A top Federal Reserve policymaker expressed concern that financial reforms could make it harder for the central bank to stem a panic in credit markets, a warning that comes amid growing stress in corners of the banking sector.
Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer on Friday said it was a “major” concern that the 2010 Dodd-Frank law required the Fed to disclose which banks had borrowed under a special facility designed to extend credit to banks otherwise shut out of lending markets.
The Fed previously released only aggregate figures for this program but now publishes a more detailed report with a two-year lag.
Fischer said the reporting requirements marked a “failure to resolve the problem of stigma – that is, the stigma of borrowing from the central bank at a time when the financial markets are on guard,” according to prepared remarks to a closed-door conference.
“Indeed, some of the Dodd-Frank Act reporting requirements may worsen the stigma problem,” Fischer said, adding that the new regulatory framework was still untested by crisis.
