samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
After this year’s spike in inflation related to the effects of the pandemic—and with inflation expectations and other measures of underlying inflation close to our 2 percent longer-run goal—I expect inflation pressures to moderate over time and for the inflation rate to come back to its underlying trend of around 2 percent next year. It goes without saying that there is still a great deal of uncertainty about the inflation outlook, and I will be watching the data closely in the coming months. North Country I’ve spoken at great length about the outlook for the U.S. economy as a whole. While people’s experiences are influenced by the macro outlook, the local economy often plays a very important role in shaping their economic opportunity. At the beginning of this speech, I referred to the Federal Reserve System’s Second District, which is the region the New York Fed is responsible for. This area includes New York State, parts of New Jersey and Connecticut, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. To better understand the state of the economy and economic growth here, I’ve spent a lot of time this week meeting with North Country business leaders, community organizers, and elected officials. Much of what emerged from these conversations reflects the unique aspects of the North Country economy, which suffered outsize job losses at the onset of the pandemic and continues to experience a reduction in tourism owing to border closures. This area, like many across the Second District and around the country, has its challenges.

37  Aside from these effects, the estimates available show that potential growth in the Spanish economy is low in comparison with other developed countries. An economy's potential growth, on which the level of welfare in the long term hinges, is the result of the accumulation of the capital and labour factors of production, and the degree of efficiency with which they are combined. The low levels of potential growth in our economy are attributable to both poor total factor productivity and a higher level of structural unemployment. In its recent annual reports,13 the Banco de España has highlighted some avenues of economic policy which, if pursued, could improve the dynamics of these variables in Spain. These initiatives relate to the level of sectoral competition and to the productive structure, tax and regulatory incentives, human capital, R&D and technology, and labour market regulation, inter alia. Here I would like to highlight two areas of action: improving human capital and fostering efficient R&D expenditure, as both could be particularly affected by the situation brought about by COVID-19. As regards human capital, the confinement imposed as a result of the crisis has led to students at different levels of educational attainment ceasing to attend classes in person. This could have significant effects on their academic performance, particularly in lowincome households, where there is a lower possibility of replacing physical access to education.
Bank customers also bear a major responsibility in  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  protecting their own interests and rights. Indeed I would argue that it is crucial for bank customers to become “smart and responsible” consumers of banking services. Incidentally, at the international level, the G20 in its High-level Principles on Financial Consumer Protection is also emphasising the need for financial consumer literacy. Let me use a couple of examples to illustrate this point. Before a customer shops with a new credit card, he should take time and effort to understand the key terms of the credit card, such as the interest rates for cash advances and any applicable charges for late payments etc. He should learn how to take good care of his credit cards and ATM cards to avoid theft or other kind of scams. When he logs onto internet banking, he should exercise care to avoid bogus bank websites and reduce the risks of being hacked. This is also very true when it comes to investment decisions. Investing one’s savings with the hope of generating higher returns than bank deposits is a natural and legitimate aspiration of most bank customers, but they must also understand the inevitable correlation between returns and risks. So they must use their best endeavours to understand the likely risks and returns of any investment products that are sold to them.

Meanwhile, our decisions have to rely on as much as possible sound basis. Drafting the confidence indices, as indicators of economic expectations, does not substitute the lack of statistical information on the current situation of an economy. These indices enable monetary markets and authorities to rearrange in time the strategies that preserve balances of related goals. Confidence indices enable a central bank adjustment of monetary policy stance in the right time in order to preserve price stability, while the economy grows at a potential pace. The developed countries are in frontward regarding the preparation of confidence indices as indicators of expected performance of the economy. Integration of the markets and the globalizing process increase the necessity of preparing these indices in our region, because the objective of monetary policy, the price stability, reflects stability and economic openness towards regional countries and further. It has already been 4 years that Bank of Albania has started the evaluation of business and consumer confidence indices. These surveys are being run on a quarterly basis, with the help of INSTAT, and involve over 600 businesses of production, construction and services sectors and about 1500 consumers. The information collected covers the performance of prices, consumption, income, production, employment, investments and some other indicators, which support the decision-making on the monetary policy stance. In this important process, the Bank has from the beginning been assisted by the experts of Ifo Institute for Economic Research, witch is internationally renown in the field of business confidence indices.
In particular how best to assess the sometimes bewildering quantity and variety of data; yet to keep a sense of perspective in relation to the big issues. There is for example the need to understand the implications of the frequent data revisions and updates: how to think about them and what conclusions we need to draw ahead of the next policy decision. But it is the big picture issues, all of which have puzzling unknowns, which have fascinated me most. We spend considerable time reflecting on these in our quarterly forecast round, when we estimate the course of the economy and inflation three years ahead. The November Inflation Report was published a couple of weeks ago and provided an analysis of the UK economy, the factors influencing policy decisions and the MPC's latest forecasts for inflation and output growth. The models of the economy that we use to produce these projections provide a framework to organise thinking on how the economy works and how different economic developments might affect future inflation. The forecasts need to reflect the uncertainty in the economy. The technique we rely on is “fan charts”. [Chart 1] They show the Committee’s best collective judgement about the balance of risks and uncertainty around the central case. It means that members can agree on the overall outlook and balance of risks, even though they may come to that view for slightly different reasons.

