Our Services
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.
As seen In:
In the News
Marketplace, Monday, June 17, 2024
Why are bond prices up right now? And what difference does it make? By Mitchel Hartman We’re in the midst of a bond market rally. In the last eight weeks — barring Monday, when the bond market retreated a bit — bond prices have been going up, as their yields [...]
American Banker, Wednesday, May 8, 2024
Will Democrats stand by Gruenberg? By Clair Williams Lawmakers — mostly Republicans — let loose almost immediately after the release of an independent review of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s workplace culture, calling for the agency's chairman, Martin Gruenberg, to resign. Those calls, while neither entirely new nor unexpected, were [...]
American Banker, Friday, April 19, 2024
Is the Fed board eroding regional Fed banks' independence? By Kyle Campbell The Federal Reserve Board of Governors has a greater say over leadership at the reserve banks than it once did. But whether that benefits the central banking system is an open debate...Karen Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial [...]
Issues in Focus
The Vault
FedFin on: Squeezing Closed Ends
Late Friday afternoon, FHFA hoped quietly to announce that, while it was approving the gist of Freddie’s request to purchase certain closed-end second liens, it heard many critics and would sharply curtail the approval and, should it go any farther, seek still more public comment. For good measure, FHFA Director Thompson even invited comment on the new program approval process, one of the more controversial provisions in 2008’s GSE-regulatory rewrite... The full report is available [...]
Karen Petrou: Why Synthetic CRT Isn’t the Crisis It’s Cracked Up to Be
Last week, several press reports slammed synthetic credit risk transfers (CRTs) on grounds that the biggest U.S. bank in this sector which is of course the biggest global bank ever – JPMorgan – is creating new and serious risks when it scores SCRTs. It’s easy to assume that anything “synthetic” is more dangerous than the “natural” way a bank absorbs credit risk, but this is simply not the case as [...]
FedFin on: AI Implementation
Although pressed by Congress to reach conclusions about AI’s risk in the financial sectors, Treasury is following up the worries in the most recent FSOC report with only a request for information (RFI) from the public. The RFI follows an Executive Order (EO) from President Biden in 2023 instituting a “whole-of-government” program to identify best-use and high-problem aspects of AI from both a private- and -public sector perspective.... The full [...]