The first challenge is what we might think of as data innovation, and the second is data stewardship. With data innovation, the big challenge is to use our imagination and to think hard about what data may be able to say about a particular problem. This includes both novel uses of existing  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  data as well as the collection of new data. To illustrate what I mean by this, let me describe one effort, among many, here at the New York Fed. Consumer Credit Panel I’ll describe our Consumer Credit Panel, which we created in 2010. At the onset of the financial crisis, it became apparent that our knowledge of the liability side of household balance sheets was inadequate. At that time, the main data sources on consumer debt consisted of loan-level data sets on specific categories of loans, such as mortgages, as well as aggregated data on household sector debt from the Board of Governors’ Flow of Funds statistical release. While providing a useful aggregate overview of household debt, the Flow of Funds release defines the household sector as a residual sector that also includes nonprofit organizations, such as schools, hospitals and churches, as well as hedge funds and private equity funds. Furthermore, the overview it provides is limited to outstanding balances and lacks important information on the origination, repayment, and delinquency status of household debt.
The apparently unending increase in expectations of rising share prices on U.S. stock markets stimulated the capital imports, which continued to such an extent that the dollar rose to high levels against other currencies. Together with large investments in the real capital stock, which led to a capital-deepening process and hence an acceleration of productivity, the dollar's appreciation held back the price impulses that normally accompany growing pressure from wage costs. BIS Review 42/2001  3  It is not yet possible to tell to what extent the U.S. economy will experience a lengthy, more difficult process of adjustment. That is probably the background to how the Federal Reserve has acted in recent years. A series of interest rate hikes during 1999 and 2000 was presumably intended to restrain the euphoria and excessive expansion. When a downturn then became evident, it seemed desirable to try to limit the mood swing by means of the marked interest rate cuts we have seen this year. It is precisely the Federal Reserve's vigorous action that underlies certain analysts' view that the current economic slowdown will be fairly mild and brief. …and the tensions between supply and demand in Sweden Since the previous inflation report, demand in the Swedish economy has slowed down somewhat. This is true in particular for industry. Incoming statistics also indicate a slightly weaker growth in household sector consumption. Employment, on the other hand, remains strong even though more forward indicators of the labour market are signalling slower growth later this year.