Supervision should be an alternative to monetary policy actions for dealing with asset bubbles and imbalances, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston president and chief executive officer Eric Rosengren said yesterday.
“If we take a good, hard analytical look at the last recovery, we see that the low fed funds rate was not the standout, and stand-alone, culprit that many assume,” he told an audience in Philadelphia, according to a prepared text of the speech released by the Fed.
“This is a crucial matter to consider right now, when rates are very low — in my opinion, totally appropriately — because some are predicting that these rates will fuel another bubble,” according to Rosengren.
The Fed “should play a significant role in overseeing systemically important institutions and addressing systemic risks,” he said, “because of the substantial synergies between monetary policy, the lender-of-last-resort role, and supervision of banks.”
