samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
One year on, we have seen a significant number of market participants from all over the 1/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  world using the Statement as a means to demonstrate adherence to the Code. To lead by example, many central banks, including MAS, have also issued Statements and published these on our websites. Central banks have also requested that our FX counterparties issue the Statement. Many FXCs have linked membership of the FXC with Code adherence. These efforts have resulted in a “bumper crop” of Statements being issued at the one-year anniversary of the Code. We have also seen about 12 public registers being established in response to market demand. These are repositories where market participants can publish their Statements, to publicly demonstrate adherence to the Code. In addition, the GFXC launched a Global Index of Public Registers (or the Global Index) in May this year, which links these public registers. The Global Index has a search function which enables the quick identification of market participants that have published Statements on the participating public registers. As at mid-August, the Global Index had about 420 Statements, from 9 participating public registers. The GFXC is continuing with efforts to include more public registers, and this will be an important and highly visible way to track adherence progress to the Code. The GFXC has also been expanding its membership to include more jurisdictions. From the original 8 FXCs, we have seen a number of new FXCs being established in the last year.

Jacqueline Loh: The FX Global Code – one year on Keynote address by Ms Jacqueline Loh, Deputy Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the 14th FX Week Asia Conference, Singapore, 29 August 2018. * * * Ms Eva Szalay, Editor, FX Week, 1 Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. How time flies. It did not seem too long ago when I was invited to speak at last year’s conference and I am very happy to be here again at the 14th FX Week Asia Conference. 2 Last year, I shared the launch of the FX Global Code (or the Code), its unique features and the elements that have been put in place to promote industry adherence. One year has passed, and it is timely to review developments since the launch of the Code and its impact on the global FX industry. More importantly, I would like to share with you, the priorities ahead to further embed the Code within the global FX market. FX Global Code: Overview 3 I am sure that by now, most of you would have heard of the Code. But for the benefit of those who may not have, let me provide a quick overview. 4 The Code was launched in May last year by the Bank for International Settlements (or BIS) as a single, global code of conduct for the wholesale FX market. It was developed over 2 years through a public-private partnership between central banks and key FX market participants.
Accordingly, the fiscal projections that are consistent with the macroeconomic scenario I have set out today point to the fiscal surplus almost disappearing in 2009. With this in mind, when designing the appropriate fiscal policy strategy for the downturn in the Spanish economy, it makes complete sense to give free rein to the automatic stabilisers, whose movement tends to counter cyclical fluctuations. This is one of the great advantages arising from the fiscal consolidation drive that took place during the expansion. The  6  BIS Review 44/2008  automatic nature of these instruments makes them the most suitable ones for stabilisation, because they respond rapidly to changes in the cycle, they help agents to form correct expectations regarding the authorities’ actions and they boost confidence. However, discretionary increases in public spending and tax reductions beyond the specific scope of the automatic stabilisers should be avoided, since they may compromise the maintenance of medium and long-term budgetary stability and eliminate the fiscal policy leeway to respond to sharper slowdowns. Maintaining a stance of budgetary stability during the downturn is, in any case, compatible with measures that may alter the composition of revenues and spending, without giving rise to a permanent deterioration in the budgetary situation, especially if such measures contribute to enhancing the quality of public finances and the efficiency of the economy.

