Thank you, Reena. It is an honor to be back at Georgetown and at the Psaros Center. I have spent a significant amount of time on and around this campus, including when I served as a congressional intern early in my career. Perhaps in fate's way of foreshadowing, one of the topics I researched that summer was the Glass-Steagall Act. Turns out that it was handy to learn about at a young age.
Financial stability is a focal point of my attention at the Board of Governors, since I serve as chair of the Board's Committee on Financial Stability. Allow me to start by saying that the financial system remains resilient, supported by strong balance sheets among households and businesses and high capital levels across the banking system. Earlier this month, the Fed issued the most recent version of our semiannual Financial Stability Report. That report affirmed the system is resilient, while also noting some of the same risks and vulnerabilities we have seen in recent reports.
My remarks will center on three areas of vulnerabilities: asset valuations; the structural shift in lending to private companies, away from traditional bank loans and toward private credit arrangements; and the growing role of hedge funds as investors in the U.S. Treasury market. Finally, I will turn to a longer-term issue-the potential for the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in financial market trading that could both increase and decrease financial stability.