samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
We  BIS Review 68/2004  1  believe that improving risk management helps to increase the stability of the global financial system - a goal that would benefit not just banks, but more broadly businesses and consumers. To foster greater financial stability, the Basel Committee blended several policy approaches to replace the existing capital framework. Basel II consists of three mutually reinforcing pillars. The first pillar aligns the minimum capital requirements more closely to banks’ actual underlying risks. Many banks will rely on external measures of those risks to determine their capital requirements. These might include drawing on credit ratings issued by external rating agencies or on supervisors’ assessments of the degree of operational risk inherent in various businesses. More sophisticated institutions, in comparison, may qualify to rely partly on their own measures of those risks when determining their capital requirements, an innovation that will help to create economic incentives for banks to improve those measures. The second pillar - supervisory review - allows supervisors to evaluate each bank’s assessments of its own risks and to determine whether those assessments seem reasonable. Ultimately each bank’s own management is responsible for assessing and responding prudently to all of the risks that a bank faces, including those risks that might not be captured entirely in the first pillar. The second pillar will therefore foster a dialogue between banks and their supervisors on the nature of the risks that banks face and the measures they take to control them, including holding aside sufficient levels of capital.

Apart from the measures taken by the Riksbank, crisis measures taken by the Ministry of Finance and the National Debt Office of course affect costs (spreads) on the credit market. Fiscal policy stimulation measures also affect the costs of credit risk and thus the price of credit. We should also remember that supervisory and regulatory measures that establish different forms of constraint, for example capital adequacy requirements for the banks, can indirectly affect the price of credit. A question that we are wrestling with just now is how serious the credit crunch is and whether there is a risk that it will hit the non-financial sector so hard that it will have major repercussions on the real economy over and above the credit crunch that normally follows a recession that undermines the creditworthiness of companies and households. On the one hand the supply of credit declines when the banks want to shrink their balance sheets. Many companies in the Riksbank’s company survey state, for instance, that they are finding it difficult to borrow at longer maturities. On the other hand, the demand for credit should also  BIS Review 41/2009  13  decline as a consequence of weak economic activity. What can be done about this and what is the role of the central banks in easing the credit crunch? The Riksbank's view is that it is the financial system that as far as possible should be strengthened in order to ease the credit crunch.
The figures in Table 1 have been updated with details for 2017. 11 These calculations only show interest payments and ignore effects on interest income. 9  9 [13]  Table 1. Households more affected more by interest rate adjustments than previously Interest payments for a typical housing purchase, SEK per month Sweden Greater Stockholm Housing price (SEK million) Debt (SEK million) Interest rate (%) Interest payments Increase in interest payments (+1%)  2004 1.3 0.8 3.7 1793 485  2017 3.0 2.0 1.6 1814 1161  2004 2.6 1.6 3.7 3452 934  2017 6.0 4.0 1.6 3643 2351  Note. The amounts have been adjusted for tax relief on interest payments. The table does not include amortisations. Sources: Finansinspektionen, Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  Rate increases in line with the Riksbank’s forecast are expected to have minor cashflow effects on households as a whole ... In the Monetary Policy Report in December, our assessment was that total disposable household income would slow by about 1.3 per cent in a three-year perspective as a result of rising interest rates. 12 This must be considered a minor effect, especially bearing in mind that rising wages, among other factors, will contribute about 4 percentage points a year to the growth in disposable household income in the coming years. Total disposable income, according to our forecast, will continue to grow at a healthy rate in the years to come, despite rising interest rates.

