Tag Archives: Federal Reserve

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System today announced that its asset purchase program, known as QE3 (quantitative easing) will end this month, citing sufficient economic growth.

Federal regulators announced on Tuesday they have finalized a rule establishing a risk retention framework for mortgage lenders securitizing and selling loans.

As a broad measure of the market, the Fed's index includes a number of indicators that go beyond just the national unemployment rate, including average hourly earnings, hiring rates, and labor force participation, among others.

Despite slower growth early in the year and a disappointing showing in August, the labor market managed to add more than 1.7 million jobs in 2014's first eight months, coming in at 300,000 more than average over the previous three years as payrolls kept up a steady streak of monthly gains above 200,000.

More than two years after the central bank kick off its latest economic stimulus program, policymakers at the Federal Reserve once again voted this week to scale down monthly asset purchases—and hinted that the end is in sight.

Federal Reserve governor Daniel Tarullo echoed Gruenberg's statement, though he was less concrete on a timeline: "I don't know whether I'd say by the end of the year, but I think we're definitely in the home stretch." As it was proposed in 2011, the rule originally called for securities issuers to hold on to 5 percent of a mortgage's risk after selling it unless the borrower made a 20 percent down payment.

In their latest economic projections from June, the members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) projected a median federal funds rate of 1 percent at year-end 2015 and 2.5 percent at the end of 2016. Based on their own modeling, the analysts say investors put the probability of the federal funds rate hitting the FOMC's target next year at 31 percent, with 2016's projected rate having a 27 percent probability.

In an effort to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo announced on September 9 to the Senate Banking Committee that the Federal Reserve is planning to impose a capital surcharge on the nation's biggest banks that is higher than that of their international counterparts.

Growth was described as "modest" in the New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Dallas, and San Francisco districts, while Philadelphia, Atlanta, St. Louis, and Kansas City reported “modest” growth. Looking ahead, contacts in about half of the districts "generally remained optimistic about future growth," while most of the other districts saw ongoing optimism in specific sectors.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced Tuesday that it had completed the review of the second round of resolution plans submitted by 11 large banks.