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10 posts from May 2019May 29, 2019
Is There Too Much Business Debt?
By many measures nonfinancial corporate debt has been increasing as a share of GDP and assets since 2010. As the May Federal Reserve Financial Stability Report explained, high business debt can be a financial stability risk because heavily indebted corporations may need to cut back spending more sharply when shocks occur. Further, when businesses cannot repay their loans, financial institutions and investors incur losses. In this post, we review measures of corporate leverage in the United States. Although corporate debt has soared, concerns about debt growth are mitigated in part by higher corporate cash flows.
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Banks, Corporate Finance, Credit, Financial Intermediation | Permalink | Comments (10)May 23, 2019
New China Tariffs Increase Costs to U.S. Households
Tariffs on $200 billion of U.S. imports from China subject to earlier 10 percent levies increased to 25 percent beginning May 10, 2019, after a breakdown in trade negotiations. In this post, we consider the cost of these higher tariffs to the typical U.S. household.
Continue reading "New China Tariffs Increase Costs to U.S. Households" »
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Household Finance, International Economics, Tariffs | Permalink | Comments (9)May 22, 2019
Just Released: Press Briefing on the Evolution and Future of Homeownership
The New York Fed today held a press briefing on homeownership in the United States, in connection with its release of the 2019 Survey of Consumer Expectations Housing Survey. The briefing opened with remarks from New York Fed President John Williams, who provided commentary on the macroeconomic outlook and summarized the prospects for homeownership. He noted that the labor market remains very strong and that there seems to be little evidence of inflationary pressures, meaning that the economy is on a healthy growth path.
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Posted by Blog Author at 11:01 AM in Foreclosure, Household Finance, Housing, Mortgages | Permalink | Comments (0)May 20, 2019
How Has Germany’s Economy Been Affected by the Recent Surge in Immigration?
Germany emerged as a leading destination for immigration around 2011, as the country’s labor market improved while unemployment climbed elsewhere in the European Union. A second wave began in 2015, with refugees from the Middle East adding to already heavy inflows from Eastern Europe. The demographic consequences of the surge in immigration include a renewed rise in Germany’s population and the stabilization of the country’s median age. The macroeconomic consequences are hard to measure but look promising, since per capita income growth has held up and unemployment has declined. Data on labor-market outcomes specific to immigrants are similarly favorable through 2015, but reveal challenges in how well the economy is adjusting to the second immigration wave.
Continue reading "How Has Germany’s Economy Been Affected by the Recent Surge in Immigration?" »
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Employment, International Economics, Labor Market, Macroecon, Unemployment | Permalink | Comments (3)May 17, 2019
Understanding Cyber Risk: Lessons from a Recent Fed Workshop
Cyber risk poses a major threat to financial stability, yet financial institutions still lack consensus on the definition of and terminology around cyber risk and have no common framework for confronting these hazards. This impedes efforts to measure and manage such risk, diminishing institutions’ individual and collective readiness to handle system-level cyber threats. In this blog post, we describe the proceedings of a recent workshop where leading risk managers, academics, and policy makers gathered to discuss proposals for countering cyber risk. This workshop is part of a joint two-phase initiative run by the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and New York and the Fed’s Board of Governors to harmonize cyber risk identification, classification, and measurement practices.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Banks, Central Bank, Federal Reserve, Systemic Risk | Permalink | Comments (0)May 15, 2019
Did Changes in Economic Expectations Foreshadow Swings in the 2018 Elections?
Second of two posts
In the months leading up to the 2018 midterm elections, were economic expectations in congressional districts about to elect a Republican similar to those in districts about to elect a Democrat? How did economic expectations evolve in districts where the party holding the House seat would switch? After examining the persistence of polarization in expectations using voting patterns from the presidential election in our previous post, we explore here how divergence in expectations may have foreshadowed the results of the midterm elections. Using the Survey of Consumer Expectations, we show that economic expectations deteriorated between 2016 and 2018 in districts that switched from Republican to Democratic control compared to districts that remained Republican.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Employment, Expectations, Household Finance, Stocks, Unemployment, Wages | Permalink | Comments (0)May 14, 2019
Just Released: Shifts in Credit Market Participation over Two Decades
The New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data today released the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the first quarter of 2019. Total household debt grew by $124 billion over the quarter, boosted by increases in mortgage, auto, and student loan balances. Over the past twenty years, the prevalence of each type of credit has waxed and waned, shifts linked to the housing boom, the Great Recession, and the subsequent economic recovery. In this blog post, we draw on the New York Fed’s Consumer Credit Panel—a nationally representative sample of Equifax credit report data and the basis of our Quarterly Report—to explore those longer-term trends in credit market participation.
Continue reading "Just Released: Shifts in Credit Market Participation over Two Decades" »
Posted by Blog Author at 11:01 AM in Credit, Household, Household Finance | Permalink | Comments (0)May 13, 2019
Economic Expectations Grow Less Polarized since the 2016 Election
First of two posts
In two previous blog posts (from January 2017 and December 2017), we examined political polarization in economic expectations in the period immediately after the 2016 presidential election using the Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE). Today, we begin a two-part series that revisits the issue. In this post, we provide an update on how economic expectations have evolved in counties where a plurality voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and counties where a plurality voted for Hillary Clinton. In a second post, we will look at how economic expectations differed in the run-up to the 2018 congressional elections, based on how districts ended up voting in that election.
Continue reading "Economic Expectations Grow Less Polarized since the 2016 Election" »
May 08, 2019
Ten Years Later—Did QE Work?
By November 2008, the Global Financial Crisis, which originated in the residential housing market and the shadow banking system, had begun to turn into a major recession, spurring the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to initiate what we now refer to as quantitative easing (QE). In this blog post, we draw upon the empirical findings of post-crisis academic research–including our own work–to shed light on the question: Did QE work?
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Banks, Central Bank, Employment, Financial Markets, FOMC, Monetary Policy | Permalink | Comments (7)May 06, 2019
Selected Deposits and the OBFR
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently decided to revise the composition of the Overnight Bank Funding Rate (OBFR), a reference rate measuring the cost banks face to borrow overnight in unsecured U.S. dollar-denominated money markets. Specifically, in addition to the federal funds and Eurodollar transactions currently comprising the OBFR, the OBFR now also includes overnight, interest-bearing demand deposits (at rates negotiated between the counterparties and excluding deposits payable on demand) booked within banks’ U.S. offices, known as “selected deposits.” In this post, we discuss the change in more detail, the reason for including selected deposits, and the likely impact on the OBFR’s published values.
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Central Bank, Fed Funds, Federal Reserve, Monetary Policy | Permalink | Comments (0)About the BlogLiberty Street Economics features insight and analysis from New York Fed economists working at the intersection of research and policy. Launched in 2011, the blog takes its name from the Bank’s headquarters at 33 Liberty Street in Manhattan’s Financial District.
The editors are Michael Fleming, Andrew Haughwout, Thomas Klitgaard, and Asani Sarkar, all economists in the Bank’s Research Group.
Liberty Street Economics does not publish new posts during the blackout periods surrounding Federal Open Market Committee meetings.
The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the New York Fed or the Federal Reserve System.
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