While the basic legal, regulatory and supervisory framework that takes into account the distinctive features of Islamic finance are already in place, efforts are now underway to put in place a comprehensive infrastructure to deal with the new challenges confronting the international financial system. Looking beyond the current crisis, an integrated crisis management framework will be part of this infrastructure. It is recognised that a more facilitative and modernised legal framework is also required and that the boundaries of the regulatory framework for Islamic finance would also have to be regularly adapted to keep pace with the evolution and transformation of the financial system. Finally, the supervisory framework for Islamic finance is also being reinforced by a financial safety net framework that comprises the lender of last resort facility and a deposit insurance system. These financial arrangements are now in place in Malaysia. Also important are the institutional arrangements for resolution of troubled Islamic financial institutions. In Malaysia, we have in place a mandated resolution mechanism to provide for expedient, effective and cost efficient resolution of Islamic financial institutions. Yet to be put in place however, is a mechanism for cooperation between regulators within and across jurisdictions for resolution to contain potential systemic risks beyond the national boundaries.
In a world of low growth, the political rhetoric in some major economies has tended to focus more on the costs and less on the benefits. That is unfortunate, because given the current circumstances of the global economy, it is likely that we need deeper and fairer integration. For emerging economies in Asia and Latin America, the question for us is whether deeper economic and financial integration offers a feasible path towards unlocking sustainable growth of our economies? How do we mitigate the costs and maximise the benefits? The World Bank theme paper for this conference provides a useful starting point for thinking about these issues. I will leave it to the learned speakers today to ponder on that. I will just briefly share my perspective on this issue with respect to ASEAN and Malaysia. Asian regional economic and financial integration The ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint 2025 contains ASEAN’s vision of regional economic and financial integration over the next 10 years. When it came to formulating the 2025 Blueprint, the issue of the nature of integration has always been central. The fundamental challenge remains on how to use regional integration to leverage on ASEAN’s diversity in terms of economic size and structure, income levels, resource endowments and stage of financial sector development. Here, in the interest of time, l will just focus on ASEAN financial integration. I remember that soon after the Asian Financial Crisis, there was a lot of interest in looking at the European model of a single currency.

Global Money Week takes place on the 10–17 March and is a worldwide celebration through events and activities to help empower children and youth to be confident and responsible economic citizens. During this week, children are encouraged to engage in learning on how money works, including saving, creating livelihoods, gaining employment and entrepreneurship as well as living financially smart lives. And so for Samoa’s contribution to the event, the Central Bank decided to conduct a financial literacy poster competition to encourage kids to use their imaginations and knowledge about money choices, and help provide a creative outlet to demonstrate their knowledge. For this year’s poster competition theme “I can grow my money by...” myself and Mrs Vicseta Meredith of Business System Limited had the pleasure AND the hard task of judging the entries. We were very impressed with the quality of entries that were presented to us – so it pains us that there are only a limited number of awards we can give out for the competition. “Financial literacy” or “the set of skills and knowledge that allows an individual to make informed and effective decisions with all of their financial resources” is an important life-skill in our diverse capacities as students, employees, consumers, savers and investors etc. In short, it is important for all responsible economic citizens to have. – So why not start now and start young? Start young on financial fitness...it will be fun and worth it!
This is probably due, not least, to progress in overcoming the crisis as well as encouraging economic data from the euro area. However, investors are still cautious, so that demand is still high for investments seen as safe havens. Consequently, in recent months, the Swiss franc has moved in a narrow range above the minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20. Nevertheless, in view of the progress in the euro area, many market participants expect that the Swiss franc will depreciate. Despite this progress, it is still too early for an all-clear. Conditions on financial markets could change again rapidly. In order to counteract possible tensions on financial markets and lessen their potential impact on the economy, six leading central banks including the Swiss  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  National Bank (SNB) converted their reciprocal swap lines into a standing arrangement in October. These swap lines had initially been arranged on a temporary basis at the height of the financial crisis, in order to secure access to liquidity. Developments in foreign exchange reserves At the end of September 2013, our holdings of foreign exchange reserves stood at CHF 443 billion. I would now like to make a few comments on income from foreign exchange reserves. I should begin by stressing that monetary policy has priority over investment policy, and that generating income is not the primary objective of investment policy. We are guided, first of all, by the criteria of security and liquidity.

In May and June we saw what could happen if expectations of a less expansionary monetary policy course become widespread in the market. At that time, the announcement by the US Federal Reserve of a possible reduction in its bond purchase programme caused share markets to plunge temporarily. The wave of selling did not recede until the beginning of July, when the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England reassured markets that key rates would remain at very low levels until the recovery of the individual economies was on a firm foundation. On bond markets, interest rates continued rising in June and July. Since then, they have largely moved sideways. This applies to US, UK, German and Swiss government bonds, in particular. Until the beginning of September, yields on ten-year Confederation bonds rose to almost 1.2%. They are currently at around 1%, which means that they have increased by about half a percent year-on-year. Government bonds in the emerging economies were particularly strongly affected by the rise in interest rates, since the expectation of an impending monetary policy normalisation in the US led to significant capital outflows from these countries. By contrast, risk premia on government bonds for the peripheral euro area economies did not increase very much. Moreover, these risk premia have fallen again in the meantime so that returns on government bonds in the peripheral economies are now in fact lower than at the beginning of the year.
Miguel Fernández Ordóñez: Global rebalancing, asset prices and policy responses Opening remarks by Mr Miguel Fernández Ordóñez, Governor of the Bank of Spain, at the Fifth High-Level Seminar of the Eurosystem and Latin American Central Banks, Madrid, 10 December 2010. *  *  *  Good morning and welcome again. More than three years after the global financial system started to show serious signs of instability and two years after being on the verge of a global economic and financial meltdown, the world economy seems to have avoided that risk, backed by a strong and coordinated policy response. Nevertheless, the strengthening has been uneven and the risk of economic and financial instability is still persistent and significant in some regions, like the euro area. Indeed, it is hard to emphasise sufficiently the challenges ahead and how crucial the present juncture is for the future of our Monetary Union. On the contrary, Latin American economies had learned the lessons from the severe financial and economic disruptions they experienced in the not so distant past, and the challenges they currently face are more similar to those that characterised the period of strong growth prior to the financial crisis. These very different sets of present circumstances make today’s exchange of mutual experiences and policy discussion particularly interesting. The title of today’s Seminar was chosen almost a year ago, but it couldn’t be more timely: Global Rebalancing, Asset Prices and Policy Responses.

