Speech At “Rural Places, Rural Spaces: Closing Financial Services Gaps in Persistent Poverty America,” a policy forum sponsored by Hope Enterprise Corporation, Mississippi Valley State University, Itta Bena, Mississippi
Speech At the Conference for Community Bankers, sponsored by the American Bankers Association, San Diego, California
Speech At Bank for International Settlements Special Governors Meeting, Hong Kong
Speech To the Council for Economic Education, New York, New York
Speech At "Research Symposium on the Community Reinvestment Act" hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Speech At the Money Marketeers of New York University, New York, New York
Speech At the American Council of Life Insurers Executive Roundtable, Naples, Florida
Speech At the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, D.C.
Speech At the Housing Assistance Council's 2018 Rural Housing Conference, Washington, D.C.
Speech At the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Stanford University, Stanford, California
WASHINGTON –Institutional orders routed by brokers that send a relatively high percentage of such orders through affiliated alternative trading systems (ATSs) tend to receive lower order fill rates and higher execution costs, according to a new working paper by
WASHINGTON — FINRA today released its 2019 Risk Monitoring and Examination Priorities Letter, highlighting new priorities as well as identifying areas of ongoing concern that FINRA will continue to review in the coming year. This year’s letter’s focus on materially new issues may help firms better identify those priorities that are relevant to their business.
Among the emerging issues identified in the letter as areas of focus in 2019 are:
WASHINGTON - FINRA announced today that it has fined Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC $10 million for anti-money laundering (AML) program and supervisory failures that spanned a period of more than five years.
FINRA found that Morgan Stanley’s AML program failed to meet the requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act because of three shortcomings:
Sixteen Libraries in Eight States Each Received $5,000 to Expand Personal Finance Collections and Educate Consumers About Financial Fraud
WASHINGTON – This holiday season, the FINRA Foundation is giving back to local libraries to help them provide resources to communities impacted by some of the nation’s most devastating and deadly natural disasters this year.
WASHINGTON – FINRA’s Board of Governors met on Dec. 12-13 at FINRA’s offices in New York, where it approved two rule proposals—both related to the dispute resolution forum—and approved the organization’s 2019 budget.
WASHINGTON – FINRA today published its Report on Selected Cybersecurity Practices - 2018, a detailed review of effective information-security controls at securities firms.
WASHINGTON - FINRA announced today that it has fined Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. for improperly selling shares in initial public offerings (IPOs) to industry insiders, including its employees’ immediate family members and customers who were brokers at other brokerage firms. Merrill Lynch will pay a $5.5 million fine, and disgorge $490,530 it earned as revenue from the sales.
WASHINGTON - FINRA announced today that it has fined UBS Financial Services Inc. (UBSFS) $4.5 million and UBS Securities LLC (UBSS) $500,000 for failing to establish and implement anti-money laundering (AML) programs reasonably designed to monitor certain high-risk transactions in customer accounts. The high-risk transactions included foreign currency wire transfers at UBSFS, and transactions in low-priced equity securities, or “penny stocks,” at UBSS.
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against a broker-dealer, a transfer agent, and three individuals for their roles in the creation of over a dozen undisclosed “blank check” companies from 2009 to 2014.
In its complaint, the SEC alleges that broker-dealer Spartan Securities Group, Ltd. and transfer agent Island Capital Management LLC, which does business as Island Stock Transfer, helped create and sell at least 19 purportedly legitimate public companies that were in fact shams. To effectuate the scheme, the complaint alleges that Spartan Securities filed fraudulent applications with Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to publicly list the companies’ common stock and ultimately enable the shares to become free-trading and available to public investors. The complaint also alleges that Spartan Securities’ principals, Carl E. Dilley and Micah J. Eldred, signed the false applications even though they knew or at least were reckless that the companies were fake and David D. Lopez failed to investigate red flags raised by FINRA or even familiarize himself with the companies. The SEC further alleges that Island Stock Transfer and Dilley facilitated the public sale of the stock of at least 12 of the sham companies through the bulk issuance and transfer of the “free-trading” securities.
“Broker-dealers are critical gatekeepers protecting the integrity of our markets, with obligations under our rules to fulfill that role,” said Eric I. Bustillo, Director of the SEC’s Miami Regional Office. “We allege, however, that Spartan Securities and three of its principals failed as gatekeepers by enabling multiple illicit supply chains of undisclosed blank check companies.”
The SEC alleges that the defendants violated provisions of the federal securities laws, including Exchange Act Rule 15c2-11, that prohibit fraudulent misconduct by registered broker dealers.
