Yellen: Banking reforms should avert future financial crisis

LONDON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Tuesday that she believes banking regulators have made enough improvements to the financial system that the world will not experience another financial crisis "in our lifetimes."

Addressing an audience at the British Academy in London on Tuesday, Yellen said the banking reforms put in place in recent years have made the financial system much safer.

[...] Yellen said the system is better able to handle any shocks that might occur if investors began dumping assets out of concerns about a future financial threat.

Yellen said the U.S. unemployment rate, which stands at a 16-year low of 4.3 percent, is "below the level that most of my colleagues believe is sustainable in the long run."

The Fed has hiked its Fed funds rate by a quarter point on three occasions since December, most recently this month, to a range of 1 to 1.25 percent, partly because of this concern.