A discussion of how the dramatic increase in the volume of international securities trading has strained the present system of settling trades. Included are nine recommendations made by the Group of Thirty to reduce the risk and cost of trading in financial markets worldwide and the difficulties...

Everyone recognizes the need to have a credible resolution regime in place for financial companies whose failure could harm the entire financial system, but people disagree about which regime is best. The emergence of the parallel banking system has led policymakers to reconsider the dividing...

One of the reforms proposed for preventing financial crises is to require financial institutions to hold more capital. There are a number of unresolved issues related to such a requirement, ranging from the costs of increased capital requirements to the best way to structure them. Some of this...

There is disagreement about whether large and complex financial institutions should be allowed to use U.S. bankruptcy law to reorganize when they get into financial difficulty. We look at the Lehman example for lessons about whether bankruptcy law might be a better alternative to bailouts or to...

How to best manage the failure of systemically important financial firms was the theme of a recent conference at which the latest research on the issue was presented. Here we summarize that research, the discussions that it sparked, and the areas where considerable work remains.

One of the changes introduced by the sweeping new financial market legislation of the Dodd–Frank Act is the provision of a formal process for liquidating large financial firms—something that would have been useful in 2008, when troubles at Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Merrill Lynch threatened...

One type of financial reform being proposed to deal with the aftermath of the housing crisis is allowing bankruptcy judges the authority to modify residential mortgages in a way referred to as a stripdown. The reform is seen by some as a partial solution to the rise in foreclosures and as a...

With the passage of the Financial Modernization Act in 1999, the FDIC began reforming our system of federal deposit guarantees. Among the possibilities it has recently raised is a merger of its Bank Insurance Fund with its Savings Association Insurance Fund. This Economic Commentary explores...

A discussion of various proposals to allow the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to vary the cost of deposit insurance on the basis of risk.

Once Wal-Mart announced its intention to acquire an industrial loan company, a public furor arose that has brought a lot of attention to a type of institution that has existed for quite some time, but was not widely recognized outside of banking circles. What are ILCs and why have they become so...