Between 2015 and 2018, the SEC filed multiple enforcement actions in related schemes to sell “blank check” companies. Broker-dealers that initiate or resume the publication of quotations in over-the-counter securities should be mindful of their obligations under the SEC rules, including Rule 15c2-11. For further guidance on the scope of the relevant rules, including a discussion of red flags, please see the Appendix to Publication or Submission of Quotations Without Specified Information, 64 FR 11124, 11145 (March 8, 1999).
The SEC’s investigation was conducted by Jeffrey Cook and supervised by Eric Busto and Glenn Gordon in the Miami Regional Office. The SEC’s litigation will be led by Christine Nestor and Wilfredo Fernandez.
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Gladius Network LLC with conducting an unregistered initial coin offering (ICO), which the company self-reported to the SEC.
According to the SEC’s order, Gladius conducted an ICO in late 2017, after the Commission had warned in its DAO Report of Investigation that ICOs can be securities offerings. Gladius, a Washington, DC-based company, raised approximately $12.7 million in digital assets to finance its plan to develop a network for renting spare computer bandwidth to defend against cyberattacks and enhance delivery speed. Gladius did not register its ICO under the federal securities laws, and the ICO did not qualify for an exemption from registration requirements.
Gladius self-reported to the SEC’s Enforcement staff in the summer of 2018, expressed an interest in taking prompt remedial steps, and cooperated with the investigation. The SEC did not impose a penalty because the company self-reported the conduct, agreed to compensate investors, and will register the tokens as a class of securities. The case follows the Commission’s two recent ICO registration cases, in which companies agreed to pay penalties for similar registration violations and agreed to similar undertakings.
“The SEC has been clear that companies must comply with the securities laws when issuing digital tokens that are securities,” said Robert A. Cohen, Chief of the SEC’s Cyber Unit. “Today’s case shows the benefit of self-reporting and taking proactive steps to remediate unregistered offerings.”
Pursuant to the order, Gladius undertakes to return funds to those investors who purchased tokens in the ICO and request a return of funds, and register its tokens as securities pursuant to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Gladius also will file required periodic reports with the Commission. Gladius consented to the order without admitting or denying the findings.
The investigation was conducted by Laura K. D’Allaird and Marc E. Johnson of the Enforcement Division’s Cyber Unit and was supervised by Mr. Cohen.
The Securities and Exchange Commission voted to propose an expansion of a popular modernization reform that would permit investor views about potential offerings to be taken into account at an earlier stage in the process than is the case today. The new rule and related amendments would expand the "test-the-waters" accommodation—currently available to emerging growth companies or "EGCs"—to all issuers, including investment company issuers.
This proposal would allow all prospective issuers, not just EGCs, to gauge market interest in a possible initial public offering or other proposed registered securities offering by permitting discussions with certain investors prior to the filing of a registration statement. The proposed reform builds on a popular similar provision of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) that has been limited to EGCs. Generally, companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenues do not qualify as EGCs and, therefore, have not benefitted from JOBS Act provisions intended to foster capital formation in the public markets. The proposed rule follows action taken by the Division of Corporation Finance in 2017 to extend another EGC reform to all issuers: the ability to initially submit certain filings in draft, non-public form. As a result of that policy change, all issuers, not just EGCs, have been able to make non-public filings with the SEC as they begin the process of becoming a public company.
"Extending the test-the-waters reform to a broader range of issuers is designed to enhance their ability to conduct successful public securities offerings and lower their cost of capital, and ultimately to provide investors with more opportunities to invest in public companies," said SEC Chairman Jay Clayton. "I have seen first-hand how the modernization reforms of the JOBS Act have helped companies and investors. The proposed rules would allow companies to more effectively consult with investors and better identify information that is important to them in advance of a public offering."
The proposed test-the-waters rule and related amendments are intended to provide increased flexibility to issuers with respect to their communications with institutional investors about contemplated registered securities offerings, as well as a cost-effective means for evaluating market interest before incurring the costs associated with such an offering.
The proposal will have a 60-day public comment period following its publication in the Federal Register.
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FACT SHEET
Solicitations of Interest Prior to a Registered Public Offering
Feb. 19, 2019
Action
The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a rule and related amendments under the Securities Act that would enable all issuers to engage in test-the-waters communications with certain institutional investors regarding a contemplated registered securities offering prior to, or following, the filing of a registration statement related to such offering. These communications would be exempt from restrictions imposed by Section 5 of the Securities Act on written and oral offers prior to or after filing a registration statement and would be limited to qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) and institutional accredited investors (IAIs). The expanded test-the-waters provision, as proposed, would provide all issuers with appropriate flexibility in determining when to proceed with a registered public offering while maintaining investor protections.
