The Financial Crisis: Miss-Diagnosis and Reactionary Responses

摘要

This paper divides the current financial crisis into three phases and describes the policy responses to each. In Phase Ⅰ policy makers misdiagnosed it as a traditional liquidity crisis. Phase Ⅱ was a triage period as policy makers addressed the significant solvency problems that became apparent in the country's largest financial institutions. Phase Ⅲ was the pronounced slowdown in the real U.S. economy during which the Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet by purchasing long term Treasuries and newly issued mortgage backed securities from GSEs. This paper describes the financial market conditions that characterized each of the three phases, describes the policy responses, and finally, attempts to sort out what we have learned and not learned from this crisis and how to handle it so far.