But it is also clear that if this episode continues much longer, its effects on the Spanish economy may be significant, as is to be expected in the case of an economy in which external financing is one of the fundamental elements underpinning growth. When the ability of the international financial system to perform its role of allocating resources efficiently is seriously curtailed, as at present, the financial soundness of borrowers is not sufficient to attract the financing they need. Thus, if the strains currently affecting the main wholesale markets for medium and long-term financing are prolonged excessively, we cannot ultimately rule out greater constraints on the raising of external financing by the economy. The poor functioning of these wholesale markets has a global dimension and there is relatively little that the Spanish authorities can do to help mitigate it. However, the Banco de España can and will proceed to ensure that Spanish banks continue managing their risks prudently and have appropriate risk provisioning policies that guarantee their financial soundness. This is undoubtedly the best way of ensuring that, once uncertainties have been dispelled and normal market functioning restored, financial institutions can continue to efficiently perform their role of channelling financial flows between our country and the rest of the world. In addition, the Banco de España will continue encouraging banks and savings banks to start issuing medium-term bonds again and to place them on the international  BIS Review 44/2008  5  markets.
The latter responds to both the expansionary monetary policies in Chile and around the world and more structural conditions (figure 11). In any case, qualitative information, such as the Bank Lending Survey for the second quarter and our August Business Perception Report, shows that a weaker demand for credit is perceived. According to the respondents, this is due to a shortage of investment projects and job security fears. Turning to our monetary policy, if the macroeconomic scenario that has been taking shape over the past few months consolidates, with external financial conditions that, while volatile, are better than we projected in June, where gaps are bounded and inflation is returning to the target a little earlier, we see no need to make any new increases in the policy rate over the policy horizon. Accordingly, we use as a working assumption that the monetary policy rate will be kept unchanged during the projection horizon. As always, any monetary policy measure or adjustment to the rate will be conditional on the expected effects of incoming information on the projected inflation dynamics. Some thoughts I wish to share on monetary policy conduct. For two and a half years, inflation has been above the Central Bank’s defined tolerance range. The main reason being, as we have said time and again, the increase in the exchange rate, which was necessary in the new conditions facing the Chilean economy. Because it was a one-time shock and therefore with transitory effects on inflation, tightening the policy was less than optimal.

I am happy to report that this experience has been a successful one, particularly from the point of view of monetary autonomy. Indeed, the Basic Law has, since 1 July 1997, provided Hong Kong with far greater autonomy in its monetary and financial affairs, and this autonomy has been confirmed in practice by the clear confidence that the Central Government has placed in our ability to manage things on our own. I make this point, not because Macau needs any reassurance from Hong Kong, but because it is a striking illustration of how some of the deepest forebodings about future events can often be the product of the most dismal misjudgements. Two years ago, gloomy scenarios were being painted - not about an Asian financial crisis - but about the impending demise of Hong Kong’s monetary autonomy under Chinese rule: about the breaking of the link between the Hong Kong dollar and the U.S. dollar, the absorption of Hong Kong’s substantial foreign reserves by the Mainland, and so on. Of course, nothing of the kind has happened, and there may well be lessons here to apply to some of the more lurid scenarios that are being drawn up for the first of January 2000. Our topic this morning, however, is not the Year 2000 problem, but the perennial question of how to devise sustainable and realistic monetary and exchange rate policies in an uncertain global financial environment.
Ladies and Gentlemen, This initiative is positive and both BancABC and NORFUND should be highly commended for it. As a financing institution, I am aware that NORFUND financing rates are favourable. I want to encourage BancABC to pass the benefit of getting money at  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  favourable NORFUND rates to the final borrowers so that the SME sector will experience the full benefit of this relationship. I wish to end by wishing BancABC the best and success in growing a successful SME lending portfolio. I THANK YOU…  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches

Data needs could originate from the necessity to cover new areas of measurement and use new methodologies to improve data quality, use and availability. They could also stem from the requirement to come up with new subject measures and variables. Therefore, national data compiling agencies must be cognizant of such evolving data needs to remain relevant and useful. After all, it is the responsibility of the statistical community to make sure to address new data-related challenges which are driven by current and emerging user demands for official statistics. It is potentially in recognition of emerging data-related challenges that the IMF took several steps to enhance transparency and openness, and launched two key data dissemination standards in the 1990s. These included the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) and the General Data Dissemination System (GDDS). Let me briefly touch on these standards. The SDDS was established in 1996 to guide IMF member countries, interacting or set to interact with international capital markets, in the provision of their economic and financial data to the public. Countries that subscribe to the SDDS agree to follow good practices in four areas which include the coverage, periodicity, and timeliness of data, public access to those data, data integrity, and data quality. Earlier this year, the IMF Board expanded the scope of the SDDS to include seven financial soundness indicators in order to make all stakeholders better understand cross-border linkages, and made it mandatory for participating nations to report international investment positions on a quarterly basis over a transition period of four years.
Turning to economics, the educational pyramid could not be more different (Figure 2). It is more diamond than pyramid. Economics is not a compulsory part of the school curriculum at any stage. Up to age 16, economics forms only a very small part of PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education), a voluntary part of the curriculum. Surveys suggest that PSHE provision is patchy and has decreased significantly in recent years. 56  Among early-years children, there is little foundation for learning everyday economics. 57  Beyond 14, students at some schools can opt to study economics. In practice, only around a third of schools offer this option. As a result, in 2016/17 only just over 9,000 students across the UK studied GCSE economics, typically between the ages of 14 and 16. That is a tiny 1.4% of the student population in that age range. These numbers have been flat over the past decade. More than a decade into their educational lives, then, the vast majority of students have had virtually no exposure to economics and business. Beyond age 16 the number of schools offering, and students studying, economics picks up - the pyramid begins to widen. Around 33,000 students completed A-Level economics in the UK in 2016/17, typically studying between the ages 16 to 18. Encouragingly, these numbers have swelled, by around 70%, over the past ten years. That remains only 4.3% of the total number of young people in this age range.