Against this economic backdrop, and amid heated banker-bashing, it is easy to see how the social benefits of segregation were perceived as far outweighing the private costs at the time. Kennedy (1973) describes how “Stock dealings which had made bankers rich and respected in the era of affluence now glared as scarlet sins in the age of depression. Disillusionment with speculators and securities merchants carried over from investment bankers to commercial bankers; the two were often the same, and an embittered public did not care to make fine distinctions”. Glass and Steagall made just such a distinction. They underpinned it with legislation, signed by President Roosevelt in June 1933. As with McFadden, Glass-Steagall appears to have been effective from the 1930s right up until the latter part of the 1980s. Measures of concentration in the US banking system  14  Chapman and Westerfield (1942). BIS Review 40/2010  5  remained broadly flat between the 1930s and the late 1980s (Chart 2). But competitive pressures were building from the late 1970s onwards. Strains on US commercial banks intensified from alternative lending vehicles (such as mutual funds and commercial paper markets) and from overseas banks. The private costs of restrictions were rising. Legislators responded. After 1988, securities affiliates within BHCs were permitted, though were still subject to strict limits. In 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act revoked the restrictions of Glass-Steagall, allowing co-mingling of investment and commercial banking.
And while there are potential gains from a shift to market-based financing, whether or not they are realised will depend on how the financial system adapts. As part of its responsibility for identifying, monitoring and taking action to remove or reduce systemic risks, the FPC will monitor any implications of a shift to market-based finance for UK financial stability. There could also be implications for money markets. The smooth functioning of these markets is important for the Bank to meet its objectives. Any large-scale reallocation of cash around the financial system has the potential to impact how money markets function. Hence, there is a risk of some disruption to money markets in the short-term, as new forms of digital money emerge. But in the long run, these markets should adapt to the introduction of new forms of digital money. I have talked so far about the impact of innovation in digital money in normal conditions. But, during a system wide stress, the availability of new forms of digital money could increase the proportion of banks’ deposits that are withdrawn. Private liquidity insurance is calibrated to help mitigate liquidity risks. And, in aggregate, given existing liquidity resources, the banking system should be able to withstand sudden deposit outflows. But there is significant uncertainty around how smoothly such a deposit outflow would unfold, emphasising the importance of banks ensuring they have access to the Bank’s liquidity facilities.

There will inevitably be elements of tough love in such a process, and some disappointed ambitions, but I am confident that out of it will come a robust form of innovation. I hope also that laying out the principles of public interest and how they should be put into practice in the context of new innovation will help to deal with another difficult and perennial challenge of financial regulation. It is in the nature of innovation – and a good thing – that while some ideas succeed, many fall by the wayside. How many people remember Visi On, TopView and GEM? I have to admit I did not until I did some research for today. In the mid-1980s, they were rivals to Windows for the personal computer software market. More precisely, they were briefly rivals, but the rest as they say is history, as were these three rivals. In our world of finance, things can be more complicated, because dealing with failures itself raises public policy issues. There are quite often suggestions that central banks and financial regulators are anti-innovation and lukewarm on competition, because the results will at times be messy as the winners emerge and the losers fall by the wayside. We are not anti-innovation or anti-competition, but we are trying to manage our sphere of influence in order to achieve our public policy objectives, as required by Parliament and serve the public interest continuously. With that in mind, let me apply the framework to the world of payments and digital currency.
Jaime Caruana: Overview of the Spanish economy in 2005 Address by Mr Jaime Caruana, Governor of the Bank of Spain and Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, to the Governing Council of the Bank of Spain on the occasion of the presentation of the Annual Report 2005, Madrid, 15 June 2006. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, The vigour of the world economy in 2005 confirmed that the current expansionary phase is proving one of the most dynamic of recent decades. In the past few years, average growth rates not seen since the late seventies have been attained. There are two particularly notable facets to this expansion. First, unlike in previous booms, the world economy has benefited from the salient contribution of the emerging economies. And further, this high growth rate has been accompanied by very moderate inflation rates, a most significant development in the light of their concurrence with a marked and persistent rise in oil prices. The vagaries of oil prices have, indeed, been central to international economic developments in recent years. The momentum of worldwide demand for energy, combined with its slowly expanding supply which is, moreover, fairly volatile owing to geopolitical tensions and climate-related shocks, pushed oil prices up throughout 2005 and the opening months of 2006 to an all-time high in early May. In turn, other commodities, including most notably industrial metals, have risen substantially.

