Fiscal Intelligence

Clearly, financial market excess (FME) has been building up due to increased risk appetite and low market volatility. The Swiss Re FME index is now close to pre-crisis average levels (see Figure 7). The Fed has warned about these risks on a number of occasions, even though they have largely been engineered by the Fed itself. In a February 2013 speech, former Fed Governor Jeremy Stein highlighted the overheating in credit markets. In her semi-annual testimony, Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen later identified small cap, biotech and social media stocks as being highly valued relative to the historical norm.