Search Results
Working Paper
Gauging the Ability of the FOMC to Respond to Future Recessions
Current forecasts suggest that the federal funds rate in the future is likely to level out at a rather low level by historical standards. If so, then the FOMC will have less ability than in the past to cut short-term interest rates in response to a future recession, suggesting a risk that economic downturns could turn out to be more severe as a result. However, simulations of the FRB/US model of a severe recession suggest that large-scale asset purchases and forward guidance about the future path of the federal funds rate should be able to provide enough additional accommodation to fully ...
Have Fed Asset Purchases Reshaped Bank Balance Sheets? Part 1
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the Fed bought trillions of dollars in bonds. Did this cause U.S. commercial banks to “de-risk” their assets?
Discussion Paper
How Do the Fed's MBS Purchases Affect Credit Allocation?
It is sometimes said that the Federal Reserve should not engage in “credit allocation.” But what does credit allocation actually mean? And how do current Fed policies affect the allocation of credit? In this post, we describe two separate ideas often associated with credit allocation. The first idea is that the Fed should not take credit risk, which taxpayers would ultimately have to bear. The second idea is that the Fed’s actions should not influence the flow of credit to particular sectors. We consider whether the Fed’s holdings of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) could ...
Speech
The U.S. economic outlook and the implications for monetary policy: remarks at Money Marketeers of New York University, New York City
Remarks at Money Marketeers of New York University, New York City.
Speech
Panel remarks at Bank Indonesia–Federal Reserve Bank of New York Joint International Seminar, Bali Indonesia
Remarks at Bank Indonesia?Federal Reserve Bank of New York Joint International Seminar, Bali Indonesia.
Working Paper
Gauging the Sentiment of Federal Open Market Committee Communications through the Eyes of the Financial Press
We apply natural language processing tools to news articles in the financial press to construct a sentiment index—an index of the perceived semantic orientation of monetary policy communications around scheduled Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings. To that end, we develop several dictionaries that capture various monetary policy tools: conventional monetary policy, asset purchases, and forward guidance. The surprises in the sentiment index around FOMC meetings announcements explain variation in major asset prices classes between May 1999 and November 2022. Sentiment index ...
Report
The Federal Reserve’s Market Functioning Purchases
In March 2020, massive customer selling of U.S. Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed dealers’ capacity to intermediate trades, contributing to a marked deterioration of market functioning. The Federal Reserve promptly took numerous steps to address the market disruptions, including the initiation of market functioning purchases of Treasury securities and agency MBS. Purchases quickly expanded to over $100 billion per day as the Fed announced plans to buy securities “in the amounts needed” to support market ...