How have the banking system and the process of financial intermediation changed?

Comparing and contrasting the U.S. banking and financial system in 1986 and in 2006, the author notes that the most notable difference is the current system's resilience and health in spite of some significant shocks. One reason for this health, he believes, is the changing bank supervisory environment, particularly the move toward stronger capital standards and more risk-focused supervision. Among other positive developments he highlights are the increase in market discipline and improvements in risk measurement and management.Banks and banking - History ; Bank supervision

Money and interest rates under a reserves operating target

This study examines the short-run dynamic relationships between nonborrowed reserves, the federal funds rate, and transaction accounts using daily data from 1979 through 1982. Separate models are estimated for each day of the week, and simulation experiments are performed. The results suggest that the funds rate responded quite rapidly to a change in nonborrowed reserves, but that the short-run nonborrowed reserves multiplier for transaction accounts was only about 18 percent of its theoretical maximum. In addition, the Federal Reserve appeared to accommodate about 65 percent of a permanent shock to money, and lagged reserve requirements seemed to delay depository institutions' response to a money shock.Interest rates ; Bank reserves

A reconsideration of the risk sensitivity of U.S. banking organization subordinated debt spreads: a sample selection approach

The authors estimate a sample selection model over three distinct regulatory "regimes" when the treatment of bank bondholders (in the event of bank failures) differed substantially. They then estimate their selection model to test the strength of bond market discipline over these three regulatory regimes, finding that bank bond spreads are positively associated with bank risk measures during all three regimes, even during the too-big-to-fail period.Bank assets ; Debt management ; Banks and banking - Ratio analysis ; Deposit insurance

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts