william c dudley : student loans and household finance opening remarks by mr william c dudley, president and chief executive officer of the federal reserve bank of new york, at the convening on student loan data conference, new york city, 4 march 2015. * * * andrew haughwout, joseph tracy and wilbert van der klaauw assisted in preparing these remarks. good morning. i ’ m happy to welcome you to the new york fed for this workshop that is intended to increase our understanding of student debt and how it affects individuals, their families and the economy. i am delighted to see such widespread and growing interest in this important topic. making continued progress on understanding these issues will depend critically on efforts to identify and address existing data gaps that hamper its study. i am particularly happy to welcome deputy secretary sarah bloom raskin, who has spoken frequently and eloquently in the past about the need for improvements in student loan servicing and debt collection, the macroeconomic consequences of increased student debt, and the need for better data and analysis. i look forward to her remarks today. before i make some specific comments on student debt, let me take a step back and say a few words on household finance more generally. as always, what i say represents my own views and not necessarily those of the federal open market committee or the federal reserve system. 1 there are several reasons the new york fed has increased its focus on household finance. first, the financial crisis made it obvious that an ability to understand and anticipate what is happening in the household sector is essential to gauging the strength and resiliency of the u. s. economy. second, our policy actions are intended to change the incentives facing households, so it is important to be able to gauge how our policies are transmitted into household financial decisions. good information on household borrowing, for example, allows us to see how monetary policy affects outcomes such as auto loan originations. third, better household finance research helps support our community outreach and development missions. a major challenge to achieving these goals is that household finances have traditionally been poorly documented. we have lots of information about corporate sector debt and equity, but comparable basic facts about the household sector are much harder to come by. for example, the lack of timely, comprehensive data made it more difficult to understand how vulnerable the household sector ’ s financial position had become by 2007. i ’ m happy to say that we ’ ve made progress in beginning to close this data gap

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