NEW YORK (Reuters) – Banks, investors and industry groups last week discussed creating a backstop insurance fund among other proposals to lessen the risk a distressed dealer could trigger a crisis in the world’s largest funding market.

The discussions took place at a New York Federal Reserve sponsored industry workshop last Wednesday, according to presentations obtained by Reuters.

Participants in the tri-party repurchase market — a key funding source that briefly seized up during the financial crisis — have been tasked by the central bank with coming up with reforms to strengthen the market which, at its peak, financed more than $2.8 trillion in securities per day.

The market has shrunk from that level since there are now less participants and dealers. It is still the critical finance market for the broader financial system.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh said on Wednesday that regulatory improvements alone would not prevent future financial crises and the government must be willing to let firms fail.

“Regulation is too important to be left to regulators alone. We need a system in which insolvent firms fail,” Warsh told the New York Association of Business Economics.

In response to an audience question, Warsh said it was “essential” that the United States coordinate regulatory reform with other members of the Group of 20 rich and emerging countries.

Given the global nature of financial markets, the overall “policy prescription has to be global,” even as countries make different choices about specific reforms, he said.

NEW YORK, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Still tight credit conditions and high unemployment are putting a damper on economic recovery even as “aggressive and extraordinary actions” by officials have brought financial markets back from the brink, a top Federal Reserve policymaker said on Wednesday.

“While circumstances have improved, they are still very far from where we want them to be,” said William Dudley, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, in remarks to a meeting of the Partnership for New York City, adding:

“We have no cause for celebration when the challenges facing so many businesses and households remain so daunting.”

In a speech that dealt largely with regulatory lessons from the recent financial crisis, Dudley defended the Fed’s extraordinary response, saying it had been “critical in preventing the strains in our financial markets from resulting in even more severe damage to the economy.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Two top Federal Reserve policy-makers said on Wednesday that the U.S. central bank will need to be certain the economic recovery is firmly in place before tightening its monetary policy stance.

New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley and Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans said continued credit problems and a high rate of unemployment are constraints on the U.S. economic recovery..

“I think that we are going to be waiting for the economy to improve in a strongly sustainable fashion and until that happens, then it’s unlikely that we would be changing policy,” Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans told reporters after a speech to a business group.

The Fed has slashed rates to near zero and pumped over $1 trillion into the financial system to prevent banking failures and pull the economy out of the worst recession in decades. It has pledged to keep rates ultra-low for a long time to nurture the recovery.

NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Two top Federal Reserve policy-makers said on Wednesday that the U.S. central bank will need to be certain the economic recovery is firmly in place before tightening its monetary policy stance.

New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley and Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans said continued credit problems and a high rate of unemployment are constraints on the U.S. economic recovery..

“I think that we are going to be waiting for the economy to improve in a strongly sustainable fashion and until that happens, then it’s unlikely that we would be changing policy,” Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans told reporters after a speech to a business group.

The Fed has slashed rates to near zero and pumped over $1 trillion into the financial system to prevent banking failures and pull the economy out of the worst recession in decades. It has pledged to keep rates ultra-low for a long time to nurture the recovery.

NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) – A top Federal Reserve policy maker said on Wednesday that he would like to see a more vigorous economic recovery and a drop in the jobless rate before the U.S. central bank raises interest rates.

William Dudley, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, told PBS’ Nightly Business Report television program that continued banking problems and the decline in household wealth during the crisis pose obstacles to the economic growth.

“We are in the middle of the beginnings of an economic recovery,” Dudley said according to a transcript of the PBS interview.

“I think it’s a recovery that isn’t as strong as we would like,” he said.

NEW YORK, Jan 11 (Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Monday appeared skeptical of U.S. Federal Reserve efforts to prevent the press and the public from learning the names of participants in emergency lending programs designed to support and bail out the financial system.

The central bank has argued that disclosure would cause “competitive and reputational harm” to participants, perhaps triggering bank runs, and impede its ability “to effectively manage the current, and any future, financial crisis.”

Bloomberg News and News Corp’s <NWSA.O> Fox News Network LLC had sought details of the Fed’s actions under the federal Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, which requires government agencies to make documents available to the public.

A release of data could give the public, including bank shareholders, a better sense of how the Fed was moving to prop up the financial system during what is widely considered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

, Jan 8 (Reuters) – The murky outlook for U.S. employment will be key to the timing of the Federal Reserve’s exit from extraordinary efforts to support the economy, top central bank officials said on Friday.

The remarks, from a string of regional Fed bank presidents, came just as government data showed that the U.S. economy lost an additional 85,000 jobs in December, well beyond forecasts for a much smaller decline.

Eric Rosengren, head of the Boston Fed, told a business conference in Hartford, Connecticut, that he expects the labor market will improve only slowly, with the unemployment rate likely remaining “quite elevated” in the early phases of the recovery.

He said that with the economy still weak and the unemployment rate high, the Fed’s accommodative policy stance is appropriate.

, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Two Federal Reserve officials said on Friday they would like to see the U.S. jobs picture improve before the central bank withdraws its extraordinary support for the economy and markets.

The comments from Boston Federal Reserve Bank President Eric Rosengren and St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard came the same day government data showed U.S. employers unexpectedly cut 85,000 jobs in December. The December unemployment rate was unchanged at 10 percent.

Rosengren told a business conference in Hartford, Connecticut, that he expects the labor market will improve only slowly, with the unemployment rate likely remaining “quite elevated” in the early phases of the recovery. He said that with the economy still weak and the unemployment rate high, the Fed’s accommodative policy stance is appropriate.

Bullard told students at a university forum in Shanghai that the U.S. economy was improving, but policies to support the recovery should not be withdrawn yet.