According to some, it has been difficult to understand the motives behind some of the decisions and it has not been very clear why the decisions reached were preferable to the alternatives. I can have some understanding of this criticism and I will return to this. But first I would like to discuss the question of what is meant by a clear monetary policy. It is not self-evident, as we shall see, and different people appear to mean slightly different things. A theory-based policy is not necessarily clearer The academic literature on monetary policy often describes inflation targeting as the central bank minimising a so-called loss function. This loss function is a weighted sum of a measure of the variability of inflation and the variability of the real economy. The loss function can, somewhat simplified, be written as  measurable. Consequently, it would not be appropriate to specify a fixed goal for employment; rather, the Committee’s policy decisions must be informed by assessments of the maximum level of employment, recognizing that such assessments are necessarily uncertain and subject to revision. The Committee considers a wide range of indicators in making these assessments.” 13  Vredin, Anders, Martin Flodén, Anna Larsson and Morten Ravn (2012), Enkla regler, svåra tider – behöver stabiliseringspolitiken förändras? (Simple rules, difficult times – does stabilisation policy need to be changed?)
On the demand side, the main changes in the first quarter were the slowdown in investment in machinery and equipment and in exports (Figure 2). This coincides with the deterioration of the external scenario in recent quarters and an inventory buildup that has not been undone as expected. On the other hand, investment in construction and other works and consumption evolved as expected, without major changes compared to the previous quarters. All in a context where various indicators show an increase in job creation. Headline inflation as measured by the CPI and core inflation (CPI excluding food and energy, CPIEFE) continue near 2% per year. In the case of the CPI, with a level that has increased somewhat in the most recent past (Figure 3). In any case, the same phenomena identified in the March Report are still present: greater competition in certain markets, wider capacity gaps than previously estimated and lower pass-through of the accumulated peso depreciation than its historical averages. II.2. Updating the structural parameters As I just said, in this Report we have updated the estimates of the structural parameters that are used to assess the state of the economy, its outlook and the calibration of monetary policy. This allowed mainly to quantify the effect of the massive immigration flow of recent years on trend and potential growth, increasing both. It was also possible to compare the impact on the neutral MPR of a higher trend growth with that of the fall in international interest rates.

