securities with positions in fixed - income instruments, new york portfolio clearing, launched in march. clearinghouses and financial crises as clearinghouses developed, their resilience – in particular, their ability to manage their liquidity and ensure the integrity of transactions under stressed conditions – was tested by financial shocks and crises. i ’ ll briefly discuss three historical episodes that tested the financial infrastructure : the financial panic of 1907, the 1987 stock market crash, and the recent crisis. although the clearinghouses of the time survived all of these episodes, in each case the problems they faced demonstrated potential vulnerabilities and a need for reform. more generally, these episodes warn us to remain vigilant and to guard against complacency ; complexity and change in the financial system will continue to present new challenges to stability, as they have in the past. i noted earlier the development of clearinghouses for checks in cities around the country in the second half of the 19th century. in the financial panic of 1907, which involved depositor runs on banks and trust companies in new york and elsewhere, check clearinghouses struggled to obtain the liquidity needed to complete daily settlements. to avoid settlement see the clearing corporation ( 2011 ), a history : trusting, growing, leading, clearing ( chicago : board of trade clearing corporation ). for a summary discussion of the historical development of chicago futures clearing arrangements and their challenges, see randall s. kroszner ( 1999 ), “ can the financial markets privately regulate risk? : the development of derivatives clearinghouses and recent over - the - counter innovations, ” in “ the role of central banks in money and payments systems, ” ed. david e. altig, part 2 ( special issue ), journal of money, credit and banking, vol. 31 ( august ), pp. 596 – 618. bis central bankers ’ speeches failures and address a wider need for liquidity, including liquidity being demanded by the anxious depositors of troubled banks, many clearinghouses followed a practice that sprang up shortly after the founding of the new york clearing house. specifically, members of the clearinghouse, as a group, issued collateralized loans in the form of “ clearinghouse loan certificates ” to those members that were short of liquidity needed for settlements ; in a real sense, the clearinghouse served as a private - sector lender ( or liquidity provider ) of last resort. some clearinghouses even issued small - denomination certificates that circulated widely outside the clearinghouse as a

see cajner and others ( 2017 ) for more on racial gaps and the labor market. - 8racial differences in unemployment rates will continue to shrink if the overall unemployment rate falls further. 10 more broadly, the persistent disparities in employment outcomes are mirrored in significant and persistent racial and ethnic differences in families ’ income and wealth. according to forthcoming findings from the latest scf and as shown in figure 3, the average income for white families in 2015 was about $ 123, 000 per year, compared with $ 54, 000 for black families and $ 57, 000 for hispanic families. 11 disparities in wealth, shown in figure 4, are even larger : average wealth holdings for white families in 2016 were about $ 933, 000, compared with $ 191, 000 for hispanic families and $ 138, 000 for black families. 12 moreover, these racial and ethnic gaps in average family income and wealth have generally widened rather than narrowed over the past few decades. based on scf data, median family wealth has grown much more rapidly for white families than for other families over the past few decades, while median family incomes have risen by about the same amount for white, black, and hispanic families. as the economic expansion continues and brings more americans off the sidelines and into productive employment, it seems likely that the positive trends in employment and participation rates for historically disadvantaged groups will continue. data on recent estimates of unemployment rates for adult men ( 20 years and older ) by race and ethnicity are available from the bureau of labor statistics. historical gaps are provided by cajner and others ( 2017 ). staff calculations from forthcoming scf data. recent estimates of household income from current population survey data and reported by the census in semega, fontenot, and kollar ( 2017 ) are qualitatively similar, in that between 2013 and 2016 for both sets of data, family income has increased for whites, blacks, and hispanics ( with greater increases, in percentage terms, for black and hispanic families ). racial and ethnic differences in median income and wealth are somewhat smaller. for example, in 2016 median income for white families was about $ 61, 000, compared with $ 35, 000 for black families and $ 39, 000 for hispanic families. median wealth was about $ 171, 000 for white families, compared with about $ 20, 000 for black and hispanic families. the larger gap in average income and wealth than median income and wealth reflects a greater concentration of income and