Background
In 2012, Congress passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act), which created Section 5(d) of the Securities Act. Section 5(d) permits an emerging growth company (EGC) and any person acting on its behalf to engage in oral or written communications with potential investors that are QIBs and IAIs before or after filing a registration statement to gauge such investors’ interest in a contemplated securities offering. The proposed rule will extend the "test-the-waters" provision to non-EGCs and thereby encourage more issuers to consider entering our public equity markets.
Highlights and the Proposal
Proposed Securities Act Rule 163B
Proposed Securities Act Rule 163B would permit any issuer, or any person authorized to act on its behalf, to engage in oral or written communications with potential investors that are, or are reasonably believed to be, QIBs or IAIs, either prior to or following the filing of a registration statement, to determine whether such investors might have an interest in a contemplated registered securities offering. The proposed rule would be non-exclusive and an issuer could rely on other Securities Act communications rules or exemptions when determining how, when, and what to communicate related to a contemplated securities offering.
Under the proposed rule:
What’s Next?
The proposal will be subject to a 60-day public comment period.
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against four individuals and related businesses for their roles in two microcap frauds and unlawful securities offerings. In sum, the alleged illegal transactions resulted in proceeds of more than $25 million.
According to the SEC’s complaint, from approximately December 2012 to June 2013, microcap stock financier Magna Group, which was founded and owned by Joshua Sason, engaged in a scheme to acquire fake convertible promissory notes supposedly issued by penny stock issuer Lustros Inc. and then to convert those notes into shares of Lustros common stock. The defendants then sold the shares to unsuspecting retail investors, who did not know that the shares were fraudulently acquired and were being sold illegally. The defendants’ sales of the Lustros shares also had the effect of destroying the value of the Lustros shares held by the public. The complaint alleges that Marc Manuel, Magna Group’s former head of research and due diligence, personally negotiated and executed the sham transactions.
The complaint also alleges that in November 2013, Magna Equities II, which also was wholly-owned by Sason, and Manuel, purchased another fake promissory note from Pallas Holdings. Magna Equities II and the note’s issuer, NewLead Holdings Ltd., later agreed to retire the fake debt in exchange for shares of the issuer through a court-approved settlement agreement. To obtain approval of the settlement, Sason and Magna Equities II falsely swore to the court that the fake promissory note was a bona fide debt of NewLead. Kautilya “Tony” Sharma and Perian Salviola, who controlled Pallas Holdings, are alleged to also have participated in the scheme.
“As alleged in our complaint, Magna Group and its co-defendants used fake debt instruments to unlawfully obtain shares in microcap companies, which they then dumped on unsuspecting retail investors,” said Sanjay Wadhwa, Senior Associate Director of the SEC’s New York Regional Office. “This action demonstrates the resolve of the SEC in pursuing fraudsters who use elaborate financing schemes to engage in securities fraud.”
The SEC’s investigation was conducted by Lee A. Greenwood, Philip A. Fortino, John O. Enright, Christopher Ferrante, Diego Brucculeri, and Sheldon L. Pollock of the New York office. The SEC’s litigation will be handled by Messrs. Fortino, Greenwood, Enright, and Alexander M. Vasilescu. The case is being supervised by Mr. Wadhwa.
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation has agreed to pay $25 million to settle charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and two of the company’s former executives were charged for their roles in facilitating the payment of millions of dollars in a bribe to an Indian government official.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s complaint alleges that in 2014, a senior government official of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu demanded a $2 million bribe from the construction firm responsible for building Cognizant’s 2.7 million square foot campus in Chennai, India. As alleged in the complaint, Cognizant’s President Gordon Coburn and Chief Legal Officer Steven E. Schwartz authorized the contractor to pay the bribe, and directed their subordinates to conceal the bribe by doctoring the contractor’s change orders. The SEC also alleges that Cognizant authorized the construction firm to make two additional bribes totaling more than $1.6 million. Cognizant allegedly used sham change order requests to conceal the payments it made to reimburse the firm.
“Bribery to further corporate goals is an illusory path to long-term success. While always the wrong choice, it is particularly egregious when senior executives chart that course for those they lead, as our complaint alleges here. We are committed to holding them accountable for their actions,” said Charles E. Cain, Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s FCPA Unit.
The SEC charged Coburn and Schwartz with violating anti-bribery, books and records, and internal accounting controls provisions of the federal securities laws. The SEC is seeking permanent injunctions, monetary penalties, and officer-and-director bars against Coburn and Schwartz.
