Search Results
Journal Article
Keeping SAIF safe
The insurance fund covering most savings institutions might not be as safe as its name suggests.
Journal Article
Firewalls
Working Paper
How large has the federal financial safety net become?
Legislative and regulatory actions taken in response to the financial turmoil which occurred between 2007 and 2009 expanded the extent to which financial institution liabilities were protected by federal government guarantees: i.e., these actions expanded the federal financial safety net. How large has the safety net become? Walter and Weinberg (2002) measured and examined the size of the safety net as it stood in 1999. We estimate the size of the safety net as of the end of 2008, after the creation of a number of government programs meant to back financial liabilities. We use methods similar ...
Journal Article
The fair lending laws and their enforcement
Journal Article
Policy update: Federal terrorism insurance program renewed
Briefing
Assessing Large Financial Firm Resolvability
A large financial institution may be said to be "resolvable" if, in the event of failure, policymakers would allow it to go through bankruptcy without financial assistance from the government. The choice between bankruptcy or bailout trades off different sets of costs on the economy. This Economic Brief presents a new tool that could assist policymakers with this evaluation, potentially helping to curb the "too big to fail" problem, serving as a useful complement to the "living wills" process, and making the resolution process more transparent.
Briefing
Do Net Interest Margins and Interest Rates Move Together?
Many market participants assume that, as the Federal Reserve tightens monetary policy, and market rates increase in response, banks will be better off because their net interest margins will also increase. As a way to understand the origins of this expectation, in this Economic Brief we look at the relationship between the federal funds rate and the average net interest margin for U.S. banks since the mid-1980s. We find that the relationship is not as clear-cut as one might suspect.
Briefing
Can orderly liquidation solve the problems of bailouts and bankruptcies?
In response to the financial crisis of 2007?09, Congress created the Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA), a new regime for winding down systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) that become troubled. The OLA provisions address two conflicting goals: mitigating threats to the financial system associated with bankruptcy and minimizing moral hazard associated with government bailouts. This Economic Brief compares OLA provisions to bankruptcy procedures. Although the OLA process could be quicker and more flexible than bankruptcy, it may not limit systemic risk without increasing moral ...
Conference Paper
How market value accounting would affect banks
Briefing
Did Banking Reforms of the Early 1990s Fail? Lessons from Comparing Two Banking Crises
New Richmond Fed research on community and midsize banks evaluates the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA) and Basel I by comparing failures in the 1986-92 period to those in 2007-13. Banks greatly increased commercial real estate lending between the two banking crises, but higher capital mitigated this risk. Failure rates in the recent crisis were mainly driven by the severity of the economic shocks. However, higher capital did not help contain FDIC losses, which were much larger in the recent crisis. One possible explanation is limitations in the accounting ...