This institution has supported the Romanian banking sector too, especially during the privatization process. Joining MIGA finalized the normalization process. 1/3  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  Throughout the 1990s and up until the EU granted Romania the functional market economy status in 2004, and later on, until the actual EU Accession in 2007, the IMF and the World Bank have been our main economic and financial external partners, during the transition. It goes without saying that one central pillar of this transition was represented by the continuous reforms of the national legislation regarding the central bank and the financial sector reforms, which have benefited from the extensive contributions of IMF and World Bank staff. For instance, the essential legislation governing the banking system was drafted with the assistance of IMF experts. In this context, I would like to mention the seven IMF Stand-by Agreements that, in addition to the Balance of Payments support, have also contributed to the implementation of structural reforms prior to the EU accession. Similarly, the World Bank's programs have contributed to the development of the Romanian financial and banking system (e.g. the Financial and Enterprise Sector Adjustment Loan (FESAL) – focused on reforming the financial sector, and the Private Sector Adjustment Loan (PSAL) – offered support towards the privatization of the Romanian banks and to the development of the monetary and capital market). During this transition period marked by major changes, I would like to highlight one element of continuity.
Hamad Al-Sayari: Islamic banking prudential standards Speech by His Excellency Hamad Al-Sayari, Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, to the “Symposium on Islamic Banking Prudential Standards”, Institute of Banking, Riyadh, 15 January 2007. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, It gives me a great pleasure to address this honorable and distinguished attendance at this important symposium on “Islamic Banking Prudential Standards” organized by the Institute of Banking (IOB) in cooperation with the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB). The issue of Shari’a (Islamic Law) compliant banking is increasingly drawing attention of those concerned with financial stability, including international financial institutions such as the IMF, World Bank (WB), development banks, Basel Committee on Banking Supervision as well as supervisory authorities in the countries where Islamic banks operate. This is the result of rapid growth in the volume and scope of Islamic services offered in many countries. Those entities have shown a great interest in the growth and expansion of finance business compliant with the principle of avoiding interest and its impact and implications with respect to world markets and the global economic system. Currently, Shari’a compliant banking transactions have spread in most countries of the world through banks that totally comply with Shari’a or through Shari’a compliant windows offering all services, investment and commercial activities, leasing, investment funds and joint liability products. The Kingdom has been a forerunner country in supporting and encouraging Saudi banks to offer such products required by the Saudi market.

Corporate governance, risk management, transparency, disclosure, and internal control requirements in Islamic financial services industry should always be developed, and adjusted to meet the needs specified for Islamic banks, especially that an important part of the work of these banks is based on impression and reputation of the nature of their work. Therefore, these banks should be aware of the role entrusted to them, especially the ethical one. The nature of risks faced by Islamic banks may raise specific issues in terms of assets and inventory assessment, investment costs, regular income and recognition of losses, adequacy of guarantees and others. We must emphasize here the importance of continued development of mechanisms to cover such risks. This underlines the importance of integration into global financial markets, encouragement of competition, and provision of a proper climate for on-going innovation so that Islamic banks can consolidate their positions in all markets and boost their ability to provide products for all segments of customers. On the other hand, a controversy is sometimes raised and comparisons are made between Islamic and conventional banks in terms of risk degree, exposure to insolvency, and the argument ensuing concerning capital adequacy. However, the important point is the awareness and understanding the nature of risks, development of mechanisms to cover such risks, and the ability to compete in markets and meet the needs of customers.
In this pre-emptive phase, it is not the role of the Banco de España to decide which integration processes should go ahead, but to examine rigorously the proposals received. In its capacity as the supervisor of banking system solvency, the Banco de España has been entrusted by the legislature with evaluating, on the basis of strictly professional criteria and irrespective of any other personal or collective interests, whether the plans submitted offer sufficient guarantees of soundness and viability. BIS Review 27/2010  3  Allow me to convey to you my assessment of how the integration processes under way are progressing under the application of the “pre-emptive” measures of the FROB. First, I view most favourably the fact that, shortly after the approval of the FROB, a sizeable number of savings banks set about working to seek solutions based on mergers and restructuring. But it is also clear that some of these processes are being delayed longer than would be desirable. I must therefore call once again for responsibility on the part of those banks that have incurred the biggest delays: they should examine their situation realistically and consider forthwith viability strategies in the search for solutions conducive to creating stronger institutions that are better able to provide households and firms with the credit flows they demand. I likewise call on the sense of responsibility of certain regional governments and urge them to ensure there are no further delays or obstacles to processes that may strengthen the institutions operating in their regions.

These include prudent regulation, more intensive supervision than that of other countries, a business model geared essentially to retail banking and sound management at most banks. But let me also stress – as it seems to me an example of what could be done now with the labour reform – that the government and the opposition, which has supported it in Parliament, have expeditiously agreed on a series of high-quality financial system reform measures that have proven most effective in preventing credit institutions’ problems from bringing the country’s economy to its knees. We should not forget that if, for instance, the legislation on the funds for the acquisition of financial assets and on guarantees for bank and savings-bank bond issues had not been approved, we would no doubt have witnessed a shut-down of wholesale funding on global markets and an abrupt contraction in credit that would have led to a deep recessionary spiral. Fortunately, this did not occur. That does not mean that credit standards are the same now as before the crisis. One of the most notable consequences has been the increase in risk aversion, which stood in the previous upturn at very low levels. This increased risk aversion translates into much stricter lending policies. As a result many companies, particularly small and medium-sized ones (for various reasons, such as the fact that they are not audited and are generally less capitalised than large companies), have seen their ability to obtain funding restricted, occasionally beyond what may be considered reasonable.