The SEC’s order as to Cognizant found that the company violated Sections 30A, 13(b)(2)(A) and 13(b)(2)(B) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which are anti-bribery, books and records, and internal accounting controls provisions of the federal securities laws. Without admitting or denying the allegations, the company agreed to pay disgorgement and prejudgment interest of approximately $19 million and a penalty of $6 million.
The Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey today announced the indictment of Coburn and Schwartz on criminal charges of violating and conspiring to violate the FCPA’s anti-bribery and accounting provisions.
The SEC’s investigation was conducted by Michael K. Catoe, Paul W. Sharratt, and M. Shahriar Masud of the FCPA Unit under the supervision of Robert I. Dodge. The litigation will be led by John Bowers. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the Justice Department’s Fraud Section, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it is extending for one month the comment period on the proposed rulemaking to amend rules and forms to help investors make informed investment decisions regarding variable annuity and variable life insurance contracts that was published in the Federal Register on November 30, 2018 (Release Nos. 33-10569; 34-84508; IC-33286).
The public comment period for the proposed rulemaking “Updated Disclosure Requirements and Summary Prospectus for Variable Annuity and Variable Life Insurance Contracts,” Release Nos. 33-10569; 34-84508; IC-33286 (Oct. 30, 2018) will now end on March 15, 2019. The scope and comment process for this release remains as stated in the original Federal Register notice of November 30, 2018.
The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed insider trading charges against a former senior attorney at Apple whose duties included executing the company’s insider trading compliance efforts.
The SEC’s complaint alleges that Gene Daniel Levoff, an attorney who previously served as Apple’s global head of corporate law and corporate secretary, received confidential information about Apple’s quarterly earnings announcements in his role on a committee of senior executives who reviewed the company’s draft earnings materials prior to their public dissemination. Using this confidential information, Levoff traded Apple securities ahead of three quarterly earnings announcements in 2015 and 2016 and made approximately $382,000 in combined profits and losses avoided. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Levoff was responsible for securities laws compliance at Apple, including compliance with insider trading laws. As part of his responsibilities, Levoff reviewed and approved the company’s insider trading policy and notified employees of their obligations under the insider trading policy around quarterly earnings announcements.
“Levoff’s alleged exploitation of his access to Apple’s financial information was particularly egregious given his responsibility for implementing the company’s insider trading compliance policy,” said Antonia Chion, Associate Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “The SEC is committed to pursuing insiders who breach their duties to investors.”
The SEC’s complaint, filed in federal district court in Newark, New Jersey, charges Levoff with fraud and is seeking the return of his ill-gotten trading profits plus interest, penalties, a permanent injunction, and an officer-and-director bar.
In a parallel action, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey today announced criminal charges.
The SEC’s investigation, which is continuing, has been conducted by Pei Chung and Elizabeth Doisy. The case has been supervised by Deborah A. Tarasevich and Ms. Chion. The litigation will be led by Daniel Maher and Cheryl Crumpton. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee, January 29-30, 2019
Federal Reserve Board extends comment period for proposed role that would modify company-run stress testing requirements to conform with the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act until March 21
Federal Reserve Board identifies error in historical dataset used in its 2019 stress tests and issues correction
Federal Reserve Board begins 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances
Interagency final rule implements flood insurance reform provisions
Federal Reserve Board issues enforcement action with former employee of SunTrust Bank
Federal Reserve Board announces approval of applications by Regions Bank
Federal Reserve Board finalizes set of changes that will increase the transparency of its stress testing program for nation's largest and most complex banks
Federal Reserve Board releases scenarios for 2019 Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) and Dodd-Frank Act stress test exercises
Federal Reserve Board issues enforcement action with former chairman of Mariner's Bancorp
Bureau travel cards were used for 55,059 transactions totaling some $11.8 million in fiscal year 2018. We analyzed the risks of illegal, improper, or erroneous purchases and payments.
Organizational governance involves processes and structures for decisionmaking, accountability, controls, and behaviors designed to accomplish an organization's objectives. A strong governance system can enable an organization to achieve its objectives
During examinations of supervised institutions, the Bureau may issue corrective actions to address violations of federal consumer financial laws or regulations, compliance program deficiencies, or control weaknesses. We assessed the Bureau's . . .
The Work Plan presents the audits and evaluations we are conducting to help the Board and the Bureau fulfill their respective missions.
David C. Weiss, United States Attorney for the District of Delaware, announced today that Hon. Richard G. Andrews sentenced former Wilmington Trust Chief Credit Officer William North, age 59, to 54 months' imprisonment and a $100,000.00 fine . . .
