Securitization is a process that allows banks and other lenders to package loans and sell them as bonds called asset-backed securities (ABS), removing them from their balance sheets and immediately generating cash for new loans. ABS are an important component of the financing cycle for many...

During the summer 2007 the U.S. residential mortgage market began to decline sharply negatively impacting the asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) market, which often relied on mortgages as underlying support. Money Market Mutual Funds (MMMFs), significant investors in commercial paper (CP),...

Beginning in the summer 2007 the Federal Reserve (the Fed) deployed numerous conventional and innovative programs to address the credit crisis occurring in the interbank lending markets that was beginning to affect the broader financial markets and threaten the economy at large. Two of those...

All economists should be conversant with "what happened?" during the financial crisis of 2007-09. We select and summarize sixteen documents, including academic papers and reports from regulatory and international agencies. This reading list covers the key facts and mechanisms in the build-up of...

This paper surveys the role of the Federal Reserve within the financial regulatory system, with particular attention to the interaction of the Fed's role as both a supervisor and a lender-of-last-resort. The institutional design of the Federal Reserve System was aimed at preventing banking...

The financial crisis that began in late 2007 with the decline in the United States (U.S.) subprime mortgage markets, quickly spread to other markets and eventually disrupted the interbank funding markets in the U.S. as well as overseas. To address the strain in the U.S. dollar (USD) funding...

Beginning in the summer 2007 the Federal Reserve (the Fed) was called upon to address a severe disruption in the interbank lending markets sparked by a downturn in the subprime mortgage market. As these developments began to impact the ability of banks to raise adequate funding, the Fed...

After the mortgage market meltdown in mid-2007 and during the financial crisis in 2008, major financial institutions around the world were on the verge of collapsing one after another. Faced with these troubles, the government had to respond quickly to contain the crisis as efficiently as...

The sale and repurchase (repo) market played a central role in the recent financial crisis. From the second quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2009, net repo financing provided to U.S. banks and broker-dealers fell by about $1.3 trillion - more than half of its pre-crisis total. Significant...

Defaults can have a dramatic influence on consumer decisions. We identify an overlooked but practical alternative to defaults: requiring individuals to make an explicit choice for themselves. We study such "active decisions" in the context of 401(k) saving. We find that compelling new hires to...