In the decade prior to the financial crisis, foreign banks’ exposure to U.S.-dollar-denominated assets rose dramatically. When the crisis hit in 2007, the banks’ access to dollar funding came under severe duress, with potentially dire consequences for global financial markets that could also...

Overview of Special Issue: Federal Reserve Policy Responses to the Financial Crisis.

Established in the wake of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy to stabilize severe disruptions in the commercial paper market, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) allowed the Federal Reserve to act as a lender of last resort for issuers of commercial paper, thereby effectively addressing...

New York Fed economists Asani Sarkar and Jeffrey Shrader examine the Federal Reserve’s recent liquidity actions in the context of studies on financial amplification mechanisms, whereby an initial financial sector shock triggers substantially larger shocks elsewhere in the sector and in the...

Yale University professor John Geanakoplos discusses implications of “the leverage cycle”—a phenomenon in which leverage is excessive prior to a financial crisis and unacceptably low during the crisis—for regulatory policy and reform. Presented as the keynote address at "Central Bank...

Adapted from remarks given before the Seminar on Payment Systems in the European Union in Frankfurt, Germany, on February 27, 1997.

A fundamental concern for any lender is credit risk - the risk that a borrower will fail to fully repay a loan as expected. Thus, lenders want credit arrangements that are designed to compensate them for - and help them effectively manage - this type of risk. In certain situations, central banks...

The securitization markets for consumer and business asset-backed securities (ABS) and commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), which supply a substantial share of credit to consumers and small businesses, came to a near-complete halt in the fall of 2008, as investors responded to a drastic...

In this study, authors Joseph Gagnon, Matthew Raskin, Julie Remache and Brian Sack review the Federal Reserve’s experience with implementing the LSAPs between late 2008 and March 2010. They explain that the target fed funds rate was set as low as possible in December 2008. Thus, to further...

The U.S. dollar clearing and settlement system received little attention during the recent financial crisis, mainly because it performed reliably, processing record volumes and values of trades made in stressed financial markets. This article shows how Federal Reserve policy measures aimed at...