samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
All of us have contributed to and are familiar with what has been accomplished in 2010. I will therefore refrain from listing our past achievements but concentrate on the things that remain to be done. Let us therefore start to think about our New Year’s resolutions for 2011. New Year’s resolution number one: let’s define a SEPA migration end date There is a consensus that an end date is needed for the migration to the SEPA credit transfer (SCT) and SEPA direct debit (SDD). Throughout 2010 representatives from almost every stakeholder group have been calling for a defined end date. Just recently a study conducted by BearingPoint revealed that more than 80% of the banks surveyed consider a binding SEPA migration end date to be necessary. In fact, the majority are in favour of an EU regulation to set one. 1 Of course it is no secret that, despite this general agreement, the details of such a regulation have been widely debated since the summer. For this reason, I had welcomed the European Commission’s decision to organise a public hearing on the issue, which took place last Wednesday. We in the Eurosystem have been very explicit in our comments on this topic and we have been calling for a regulation setting a migration end date for SCT and SDD. Indeed, we have gone one step further and have announced preferred dates, i.e. the end of 2012 for credit transfers and the end of 2013 for direct debits.

Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell: SEPA – a busy year is coming to its end and another exciting year lies ahead Speech by Ms Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at the Next Generation Cards & Payments Conference, Brussels, 25 November 2010. *  *  *  Good morning ladies and gentlemen, Introduction Walking across the Grand Place and around the Bourse you can see busy preparations under way for this year’s Christmas market. I have been told that it will be opened tomorrow and exhibitors from all over Europe will be selling their goods. The guild houses and Town Hall will be beautifully illuminated and decked in festive garlands and I am sure that the Christmas song “Silent Night” will be played. In fact, today is the birthday of Franz Xaver Gruber, an Austrian primary school teacher and church organist who composed “Silent Night” at the beginning of the 19th century. On Christmas Eve 1818 “Silent Night” was performed for the first time, in a chapel in Oberndorf, near Salzburg and subsequently made its way throughout Europe and to the rest of the world. Talking about Christmas reminds us that 2010 is slowly but surely coming to an end. As in every year, the media will soon be producing reviews of the year’s events. When we look back at what has happened in the field of payments, it is obvious that Europe has invested a great deal of effort and substantial progress has been made.
Emerging Market Forum – Paris, 16 May 2022 Welcome remarks: “Multipolarity and the role of the euro in the International Financial System”  Speech by François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Banque de France  Page 1 sur 7 Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great pleasure to welcome you today in Banque de France premises for the 15th Emerging Markets Forum. “Navigating in a fast moving and turbulent world” certainly requires great skills, and recent developments in the International Financial System remind us that it is currently all but smooth sailing. We have seen disruption in the global value chains due to the still ongoing pandemic. International trade may slow down or even contract if these disruptions lead to a significant wave of re-shoring. Now the brutal war in Ukraine has induced further supply disruptions and led our democratic leaders to use financial sanctions in response. In this uncertain situation, our first duty as a central bank is to provide appropriate monetary policy. The consensus in our Governing Council is now clearly emerging, as summed up by Christine Lagarde in her speech last Wednesday i: to fight an inflation which is not only higher but broader, we now have to normalise our monetary policy. I won’t add my precise calendar prediction to the many existing ones, but expect a decisive June meeting, and an active summer.

