Economic Policy Commons^™

Lessons Learned: Jenni Lecompte, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Jenni LeCompte was deputy assistant secretary in charge of public affairs operations at the Treasury Department during the Global Financial Crisis and later became assistant secretary, public affairs. She coordinated communications, served as a spokesperson, and advised Secretary Timothy Geithner during the crisis. This “Lessons Learned” is based on an interview with Ms. LeCompte.

Lessons Learned: Steven Adamske, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Steven Adamske was Communications Director for the House Financial Services Committee under Chairman Barney Frank in 2008 and later served as a spokesman for the Treasury Department under Secretary Timothy Geithner. Adamske handled communications for issues including the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the auto industry rescue, and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. At Treasury, he specialized in domestic finance issues such as the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the wind-down of TARP, and implementation of Dodd-Frank. This Lessons Learned summary is based on an interview with Mr. Adamske.

Lessons Learned: Neel Kashkari, Yasemin Esmen

Journal of Financial Crises

Neel Kashkari was the Interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability between October 2008 and May 2009. He oversaw the architecture and administration of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) during this time. This “Lessons Learned” is based on a phone interview with Mr. Kashkari.

Lessons Learned: Arthur Murton, Sandra Ward

Journal of Financial Crises

Arthur Murton joined the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 1986 as a financial economist and rose through the ranks to become Director of the Division of Insurance and Research, a post he held from 1995 to 2013 and which he steered through the financial crisis of 2007-09. Murton participated in the important interagency discussions held on Columbus Day weekend in 2008 that led to the establishment of breakthrough programs that proved critical in stabilizing financial markets. This “Lessons Learned” summary is based on an interview with Mr. Murton about his crisis experience.

Bank Assets Management Company (Bamc), Alexander Nye

Journal of Financial Crises

Slovenia weathered the initial shock of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 well enough to return to growth in 2010. However, non-performing loans continued mounting, banks experienced significant losses, and credit growth turned negative in a credit crunch. Slovenia entered a recession in 2011, experiencing the second largest GDP decline in the euro area. It was not certain whether Slovenia had the fiscal space to resolve these problems without requesting a Troika bailout from the European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB), and International Monetary Fund (IMF). In late 2012 the government tried to prevent such a program by …

Lessons Learned: Sarah Dahlgren, Alec Buchholtz, Rosalind Z. Wiggins

Journal of Financial Crises

Sarah Dahlgren was the Executive Vice President and head of the Financial Institution Supervision Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) during the crisis and instrumental in the rescue of American International Group (AIG). This Lessons Learned summary is drawn from a March 22, 2018, interview in which she gave her take on how central bankers can prepare for future crises.

Lessons Learned: Chester B. Feldberg, Maryann Haggerty

Journal of Financial Crises

Chester B. Feldberg worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) for 36 years in a variety of roles. In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, he served as a trustee for the AIG Credit Trust Facility (2009-2011). The trust was established in early 2009 to hold the equity stock of American International Group Inc. (AIG) that the U.S. government had received as a result of the 2008 AIG bailout. The three trustees were responsible for voting the stock, ensuring satisfactory corporate governance at AIG, and eventually disposing of the stock.

When he was named as a …

Lessons Learned: Eric Dinallo, Maryann Haggerty

Journal of Financial Crises

Eric Dinallo was New York State Superintendent of Insurance from January 2007 through July 2009. In New York, as throughout the United States, insurance companies are regulated at the state level. In his position as Superintendent, Dinallo oversaw the insurance operating companies of American International Group (AIG) within New York. AIG’s holding company, however, was supervised at the federal level. Much of AIG’s problems came from its non-insurance subsidiary AIG Financial Products (AIGFP), which was a major presence in the market for credit default swaps (CDS), a type of derivative that was a factor behind the 2007-09 financial crisis. This …

Lessons Learned: Donald Kohn, Maryann Haggerty

Journal of Financial Crises

Kohn, an economist, is a 40-year veteran of the Federal Reserve System. He served as a member of the Board of Governors, and was vice chair, from 2002-2010, which included the years of the global financial crisis (GFC).

The Dutch Credit Guarantee Scheme (Netherlands Gfc), Lily Engbith

Journal of Financial Crises

As fallout from the global financial crisis intensified in October 2008, governments around the world sought to implement stabilization measures in order to calm and protect their domestic markets. While not directly exposed to the subprime mortgage crisis, the Kingdom of the Netherlands announced the creation of the Dutch Credit Guarantee Scheme (the Guarantee Scheme) on October 13, 2008, to boost confidence in interbank lending markets and to ensure the flow of credit to Dutch households and companies. In establishing this program, the Dutch State Treasury Agency of the Ministry of Finance (DSTA) committed €200 billion to support the issuance …

