Thumbs on the Scale: The Role that Accounting Practices Played in the Savings and Loan Crisis

Mr. Breeden is the Chairmain of the Securities and Exchance Commission. This speech was given by Chairman Breeden as part of the annual Financial Institutions and Regulation Symposium at the Fordham University School of Law. The Commission, as a matter of policy, disclaims responsibility for any private publication or statement by any of its members or employees. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of other members of the Commission or the staff

Electricity: A Powerful Bargain

While most residents of the Tennessee Valley still pay under a dime for a kilowatt-hour of electricity, the prices of other things have climbed much further past their 1933 levels.electricity rates, Tennessee, electricity, TVA, Tennessee Valley Authority

The Market Attitudes Inventory: The Development and Testing of Reliability and Validity

In this article we report the development of a 22-statement survey that measures attitudes towards the market system. We report on the testing of the Market Attitude Inventory (MAI) for reliability and validity. Mean scores on the instrument are reported for a random sample of Midwest high school social studies teachers. We conclude that the MAI is a valid and reliable instrument. The MAI has applications in research, educational outcome assessment, and teaching pedagogy for the measurement and evaluation of attitudes and values towards the workings of the market system in the US

The relationship between default and economic cycles for retail portfolios across countries

In this paper, we collect consumer delinquency data from several economic shocks in order to study the creation of stress-testing models. We leverage the dual-time dynamics modeling technique to better isolate macroeconomic impacts whenever vintage-level performance data is available. The stress-testing models follow a framework described here of focusing on consumer-centric macroeconomic variables so that the models are as robust as possible when predicting the impacts of future shocks

Collateral risk management at the Bank of England

In response to the financial crisis the Bank of England has expanded the range of collateral accepted in its market operations to include private sector assets, notably asset-backed securities and covered bonds. Such assets have different risk characteristics to the forms of collateral previously accepted, presenting new risk management challenges. This article sets out how the Bank of England undertakes collateral risk management, highlighting in particular the significant degree of protection taken by the Bank in its operations.