Eurozone: Central Bank Swap to Sweden, 2007

During the early days of the Global Financial Crisis in 2007, the European Central Bank (ECB) set up a swap agreement with Sveriges Riksbank to provide euro liquidity in the case of adverse developments and to support market functioning. Sweden’s central bank could borrow a maximum of EUR 10 billion (USD 14.3 billion) from the ECB under this agreement. The Riksbank activated the swap line in June 2009 to borrow EUR 3 billion from the ECB and repaid it in September 2009. The ECB swap line helped Sweden to lower euro funding costs, avoid market pressure on its currency, and avoid exhausting its foreign currency reserves. Such swap lines to euro area member states helped establish the ECB as the regional lender of last resort

India: SAARC Swap Framework, 2012

In response to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), finance ministers of member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) agreed in 2009 on the need for bilateral arrangements to tackle short-term credit contractions and financial market disruptions. In 2012, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) responded by launching a self-funded USD 2 billion swap framework for all SAARC member nations to provide a backstop line of credit to fight liquidity crises. The framework defined the terms under which a borrowing central bank could enter into a bilateral agreement with the RBI. Bhutan, Maldives, and Sri Lanka used the RBI’s SAARC swap framework to sign and activate bilateral swaps at various points between 2012 and 2022, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, to meet dollar liquidity needs. These countries may have preferred SAARC to other multilateral liquidity facilities because of its lack of conditionality and quick disbursal of funds. The SAARC framework helped borrowing central banks maintain exchange rate stability, provide short-term foreign exchange liquidity, and facilitate downstream lending programs. It was set to expire in November 2022 but is likely valid for another three years, given Bhutan’s latest swap agreement in December 2022

Eurozone: Central Bank Swap to Denmark, 2008

Danish banks faced substantial losses on loans to the slowing construction sector in the run-up to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007–09. The acceleration of the crisis in 2008 raised funding costs and froze foreign funding markets for Danish banks. The Danish central bank, the Danmarks Nationalbank (DN), responded by injecting liquidity and seeking to reassure bank counterparties about the soundness of the financial system. In October 2008, the DN established a swap agreement with the European Central Bank (ECB) under which it could receive up to EUR 12.0 billion (USD 16.8 billion) in exchange for Danish krone. The swap line helped the DN provide euro liquidity to financial institutions in Denmark without having a negative impact on its foreign exchange reserves. At its peak, the DN had EUR 5.9 billion in ECB swaps outstanding under the swap line. The ECB signed similar agreements during the GFC with the central banks of Japan, the United Kingdom, and several other European countries outside the euro area. These swap lines are now backed by standing agreements and have become an “integral part of the ECB stabilization toolkit” and enhance the ECB’s role as “regional lender-of-last-resort” as per a VoxEU column in 2021 by Albrizio et al. The DN also established a swap agreement with the Federal Reserve to receive up to USD 15.0 billion in dollars during the GFC

Eurozone: Central Bank Repo to Poland, 2008

The Polish zloty depreciated strongly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. At the same time, liquidity shortages occurred in the Polish market and Polish banks were constrained in borrowing from international markets. On November 6, 2008, the European Central Bank (ECB) and National Bank of Poland (NBP) signed a master agreement to enter into repurchase transactions (repos) for a maximum amount of EUR 10 billion. The NBP intended to use the repo agreement to provide foreign exchange liquidity to the Polish banking sector and ensure market stability. The ECB and NBP’s repo facility was unused as of June 2009. The peak outstanding usage by Polish banks of the NBP’s downstream foreign exchange swaps was approximately PLN 1.8 billion (EUR 0.4 billion) toward the end of December 2008. The ECB-NBP repo agreement and its collateral requirements were broadly based on the agreement between the ECB and Hungary’s central bank. The end date of the repo facilities for Poland was not disclosed. A Bank for International Settlements paper in 2010 said that NBP’s repo line with the ECB had made only a “modest contribution” to fixing the shortage of foreign currency in Poland. In 2020, ECB’s Executive Board members said that ECB liquidity facilities have a signaling effect that helps calm tensions in euro markets. On March 28, 2022, the ECB set up a new precautionary swap line with Poland with a limit of EUR 10 billion owing to the uncertainty created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On December 15, 2022, the ECB extended its swap line with the NBP by nine months, to January 15, 2024

