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: 1) Did the Federal Reserve violate either the letter or spirit of the law by...

We investigate the pairwise correlations of 11 U.S. fixed income yield spreads over a sample that includes the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009. Using cross-sectional methods and non- parametric bootstrap breakpoint tests, we characterize the crisis as a period in which pairwise correlations...

This paper analyzes the Federal Reserve’s major policy actions in response to the financial crisis. The analysis is divided into the pre-Lehman and post-Lehman monetary policies. Specifically, I describe the pre- and post-Lehman monetary policy actions that I believe were appropriate and those...

The level of aggregate excess reserves held by U.S. depository institutions increased significantly at the peak of the financial crisis of 2007-09. Although the amount of aggregate reserves is almost entirely determined by the policy initiatives of the central bank that act on the asset side of...

This paper proposes a model of international trade with capital accumulation and financial intermediation. This is achieved by embedding the Melitz (2003) model into an incomplete-markets neoclassical framework with an endogenous credit market. The model preserves the analytical tractability of...