The Covid-19 pandemic has affected people differently, depending on their location, access to health care, job status, and socioeconomic status. In this blog post, we compare Covid case and death rates in each wave of the pandemic with poverty rates across Chicago zip codes to investigate the different impacts on Chicago’s communities. What we discover is a distinct relationship between case rat... Read More
On October 19, 2021, the Financial Markets Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago hosted its eighth annual Central Counterparties (CCP) Risk Management conference. The conference opened and concluded with remarks from Alessandro Cocco, vice president and head of the Chicago Fed’s Financial Markets Group. The event featured a panel on the U.S. Treasury market structure that was moderated... Read More
The Chicago Fed hosted its 35th annual Economic Outlook Symposium (EOS) on December 3, 2021. Distinguished economists and industry specialists reported on economic and sectoral performance in 2021, provided projections for 2022, and discussed key policy issues. This blog post provides highlights of those presentations and discussions. Discussion of the economy and consensus outloo... Read More
Biofuels have been on a roller coaster ride over the past two decades, driven up initially by the national renewable fuel standard (RFS) program that triggered ethanol's heyday from 2002 to 2010 with growing corn prices and surging farmland values—until 2013, when ethanol growth plateaued. Bio-based diesel hit a peak in 2016 and then it too reached a plateau. Leslie McGranahan, vice president and... Read More
The annual Community Bankers Symposium is an interagency event, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS). This year's event, which focused on technology, security, and regulatory initiatives to prepare banks for the fu... Read More
This is our second post summarizing the 2021 Community Bankers Symposium, held virtually on October 22. Our first post covered the opening remarks, keynote address, and a special presentation on the future by Brett King. Read it here. In this post, we summarize the view from the CSBS, expert perspectives on cyber security, the regulatory panel, and new initiatives from... Read More
Long before the Covid-19 pandemic, Black-led businesses faced unequal access to capital that limited their ability to sustain themselves and grow. But with Black-led businesses nationwide reportedly receiving a disproportionately lower share of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding, especially at the first round of disbursement, the pandemic has cast a spotligh... Read More
In a virtual event on October 6, 2021, an expert panel discussed the auto industry's technological transformation to electric vehicles (EVs), shared ideas about what firms and workers will likely face during the transition by 2030 and beyond, and identified obstacles to achieving policy goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through electrification of transport. This blog post summarizes the ... Read More
Electric vehicles are receiving lots of attention these days as public policy measures are increasingly encouraging their use. For instance, the White House recently announced a new target of half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. being zero-emissions vehicles by 2030—which would be supported with fuel efficiency and emissions regulations and investments in... Read More
Learning Loss and Renewal after the Pandemic (August 10, 2021) was the latest in a series of Project Hometown virtual events hosted by the Chicago Fed. The latest event featured a panel of experts in the field of education and aimed to raise awareness of the consequences of school closures and remote learning on academic achievement and economic opportunities, particularly for students in economi... Read More