Denmark's Excess-Capital Temporary Credit Facility (Denmark Gfc), Keni Sabath

Journal of Financial Crises

During the interbank market freeze following the Lehman Brothers collapse in September 2008, Denmark’s central bank, Danmarks Nationalbank, used a series of unconventional monetary policy instruments to increase market liquidity. One such action included the introduction of the excess-capital temporary credit facility, also known as the solvency scheme. Under this facility, credit lines from Danmarks Nationalbank could be provided to banks and mortgage-credit institutions on the basis of their excess capital adequacy, calculated as the difference between their base capital and their capital need. The purpose of this facility was to ease the tight liquidity situation by providing access to …

The United Kingdom's Asset Purchase Program (U.K. Gfc), Ariel Smith

Journal of Financial Crises

On March 5, 2009, in the wake of the fallout from the Global Financial Crisis, the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England announced a new, unconventional policy measure: quantitative easing. The MPC determined that simply cutting the Bank Rate in the face of a recession would not be enough to boost spending and increase inflation to meet the Bank’s goal of a 2% CPI-inflation target in the medium term. Rather, over the course of the next year, the Bank purchased £200 billion of assets—primarily gilts—in reverse auctions through a newly created Asset Purchase Program. After just under one …

The European Central Bank's Securities Markets Programme (Ecb Gfc), Ariel Smith

Journal of Financial Crises

The Eurozone struggled during the escalation of the sovereign debt crisis in 2010. In order to aid malfunctioning securities markets, restore liquidity, and enable proper functioning of the monetary policy transmission mechanism, the European Central Bank (ECB) instituted the Securities Markets Programme (SMP) on May 9, 2010. This program enabled Eurosystem central banks to purchase securities from entities in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain. The program ended on September 6, 2012, and evaluations of its effectiveness are mixed.

The European Central Bank's Three-Year Long-Term Refinancing Operations (Ecb Gfc), Aidan Lawson

Journal of Financial Crises

The announcement of the three-year Long-Term Refinancing Operations (LTROs) by the European Central Bank (ECB) on December 8, 2011, signaled the beginning of the largest ECB market liquidity programs to date. Continued and increasing liquidity-related pressures in the form of ballooning financial market credit default swap (CDS) spreads, Euro-area volatility, and interbank lending rates prompted a much more forceful ECB response than what had been done previously. The LTROs, using a repurchase (repo) agreement auction mechanism, allowed any Eurozone financial institution to tap essentially unlimited funding at a fixed rate of just 1%. Because the three-year LTROs were so similar …

The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (Talf) (U.S. Gfc), June Rhee

Journal of Financial Crises

In the fall of 2008, the securitization market, which was the major provider of credit for consumers and small businesses, came to a near halt. Investors in this market abandoned not only the residential mortgage-backed securities that triggered the financial crisis but also consumer and business asset-backed securities (ABS), which had a long track record of strong performance, and commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS). Also, the unprecedented widening of spreads for these securities rendered new issuance uneconomical, and the shutdown of the securitization market threatened to exacerbate the downturn in the economy.

On November 25, 2008, the Federal Reserve (the Fed) …

The Commercial Paper Funding Facility (U.S. Gfc), Rosalind Z. Wiggins

Journal of Financial Crises

In mid-September 2008, prime money market mutual funds (MMMFs) began experiencing run-like redemption requests sparked by one fund that had “broken the buck” because of large exposure to Lehman Brothers commercial paper (CP). As a result, MMMFs, which are significant investors in CP, became reluctant to hold CP. Within a week, outstanding CP had been reduced by roughly $300 billion. The CP market experienced severe shortening of maturities and increased rates, making it difficult for issuers to place new paper. When government efforts to assist the MMMFs did not resolve the stresses in the CP market, the Federal Reserve announced, …

Market Liquidity Programs: Gfc And Before, June Rhee, Greg Feldberg, Ariel Smith, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

The virulence of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–09 (GFC) was explained in large part by the increased reliance of the global financial system on market-based funding and the lack of preexisting tools to address a disruption in that type of system. This paper surveys market liquidity programs (MLPs), which we define as government interventions in which the key motivation is to stabilize liquidity in a specific wholesale funding market that is under stress. Most of the MLPs surveyed in this paper were launched during and after the GFC, but two pre-GFC MLPs are included. A subsequent survey on MLPs …

Lessons Learned: Tony Fratto, Mercedes Cardona, Rosalind Z. Wiggins

Journal of Financial Crises

Fratto, who was Deputy Assistant and Deputy Press Secretary to the President during the financial crisis of 2007-2009, gives us his take on the government’s communications efforts and how best to prepare for future crises

Lessons Learned: James (Jim) Millstein, Alec Buchholtz, Rosalind Z. Wiggins

Journal of Financial Crises

Millstein, who was the Chief Restructuring Officer, U.S. Department of the Treasury, during the Global Financial Crisis and instrumental in the rescue of American International Group, gives us his take on how best to prepare for future crises

