Smart cards, electronic checks, and electronic money alternatives combined with broadly available communications facilities such as the Internet are rapidly increasing the choices for retail payments. They are also increasing the risks. The author reviews the lessons for risk management from the...

The conference provided a comprehensive understanding of current and evolving best practices in identifying, measuring, and modeling operational risk and in managing and mitigating this risk through capital allocation, insurance, and other existing and potential risk management tools. The...

Both the current account deficit and the federal fiscal deficit are symptoms of living beyond our means. In this essay, we first provide the basic conceptual background, starting with some elements of national income accounting. We show how the two deficits are related to each other, and how...

The world of financial services has changed rapidly in the past decade. The recent pace of innovation suggests that change could, if anything, accelerate in the coming years. Such an environment poses difficult challenges for financial industry supervisors, especially in addressing threats to...

One of the most vexing economic problems facing the United States has been the persistence of pockets of poverty in the midst of prosperity. The reasons for this are many and complex. Prominent among them are economic isolation in the case of rural areas, and language and cultural barriers in...