The Board's academic assistance program is intended to support qualified employees' development and career progression. We assessed the Board's internal controls to ensure that employees receive financial assistance in accordance with agency policy . . .
The Bureau's purchase card program supports its procurement needs and reduces the administrative cost of purchasing small-dollar items. From April 1, 2017, through June 30, 2018, cardholders made about 4,200 transactions totaling $2.7 million. We . . .
As the issuing authority for Federal Reserve notes, the Board forecasts the demand for currency and plans and executes the issuance of currency to the Federal Reserve Banks, which then fulfill currency orders from depository institutions. To carry . . .
Summary of significant audit, evaluation, and investigative work concerning the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection we completed from April 1, 2018, through September 30, 2018.
Washington, DC—Fred W. Gibson, Jr., has been selected as Deputy Inspector General of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board) and the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (Bureau) . . .
A closed meeting of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System was held at 11:30 a.m.on December 10, 2018. Matter(s) considered: Review and determination by the Board of Governors of the advance and discount rates to be charged by the Federal Reserve Banks. Supervisory Matter.
A closed meeting of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System will be held at 11:30 a.m. on December 10, 2018. Matter(s) considered: Review and determination by the Board of Governors of the advance and discount rates to be charged by the Federal Reserve Banks. Supervisory Matter.
Simon Gilchrist and Egon Zakrajsek | The diminished sensitivity of inflation to changes in resource utilization that has been observed in many advanced economies over the past several decades is frequently linked to the increase in global economic integration. In this paper, we examine this "globalization" hypothesis using both aggregate U.S. data on measures of inflation and economic slack and a rich panel data set containing producer prices, wages, output, and employment at a narrowly defined industry level. Our results indicate that the rising exposure of the U.S. economy to international trade can indeed help explain a significant fraction of the overall decline in responsiveness of aggregate inflation to fluctuations in economic activity. This flattening of the U.S. Phillips curve is supported strongly by our cross-sectional evidence, which shows that increased trade exposure significantly attenuates the response of inflation to fluctuations in output across industries. Our estimates indicate that the inflation-output tradeoff is about three times larger for low-trade intensity industries compared with their high-trade intensity counterparts.
Christopher Erceg, Andrea Prestipino, and Andrea Raffo | We study the short-run macroeconomic effects of trade policies that are equivalent in a friction-less economy, namely a uniform increase in import tariffs and export subsidies (IX), an increase in value-added taxes accompanied by a payroll tax reduction (VP), and a border adjustment of corporate profit taxes (BAT). Using a dynamic New Keynesian open-economy framework, we summarize conditions for exact neutrality and equivalence of these policies. Neutrality requires the real exchange rate to appreciate enough to fully offset the effects of the policies on net exports. We argue that a combination of higher import tariffs and export subsidies is likely to trigger only a partial exchange rate offset and thus boosts net exports and output (with the output stimulus largely due to the subsidies). Under full pass-through of taxes, IX and BAT are equivalent but VP is not. We show that a temporary VP can increase intertemporal prices enough to depress aggregate demand and output, even when wages are sticky. These contractionary effects are especially pronounced under fixed exchange rates.
Gregory J. Cohen, Melanie Friedrichs, Kamran Gupta, William Hayes, Seung Jung Lee, W. Blake Marsh, Nathan Mislang, Maya O. Shaton, and Martin Sicilian | We introduce a new software package for determining linkages between datasets without common identifiers. We apply these methods to three datasets commonly used in academic research on syndicated lending: Refinitiv LPC DealScan, the Shared National Credit Database, and S&P Global Market Intelligence Compustat. We benchmark the results of our match using results from the literature and previously matched files that are publicly available. We find that the company level matching is enhanced by careful cleaning of the data and considering hierarchical relationships. For loan level matching, a tailored approach based on a good understanding of the data can be better in certain dimensions than a more pure machine learning approach. The R package for the company level match can be found on Github.
Marco Macchiavelli and Luke Pettit | We document several effects of the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) rule on dealers' financing and intermediation of securities. For identification, we exploit the fact that the US implementation is more stringent than that in foreign jurisdictions. In line with LCR incentives, US dealers reduce their reliance on repos as a way to finance inventories of high-quality assets and increase the maturity of lower-quality repos relative to foreign dealers; additionally, US dealers cut back on trades that downgrade their own collateral. Dealers are nevertheless still providing significant maturity transformation. We also show that significant de-risking occurs immediately after the 2007-09 crisis, before post-crisis regulations.