We appreciate your accepting of our request to share with the participants your knowledge and experience in this field of your Ministry’s work, which reflects your regulatory role towards preventing and/or detecting criminals offences, including money laundering. This is the first Workshop of its kind on this important topic, with emphasis on the role of the NPOs to detect and prevent the offences of money laundering or terrorist financing activities. Money laundering and the financing of terrorists are problems that should concern us all. They are not problems for only the Government and the law enforcement agencies to worry about. Rather, the public sector, the business community, the private sector and even ordinary citizens must play a role in combating these illegal activities. This Workshop is therefore opportune, as it covers one of the important sectors, other than financial institutions. I am referring of course to yourselves, the Non-profit Organization Sector. Non-profit organization sector There is a strong belief internationally that the non-profit organizations sector is one of the more vulnerable sectors, which criminals would try and exploit to conduct their illegal activities without attracting much attention. And, some of the reasons for such vulnerability relate to generally weak management structures and the lack of regulatory supervision over NPOs operation. Many jurisdictions  BIS Review 85/2009  1  have relatively low institutional capacity to monitor NPOs and detect their being used for money laundering and by terrorist. Some jurisdictions even indicate their unwillingness to impose a regulatory requirement on this Sector.
Once Malta is an EMU member, the foreign currency and local currency rating will be equalised but at what level will depend mostly on the fiscal account.”  BIS Review 61/2004  3  ECB; and that even if the degree of business cycle synchronisation with the euro area is already significant, national economic and financial structures might respond to the ECB’s monetary policy stimuli differently from the average euro area Member State. While this might not matter much when other tools of adjustment such as the exchange rate are available, the argument continues, the use of these tools is thwarted in a single currency area such as EMU. On the one hand, exchange rate flexibility is conditioned by the maximum allowable bands in ERM II, and is given up altogether upon the irrevocable fixing of the exchange rate at the point of euro adoption. Additionally, the Stability and Growth Pact constrains the use of fiscal policy for fine tuning the economy. Consequently, any underlying imbalances in the economy are bound to persist. While based on sound theoretical principles, this argument is largely not applicable to Malta. In particular, the business cycle is already fairly synchronised with that of the euro area, and the degree of trade integration is also quite significant. At the same time, sectoral GDP and employment data both reveal a strong correspondence with euro area economic structures, after allowance is made for the relatively more dominant role of tourism in Malta.

Moreover, the small size of the domestic labour market and the extent of migration in and out of the country in past years suggest that in the event of an external shock specific to Malta, the labour market is sufficiently flexible to adapt. On a number of counts, in fact, labour market indicators are already comparable to those of the euro area. The resemblance is not complete, but further progress in this regard is to be expected as public sector employment is downsized further and as the structural reform programme continues to unfold. A similar conclusion emerges from a comparison with the euro area of the structure of the domestic financial sector and indicators of real convergence; the degree of similarity is already significant, although there remains scope for some catching up with respect to income and price levels. As far as fiscal policy is concerned, this has rarely been used for fine tuning purposes in Malta. If anything, the disciplinary mechanisms of EMU should serve to reverse the current trend of negative balances, allowing fiscal policy to respond to the needs of the economy and leaving monetary policy to focus more on price stability. As for the exchange rate, by pegging the Maltese lira to a basket of currencies, which is recognized as being the preferred regime for a small, open economy, the monetary authorities have long since given up the exchange rate as a tool of adjustment.
End-year Inflation Target and Annual CPI Inflation (Percentage Change) 35 Annual Inflation  Target  30 25 20 15 10 5  Jan-06  Sep-05  May-05  Jan-05  Sep-04  May-04  Jan-04  Sep-03  May-03  Jan-03  0  Source: TURKSTAT. However, the sole reason for the realization of inflation above the path consistent with the end year inflation target in the first quarter of the year is not the said base effect. When the contribution of subitems to first quarter inflation is analyzed, it is observed that the course of prices of unprocessed food products, which increased beyond expectations, tobacco products and services played a leading role in the said rise. Nevertheless, high-rated seasonal discounts in clothing prices due to demand and competitive conditions limited the increase in consumer price inflation (Graph 2). 2  BIS Review 67/2006  Graph 2. The Contribution of Sub-items to First Quarter Inflation (Point) 1.41  1.5  2005  2006  1.0 0.64  0.51  0.5  0.39  0.26 0.06  0.30  0.20  0.04  0.01  0.31  0.21  0.0 -0.5 -1.0 -1.18  -1.5 Food and Nonalcoholic Bev. Alcoholic Bev. Tobacco  -1.36  Clothing and Footwear  Housing  Restaurant and Hotels  Other Subgroups  Source: TURKSTAT, CBRT. Dear Guests, Classifying goods and services group, price increases in goods group gained pace, while the services group inflation declined, except rents item, in the first quarter of 2006.

