An examination of the continuing strength of the loan sales market, documenting its growth during the latter half of the 1980s, its subsequent downturn in the early 1990s, the effect of merger and acquisition activity, and the impact of the 1990-91 recession, plus a discussion of how these...

Stock and bond prices contain all sorts of information about investors’ beliefs and expectations. For example, the interest rate on bank debt not insured by the FDIC has information about the health of the banks issuing the debt. Unfortunately, difficulties in extracting information from these...

Deregulation and financial consolidation have led to the development of financial holding companies—allowing commercial banking, insurance, investment banking, and other financial activities to be conducted under the same corporate umbrella—and the Federal Reserve has been named supervisor...

One of the reforms proposed for preventing financial crises is to require financial institutions to hold more capital. There are a number of unresolved issues related to such a requirement, ranging from the costs of increased capital requirements to the best way to structure them. Some of this...

With the passage of the Financial Modernization Act in 1999, the FDIC began reforming our system of federal deposit guarantees. Among the possibilities it has recently raised is a merger of its Bank Insurance Fund with its Savings Association Insurance Fund. This Economic Commentary explores...

A discussion of various proposals to allow the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to vary the cost of deposit insurance on the basis of risk.

Once Wal-Mart announced its intention to acquire an industrial loan company, a public furor arose that has brought a lot of attention to a type of institution that has existed for quite some time, but was not widely recognized outside of banking circles. What are ILCs and why have they become so...

Do hedge funds help or hurt the financial markets in which they operate? The highly publicized troubles of Long Term Capital Management have once again focused the attention of policymakers and the press on the hedge fund industry and the cry for its regulation. This Economic Commentary refutes...

The increasingly controversial Exchange Stabilization Fund is used to influence the international value of the U.S. dollar and to provide aid to foreign countries. The debate surrounding the Fund will become more informed, the authors suggest, when observers understand how to calculate the total...

Since 1990, when commercial banks were first eligible to join the Federal Home Loan Bank System, they have become an important constituency of the FHLBs. Currently, seven out of 10 banks are members, and nearly half of all banks have advances outstanding. Given the wide range of activities that...