Reading the Tea Leaves of the U.S. Business Cycle—Part One
Banking System Vulnerability: Annual Update

A key part of understanding the stability of the U.S. financial system is to monitor leverage and funding risks in the financial sector and the way in which these vulnerabilities interact to amplify negative shocks. In this post, we provide an update of four analytical models, introduced in a Liberty Street Economics post last year, that aim to capture different aspects of banking system vulnerability.
Since the Financial Crisis, Aggregate Payments Have Co‑moved with Aggregate Reserves. Why?
Optimists and Pessimists in the Housing Market
The Indirect Costs of Lehman’s Bankruptcy

In our previous post, we assessed losses to customers and clients from foregone opportunities after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008. In this post, we examine losses to Lehman and its investors in anticipation of bankruptcy. For example, if bankruptcy is expected, Lehman’s earnings may decline as customers close their accounts or certain securities (such as derivatives) to which Lehman is a counterparty may lose value. We estimate these losses by analyzing Lehman’s earnings and stock, bond, and credit default swap (CDS) prices.
Is the United States Relying on Foreign Investors to Fund Its Larger Budget Deficit?

The federal tax cut and the increase in federal spending at the beginning of 2018 substantially increased the government deficit, requiring a jump in the amount of new Treasury securities offerings on financial markets to fund the gap. One question is whether the government will have to rely on foreign investors to buy these securities. Data for the first half of 2018 are now available and, so far, the country has not had to increase the pace of borrowing from abroad. The current account balance, which measures how much the United States borrows from the rest of the world, has been essentially unchanged. Instead, the tax cut has boosted business saving, allowing the United States to finance the higher federal government deficit without increasing the amount borrowed from foreign investors.
The Premium for Money‑Like Assets

Several academic papers have documented investors’ willingness to pay a premium to hold money-like assets and focused on its implication for financial stability. In a New York Fed staff report, we estimate such premium using a quasi-natural experiment, the recent reform of the money market fund (MMF) industry by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
From the Vault: Factor This In
New York Fed economists Tobias Adrian, Richard Crump, and Emanuel Moench developed a new approach for calculating the Treasury term premium. Their ACM term premia estimates have since become “increasingly canonical” in economic analysis.