In terms of transparency, I do think it is a fair critique that, in the past, the Federal Reserve has not always been sufficiently transparent. For example, prior to 1994, we typically didn’t even announce changes that were being implemented in monetary policy. Market participants had to infer what we were doing from our daily open market operations and where the federal funds rate was trading. During the crisis, I also believe we could have done more to explain the motivations for our extraordinary interventions. At times, while the motivations and objectives might have been obvious to us, they weren’t always as readily apparent to Congress or to the public. I think this created uncertainty about what we were trying to accomplish, and made it more difficult for outside observers to assess the appropriateness of our actions and our motives. Today the situation is quite different. We have made significant enhancements with respect to transparency. After each meeting, the FOMC issues a statement that sets the current target range for the federal funds rate and explains its monetary policy decision. Four times a year, the chair holds a press conference explaining the decision and the FOMC releases its Summary of Economic Projections (SEP). The SEP provides the FOMC participants’ forecasts for key economic variables and the federal funds rate over the next few years.
The basis for calculating income tax was expanded, rates were reduced and corporate and personal income taxation was better integrated. Distortions were remedied, bringing business and economic returns more closely into line in the case of business investment. More neutral tax rules reduced the scope for companies and industries to obtain special tax advantages. The reform contributed to solid economic growth in the 1990s and a substantial increase in government tax revenues even with appreciably lower tax rates. BIS Review 15/2010  9  But the wave of reform ebbed out before the work was completed. There is now a striking contrast in the quality of various components of our tax system. There are major weaknesses in the taxation of wealth and property. First, income and the value of various types of capital are taxed differently. The return on and value of financial capital and business capital are fully taxed. Rental income is fully taxed, while owner-occupied dwellings are exempt from a corresponding tax. Mortgage interest is tax deductible while capital gains on dwellings and the benefit of home ownership are not taxed. Housing is taxed as an asset, but not at its market value. The table shows the distortionary effects of the tax system. Housing investment is considerably more profitable than repaying debt or investing in a business. This is the case for those who pay wealth tax and for those who are not liable to wealth tax. Second, property is taxed differently across municipalities.

Philipp Hildebrand: In the focus of the Swiss National Bank - economic outlook and monetary policy Summary of a speech by Mr Philipp Hildebrand, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the WGZ-Bank, Luxemburg, 9 September 2005. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  The world economy expands at a robust pace but the growth rates of the important economic blocs diverge considerably. In spite of the accommodative monetary policy in most industrial countries, inflation and inflation expectations remain well contained which may, among other things, be due to the process of globalisation and the credibility of central banks. Switzerland, small and extremely open, benefits from a recovering global economy. The conditions for returning to a path of modest expansion look favourable. However, there are certain risks that may affect the global and the Swiss economy negatively. Most importantly, high oil prices and the devastating effect of the hurricane „Katrina”, as well as the possibility of increasing long-term interest rates have to be mentioned. A persistently high price of oil could act as a brake to demand dynamics and growth prospects could also be threatened by soaring long-term interest rates, an effect that could be amplified through the housing channel. In the foreign exchange markets, structural and cyclical factors continue to determine the value of the US-dollar. 1/1
Christian Noyer: Central bankers’ dilemmas under uncertainty Speech by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France, at a seminar in Buenos Aires, 5 June 2006. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, •  Thank you for inviting me to this seminar. It is a great pleasure to address such a challenging theme, namely “Central Bankers’ dilemmas under uncertainty”. •  In the first part of my address, I will recall the nature of uncertainty and its importance for the central banker; in the second part, I will sum up proposals for addressing uncertainty. I  The nature of uncertainty  Uncertainty arises in many forms. It is crucial to central bankers in general (I/1) and maybe even more to the Eurosystem (I/2). 1)  The importance of uncertainty for the central banker  The relevance of risks and uncertainty for economic analysis was suggested in 1921, by Frank Knight (Risk, Uncertainty and Profit). “Risk” refers to situations where the decision-maker can assign probabilities to the randomness that he is faced with; “uncertainty” to situations where this randomness cannot be expressed in terms of probabilities. Uncertainty is crucial to central bankers: according to Alan Greenspan, “Uncertainty is not just an important feature of monetary policy; it is the defining characteristic of that landscape”. Thus, I will focus on monetary policy, although the topic is also relevant for financial stability, which is another important issue for central banks.

