Preliminary Staff Report: The Role of the Federal Reserve in Banking Supervision and Regulation, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) | April 7, 2010: “The purpose of this preliminary staff report is to provide a brief overview of the role of the
Federal Reserve in banking supervision and regulation. The first section describes the structure of the Federal Reserve and the extent of the Federal Reserve’s supervisory role as it stood at the beginning of the financial crisis. Section II describes the history of banking supervision and regulation in the United States, with a focus on the deregulatory environment that prevailed in the 1990s and early 2000s. Section III describes the Federal Reserve’s approach to systemic risk in the recent period. Section IV discusses Federal Reserve supervision of mortgage lending activity.”