Ricardo Correa, Teodora Paligorova, Horacio Sapriza, and Andrei Zlate | We analyze the impact of monetary policy on bilateral cross-border bank flows using the BIS Locational Banking Statistics between 1995 and 2014. We find that monetary policy in the source countries is an important determinant of cross-border bank flows. In addition, we find evidence in favor of a cross-border bank portfolio channel. As relatively tighter monetary conditions in source countries erode the net worth and collateral values of domestic borrowers, banks reallocate their claims toward safer foreign counterparties. The cross-border reallocation of credit is more pronounced for banks in source countries with weaker financial sectors, which are likely to be more risk averse. Lastly, the reallocation is directed toward borrowers in safer countries, such as advanced economies or economies with an investment grade sovereign rating. By highlighting the effect of domestic monetary policy on foreign credit, this study enhances our understanding of the monetary policy transmission mechanism through global banksAccessible materials (.zip)
Timothy S. Hills, Taisuke Nakata, and Takeki Sunakawa | This paper characterizes optimal commitment policy in the New Keynesian model using a novel recursive formulation of the central bank's infinite horizon optimization problem. In our recursive formulation motivated by Kydland and Prescott (1980), promised inflation and output gap--as opposed to lagged Lagrange multipliers--act as pseudo-state variables. Using three well known variants of the model--one featuring inflation bias, one featuring stabilization bias, and one featuring a lower bound constraint on nominal interest rates--we show that the proposed formulation sheds new light on the nature of the intertemporal trade-off facing the central bank.
Edward L. Anderson, Fernando Cerezetti, and Mark Manning | Stress testing has become an increasingly important mechanism to support a variety of financial stability objectives. Stress tests can be used to test the individual resilience of a single entity or to assess the system-wide vulnerabilities of a network. This article examines the role of supervisory stress testing of central counterparties (CCPs), which has emerged in recent years. A key message is that crucial differences in CCPs' role, risk profile and financial structure, when compared to banks, are likely to require significant adaptation in the design of supervisory stress tests (SSTs). We examine how supervisory stress tests may be designed to complement CCPs' own daily stress tests, and argue that macro-prudential supervisory stress testing of CCPs is valuable for both authorities and market participants. The paper offers practical guidance on the implementation of the exercises and proposes some specific design principles that should allow authorities to extract more information from such tests. We propose a two-tier approach that meets the intended policy objectives, while balancing ambition and resource cost. The first tier encompasses more standardized tests that can be conducted frequently to assess the resilience of the clearing network over time. The second tier encompasses less frequent and more complex 'deep dive' assessments. The proposed approach should overcome operational and resource challenges, which to date, may have inhibited the widespread application of supervisory stress testing.
Andrew Phin, Todd Prono, Jonathan J. Reeves, and Konark Saxena | Using high frequency data, we develop an event study method to test for level shifts in beta and measure abnormal returns for events that produce such level shifts. Using this method, we estimate abnormal returns for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) announcement and find that its abnormal returns are largely realized on the first day. The abnormal returns in the remaining post event period, which show up as a drift using standard methodology, are attributed to level shifts in beta.
Christopher Kurz, Geng Li, and Daniel J. Vine | The economic wellbeing of the millennial generation, which entered its working-age years around the time of the 2007-09 recession, has received considerable attention from economists and the popular press. This chapter compares the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of millennials with those of earlier generations and compares their income, saving, and consumption expenditures. Relative to members of earlier generations, millennials are more racially diverse, more educated, and more likely to have deferred marriage; these comparisons are continuations of longer-run trends in the population. Millennials are less well off than members of earlier generations when they were young, with lower earnings, fewer assets, and less wealth. For debt, millennials hold levels similar to those of Generation X and more than those of the baby boomers. Conditional on their age and other factors, millennials do not appear to have preferences for consumption that differ signi ficantly from those of earlier generations.
Nathan Foley-Fisher, Stefan Gissler, and Stéphane Verani | This paper studies how over-the-counter market liquidity is affected by securities lending. We combine micro-data on corporate bond market trades with securities lending transactions and individual corporate bond holdings by U.S. insurance companies. Applying a difference-in-differences empirical strategy, we show that the shutdown of AIG's securities lending program in 2008 caused a statistically and economically significant reduction in the market liquidity of corporate bonds predominantly held by AIG. We also show that an important mechanism behind the decrease in corporate bond liquidity was a shift towards relatively small trades among a greater number of dealers in the interdealer market.