Inflation expectations are fundamental to the process of interest rate determination and low inflation expectations are entrenched not only by the implementation of appropriate monetary and fiscal policies at any given time, but also by past inflation developments. Low inflation expectations were becoming entrenched in 2008 following two consecutive years of single digit inflation in 2006 and 2007. However, towards the end of 2008, the increase in food prices and the impact of the global financial crisis caused inflation to increase to a double digit figure of 16.6%. In spite of this, the prospects for low inflation, now look positive, creating an appropriate environment for interest rate reduction. Mr President, as you may have noticed from the newspapers in the recent days, a number of banks have reduced their lending base rates though not as much as we would like to see. We hope that this is just a start, and that banks will continue adjusting their rates downwards consistent with developments in other macroeconomic indicators. Distinguished Members, allow me to comment on the statutory instrument regarding the $ over the counter limit on deposits. These regulations are meant to encourage the use of the banking system in order to assist in curbing money laundering. Doing away with this would deprive the Central Bank of a mechanism for detecting fraudulent activities and create a healthy environment for money to be laundered in our financial system. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bank of Zambia recognises the importance of long term finance for growth.
And we should expect the aggregate impact of individual firms’ decisions in a sector that at the end of 2019 held assets in the region of £ trillion – a figure broadly equivalent to UK GDP in the same year – to be an important influence on speed of recovery and adaptation. But what does the insurance sector do for the economy? If I asked the person on the street about the role of insurance, I’d expect them – once they’d raised the common complaint about insurers putting premiums up every year and telling a story about a particular claim – to speak about the protection it provides to households and businesses against the financial costs resulting  2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  2  from the occurrence of various risks to their physical property, health, loss of earning power or other unexpected losses. (Though maybe not using quite those words!.) This is a very important function. Efficient transfer and pooling of risk reduces aggregate risk and by freeing individuals from risk allows them to avoid reducing consumption in favour of excess saving. And it allows businesses to put capital to work in their areas of expertise and opportunity, without having to worry about – or reserve for – risks that they are not equipped to manage or diversify, and so will not be adequately rewarded for. It has particularly high value in current circumstances. Excess saving, reduced consumption, and heightened risk aversion would be detrimental to economic recovery.

We have been flexible in our implementation, but the size of the benefit offered by the MA and the relatively coarse framework for measuring levels of retained asset risk have necessitated strict eligibility conditions. 3  See June 2020 FPC remit response letter See speech by Alex Brazier (2020): ‘Protecting economic muscle: Finance and the Covid crisis’ See speech by Alex Brazier (2020): ‘Protecting economic muscle: Finance and the Covid crisis’ 6 See speech by David Rule (2018): 'An annuity is a very serious business' 4 5  5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  5  It is extremely difficult to model the behaviour of long-dated, illiquid assets, particularly under economic stress. The size of the MA benefit that a firm can take on its liabilities is driven by the credit rating assigned to its assets, which in turn depends on correctly assessing the risk of default or downgrade – an assessment which may be performed by an external rating agency, or by the insurer itself. Furthermore, when firms stress their balance sheet to calculate capital requirements they have to consider the impact of changes to the MA under stress. This means making assumptions about the impact of a stressed economic environment on default and downgrade risks, on ratings migration, and on the cost of re-establishing an MA-compliant position if necessary. Each step introduces the possibility of inappropriate or over-optimistic assumptions and therefore inadequate capital.
Mr Gjedrem focuses on monetary policy challenges in Norway Article by Mr. Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank, the Norwegian central bank, published in the Norwegian daily Aftenposten on 3 May 1999. In Norway, fiscal policy has a prominent role in stabilising growth in production and employment. The Government Petroleum Fund shall serve as a buffer so that fluctuations in the government’s oil revenues do not influence the mainland economy, but only have an effect on capital exports. The local and centralised income settlements determine wage growth. Monetary policy instruments are oriented with a view to maintaining a stable krone exchange rate against European currencies. If the government budget stabilises the domestic economy, wage growth is kept on a par with the level in Europe, and fluctuations in oil revenues are absorbed by the Petroleum Fund, Norges Bank stands a good chance of ensuring exchange rate stability through monetary policy. However, this has not been the case since 1996. The government budget has not made a sufficient contribution to smoothing growth in domestic demand and production, wage growth has been substantially higher than in other countries, and oil revenues have fluctuated widely. Furthermore, it seems that the krone is easily exposed to the contagion effects of turbulence in international markets. The krone exchange rate has fluctuated in spite of Norges Bank’s active use of instruments. Developments in recent years indicate that Norges Bank cannot fine-tune movements in the krone exchange rate.

2  BIS Review 144/2010  Finally, Ladies and Gentlemen, given the innovations around mobile banking and its attendant challenges, it is our expectation that this workshop will encourage dialogue between different market players in Zambia and within the region. This Conference provides an opportunity for such dialogue and I am glad that it takes cognizance of a dynamic market environment, paying special attention to innovation that may have significant macroeconomic benefits to all involved. We are therefore keen to draw on the policy debate arising from this Conference to move financial services in Zambia to new frontiers. As Bank of Zambia, we will play a catalytic role and facilitate private sector led developmental initiatives. I thank you. BIS Review 144/2010  3