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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.
As seen In:
In the News
Marketplace, Thursday, June 23, 2022
Here’s why the CFPB is concerned about credit card late fees By Justin Ho The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced this week that it’s looking into the fees that credit card companies charge consumers for late payments — specifically, whether those late fees are “reasonable and proportional” to the amount [...]
American Banker, Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Did bank regulators just get a green light for climate stress tests? By Kyle Campbell Internationally active banks could soon be required to conduct internal scenario analyses and undergo stress tests related to climate change. Both measures were called for as part of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s newly [...]
Barron’s, Saturday, June 4, 2022
The Fed’s Anything-We-Can-Think-Of Monetary Policy Isn’t Working By Karen Petrou The day Jerome Powell won his second term as Federal Reserve chair, he said he couldn’t promise a soft landing and hadn’t meant to commit his fellow policy makers only to fifty basis-point hikes. He has also walked away from [...]
Issues in Focus
October 26, 2020: FedFin Issues Brief: Going Green: The Future of U.S. Climate Risk Financial Policy
June 25, 2019: FedFin Policy Paper: Do Credit Unions Truly Advance Economic Equality?
The Vault
FedFin: Fed Comes Under Heightened Political Pressure
As we expected, today’s Senate Banking session with Chairman Powell is a preview of broader national debate ahead of the midterm election. Democrats generally sought to emphasize their understanding of inflation’s costs without lambasting the Fed and, indirectly, the Biden Administration. Still, Sens. Ossoff (D-GA) and Warnock (D-GA) pressed Mr. Powell on the Fed’s failure to begin to tighten last summer. Republicans were strongly united in lambasting.... The full report [...]
FedFin on: Climate Risk Management
The Basel Committee has finalized its proposed climate-risk management principles largely unchanged from its proposal, establishing over-arching goals at which both banks and their supervisors are asked to aim. Much in the final standards echoes proposed OCC risk-management standards proposed in a slightly different form by the FDIC and likely soon to be taken up by the Federal Reserve in inter-agency U.S. goals. Neither Basel’s standards nor these U.S. principles [...]
FedFin On: Big-Bank Consumer Service
Combining some of its outstanding initiatives and adding new ones, the CFPB is seeking information on how well larger banks and credit unions serve consumers and what steps may be needed to make them do better. The focus of the inquiry is response time, content, and methodology following consumer inquiries based on provisions in the agency’s mandate allowing it to require that banks with assets over $10 billion and their [...]