Restructuring And Forgiveness In Financial Crises A: The Mexican Peso Crisis Of 1994-95, Christian M. Mcnamara, June Rhee, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

Following a year in which repeated political turmoil sapped investor confidence in Mexico, putting pressure on the peso and draining the country’s foreign exchange reserves, on December 22, 1994, the Mexican government sparked a financial crisis by unexpectedly abandoning its policy of anchoring the peso to the US dollar and instead allowing it to float freely. The resulting collapse of the peso left Mexico with $40 billion to $50 billion in external debt (much of it dollar-indexed) coming due in the near term and almost no foreign exchange reserves. Faced with the prospect that Mexico would either default on its …

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.

Guarantees And Capital Infusions In Response To Financial Crises A: Haircuts And Resolutions, June Rhee, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

After the mortgage market meltdown in mid-2007 and during the financial crisis in 2008, major financial institutions around the world were on the verge of collapsing one after another. Faced with these troubles, the government had to respond quickly to contain the crisis as efficiently as possible. It was, however, limited in resources, time, and experience. To make matters worse, the complexity and opaqueness of the financial market and these institutions greatly affected the government’s ability to design an efficient and consistent method to contain the crisis. Shortly after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, American International …

Editors’ Note: Fighting The Covid-19 Pandemic Financial Crisis, Andrew Metrick, Rosalind Z. Wiggins

Journal of Financial Crises

Policy makers need decision support as they consider their options. For the past six years the Yale Program on Financial Stability (YPFS), which also publishes the Journal of Financial Crises, has researched and created content about the numerous interventions governments deployed during the Global Financial Crisis (2007-09) and other crises. With the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, we considered how we could best deploy our past research and skills to assist the current crisis-fighting efforts. We decided that we could best contribute to the effort by staying true to our mission to create, disseminate, and preserve knowledge about financial crises …

Lessons Learned: Edwin (Ted) Truman, Yasemin Sim Esmen

Journal of Financial Crises

Insights on fighting financial crises from Ted Truman, an expert in responding to the international dimensions of financial crises. Topics include the initial US response to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 and the utiltiy of issuing Special Drawing Rights (SDR).

Lessons Learned: Ray Dalio, Andrew Metrick, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Kaleb B. Nygaard

Journal of Financial Crises

Insights from a discussion with Ray Dalio, Founder, Chairman, and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Bridgewater Associates, one of the largest hedge funds in the world. Topics range from monetary policy to communications strategy when responding to a financial crisis.

Basel Iii G: Shadow Banking And Project Finance, Christian M. Mcnamara, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

The Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR), a liquidity standard introduced by Basel III, seeks to promote a better match between the liquidity of a bank’s assets and the manner in which the bank funds those assets. The NSFR requires banks to maintain a minimum amount of funding deemed “stable” by the Basel framework based on the liquidity of the banks’ assets and activities over a one-year timeframe. One of the areas seen as most affected by this development may be bank participation in project finance for infrastructure development. Since the global demand for infrastructure development remains robust, the shadow banking …

Basel Iii F: Callable Commercial Paper, Christian M. Mcnamara, Rosalind Bennett, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

One of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s responses to the global financial crisis of 2007-09 was to introduce the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR), a short-term measure that evaluates whether a bank has enough liquidity to meet expected cash outflows during a 30-day stress scenario. One area in which this incentive has already resulted in changed practices is in the market for commercial paper. Banks often provide backup liquidity facilities to the issuers of commercial paper that the issuers can draw upon to repay a maturing issue of commercial paper if they are unable to sell a new issue to …

Basel Iii D: Swiss Finish To Basel Iii, Christian M. Mcnamara, Natalia Tente, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

After the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) introduced the Basel III framework in 2010, individual countries confronted the question of how best to implement the framework given their unique circumstances. Switzerland, with a banking industry that is both heavily concentrated and very large relative to the size of its overall economy, faced a special challenge. It ultimately adopted what is sometimes referred to as the “Swiss Finish” to Basel III—enhanced requirements applicable to Switzerland’s “too-big-to-fail” banks Credit Suisse and UBS that go beyond the base requirements established by the BCBS. Yet the prominent role played by relatively new contingent …

Basel Iii B: Basel Iii Overview, Christian M. Mcnamara, Michael Wedow, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007-09, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) faced the critical task of diagnosing what went wrong and then updating regulatory standards aimed at preventing it from occurring again. In seeking to strengthen the microprudential regulation associated with the earlier Basel Accords while also adding a macroprudential overlay, Basel III consists of proposals in three main areas intended to address 1) capital reform, 2) liquidity standards, and 3) systemic risk and interconnectedness. This case considers the causes of the 2007-09 financial crisis and what they suggest about weaknesses in the Basel regime …