Remarks at the Vanderbilt University Conference on Financial Markets and Financial Policy Honoring Dewey Daane, Nashville, Tennessee.

Presented by Charles I. Plosser, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Fed Policy Forum: Policy Lessons from the Economic and Financial Crisis, December 4, 2009

Financial system redesign has become high political drama in Japan. In August, 2005, Prime Minister Koizumi's plan to privatize Japan's huge postal savings and life insurance system (PSS) was defeated in the Lower House of the Diet. Koizumi then retaliated by dissolving the Lower House and...

This commentary focuses on two specific issues. The first asks, What are the market failures that actually create the need for the public regulation of bank safety and soundness? The second issue concerns the safety and soundness issues created by the two mortgage government-sponsored...

We derive a theoretical model of how jumbo and conforming mortgage rates are determined and how the jumbo-conforming spread might arise. We show that mortgage rates reflect the cost of funding mortgages and that this cost of funding can drive a wedge between jumbo and conforming rates (the...

The housing-related government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the "GSEs") have an ambiguous relationship with the federal government. Most purchasers of the GSEs' debt securities believe that this debt is implicitly backed by the U.S. government despite the lack of a legal...

In a working paper, three Atlanta Fed economists examine the risks that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s portfolios pose to the financial system and propose that limits on their portfolios’ size could mitigate their inherent risk.