The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston published a roundup of its most-read 2025 stories, bringing together research and reporting on regional economic conditions, fraud risks, and evolving financial-sector exposures. The selection includes coverage of New England’s rural health care access challenges, generative AI-enabled synthetic identity fraud, and analysis of how the US economy is adapting to greater global volatility. Featured items include a Boston Fed in Focus piece on worsening proximity to health care in northern New England, and a recap of Boston Fed President and CEO Susan M. Collins’ visits across New England to hear from community members, business and labor leaders, and public officials about issues such as rising costs and labor force shortages. The roundup also highlights work on synthetic identity fraud, noting losses that crossed the USD 35 billion mark in 2023 and the role of generative AI as both an accelerant and a potential detection tool. In supervision-related research, a note from the Supervision, Regulation & Credit department estimates that large banks’ loan commitments to private equity and private credit funds grew nearly 30 times from about USD 10 billion in 2013 to about USD 300 billion in 2023, with a call for regulatory insight to better monitor associated risks. The list also points to the Boston Fed’s 69th Economic Research Conference on how the US economy is adapting to an increasingly fragmented and volatile global environment.

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