Economics Commons^™

Lessons Learned: Lorie Logan, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Lorie Logan is executive vice president in the Markets Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the System Open Market Account (SOMA) manager pro tem for the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), and head of Market Operations, Monitoring, and Analysis (MOMA).

The United Kingdom's Asset-Backed Securities Guarantee Scheme (U.K. Gfc), June Rhee

Journal of Financial Crises

The key structures of housing finance in the UK in the years leading up to the global financial crisis of 2007-09 consisted of retail deposits, secondary market funding and wholesale interbank lending. Although retail deposits were the major funder of UK mortgages, secondary market funding, which included covered bonds and residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), accounted for 31% of UK mortgage lending in 2006. In 2007, the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market triggered a financial shock, and the shock quickly traveled beyond national borders. Regardless of differences in the UK mortgage market, investors’ concern over the prospects of the …

The United Kingdom's Credit Guarantee Scheme (U.K. Gfc), Christian M. Mcnamara

Journal of Financial Crises

The September 15, 2008, bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers resulted in a collapse of wholesale funding markets that threatened the ability of UK financial institutions to continue funding themselves. By the end of the month, two leading UK banks—HBOS and Bradford & Bingley—had to be rescued, and there was a real risk that the entire financial system could collapse. Faced with the need to stabilize the system, UK regulators on October 8 introduced a package of measures that included a £250 billion Credit Guarantee Scheme (the Guarantee Scheme) aimed at providing banks with access to needed funding. Under the Guarantee Scheme, …

French Liquidity Support Through The Société De Financement De L’Economie (Sfef) (France Gfc), Everest Fang

Journal of Financial Crises

After the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in September 2008, financial panic and uncertainty intensified in Europe. In France, banks faced a widespread confidence crisis driven by fear that they were exposed to the US subprime market. In response, on October 13, 2008, the French government passed the “loi de finances rectificative pour le financement de I'économie.” This provided for the establishment of the Société de Financement de l’Economie Française (SFEF), a special purpose vehicle (SPV) jointly owned by the State and a group of banks and responsible for refinancing major French credit institutions. The SFEF raised funds on the …

Denmark's Guarantee Scheme (Denmark Gfc), Keni Sabath

Journal of Financial Crises

The international financial system had been experiencing challenges for almost a year before the crisis truly manifested in Denmark during the Summer of 2008 with the sudden demise of Roskilde Bank, Denmark’s eighth largest bank. As more Danish banks became distressed in the fall of 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the government determined that it was necessary to intervene in the banking sector through actions such as taking over and winding up distressed banks, giving guarantees to back up the sector, and providing capital injections and liquidity support. This paper focuses on the two different types of guarantee …

The Canadian Lenders Assurance Facility (Canada Gfc), Claire Simon

Journal of Financial Crises

Following a meeting of Group of Seven leaders in October 2008, the Canadian Minister of Finance announced the creation of a new Canadian Lenders Assurance Facility (CLAF). The facility enabled federally regulated deposit-taking financial institutions to access government insurance of up to three years on newly issued senior unsecured wholesale debt. This mirrored similar programs in other countries to ensure that Canadian financial institutions were not competitively disadvantaged in the wholesale debt market at a time when most developed countries were guaranteeing their banks’ debt. This competitive disadvantage never materialized, and the facility was allowed to expire on December 31, …

The Belgian Credit Guarantee Scheme (Belgium Gfc), Aidan Lawson

Journal of Financial Crises

Much like other developed economies during the global financial crisis, Belgium faced substantial systemic stress to its large and heavily concentrated financial system. To combat these mounting pressures, the Belgian government launched a wide-ranging, opt-in state debt guarantee program in a concerted effort to instill confidence and stymie the fear of runs in its financial sector. The debt guarantee scheme, pursuant to which eligible institutions could issue government-guaranteed debt, was originally put into place on October 15, 2008, and retroactively covered liabilities entered into from October 9, 2008, to October 31, 2009, with a maximum maturity of three years. It …

The Federal Reserve’S Financial Crisis Response D: Commercial Paper Market Facilities, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

During the summer of 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), quickly retreated from the market, causing a substantial decline in outstanding ABCP. In September 2008, pressures on the markets severely escalated again, when the Reserve Primary Fund MMMF “broke the buck” and prompted run-like redemption requests by many MMMF investors. These disruptions resulted in higher rates and shorter maturities, practically freezing the market for term CP. Concerned about the …

Guarantees And Capital Infusions In Response To Financial Crises C: U.S. 2009 Stress Test, Chase P. Ross, June Rhee, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

When President Obama took office in 2009, the Treasury focused on restarting bank lending and repairing the ability of the banking system as a whole to perform the role of credit intermediation. In order to do so, the Treasury needed to raise public confidence that banks had sufficient buffers to withstand even a very adverse economic scenario, especially given heightened uncertainty surrounding the outlook of the U.S. economy and potential losses in the banking system. The Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (SCAP)—the so-called “stress tests”—sought to rigorously measure the resilience of the largest bank holding companies. Those found to have insufficient …

Guarantees And Capital Infusions In Response To Financial Crises B: U.S. Guarantees During The Global Financial Crisis, June Rhee, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

During 2008-09, the federal government extended multiple guarantee programs in an effort to restore the financial market and contain the panic and crisis in the market. For example, the Treasury provided a temporary guarantee program for the money market funds, the FDIC decided to stand behind certain debts and non-interest-bearing transaction accounts, and the Treasury, the FDIC, and the Federal Reserve agreed to share losses in certain assets belonging to Citigroup. This case reviews these guarantee programs implemented during the global financial crisis by the government and explores the different rationale that shaped certain design features of each program.

Racialized Tax Inequity: Wealth, Racism, And The U.S. System Of Taxation, Palma Joy Strand, Nicholas A. Mirkay

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article describes the connection between wealth inequality and the increasing structural racism in the U.S. tax system since the 1980s. A long-term sociological view (the why) reveals the historical racialization of wealth and a shift in the tax system overall beginning around 1980 to protect and exacerbate wealth inequality, which has been fueled by racial animus and anxiety. A critical tax view (the how) highlights a shift over the same time period at both federal and state levels from taxes on wealth, to taxes on income, and then to taxes on consumption—from greater to less progressivity. Both of these …

Incorporating Macroprudential Financial Regulation Into Monetary Policy, Aaron Klein

Journal of Financial Crises

This paper proposes two insights into financial regulation and monetary policy. The first enhances understanding the relationship between them, building on the automobile metaphor that describes monetary policy: when to accelerate or brake for curves miles ahead. Enhancing the metaphor, financial markets are the transmission. In a financial crisis, markets cease to function, equivalent to a transmission shifting into neutral. This explains both monetary policy’s diminished effectiveness in stimulating the economy and why the financial crisis shock to real economic output greatly exceeded central bank forecasts.

The second insight is that both excess leverage and fundamental mispricing of asset values …