In taking this action, the Board approved the request submitted by the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

FORBES: Joint Statement by Central Banks

Earlier this year, in a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in January 2010, nearly 45% of respondents said their unpaid credit card balance had declined in the past 12 months.

FORBES: Consumer Renaissance Carries Capital One Stock Beyond $50

In this column, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston economist Daniel Cooper presents new evidence suggesting that the spending impact of equity extraction during the recent U.S. housing boom was relatively small compared with the household balance sheet changes and residential investment.

FORBES: Home Equity Extraction: Where Did All The Money Go?

Mr Obama's advisers were drawn to the first school, in part by a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston study that found that when home prices fell 23% in Massachusetts between 1988 and 1993, only 6.4% of borrowers with negative equity ended up in foreclosure.

ECONOMIST: The foreclosure plan

Regression analysis has provided important evidence: a famous study of mortgage applications by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, for instance, showed that loan denial rates for blacks were eight percentage points higher than those for whites, once a large number of factors that affected the risk of default were included.

ECONOMIST: Race, sex and the dismal science | The