The Federal Reserve Board has announced^[1] the details^[2] of its first-ever mid-cycle stress test. Following the release^[3] of its regularly scheduled annual stress test results^[4] in June, the Fed committed to develop a mid-cycle stress test by September 30^[5] given the ongoing uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic. 

The stress test results released in June found that all large banks were “sufficiently capitalized.” However, that stress test was based on banks’ year-end 2019 balance sheets and thus did not take into account the historic economic volatility experienced in the spring of 2020 associated with the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, by the June release date, several economic variables had already moved more adversely than the Fed had anticipated in its most extreme stress test scenario. 

On September 17, the Fed released the details of its newly developed adverse macroeconomic scenarios designed to re-test 34 large banks’ resilience against downside pandemic scenarios.

The previous “severely adverse” scenario started in the first quarter of 2020. It featured a hypothetical severe global recession in which the U.S. experienced seven successive quarters of negative real GDP growth and its unemployment rate rose by 6.5 percentage points to 10%, among other stressors.

The new “severely adverse” scenario starts in the third quarter of 2020. It includes 24% annualized growth in GDP in this quarter, followed by five successive negative growth quarters and unemployment rising 3 percentage points to 12.5%. 

Instead of basing the unemployment shock on the June 30 unemployment rate of 13.5% consistent with the start date of the stress test, the Fed has used the Blue Chip Economic Indicators forecast for September 30 unemployment of 9.5%. The Fed ascribed this adjustment to its release of these scenarios coming late in the third quarter (footnote 5^[6]).

In its choice of a 3 percentage point increase, the Fed cites its “Scenario Design Framework, which calls for a smaller increase in the unemployment rate when the unemployment rate is already elevated.” In the Fed’s Scenario Design Framework for Stress Testing (12 CFR 252^[7], Appendix A^[8]), the Board states unemployment should be raised 3 to 5 percentage points in the severely adverse scenario, with the final number pending the Board’s view of “cyclical systemic risks” and whether the initial unemployment rate was seen as high or low, subject to a 10% floor. This approach is intended to “avoid adding sources of procyclicality to the financial system.”