Since 2009, the stress tests and disclosures, together with other regulatory and supervisory actions, have contributed to a doubling in capital held by the largest U.S. financial institutions and the resumption of more-normal flows of credit. The Fed has also worked to draw the appropriate lessons from the crisis and to take the steps necessary to help avoid a similar event in the future.
As those assembled here well know, the  1  See Walter Bagehot ([1873] 1897), Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons). BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  deliberations that led to the founding of the Federal Reserve were precipitated by a financial panic, the Panic of 1907.