The financial crisis of 2007-09 is widely viewed as the worst financial disruption since the Great Depression of 1929-33. However, the accompanying economic recession was mild compared with the Great Depression, though severe by postwar standards. Aggressive monetary, fiscal, and financial...

This paper provides a systematic analysis of the lending performance of U.S. commercial banks and savings institutions that received financial support through the Capital Purchase Program (CPP) established in October 2008. The authors combine U.S. Treasury data on recipients of the CPP with...

The authors document the provision of liquidity in Swiss francs (CHF) by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to banks located outside Switzerland during the recent financial crisis. What makes the Swiss case special is the size of this liquidity provision—at times, 80 percent of all short-term CHF...

The number of U.S. commercial banks and savings institutions declined by 12 percent between December 31, 2006, and December 31, 2010, continuing a consolidation trend begun in the mid-1980s. Banking industry consolidation has been marked by sharply higher shares of deposits held by the largest...

This article was originally presented as the Homer Jones Memorial Lecture, organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, April 1, 2010.

The authors examine the experience of selected central banks that have used large-scale balance-sheet expansion, frequently referred to as “quantitative easing,” as a monetary policy instrument. The case studies focus on central banks responding to the recent financial crisis and Nordic...

“When confidence is lost, liquidity dries up.” The authors investigate the meaning of “confidence” and “liquidity” in the context of the recent financial crisis, which they maintain is a manifestation of an age-old problem with private money creation: banking panics. The authors...

The 2007-09 financial and economic crisis was the result of a lack of effective regulation. The author addresses the problems with regulations in effect at the time of the crisis and offers proposals for regulation reform to address future crises. He notes that reforms should be based on solid...