Eurozone: Central Bank Repo to Hungary, 2008

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 led to a severe liquidity crisis in Hungary, which is part of the European Union but does not use the euro. Hungary’s banking system was vulnerable to short-term liquidity withdrawals by foreign banks. In October 2008, the Hungarian central bank, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB), created a temporary bilateral repo facility with the European Central Bank (ECB) to access euro liquidity for a maximum of EUR 5 billion in exchange for euro-denominated government securities held by the MNB. The ECB-MNB agreement was designed to increase the MNB’s ability to lend euros to Hungarian markets. The MNB drew on its ECB repo facility for this purpose increasingly from 2008 to 2010; repo usage peaked at EUR 1.8 billion, and the MNB’s downstream facilities provided EUR 4 billion of euro and Swiss franc liquidity in December 2010. The ECB converted half of the MNB’s repo facility into a swap facility in January 2010. A Bank for International Settlements paper said that the announcement of the ECB-MNB repo facility in October 2008 had a calming effect on currency markets. The end date of the original facilities for Hungary was not disclosed. In July 2020, the MNB created a EUR 4 billion repo facility with the ECB as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In December 2022, the ECB’s euro-providing facilities with Hungary were extended to January 15, 2024, because of the uncertainties arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

A study of low level nitrogen laser therapy in the treatment of non-responding tubercular lymphadenopathy and sinuses

Forty-four cases of tubercular lymphadenopathy and sinuses, who were taking anti-tubercular treatment for more than 6 months and not responding to it, were randomly selected in this study. Overall cure rate in cases of lymphadenopathy was 93.99% , sinus 77.77% and cold abscess 100%. Mean age of the patients was 30.13 (Male: female1:4.5). Most common site of lymphadenopathy was cervical , smear was positive in 19(43.18%) cases and culture in 25(56.81%) cases. Low Level Nitrogen Laser Therapy may be used as an adjuvant to anti-tubercular drugs in cases of chronic non-responding tubercular lymphadenopathy and sinuses

Energy-aware Demand Selection and Allocation for Real-time IoT Data Trading

Personal IoT data is a new economic asset that individuals can trade to generate revenue on the emerging data marketplaces. Typically, marketplaces are centralized systems that raise concerns of privacy, single point of failure, little transparency and involve trusted intermediaries to be fair. Furthermore, the battery-operated IoT devices limit the amount of IoT data to be traded in real-time that affects buyer/seller satisfaction and hence, impacting the sustainability and usability of such a marketplace. This work proposes to utilize blockchain technology to realize a trusted and transparent decentralized marketplace for contract compliance for trading IoT data streams generated by battery-operated IoT devices in real-time. The contribution of this paper is two-fold: (1) we propose an autonomous blockchain-based marketplace equipped with essential functionalities such as agreement framework, pricing model and rating mechanism to create an effective marketplace framework without involving a mediator, (2) we propose a mechanism for selection and allocation of buyers' demands on seller's devices under quality and battery constraints. We present a proof-of-concept implementation in Ethereum to demonstrate the feasibility of the framework. We investigated the impact of buyer's demand on the battery drainage of the IoT devices under different scenarios through extensive simulations. Our results show that this approach is viable and benefits the seller and buyer for creating a sustainable marketplace model for trading IoT data in real-time from battery-powered IoT devices.Comment: Accepted in SmartComp 202

Survey of Resolution and Restructuring in Europe: Pre- and Post-BRRD

This paper surveys 19 case studies of bank resolutions and restructurings across 15 Key Design Decisions. It focuses on interventions that occurred in Europe both in the years leading up to the adoption of the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) in 2014 (when many jurisdictions were constrained by a lack of legal authority) and in the years after the BRRD was in place. The main themes that emerge are: (a) the need for resolution and restructuring to eliminate uncertainty about an institution’s solvency by closing it, recapitalizing it, or merging it with a healthier institution; (b) the importance of effective valuation in achieving this result; (c) the necessity of clarity in the treatment of creditors; and (d) the value of a credible bail-in tool to incentivize creditors to agree to solutions outside of resolution