Treasury's Anthony Ryan Addresses SIFMA Annual Meeting

The Department of the Treasury's Anthony Ryan, Acting Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, addressed the annual meeting of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) in New York today.  Mr. Ryan's address provides an excellent update on the state of the capital markets and the global economy, and on Treasury's ongoing implementation of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA). 

Ryan characterized the current stresses on the domestic and international financial markets as "the most serious in recent memory," tracing the root of these stresses to the housing market correction, and the failure to maintain strong market discipline and regulatory oversight in the housing and credit markets.  As a result, "investor confidence was undermined, illiquidity then compromised our credit markets, and now the housing and financial market turmoil has spilled over into the rest of the U.S. economy."  Summing up the current state of financial markets, Mr. Ryan said:

Equity, credit, and funding markets remain under considerable strain, as banks have been forced to delever aggressively and risk appetite has abated. However, policy measures enacted by the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, other U.S. policymakers and our counterparts around the world have helped relieve some pressures in the funding market.

The speech provides and excellent summary of Treasury's programs implemented under EESA, the Capital Purchase Program, and the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).  The speech also includes some short discussion of establishing a balance between market discipline and regulatory oversight, and the goals and progress of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets. 

The full text of Mr. Ryan's address is available at: http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/hp1240.htm