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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
The Hill, Wednesday, February 1, 2023
The Fed can’t fix inflation alone. Here’s why By Karl Evers-Hillstrom The Federal Reserve continues to hike interest rates in its fight to bring an end to historic inflation. The central bank has driven up borrowing costs and slowed the economy in an effort to reduce demand for goods and [...]
Banking with Interest, Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Are the FHLBs Dangerously Off Mission? Host Rob Blackwell While the Federal Housing Finance Agency conducts a historic review of the Federal Home Loan Banks’ mission, several critics are questioning whether the housing government-sponsored enterprises have lost sight of their original purpose. Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial [...]
American Banker, Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Silvergate Bank loaded up on $4.3 billion in FHLB advances By Kate Berry When depositors began pulling money out of Silvergate Capital Corp. following the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, the California bank shored up its liquidity by tapping a quasi-government agency not typically known as a lender of last [...]
Issues in Focus
The Vault
Karen Petrou: It’s Game-On for End-Game Capital Regulation
Many rules determine the terms of combat in key financial markets, but none is as fundamental as bank-capital standards because every decision a bank makes first factors capital costs or benefits. These are axiomatic because, even if every other business assumption a company makes is good, a financial product or service will still prove unprofitable if capital requirements are high enough to doom returns sufficient for insatiable investors. Said by [...]
FedFin on: State Member Bank Powers
In conjunction with rejecting an uninsured crypto bank’s application for Federal Reserve membership, the Federal Reserve issued a policy statement conforming state member bank powers only to those authorized for national banks even if the state member is an uninsured depository institution. While it is possible for state member banks to gain greater powers following Fed deliberations, the new approach sharply limits the ability of states to empower uninsured charters [...]
Karen Petrou: M&Ms, McHenry, and the Making of Financial Policy
It’s a sad commentary on American politics to observe, as I feel we must, that the experienced chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Patrick McHenry, has followed M&M’s “spokescandies” as a target of Tucker Carlson’s bilious, yet widely-watched, wrath. The fundamental frivolity of this contrast is self-evident, but that has yet to dampen the credibility of this combustible commentator with his super conservative acolytes. That Mr. Carlson matters so [...]