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Journal Article
CDFIs and banks: addressing the financing needs of small businesses
The Chicago Fed has had a longstanding interest in the work of community development financial institutions (CDFI) and the evolution of the development finance industry. In this edition of Profitwise News and Views, we provide overviews of two conferences that addressed ways the industry is changing, organizing, and increasing its impact. In Milwaukee, CDFIs from across Wisconsin met in December to consider forming a statewide association, and to hear ideas about shared resources and collaboration from both researchers and practitioners. In Chicago, staff from the Reserve Bank and Board of ...
Journal Article
Concentrated poverty in Milwaukee
Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath created a renewed awareness of the unique isolation and vulnerability of people who live in communities where poverty concentrates and persists. The Federal Reserve?s Community Affairs staff partnered with the Brookings Institution to re-examine our understanding of concentrated poverty ? defined as areas where at least 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
Discussion Paper
Interest Rate Derivatives and Monetary Policy Expectations
Market expectations of the path of future policy rates can have important implications for financial markets and the economy. Because interest rate derivatives enable market participants to hedge against or speculate on potential changes in various short-term U.S.interest rates, they are a rich and timely source of information on market expectations. In this post, we describe how information about market expectations can be derived from interest rate futures and forwards, focusing on three main instruments: federal funds futures, overnight index swaps (OIS), and Eurodollar futures. We also ...
Discussion Paper
Survey Measures of Expectations for the Policy Rate
Market prices provide timely information on policy expectations. But as we emphasized in our previous post, they can deviate from investors? expectations of the most likely path because they embed risk premiums and represent probability-weighted averages over different possible paths. In contrast, surveys explicitly ask respondents for their views on the likely path of economic variables. In this post, we highlight two surveys conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that provide information about expectations that can complement market-based measures.
Journal Article
Addressing the financing needs of small businesses in the Seventh Federal Reserve District
Addressing the Financing Needs of Small Businesses is a Federal Reserve System initiative designed to inform policymakers on the issues that restrict the flow of credit and opportunities to improve the flow of credit to small businesses. A widely held view among policymakers and other observers is that economic recovery and prospects for job growth will falter if small businesses cannot meet payroll, pay suppliers and invest in innovation and expansion. ; As part of this national initiative, the Community Development division of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago held meetings in Davenport, ...