30  Debt, default and dependency on high-cost credit are also a recipe for another d – depression. Debt and financial illiteracy affect physical and mental health. without to have a common mental health disorder. 31  32  Adults in debt are three times more likely than those  Financial stress is associated with high levels of  personal anxiety, depression and alcohol-dependency - problems that tend to felt more acutely by people with low levels of financial literacy. 33  The link between debt, financial illiteracy and mental health is clearly two-way. In a survey by mental health charity MIND, over 90% said that financial problems had worsened existing mental health problems, while around two-thirds said mental health problems had contributed to their financial difficulties. 34  There is a  debt-cum-depression spiral. These statistics are, in every sense of the word, depressing. A lack of trust or understanding of finance and the economy can have wider societal costs. Economic mistrust and misunderstanding can spread contagiously across societies, much as happened after the MMR 26  House of Lords Select Committee on Financial Exclusion (2017). Resolution Foundation (2014). 28 Lusardi and Tufano (2009). 29 Gerardi, Goette and Meier (2010). 30 Disney and Gathergood (2013), for example, find that borrowers with poor financial literacy hold higher shares of high cost credit. 31 Richardson et al (2017). 32 Earwicker (2016). 33 Earwicker (2016). 34 As quoted in Earwicker (2016). 27  6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  vaccine scare.
Some people claim that the regulatory and oversight authorities' objective of promoting the stability of the financial system hides an undue interventionist activism. Well, such claims are besides the mark. Financial stability depends on how we deal with imperfections in the financial system. Thus we should not waste our time discussing whether such an intervention is necessary or not. We should rather focus on how the authorities should shape the process. The challenges regulators and overseers face in the area of CSDs, ICSDs and CCPs are numerous and, I dare say, well known if we consider the avalanche of standards and recommendations that have been published over the last three years. The CPSS-IOSCO Recommendations for Securities Settlements Systems, the Report of the Wise Men, the G-30 Report on Global Clearing and Settlement and both Giovannini reports provide indeed an excellent view on what and how improvements should be achieved in the area of securities clearing and settlement systems. I also strongly believe that a co-operative approach among the financial intermediaries, the service providers and the regulators is the right way to achieve efficiency gains and risk reduction. There is no sense in pursuing the complex goals of market efficiency in a financial system independently. As I mentioned before, clearing and settlement institutions are by their very nature meant to overcome market imperfections. This task is huge, however. Support from public authorities sometimes comes in handily; sometimes it is the sine qua non for the success of a financial system.

