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
American Banker, Thursday, December 7, 2023
Operational risk emerging as linchpin of Basel capital debate By Kyle Campbell What had for months been a broad debate around the wisdom and process of the Basel III capital proposal has narrowed in recent weeks to center on a particular aspect of that proposal: capital retention for banks' operational risks...Karen [...]
Politico, Friday, November 17, 2023
‘The general’s at risk': FDIC controversy threatens plans to rein in Wall Street By Zachary Warmbrodt The misconduct scandal swirling at the FDIC is threatening to derail a Washington crackdown on the biggest U.S. banks ... “The proposal is showing some very significant vulnerabilities,” Federal Financial Analytics managing partner Karen Petrou [...]
New York Times, Thursday, November 16, 2023
Bidenomics Has a Mortal Enemy and It Isn’t Trump By Karen Petrou On Oct. 26, the Department of Commerce announced that gross domestic product had grown at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter. This growth rate ran well above even optimistic forecasts, leading to what can [...]
Issues in Focus
The Vault
Karen Petrou: Why Curbing Banks Won’t Curtail Private Credit
Last Wednesday, Sens. Brown and Reed wrote to the banking agencies pressing them to cut the cords they believe unduly bind big banks to private-credit companies. The IMF and Bank of England have also pointed to systemic-risk worries in this sector, as have I. Still, FSOC is certainly silent and perhaps even sanguine. This is likely because FSOC is all too often nothing more than the “book-report club” Rohit Chopra [...]
FedFin on: FHA’s Mission and Mishaps
A new FRB-NY study confirms that 83% of loans from 2000-2022 went to first-time homebuyers, compared to 56% for the GSEs and 57% for private lenders. FHA loans of course have very high LTVs and low scores, with scores improving after 2008 when the PLS market stopped adversely selected FHA even though over half of FHA loans still have scores under 680. FHA sustainability has varied based on these and [...]
FedFin on: An Advanced View of Regulatory Capital?
The most significant thing in FHFA’s final capital rule is not what is to be done, but what FHFA left out: ending the GSEs’ advanced-approach requirement. As a result, Fannie and Freddie can still use models for key calculations, a requirement that makes more sense for two complex organizations than it did for the regional banks also long subject to advanced-approach requirements even though the rules required them, like GSIBs, [...]