Institutions should thus make allowances for less favourable future scenarios of access to these international markets than those seen in recent years. The expansion of activity during 2005 was not restricted, however, to credit extended; banks also offered a wider range of non-typical banking products, such as insurance, and mutual and pension funds. Likewise, activities pursued abroad contributed to making bank balance sheets more dynamic. In this respect, the geographical composition of Spanish deposit institutions' financial assets abroad changed considerably last year. While Latin America continues to hold a relevant position, the European Union has become notably more prominent, and now accounts for the highest proportion of assets. In 2005 Spanish deposit institutions’ results, the first line of defence against potential difficulties, posted sizeable growth rates, confirming the sound position seen in previous years. It should not be forgotten, however, that a greater degree of dispersion and volatility is to be expected further to the application of the new accounting principles introduced by Banco de España Circular 4/2004. In any event, the considerable increase in business volume, the greater leverage of credit institutions and the drive to contain operating cost increases have allowed high profitability ratios to be maintained, despite the moderation of the financial margins. The clearest expression of this was the return on equity; once again in 2005, its spread over long-term public debt continued to widen.
It would be potentially destabilising of the whole project if countries found themselves obliged to take extremely difficult political decisions in the early years because their fiscal positions had not been properly corrected beforehand. Of course it goes without saying that if a country’s outstanding debt burden is well above the Maastricht guideline it will be much more difficult to achieve a sustainable BIS Review 1/1997  -3-  deficit position, since it will be necessary to run sizeable primary surpluses at high points in the cycle. It is worth recalling that when the Treaty set a figure of 60 per cent of GDP the EU average was 55 per cent. This year it will be over 73 per cent, and only Luxembourg, France and the UK will be below 60 per cent. Any country with a very large outstanding debt to GDP ratio will find the going particularly tough. As far as the UK is concerned, our debt to GDP ratio is relatively low at 56 per cent, but while we have made considerable progress towards fiscal consolidation in recent years, our deficit remains above the Maastricht guideline, even after almost five years of growth. A UK government of any political colour, as it comes to make a decision on our readiness for EMU membership next year, will be bound to take that into consideration. The latest government forecast, after the recent Budget, shows us achieving a figure of a touch below 3 per cent in calendar 1997.

Much has been said about how the banking system has remained broadly resilient to date, and how banks have not been “part of the problem” in exacerbating the economic crisis. This is in no small part due to the fact that banks entered the pandemic on a much more resilient footing that during the Great Financial Crisis, thanks to the initial set of Basel III reforms, and the ongoing cooperation among Basel Committee members over the past year. In addition, the unprecedented range of fiscal and monetary measures taken by jurisdictions around the world to support the real economy have largely shielded banks to date from losses. 1/3  Yet in order to safeguard global financial stability, it is crucial to lock-in the benefits of the outstanding Basel III reforms by implementing them in a full, timely and consistent manner. Doing so would ensure that the regulatory fault lines of the global banking system – most notably with regards to excessive variability in risk-weighted asset, the gravity of which remains as important today as it was pre-pandemic – are adequately fixed. These reforms benefited from an extensive consultation process with a wide range of stakeholders. The finalised standards took on board many of the comments received from stakeholders and reflect the differences in views among our members. They are a compromise by their very nature. I should further note that the majority of the adjustments made in the finalised standards reflected the views of different European stakeholders.
Pre-euro economic policy required careful monitoring of the balance of payments and the foreign exchange and interest-rate markets. The authorities received constant feedback on key indicators affecting national economic performance and could then react accordingly. These indicators were sensitive, multiple and very reactive. At present, with the advent of the single currency, economic managers must monitor the relevant competitiveness indicators with even greater vigilance, as economic policy errors  BIS Review 96/2001  5  could have slower and more insidious repercussions, such as rising unemployment and weak growth. The rules of a market economy continue to apply to all euro area countries. Jobs are created by consumers – totally free to purchase whatever they wish – when they choose the goods and services that they deem to be best value for money. Companies – totally free in their investment choices – locate their business according to the relative competitiveness of the different possible sites. It is therefore necessary to monitor competitiveness even more closely than before, in particular unit production costs, and the tax and regulatory framework. The multilateral surveillance carried out in the context of the Eurogroup, will help monitor competition trends in each euro area country and in the zone as a whole and, where necessary, suggest appropriate adjustments. III. A smooth changeover to the Euro will also be a determining factor for Europeans’ confidence in their new currency  Of course, the Eurosystem is at the heart of the euro cash changeover process.