Laura J. Feiveson and John Sabelhaus | Empirical analysis of U.S. income, saving and wealth dynamics is constrained by a lack of high-quality and comprehensive household-level panel data. This paper uses a pseudo-panel approach, tracking types of agents by birth cohort and across time through a series of cross-section snapshots synthesized with macro aggregates. The key micro source data is the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which captures the top of the wealth distribution by sampling from administrative records. The SCF has the detailed balance sheet components, incomes, and interfamily transfers needed to use both sides of the intertemporal budget constraint and thus solve for saving and consumption. The results here are consistent with recent papers based on individual panel data from countries with administrative registries, and highlights the different roles of saving, capital gains, and interfamily transfers in wealth change over the lifecycle and across permanent income groups.
Neil Bhutta, Jesse Bricker, Lisa J. Dettling, Jimmy Kelliher, and Steven M. Laufer | We estimate a county-level model of household delinquency and use it to conduct "stress tests" of household debt. Applying house price and unemployment rate shocks from Comprehensive Capital Analysis Review (CCAR) stress tests, we find that forecasted delinquency rates for the recent stock of debt are moderately lower than for the stock of debt before the 2007-09 financial crisis, given the same set of shocks. This decline in expected delinquency rates under stress reflects an improvement in debt-to-income ratios and an increase in the share of debt held by borrowers with relatively high credit scores. Under an alternative scenario where the size of house price shocks depends on housing valuations, we forecast a much lower delinquency rate than occurred during the crisis, reflecting more reasonable housing valuations than pre-crisis. Stress tests using other scenarios for the path of house prices and unemployment also support the conclusion that household debt curren tly poses a lower risk to financial stability than before the financial crisis.
Ben S. Bernanke, Michael T. Kiley, and John M. Roberts | In low-rate environments, policy strategies that involve holding rates “lower for longer” (L4L) may mitigate the effects of the effective lower bound (ELB). However, these strategies work in part by managing the public’s expectations, which is not always realistic. Using the Fed’s large-scale macroeconometric model, we study the effectiveness of L4L policies when financial market participants are forward-looking but other agents are not. We find that the resulting limited ability to manage expectations reduces but does not eliminate the advantages of L4L policies. The best policies provide adequate stimulus at the ELB while avoiding sizable overshoots of inflation and output.Appendix (PDF)
Serafin J. Grundl and Yu Zhu | In laboratory experiments bidding in first-price auctions is more aggressive than predicted by the risk-neutral Bayesian Nash Equilibrium (RNBNE) - a finding known as the overbidding puzzle. Several models have been proposed to explain the overbidding puzzle, but no canonical alternative to RNBNE has emerged, and RNBNE remains the basis of the structural auction literature. Instead of estimating a particular model of overbidding, we use the overbidding restriction itself for identification, which allows us to bound the valuation distribution, the seller's payoff function, and the optimal reserve price. These bounds are consistent with RNBNE and all models of overbidding and remain valid if different bidders employ different bidding strategies. We propose simple estimators and evaluate the validity of the bounds numerically and in experimental data.
Antonio Falato, Diana Iercosan, and Filip Zikes | This paper uses detailed high-frequency regulatory data to evaluate whether trading increases or decreases systemic risk in the U.S. banking sector. We estimate the sensitivity of weekly bank trading net profits to a variety of aggregate risk factors, which include equities, fixed-income, derivatives, foreign exchange, and commodities. We find that U.S. banks had large trading exposures to equity market risk before the introduction of the Volcker Rule in 2014 and that they curtailed these exposures afterwards. Pre-rule equity risk exposures were large across the board of the main asset classes, including fixed-income. There is also evidence of smaller exposures to credit and currency risk. We corroborate the main finding on equity risk with a quasi-natural experiment that exploits the phased-in introduction of reporting requirements to refine identification, and an optimal changepoint regression that estimates time-varying exposures to address rebalancing. A stress-test calibration indicates that the Volcker Rule was an effective financial-stability regulation, as even a 5% drop in stock market returns would have led to material aggregate trading losses for banks in the pre-Volcker period, as large as about 3% (1.5%) of sector-wide market risk weighted assets (tier 1 capital).
