, though, serious fiscal challenges have surfaced that are closely interrelated with the Island’s ongoing weak economic performance. Persistent deficits in the Commonwealth’s fiscal accounts as well as mounting deficits in the operation of the several major public corporations have substantially raised the Island’s overall level of public debt and led to serious concerns about whether the Island’s fiscal position is sustainable. In light of the fiscal pressures Puerto Rico now faces, the New York Fed is undertaking an update to our earlier report. In this new report, we plan to focus on Puerto Rico’s fiscal health. We will examine the factors leading to the sizeable buildup of public debt on the Island and the key variables that will determine its future trend. In some ways, the data on Puerto Rico’s public debt clearly define the fiscal problems the Island faces. But meeting with a variety of stakeholders, as I have on this visit, will help to inform our analysis and will provide us with concrete evidence of how these issues are playing out across the Puerto Rico economy. The clear challenge going forward will be for the Commonwealth government to continue to make progress on its efforts to raise its economic growth rate while at the same time to take credible steps to constrain the buildup of debt. The demanding choices Puerto Rico makes today will affect its long-run economic prospects and the future livelihood of its residents.

I would like to reiterate: •  that all European banks now have unlimited access to short-term liquidity, denominated in both euro and dollars, at a fixed rate;  •  that in all countries there are guarantee mechanisms enabling banks to ensure their financing and therefore to maintain their credit activities;  •  that banking systems are all being recapitalised at equivalent or higher levels than those prevailing before the crisis;  •  and lastly, that macroeconomic policy instruments are still available and could be used if economic activity were to decline durably. Moreover, for the past two months we have witnessed a reversal of the oil and food shock which strongly penalised economic growth during the first half of the year. Prices are now falling. If this trend continues, or even if it just stabilises, we can expect a gradual but marked  4  BIS Review 130/2008  slowdown in inflation. This should spontaneously give households extra purchasing power, contributing to a possible pick up in consumption. Together, these developments could stabilise the economy and allow a recovery in economic growth during 2009. We cannot, of course, predict a precise date or forecast the extent of this recovery. However, in my opinion, the prospect of a significant recovery in economic growth in 2009 is not being sufficiently taken into account, either by analysts or markets.
The international recovery is progressing It is natural to begin a survey of inflation perspectives by touching upon the international economy. At the end of 2002, the Riksbank and other forecasters expected world economic activity to embark on an upturn. However, during spring 2003, we gradually had to revise down our growth forecasts. While a recovery in the world economy was still expected, it was now judged to occur at a later stage. The weak growth, however, prompted a shift to more expansionary economic policy in many countries. Both the European Central Bank (ECB) and the US Federal Reserve, as well as the Riksbank and other central banks, continued to cut key interest rates to historically very low levels. However, most factors now indicate that both the Riksbank and other forecasters were somewhat overly pessimistic in connection with the Iraq war, particularly regarding the view of economic developments in the US. During the second half of 2003, we have had reason to again revise up our growth forecasts for the world economy. What has happened then since December, when the Riksbank published its latest Inflation Report and forecasts? The most apparent and perhaps the single most important change in the world economy has been the sharp depreciation of the dollar, mainly against the euro. It is likely that the dollar’s weakening against both the euro and the yen is an effect of the US current account deficit, coupled with a growing deficit in the US federal budget.

As opposed to the situation in the two most recent  BIS Review 6/2004  3  wage bargaining rounds, unemployment has risen recently. There is neither any shortage of labour other than within very limited areas. It is also positive that the rate of wage increases last year was decelerating and that this was also the case for expected inflation. With the currently low rate of inflation, even limited nominal wage increases would imply higher real wages. The demands that have been put forward are also lower than what has been the case in recent years. At the same time, there is always the risk of disturbances from the negotiation process itself. Neither is it inconceivable that some of the productivity gains will be taken to justify a higher wage-payment capacity. In December, the Riksbank revised down its forecast of unit labour costs somewhat. Behind this was both a marginally more positive view of productivity growth and a small decline in the rate of wage increases. The data that has been received since December reinforces this picture. As I see it, there is probably reason now to further revise down the forecast of unit labour costs somewhat and thereby also the forecast for domestic inflationary pressure. Inflation and monetary policy That brings me to the inflation assessment. In 2003 average inflation was somewhat above target. However, the situation changed considerably over the year.