I now turn to some recent research on whether there has been an increase in the riskiness of our investments abroad and whether such increases might be traced to the current lowinterest rate environment. Many studies of the pre-crisis period document the pro-cyclical nature of bank lending and leverage, and the buildup of risk-taking and leverage by banks.
2 It  1  The views expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of other FOMC participants. 2  See Tobias Adrian and Hyun Song Shin (2010), “Liquidity and Leverage,” Journal of Financial Intermediation, vol. 19 (July), pp.