Finding the Right Balance in Banking Supervision

Thomas M. Hoenig, vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, presented a speech on “Finding the Right Balance,” the final keynote remarks of his six-year term as a member of the Board of the FDIC. Speaking at the Peterson Institute on March 28, 2018, Hoenig discussed the increasing complexities of banking, the experience of recurring crises, short-run versus long-run choices, and the trend toward using the administrative process over simpler prudential standards in banking supervision.

Hoenig joined the FDIC Board in April 2012. Prior to that, he was the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and a member of the Federal Reserve System's Federal Open Market Committee from 1991 to 2011. He was with the Federal Reserve for 38 years, beginning as an economist and then as a senior officer in banking supervision during the US banking crisis of the 1980s. Concurrently as vice chairman of the FDIC, Hoenig served as president of the International Association of Deposit Insurers (IADI) from 2015 to 2017. He holds a PhD in economics from Iowa State University.