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Issues In Focus
The latest in-depth FedFin analysis on breaking strategic challenges and critical policy question.
Financial Services Alert
This analytical service is a battery of alerts and analyses that keep senior management up to the minute on federal developments that affect strategy and the bottom line.
Financial Services Management
Financial Services Management is the analytical resource for senior management. Sharp and concise, it provides detailed discussions of the implications of a wide range of federal actions.
GSE Activity Report
GSE Activity Report is the only analytical service so objective that the GSEs and their harshest critics, as well as the government and investors, all rely on it.
Expert Analysis and Testimony
Federal Financial Analytics managing partner Karen Petrou has on a selective basis agreed to serve as an expert witness in litigation germane to matters such as director-and-officer liability related to regulatory requirements, the manner in which financial institutions are resolved, and the role forward-looking regulatory planning plays in M&A transactions, contractual matters, and related corporate actions.
Engine of Inequality, by Karen Petrou
The first book to reveal how the Federal Reserve holds the key to making us more economically equal, written by an author with unparalleled expertise in the real world of financial policy.
Following the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy placed much greater focus on stabilizing the market than on helping struggling Americans. As a result, the richest Americans got a lot richer while the middle class shrank and economic and wealth inequality skyrocketed. In Engine of Inequality, Karen Petrou offers pragmatic solutions for creating more inclusive monetary policy and equality-enhancing financial regulation as quickly and painlessly as possible.
“Petrou’s book uncovers a hidden engine of our skyrocketing inequality: financial-policy. In an accessible and engaging prose, Petrou takes us through the inner workings of monetary policy at the Fed and financial regulations, how they’ve made inequality worse and how they could instead be retooled to take us to a more equitable future. A novel look at the problem of inequality and bold ideas to help resolve it. A must read.”—Emmanuel Saez, Professor of Economics at the University of California Berkeley and author of The Triumph of Injustice
Read full description and reviews.
Industry Expert
Federal Financial Analytics (FedFin) is a Washington-based financial services-consulting firm that has for decades attracted a high-powered clientele in Washington, on Wall Street, and among global central bankers. Since 1985 FedFin has provided a unique blend of analysis and strategic advice on public policy, regulatory, and legislative issues for industry and governmental clients doing business in the U.S. and abroad.
A proprietary think-tank for its clients, FedFin reviews critical federal and global policy developments in banking, insurance, asset management, and mortgage finance, analyzes them in great depth, and then advises clients on whether what they want can be made to work for them, within the policy environment and for the financial system. It is FedFin’s guiding principle to be an honest broker, and clients depend on the fact that the firm does not offer lobbying or any other services that could compromise its objectivity and independence.
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In the News
The Free Press, Tuesday, July 29, 2025
How Long Can the Fed’s Independence Last? By Joe Nocera As the Federal Reserve board was meeting on Tuesday to make its latest decision about interest rates—amid President Donald Trump’s continuing agitation for them to be lowered—I got on the phone with several of Fed chairman Jerome Powell’s most cogent [...]
American Banker, Wednesday, July 23, 2025
The stablecoin bill is now law. What's next for banks? By Claire Williams WASHINGTON — Now that President Donald Trump has signed the stablecoin bill into law, banks are gearing up to lobby regulators as they make rules that could either further threaten or protect banks' traditional turf. The [...]
Marketplace, Tuesday, July 22, 2025
The matter of central bank independence Who should the head of the Federal Reserve be accountable to? We’ll discuss that and more with Karen Petrou of Federal Financial Analytics. https://www.marketplace.org/episode/2025/07/22/the-matter-of-central-bank-independence
Issues in Focus
The Vault
FedFin Assessment: Administration Mandates Massive Banking-Regulatory Crypto Rewrite
Pursuant to the President’s executive order, the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets (PWG) yesterday released a detailed report outlining specific policies the Administration will now follow or pursue. As we noted yesterday, the report is unreservedly pro‑crypto, emphasizing the benefits of these assets to the United States while also reaffirming the Administration’s strong opposition to a CBDC. The recommendations for banking agencies are most specific when it comes [...]
FedFin Assessment: Crypto-Clarity Bills Recraft Bank Powers, Ownership
In this report, we assess provisions in the House-passed CLARITY Act, the Senate discussion draft, and a new Senate Banking GOP request for information on provisions in these measures affecting financial-industry structure and banking activities. The measures are focused on recrafting the regulatory framework governing digital assets to promote rapid innovation, as well as to redefine SEC and CFTC authority. However, the bills also alter provisions affecting what banking organizations [...]
Karen Petrou: The High Cost to Competitiveness of the Bankers’ Quest for Certainty
FedFin reports since at least 2011 have identified the comparative advantage nonbanks enjoy thanks to lots of costly bank-only standards. However, we missed one big nonbank advantage sure to prove even more decisive in the stablecoin wars: bankers crave regulatory certainty even as their competitors aggressively exploit the battlefield advantage that uncertainty gives to those who dare. Bankers aren’t dare-devils because they’re not supposed to be. Indeed, anyone who takes [...]