Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the context of "Fairfield County, Connecticut"

Lower Manhattan, also known as Downtown Manhattan, is the southernmost part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The area is the historical birthplace of New York City and in the 17th and 18th centuries composed the entirety of the city. Lower Manhattan serves as the seat of government of both Manhattan and the entire City of New York because there are no municipally defined boundaries for the area. A precise population cannot be quoted, but several sources have suggested that it was one of the fastest-growing locations in New York City between 2010 and 2020, related to the influx of young adults and significant development of new housing units.

Despite various definitions of Lower Manhattan, they generally include all of Manhattan Island south of 14th Street, with the Bowling Green and the Battery near the southern end. Anchored by Wall Street and the Financial District in Lower Manhattan, New York City is the leading global center for finance and fintech. The Financial District houses the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and other major financial institutions. A center of culture and tourism, Lower Manhattan is home to many of New York City's most iconic structures, including New York City Hall, the Woolworth Building, the Stonewall Inn, the Bull of Wall Street, and One World Trade Center, the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere.

The Financial District of Lower Manhattan, also known as FiDi, is a neighborhood located on the southern tip of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by the West Side Highway on the west, Chambers Street and City Hall Park on the north, Brooklyn Bridge on the northeast, the East River to the southeast, and South Ferry and the Battery on the south.

The City of New York was created in the modern-day Financial District in 1624, and the neighborhood roughly overlaps with the boundaries of the New Amsterdam settlement in the late 17th century. The district comprises the offices and headquarters of many of the city's major financial institutions, including the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Anchored on Wall Street in the Financial District, New York City has been called both the leading financial center and the most economically powerful city of the world, and the New York Stock Exchange is the world's largest stock exchange by total market capitalization. Several other major exchanges have or had headquarters in the Financial District, including the New York Mercantile Exchange, NASDAQ, the New York Board of Trade, and the former American Stock Exchange.

United States Treasury securities, also called Treasuries or Treasurys, are government debt instruments issued by the United States Department of the Treasury to finance government spending as a supplement to taxation. Since 2012, the U.S. government debt has been managed by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, succeeding the Bureau of the Public Debt.

There are four types of marketable Treasury securities: Treasury bills, Treasury notes, Treasury bonds, and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS). The government sells these securities in auctions conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, after which they can be traded in secondary markets. Non-marketable securities include savings bonds, issued to individuals; the State and Local Government Series (SLGS), purchaseable only with the proceeds of state and municipal bond sales; and the Government Account Series, purchased by units of the federal government.

On 20 February 2020, stock markets across the world suddenly crashed after growing instability due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The crash ended on 7 April 2020.

Beginning on 13 May 2019, the yield curve on U.S. Treasury securities inverted, and remained so until 11 October 2019, when it reverted to normal. Through 2019, while some economists (including Campbell Harvey and former New York Federal Reserve economist Arturo Estrella), argued that a recession in the following year was likely, other economists (including the managing director of Wells Fargo Securities Michael Schumacher and San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary C. Daly) argued that inverted yield curves may no longer be a reliable recession predictor. The yield curve on U.S. Treasuries would not invert again until 30 January 2020 when the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, four weeks after local health commission officials in Wuhan, China announced the first 27 COVID-19 cases as a viral pneumonia strain outbreak on 1 January.

The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. was an American investment bank, securities trading, and brokerage firm that famously failed during the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession. After its closure, it was subsequently sold to JPMorgan Chase. The company's main business areas before its failure were capital markets, investment banking, wealth management, and global clearing services, and it was heavily involved in the subprime mortgage crisis.

In the years leading up to the failure, Bear Stearns was heavily involved in securitization and issued large amounts of asset-backed securities which were, in the case of mortgages, pioneered by Lewis Ranieri, "the father of mortgage securities." As investor losses mounted in those markets in 2006 and 2007, the company actually increased its exposure, especially to the mortgage-backed assets that were central to the subprime mortgage crisis. In March 2008, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York provided an emergency loan to try to avert a sudden collapse of the company. The company could not be saved, however, and was sold to JPMorgan Chase for $10 per share, a price far below its pre-crisis 52-week high of $133.20 per share, but not as low as the $2 per share originally agreed upon.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York Building, also known as 33 Liberty Street, is a building in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City, which serves as the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The building occupies the full block between Liberty, William, and Nassau Streets and Maiden Lane; it narrows at its east end, following the footprint of the block.

The Federal Reserve Building has fourteen above-ground stories and five basement levels, designed by York and Sawyer with decorative ironwork by Samuel Yellin of Philadelphia. Its facade is separated horizontally into three sections: a base, midsection, and top section. The stone exterior is reminiscent of early Italian Renaissance palaces such as Florence's Palazzo Strozzi and Palazzo Vecchio. The horizontal and vertical joints of the facade's stones are deeply rusticated. The Federal Reserve Building's gold vault rests on Manhattan's bedrock, 80 feet (24 m) below street level and 50 feet (15 m) below sea level. The vault contains the largest known monetary-gold reserve in the world, with about 6,979 short tons (6,331 metric tons) in storage as of 2024.

The System Open Market Account (SOMA) is a financial portfolio managed by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, that holds the assets it has purchased through open market operations (OMOs) in the course of carrying out monetary policy. Through SOMA transactions, the Federal Reserve System influences interest rates and the amount of reserves in the US banking system. Income from SOMA assets also provides funding for the Federal Reserve's activities, which are not funded by Congress. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) instructs the Reserve Bank of New York as to how it should use the SOMA to support monetary policy.