The act replaced a patchwork of safeguards with consistent tough penalties for the unauthorized disclosure of confidential statistical information. Second, the act authorized the limited sharing of business data among the Bureau of the Census, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for statistical purposes.
The standard tool of central banks is the short term interest rate which they use to influence interest rates across financial markets, and thereby steer the financial conditions in the economy. During the crisis, central banks around the world reduced policy rates ferociously, and in many advanced economies the rates are at or near zero.