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Forefront Topic

Regulatory Reform

• Making Financial Markets Safer for Consumers: Lessons from Consumer Goods Markets and Beyond
• Thomas J Fitzpatrick IV, Daniel A Littman and Stephan Whitaker
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• In the wake of the mortgage meltdown, policymakers are discussing how best to protect consumers in financial product markets. The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland hosted a seminar, “Consumer Protection in Financial Product Markets,” in September 2009 to exchange ideas with other regulators about consumer protection and the role of the courts. Read more  (PDF)

   

• Regulating the Raters: Key Provisions in Proposed Reforms
• Thomas J Fitzpatrick IV
• The financial crisis has produced no shortage of culprits—from Wall Street executives who were highly compensated for taking excessive risks to woefully undercapitalized insurance companies. Then there are the so-called credit rating organizations, or CROs, which have largely flown under the radar. How was it possible that CROs such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s handed out so many high—quality ratings to investment vehicles that turned out to be so high-risk? Read more  (PDF)

   

• A Framework for Systemically Important Institutions
• Jean Burson
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• While size can sometimes be the essential criterion for determining whether a firm is systemically important, the definition also depends on the circumstances and characteristics of a particular institution. (Based on James Thomson”s “On Systemically Important Financial Institutions and Progressive Systemic Mitigation,” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Policy Discussion Paper, August 2009.) Read more  (PDF)

   

• President’s Message
• Sandra Pianalto
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• Regulatory Reform: Lessons from the Front Line Read more  (PDF)

   

• A Proposal: Using the CRA to Fight Vacancy and Abandonment
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• In 2009, banks became the reluctant holders of more than 1,500 foreclosed properties in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Most of these houses are in Cleveland, worth little to nothing, and in danger of remaining vacant for the foreseeable future- destined to define neighborhood decay. Read more  (PDF)

   

• Video Clips: Using the CRA to Fight Vacancy and Abandonment
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• Cleveland Fed researchers discuss the Bank’s proposal for recasting the CRA to address the vacancy and abandonment problem. Read more

   

• The Community Reinvestment Act and the Economics of Lending in Lower-Income Neighborhoods
• Ozgur Emre Ergungor
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• The Community Reinvestment Act helped end the practice of redlining. But 33 years after its introduction, it may be time to consider whether the CRA needs a twenty-first century overhaul. Read more  (PDF)

   

• Spotting a Financial Crisis Before It Happens
• Stephen J Ong and James B Thomson
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• What could we have done differently to spot—and then stop—the impending financial crisis of 2008? Read more  (PDF)

   

• Video Clips: Interview with Anil K. Kashyap
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• Anil K. Kashyap is among the nation’s leading experts on the financial crisis and efforts to reform financial regulations. He is the Edward Eagle Brown Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Chicago?s Booth School of Business. Mark Sniderman, Executive Vice President and Chief Policy Officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, interview Kashyap on February 15, 2010, at the Booth School. Read more

   

• Interview with Anil K. Kashyap
• Mark S Sniderman
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• Some say that the financial crisis has launched a thousand Ph.D. dissertations and perhaps just as many books. Anil Kashyap was on the case from the very beginning. Read more  (PDF)

   

• President’s Message
• Sandra Pianalto
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• Now that some of the worst effects of the financial crisis are fading, our attention has properly turned to the future. Read more  (PDF)

   

• Rules and Regulations: How the Details Take Shape
• April McClellan-Copeland
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• Last summer, Congress approved the most sweeping reforms to the financial market regulatory system since the Great Depression with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Read more  (PDF)

   

• Early Warning: Introducing the Cleveland Financial Stress Index
• Stephen J Ong
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• The financial crisis has raised interest around the world in developing models that can spot the emergence of systemic risk. Read more  (PDF)

   

• How to Build a Bad Bank--for the Greater Good
• James B Thomson
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• Among the many unwanted things that taxpayers get socked with during a financial crisis is a portfolio of deeply distressed assets--loans gone sour, millions of them, many of them sliced and bundled into securities that nobody can sell because nobody wants to buy. Read more  (PDF)

   

• Keeping Banks Strong
• Joseph G Haubrich and James B Thomson
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• To measure a bank’s strength, one could look at factors like profitability or stock price, but few gauges are as revealing as a bank’s capital level. Read more  (PDF)

   

• Interview with Charles Calomiris
• Joseph G Haubrich
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• Charles Calomiris is the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a Professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s Joseph Haubrich interviewed Calomiris on October 14, 2010 at the Bank’s Conference on Countercyclical Capital Requirements. Read more  (PDF)

   

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