The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (SFRC) is a group of publicly recognized independent experts on the financial services industry--including banking, insurance and securities--who meet regularly to study and critique regulatory policies affecting this sector of the economy.

For many years, community financial institutions have been denied fair and equal access to the secondary market. Banks prosper by making prudent loans with an adequate return and maintaining a reasonable cost structure. Today 97 percent of our banks are community banks and they are increasingly finding this business model under siege.

Given the Postal Service's fiscal crisis, and the need to adjust to market realities, it is time to put the Service on a course toward meaningful structural change that will give it the ability to adjust to demand for its core activity of delivering physical mail.

At this luncheon press briefing, SFRC members issued statements and answered questions.

The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (SFRC) is a group of publicly recognized independent experts on the financial services industry--including banking, insurance, and securities--who meet regularly to study and critique regulatory policies affecting this sector of the economy. At the two closed sessions before the luncheon, committee members will discuss, among...

Risk-inviting microeconomic rules of the banking game that are established by government have always been the key additional necessary condition to producing a propensity for banking distress.

The Fed's role in banking regulation, orfinancial regulation, is not well understood.

At the luncheon press briefing that follows these sessions, SFRC members will issue one or more statements and answer questions relating to the topics discussed.