In reality there continue to remain some important imperfections, which have always been with us and which tend to re-emerge in a new shape whenever measures are taken to eliminate them. I would now like to discuss some of these imperfections and their implications for your industry. 2. Some imperfections of the financial system  Among the imperfections that affect the smooth functioning of a financial system I shall focus on asymmetric information, on negative externalities and on limited competition. A first imperfection that typically impairs the smooth functioning of a financial system is asymmetric information (Mishkin, 1997). Indeed, information may not be universally or commonly shared within the financial system. Differences in information endowment – another way to define asymmetric information – are likely to lead to differing behaviour by different classes of agents. This will have an impact on price formation and will affect market exchange. The first example is known as adverse selection and derives from Akerlof’s seminal contribution on the market for “lemons” (1970). For those of us who are not native English speakers: In colloquial English a lemon is a good of very low quality. What is going on in a market for “lemons”? According to Akerlof the seller knows the intrinsic quality of the good or services supplied, while the buyer has no means of knowing it. The buyer will then be ready to pay a price reflecting an average quality.
But it is also clear that if this episode continues much longer, its effects on the Spanish economy may be significant, as is to be expected in the case of an economy in which external financing is one of the fundamental elements underpinning growth. When the ability of the international financial system to perform its role of allocating resources efficiently is seriously curtailed, as at present, the financial soundness of borrowers is not sufficient to attract the financing they need. Thus, if the strains currently affecting the main wholesale markets for medium and long-term financing are prolonged excessively, we cannot ultimately rule out greater constraints on the raising of external financing by the economy. The poor functioning of these wholesale markets has a global dimension and there is relatively little that the Spanish authorities can do to help mitigate it. However, the Banco de España can and will proceed to ensure that Spanish banks continue managing their risks prudently and have appropriate risk provisioning policies that guarantee their financial soundness. This is undoubtedly the best way of ensuring that, once uncertainties have been dispelled and normal market functioning restored, financial institutions can continue to efficiently perform their role of channelling financial flows between our country and the rest of the world. In addition, the Banco de España will continue encouraging banks and savings banks to start issuing medium-term bonds again and to place them on the international  BIS Review 44/2008  5  markets.

We should all accept that in a situation like the present one in which the economy is facing a slowdown, in an adverse international setting and surrounded by risk factors, it is more important than ever that economic policies be firmly geared in two directions: first, towards safeguarding macroeconomic stability; and further, to promoting the adoption of structural measures and reforms in product and factor markets, to enhance the degree of competition in the environment in which agents take their decisions, the mobility of factors of production and the flexibility of price and wage-setting mechanisms. I believe that both strategies generate substantial synergies if they are pursued simultaneously. And in Spain we have the experience of the key role they have played in the real convergence of the Spanish economy over the last decade. And this is so because it is essential that the response of supply and demand to the changes required to rebalance the various sources of spending and the various sectors of activity should be flexible, so as to ensure that the slowdown is mild and leads promptly to a new path of high growth, in line with the economy’s potential, that is more balanced and sustainable.
We are in fact already in the process of reviewing the question of whether the HKMA should play a bigger role in consumer issues, and if so what powers and resources we would need for this purpose. It is too soon to say where this will lead, but I stress again that we have no desire to get involved in the regulation of fees and charges. Deposit insurance Let me now turn to the other major plank of our reform package, which is equally, if not more, controversial. I am referring to the proposal to introduce a deposit insurance scheme (“DIS”) in Hong Kong. In a sense, this can be seen as the other side of the coin to deregulation. Increased competition in a deregulated environment may give rise to increased risk and therefore it seems right that we should look again at the arrangements for dealing with banking failure, should it occur. Let me hasten to add that we have no reason to believe that such a failure will occur. The banking system in Hong Kong remains profitable and robust, despite the challenges that it faces. Our system of banking supervision is also generally reckoned to be effective. But banks can still get into difficulties because of risks that supervision may not be able eliminate. There is always the possibility of external shocks or unfounded rumours that may damage confidence in a bank.

Deposit insurance, like other forms of insurance, is there to deal with low probability events that have a major impact if they occur. To make an obvious analogy, you still take out fire insurance even if you do not expect your house to burn down. Hong Kong stands out as one of the few developed banking centres which does not have a DIS. There is of course no reason why we should follow the rest of the world just for the sake of it. But we should at least keep our safety net arrangements under regular review to ensure that they are still appropriate to changing market circumstances. This is what we did last year when we engaged an external consultant to consider whether the existing deposit protection arrangements in Hong Kong were sufficient, and if not how they should be changed. The conclusion was that an explicit and limited form of deposit insurance should be introduced. We subsequently undertook a public consultation on this proposition and on the detailed design features of the proposed scheme. This consultation generated a heated, albeit civilised, debate. Not surprisingly, some of the large banks vehemently opposed the scheme. Opinion in the community as a whole was however generally supportive.