Edward Nelson | Although he was based in the United States, leading monetarist Karl Brunner participated in debates in the United Kingdom on monetary analysis and policy from the 1960s to the 1980s. During the 1960s, his participation in the debates was limited to research papers, but in the 1970s, as monetarism attracted national attention, Brunner made contributions to U.K. media discussions. In the pre-1979 period, he was highly critical of the U.K. authorities’ nonmonetary approach to the analysis and control of inflation--an approach supported by leading U.K. Keynesians. In the early 1980s, Brunner had direct interaction with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on issues relating to monetary control and monetary strategy. He was unsuccessful in persuading her to use the monetary base--instead of a short-term interest rate--as the instrument for implementing monetary policy. However, following his interventions, the U.K. authorities during the 1980s assigned weight to the monetary base as an indicator and target of monetary policy. Brunner’s imprint on U.K. monetary policy has also been felt in the twenty-first century. Brunner’s analysis, with Allan Meltzer, of the monetary transmission mechanism helped provide the basis for the policy of quantitative easing followed by the Bank of England.
Hess Chung, Etienne Gagnon, Taisuke Nakata, Matthias Paustian, Bernd Schlusche, James Trevino, Diego Vilán, and Wei Zheng | We simulate the FRB/US model and a number of statistical models to quantify some of the risks stemming from the effective lower bound (ELB) on the federal funds rate and to assess the efficacy of adjustments to the federal funds rate target, balance sheet policies, and forward guidance to provide monetary policy accommodation in the event of a recession. Over the next decade, our simulations imply a roughly 20 to 50 percent probability that the federal funds rate will be constrained by the ELB at some point. We also find that forward guidance and balance sheet polices of the kinds used in response to the Global Financial Crisis are modestly effective in speeding up the labor market recovery and return of inflation to 2 percent following an economic slump. However, these policies have only small effects in limiting the initial rise in the unemployment rate during a recession because of transmission lags. As with any model-based analysis, we also discuss a number of c aveats regarding our results.
Travis J. Berge, Andrew C. Chang, and Nitish R. Sinha | We propose a framework to evaluate the conditionality of forecasts. The crux of our framework is the observation that a forecast is conditional if revisions to the conditioning factor are faithfully incorporated into the remainder of the forecast. We consider whether the Greenbook, Blue Chip, and the Survey of Professional Forecasters exhibit systematic biases in the manner in which they incorporate interest rate projections into the forecasts of other macroeconomic variables. We do not find strong evidence of systematic biases in the three economic forecasts that we consider, as the interest rate projections in these forecasts appear to be efficiently incorporated into forecasts of other economic variables.
Edward Nelson | This analysis of Allan Meltzer’s analytical framework focuses on the role that Meltzer assigned to the monetary base. For many years, Meltzer suggested that central banks should use the monetary base as their policy instrument, in place of a short-term nominal interest rate. However, he recognized that in practice central banks did not follow this prescription. He believed that the monetary base could play an important role even when an interest rate was used as the instrument. Meltzer’s reasoning was twofold: (i) The monetary base might shed light on the behavior of important asset prices that mattered for aggregate demand. (ii) The base might serve as a useful indicator of the likely future course of the money stock. In later years, while still emphasizing the valuable indicator properties of the monetary base, Meltzer accepted that interest-rate-based rules could deliver monetary control and economic stabilization. For the situation in which the short-term nom inal interest rate was at its lower bound, Meltzer continued to stress quantities as monetary policy instruments. He felt that, at the lower bound, the central bank remained able, through quantitative easing, to boost asset prices, the money stock, and the economy. Such stimulative actions implied increases in the monetary base; however, Meltzer did acknowledge that the manner in which the base was increased (that is, what asset purchases generated the increase) figured importantly in securing the stimulus.
Survey Shows an Increase in Year-Ahead Household Spending Expectations.
Auto Loan Balances Continue Rising; Younger Borrowers Struggle With Auto Debt Delinquencies.
The New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data released the January 2019 Survey of Consumer Expectations, which shows that while short- and medium- term inflation expectations were unchanged, households were generally less optimistic about the economy and about future changes in their financial situation.
As the administrator of the Overnight Bank Funding Rate (OBFR), the New York Fed is proposing a change in the composition of the rate, and is providing details of this change for public comment.
The New York Fed recently announced the promotion of 22 assistant vice presidents to vice president and seven vice presidents to senior vice president.
The New York Fed recently announced the promotion of 30 officers to assistant vice president and named 26 new officers at the Bank.
Competition Encourages Financial Education Among Island’s College-Age Students
The New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data released the December 2018 Survey of Consumer Expectations, which shows no change in short-term inflation expectations and a slight uptick in medium-term inflation expectations.
The New York Fed today announced that the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System has designated Denise Scott chair and Rosa Gil deputy chair of the New York Fed's Board of Directors for 2019.
The New York Fed is committed to the use and handling of confidential information about participants in financial markets in a manner that promotes the integrity and efficiency of these markets, and is consistent with goals of the Treasury Market Practices Group Best Practices and the FX Global Code.
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