are experiencing significant financial distress. regulators, lenders, community leaders, and consumer advocates also continue to be concerned about abusive home mortgage lending practices and other consumer credit practices that target vulnerable populations. financial education is especially critical in the effort against these deceptive practices. consumers empowered with the information to make educated financial choices are less susceptible to fraud and less likely to become entangled in financially devastating credit arrangements. trends in the financial services industry some may believe these trends indicate that market forces have hurt consumers. on the contrary, household and business borrowers have benefited from the technological developments that have enhanced financial services, and their remarkable growth. computer and telecommunications technologies have lowered the cost and broadened the scope of such services. consequently, specialized lenders and new financial products tailored to meet very specific market needs have proliferated. at the same time, the development of credit - scoring tools and the securitization of loan pools are opening doors to national credit markets for both consumers and businesses. deregulation has encouraged competition and innovation by opening the marketplace to the entry of new service providers and the expansion of existing service providers. throughout our banking history, markets have adjusted to respond to demand. these structural changes have heightened competition, resulting in lower costs and the emergence of increasingly diverse and highly specialized organizations. these entities range from banks and brokerage firms that offer their services exclusively through electronic delivery mechanisms to locally based publicprivate partnerships that provide counseling and financing arrangements to low - and moderate - income families. the role of financial education given the significant changes in the financial marketplace, some consumers may lack sufficient familiarity with the newer financial concepts to make sound decisions. in response, government agencies, major banking companies, grass - roots consumer and community groups, and other organizations have developed a wide variety of financial education programs. some are tailored to specific products such as credit cards and home equity lines of credit, and others are focused on specific consumers, such as military personnel, college students, or first - time homebuyers. yet other programs adopt a more comprehensive approach, teaching broad audiences about savings, credit, budgeting, and similar topics. all of these programs are designed to give individuals tools to manage their personal financial affairs and make responsible decisions about products that can improve their economic well - being. the financial services industry maintains a keen interest in financial education programs and provides significant support. a recent nationwide survey of bank - sponsored financial literacy programs at fourteen of the largest twenty - five banks, as well as other smaller

on the ccyb would build an extra layer of resilience and signal restraint, helping to damp the rising vulnerability of the overall system. moreover, because the ccyb is explicitly countercyclical, it is intended to be cut if the outlook deteriorates, boosting the ability of banks to make loans when extending credit is most needed and providing a valuable signal about policymakers ’ intentions. this feature proved to be valuable in the united kingdom in the wake of the brexit referendum. see lael brainard ( 2018 ), “ assessing financial stability over the cycle, ” speech delivered at the peterson institute for international economics, washington, december 7, https : / / www. federalreserve. gov / newsevents / speech / brainard20181207a. htm. - 9if countercyclical tools and other regulatory safeguards are not adequate over the cycle, monetary policy will need to carry a greater burden in leaning against financial excesses. that would be unfortunate, because adding financial stability concerns to the burden of conventional monetary policy might undermine sustained achievement of our employment and inflation goals. because the financial cycle is today likely to be tempered less than in the past by material increases in interest rates as the economy expands, the appropriate level of bank capital for today ’ s conditions is unlikely to be the same as in past business cycles : because interest rates likely will do less than in past cycles, regulatory buffers will need to do more. as a consequence, now is a bad time to be weakening the core resilience of our largest banking institutions or to be weakening oversight over the nonbank financial system. instead, we should be safeguarding the capital and liquidity buffers of banks at the center of the system, carefully monitoring risks in the nonbank sector, and making good use of the countercyclical tool that we have. achieving our inflation objective on a sustained basis finally, let us turn to the apparent softness in underlying trend inflation. one hypothesis for the flat phillips curve is that central banks have been so effective in anchoring inflation expectations that tightening resource utilization is no longer transmitted to price inflation. 11 another possibility is that structural factors such as administrative changes to health care costs, globalization, or technological - enabled disruption have been dominant in recent years, masking for evidence that inflation expectations may have played a role in flattening the phillips curve, see damjan pfajfar and john m. roberts ( 2018 )