108 posts on "Crisis"
December 5, 2011
“Flip This House”: Investor Speculation and the Housing Bubble
The recent financial crisis—the worst in eighty years—had its origins in the enormous increase and subsequent collapse in housing prices during the 2000s.
October 24, 2011
Using Crisis Losses to Calibrate a Regulatory Capital Buffer
In response to the enormous losses experienced during the recent financial crisis, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision reached a new international agreement on the amount of capital banks will be required to hold.
October 17, 2011
Back to the Future: Revisiting the European Crisis
Recent financial developments are calling into question the future of regional economic integration.
Posted at 10:00 am in Crisis, Economic History, Exchange Rates, Exports, International Economics | Permalink
October 12, 2011
Short‑Term Debt, Rollover Risk, and Financial Crises
One of the many striking features of the recent financial crisis was the sudden “freeze” in the market for the rollover of short-term debt.
Posted at 7:00 am in Credit, Crisis, Financial Institutions, Financial Markets, Inflation | Permalink
October 11, 2011
Did the Fed’s Term Auction Facility Work?
We argue that the Fed’s Term Auction Facility (TAF), introduced in December 2007, lowered the cost of borrowing of banks in the market during the recent financial crisis.
June 29, 2011
Did Trade Finance Contribute to the Global Trade Collapse?
The financial crisis of 2008-09 brought about one of the largest collapses in world trade since the end of World War II. Between the first quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, the value of real global GDP fell 4.6 percent while exports plummeted 17 percent, as can be seen in the chart below. The dramatic decline in world trade—a loss of $761 billion in nominal exports—came through two channels: decreased demand for imports and supply effects, most likely arising from financial constraints. In this post, we look at evidence that supply effects, including curtailed funding for export-related activities, played a key role in the trade collapse—and thus in the transmission of the financial crisis from Wall Street to “Main Street,” here and abroad.
Posted at 10:00 am in Crisis, Exports, Financial Markets, International Economics, Unemployment | Permalink | Comments (2)
May 11, 2011
Why Are Adjustable Rate Mortgages So Rare These Days?
The fraction of mortgage borrowers who choose an adjustable-rate loan has fallen significantly over the past five years or so. Although the fraction edged up slightly in 2010, it remains close to historic lows, with less than 10 percent of mortgage originations since 2009 featuring an adjustable interest rate. What explains the striking decline? And what are its implications for borrowers and policymakers?
April 4, 2011
CoVaR: A Measure of Systemic Risk
Wonk alert: technical content — During the 2007-09 financial crisis, we saw that losses spread rapidly across institutions, threatening the entire financial system. Distress spread from structured investment vehicles to traditional deposit-taking banks and on to investment banks, and the failures of individual institutions had outsized impacts on the financial system. These spillovers were realizations of systemic risk—the risk that the distress of an individual institution, or a group of institutions, will induce financial instability on a broader scale, distorting the supply of credit to the real economy. In this post, we draw on our working paper “CoVaR”—issued in the New York Fed’s Staff Reports series—to do two things: first, propose a new measure of systemic risk and, second, outline a method that can help bring about the early detection of systemic risk buildup.
Posted at 10:00 am in Crisis, Fed Funds, Financial Institutions, Financial Markets, Regulation, Systemic Risk | Permalink
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