Our Business News

The U.S. financial system and its regulators need to “update our thinking” about the threat of cyber-attacks given the spike and magnitude of recent events, said Dennis Lockhart, president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, on Tuesday. “What was previously classified as an unlikely but very damaging event affecting one or a few institutions should now probably be thought of as a persistent threat with potential systemic implications,” Lockhart told a conference in Berlin on financial instability, sponsored by the Levy Economics Institute. Banks have been defending themselves against such attacks for a while, but recent episodes carry up to [...]

The Federal Reserve should maintain its ongoing bond-buying program until there are clear signs that the public is growing more confident in the labor market, Dennis Lockhart, president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, said Thursday. In September, the Fed launched its third round of bond buying — or quantitative easing, colloquially known as QE3 — and said it would keep up the purchases until there was a substantial improvement in employment. In a speech in Chattanooga, Tenn., Lockhart said a simple decline in the unemployment rate would not meet this test. In addition to confidence, as measured by people [...]

There is only a “remote” risk of an outbreak of inflation as a result of the Federal Reserve’s third round of asset purchases, said Dennis Lockhart, the president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank on Thursday. Lockhart voted in favor of QE3 last week. His views are seen as close to the center of Fed policymakers. After a speech in Kansas City, Lockhart told reporters that he decided more asset purchases would help the economy, according to Reuters. He said the risks associated with the purchases were not severe and were manageable.