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...

The articles and commentaries included in this volume were presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis' fifteenth annual economic policy conference. The conference focused on the effects of a variety of recent changes in the market for financial services in the United States. This market...

The Federal tax code creates challenges for comparing the profit rates of different banks on a consistent basis. The earnings of banks that elect to operate under Subchapter S of the Federal tax code are not subject to the Federal corporate income tax, but S-bank shareholders are taxed on their...

We examine the value of jumbo certificate-of-deposit (CD) signals in bank surveillance. To do so, we first construct proxies for default premiums and deposit runoffs and then rank banks based on these risk proxies. Next, we rank banks based on the output of a logit model typical of the...