The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s new Americas Center can be a resource for online information about financial and economic issues related to Latin America and the Caribbean, said Stephen Kay, coordinator of the center and Latin America analysis coordinator at the bank.
The center is a collaborative effort among the financial services, research and supervision and regulation divisions of the bank to share information. The center’s online content at www.atl.frb.org/econ_rd/americas_center will be of interest to bankers, policy makers, researchers and businesspersons dealing with Latin America, Mr. Kay said.
“We wanted to put all Latin American services under one umbrella so people can understand the Fed’s connections with Latin America,” Mr. Key told GlobalAtlanta. “It serves an internal function as well because we can do a better job of communicating and collaborating on various projects,” he added.
All three divisions have different functions, but “we realized that we all had a lot to learn from each other,” Mr. Kay explained. For example, the bank’s research department is interested in the topic of remittances sent from the United States to Latin America. The community affairs department is also interested in this topic because it works to provide services for the underbanked Latino immigrant population in the Southeast. The bank’s financial services division is interested in remittances because it is working on a money transfer program to allow for the more affordable transfer of funds between countries, he said.
Mr. Kay highlighted the Americas Center’s Web page that provides original Fed research and various links to external research on Latin American finance issues. It also includes speeches and presentations on topics such as remittances, foreign banking and structural reform in Latin America.
Subscribers can register on the site to receive a free e-mail notification to alert them when information about certain topics is posted to the site.
Mr. Kay added that some of the site’s content is in Spanish, and there are plans to translate some material into Portuguese as well.
The Atlanta Fed is the head of the Sixth Federal Reserve District, which covers Alabama, Florida, Georgia and parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. It focuses its international research and services on Latin America and the Caribbean. The bank is part of the U.S. central banking system that sets national monetary policy, supervises commercial banks and provides financial services to banks and the federal government.
The Americas Center will be participating in a conference about banking in Latin America at the International Development Bank’s headquarters in Washington on Sept. 30.
Contact Mr. Kay at stephen.kay@atl.frb.org