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Issues In Focus
The latest in-depth FedFin analysis on breaking strategic challenges and critical policy question.
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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
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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, Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Host David Boccaccio speaks with Karen Petrou, Federal Financial Analytics Managing Partner, about Federal Reserve, Chairman Powell, and interest rates. https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/
Marketplace, Friday, July 5, 2024
Unpacking the June jobs report by Sabri Ben-Achour The U.S. economy added 206,000 jobs in June, according to the labor department. On the other hand, the job growth in previous months was revised down significantly. Let’s discuss with Karen Petrou, co-founder and managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics. https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/more-signs-of-a-cooling-labor-market/#Unpacking-the-June-jobs-report
American Banker, June 25, 2024
Derivatives pose thorny problem for banks, regulators in resolution plans By Kyle Campbell Federal regulators want large banks to get specific about their contingency plans for their derivatives holdings. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve cited four of the country's largest banks last week for weaknesses in [...]
Issues in Focus
The Vault
Karen Petrou: The Toxic Brew of Insurance Companies, Private Equity, and High-Risk Mortgages
As financial regulators fret about risk migration to nonbank financial intermediaries, a new race to the sunny side of the regulatory street is already underway. As detailed in a comprehensive Bloomberg article, insurance companies are increasingly investing in high-risk whole residential-mortgage loans, doing so either with no capacity to service them unless they rely on parent-company private-equity firms to do so somehow. What could go wrong? This transaction is redolent [...]
Karen Petrou: The Problem With Preemption
Last week, I wrote about the populist and progressive tie that binds each side of the U.S. political spectrum, pointing in particular to how the left and right are each calling for an end to “financial censorship.” MAGA Republicans in Florida have taken the lead here for populists with new legislation barring banks from closing accounts based on pretty much anything but the fact that the account holder took out [...]
Karen Petrou: What MAGA Republicans and Rohit Chopra Both Want
Following last week’s celebration of American independence, my thoughts turned to the confluence of concern from both sides of the political spectrum about an issue at the heart of the Bill of Rights: “financial censorship.” When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and CFPB Director Chopra agree – as they do – on a hot-button point such as freedom of thought as it may be expressed in financial transactions, a new framework [...]