The Federal Reserve Board has established the Office of Financial Stability Policy and Research and appointed Board economist J. Nellie Liang as its director.

 The office is expected to bring together economists, banking supervisors, markets experts, and others in the Federal Reserve who will be dedicated to supporting the Board’s financial stability responsibilities.  The office will develop and coordinate staff efforts to identify and analyze potential risks to the financial system and the broader economy, including through the monitoring of asset prices, leverage, financial flows, and other market risk indicators; follow developments at key institutions; and analyze policies to promote financial stability.  It will also support the supervision of large financial institutions and the Board’s participation on the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

The financial stability team is expected to play an important role in implementing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, in the Board’s oversight of systemically important financial institutions, and in the Board’s overall surveillance of the financial markets and the economy.

 Liang joined the Board in 1986, acting most recently as a senior associate director in the Division of Research and Statistics.  In that role, she has led a group of economists focused on the intersection of economics and finance, including oversight of capital markets, financial institutions, consumer finance, and financial flows.  Liang was a key participant in crafting the Federal Reserve’s response to the financial crisis and helped lead the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program, or bank stress tests, which helped increase public confidence in the banking system in 2009. Liang has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland and an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Notre Dame.

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