The Fed’s stress testing is put to the test
Marketplace
Marketplace
4.6 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 22 March 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One way the Federal Reserve oversees the banking system is through “stress tests,” which help determine whether banks can withstand economic disasters. But only the biggest banks are required to undergo these tests. Could Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse change that? We’ll also unpack Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s rate hike remarks, check to see who’s currently hiring and gauge reactions to anticipated charges for COVID-19 vaccines.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Happy Fed Day everybody! |
| 0:04.1 | I want to start with a plain English summary of how the economy is doing, what my colleagues |
| 0:08.7 | and I at the Federal Reserve are trying to do, and why. |
| 0:12.0 | From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. |
| 0:24.8 | I'm Los Angeles, I'm Cai Rizdole. |
| 0:26.7 | It is Wednesday, today, the 22nd day of March. |
| 0:30.3 | Good as always to have you along. |
| 0:32.9 | All right, so look to be clear, that piece of audio up in the open that we just played |
| 0:37.0 | was from one of Jay Powell's very first press conferences, not today's, but I played it |
| 0:42.4 | because the Fed chair today had a very fine public messaging line to walk. |
| 0:49.2 | There was of course, and is the whole banking situation. |
| 0:53.3 | I guess our view is that the banking system is sound and it's resilient, it's got strong |
| 0:57.1 | capital and liquidity. |
| 0:58.4 | There was some calming of the water is going on, right? |
| 1:01.4 | We took powerful actions with Treasury and the FDIC, which demonstrate that all depositors |
| 1:06.2 | savings are safe, and that the banking system is safe. |
| 1:09.4 | And there was, and is, this. |
| 1:11.7 | The process of getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go, and is likely to |
| 1:16.7 | be bumpy. |
| 1:18.0 | And this is where things get tricky because you got a banking situation on one hand. |
| 1:23.3 | And inflation on the other, and neither of those exists in a vacuum. |
| 1:27.9 | So here are the relevant parts of a single long-ish Powell answer, chopped up just a little |
... |
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