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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
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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
American Banker, Sunday, February 22, 2026
Karen Petrou, founder of Federal Financial Analytics, dies By John Heltman WASHINGTON — Karen Petrou, co-founder and managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics and a luminary of financial policy, died Saturday afternoon of liver cancer after a brief illness. She was 73. Petrou wielded an outsized presence in Washington [...]
Semafor, Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Trump adviser Stephen Miran mired in Fed’s personnel purgatory By Eleanor Mueller Stephen Miran was supposed to step down from the Federal Reserve at the end of this week. That’s not going to happen. As Trump nears a decision on a central bank nominee who’d arrive as his chosen successor [...]
The New Republic, Tuesday, January 27, 2026
What Trumpian Chaos Is Doing to the Dollar One potential long-term casualty of continued political instability sown by the administration: America’s centrality to the international monetary system. By Grace Seger Natural gas futures charts on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on January 20. Stocks, bonds and the [...]
Issues in Focus
The Vault
Karen Petrou: Tether’s Tangled Web of High-Risk Assets
Last week, the IMF said that stablecoins could prove a threat to financial stability if widespread adoption is followed by a sudden consumer-confidence shock. A little-noticed report makes it clear that any consumer with confidence in the largest USD-denominated stablecoin, Tether, is betting on fumes and policy-makers touting widespread adoption are playing with fire. As the IMF rightly says, stablecoins may well have valuable use cases, but radical reform is [...]
Karen Petrou: What Happens if Bank Deposits Follow Assets Out the Door?
Last week, Treasury Under-Secretary McKernan outlined a critical strategic phenomenon: the growing transformation of bank deposits into financial instruments lacking the sticky permanence or taxpayer backstops that characterize core deposits. Does the financial system need bank deposits, or could it do as well with other liabilities or even representations of liabilities? This question signals, Mr. McKernan said, a policy transformation warranting attention in the most senior quarters, not just among [...]
Karen Petrou: The Fed’s Secret Safety Net for Cayman Island Hedge Funds
In a speech last week, Secretary Bessent described Treasury obligations as “not only the bedrock of the global financial system, but also the American dream.” So they are, but they are also a huge source of profit to basis-trading hedge funds happily evading U.S. taxes in the Cayman Islands. Should the Fed grow its already-gargantuan portfolio at still more taxpayer risk and expense just to keep the good times rolling? [...]