The international division of labour is shifting, and when faced with major changes it is a disadvantage for Norwegian business and industry that costs are high. Credit growth Total credit is expanding broadly in line with growth in nominal GDP. However, the composition of credit growth has been giving mixed signals in terms of interest-rate setting over the past year. Household debt accumulation is high, while it is low in the enterprise sector. Household debt has increased sharply since 1994. The rise in the value of dwellings is one of the main factors behind growth in household debt. House prices have risen by an average of around 9 per cent over the past 10 years. High and persistent house price inflation may contribute to holding up credit growth even after prices have levelled off. Since only a portion of the housing stock is sold each year, there will for a long period be some dwellings that are sold at a higher price than when they were last sold. This contributes to sustaining credit growth at a high level. This probably reflects a structural adjustment to the deregulation of the housing and credit markets in the 1980s, after many households suffered financial distress in the wake of the relaxation. Homeowners with dwellings that have risen in value now have greater scope for taking up new mortgage-secured loans, using mortgage-equity withdrawal to finance consumption and other investments.
Many of the tools are indeed the same as the microprudential limits familiar to regulators: loan-to-value ratios, debt-toincome ratios, debt service ratios, and so on. 33 But there are some key differences. When these prudential limits are used for macroprudential purposes, the scope and impact are much larger. Let me give an example. •  A loan-to-value ratio of 80% for property loans, applied through the cycles, as we have had in Singapore for many years, is a microprudential tool. •  But when we limit the loan-to-value ratio to 20% for a third property loan, as we have done in Singapore recently, it becomes a macroprudential measure. Macroprudential policy may well be old wine, but it is in much bigger bottles! 34 Second, unlike monetary policy which has a single instrument, macroprudential policy requires a multi-dimensional approach. There is no single instrument that has a stable and reliable relationship with financial stability or asset price stability. 35 Macroprudential policies encompass more than just counter-cyclical capital buffers. Adjusting capital requirements in a counter-cyclical fashion or increasing the risk weights for loans to vulnerable sectors cannot fill the cracks completely. In a boom market characterised by keen competition among banks, higher capital charges do not translate into sufficiently higher lending rates that can restrain demand. •  A cross-country study by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision shows that a 1 percentage point increase in capital ratios results in a median rise in lending spreads of only 13 basis points.

It was only founded a year ago and we believe it will continue to develop and be fully fledged as a legacy of our national memory. In mid 1800s, announcing the competition on American banknote, the US Secretary of the Treasury, specified two obligatory requirements to participants about the design: it had to be original, and unpublished previously, and have a national character. Since at the beginning, the banknote is thought as not only a means of exchange, but also as an education tool for the public. As such, it should bear important moments of the history. The banknote performs this function through complicated techniques of subtly fine lines, to prevent reproduction, attributable also to robust security features. Although we frequently have these valuable papers on our hands, seldom do we concentrate for a few minutes and enjoy the art embedded in them. We very rarely focus on examining how the work of a talented painter is intertwined in a sort of a miniature canvas with that of a talented engraver, turning that piece of paper into an elegant expression of creative art. The image is familiar, but it is hard to believe that 14% of interviewers in advanced countries are able to remember recognise the picture designed on each banknote. Even less people may recognise the portrait depicted on 1000 Leke or 2000 Leke Albanian banknotes.