Numerous commentaries have questioned both the legality and appropriateness of Federal Reserve lending to banks during the recent financial crisis. This article addresses two questions motivated by such commentary: Did the Federal Reserve violate either the letter or spirit of the law by lending...

Off-site surveillance involves using financial ratios to identify banks likely to develop safety-and-soundness problems. Bank supervisors use two tools to flag developing problems: supervisory screens and econometric models. Despite the statistical dominance of models, supervisors continue to...

The Federal Reserve’s off-site surveillance system includes two econometric models that are collectively known as the System for Estimating Examination Ratings (SEER). One model, the SEER risk rank model, uses the latest financial statements to estimate the probability that each Fed-supervised...