NBER: Mutual Assistance between Federal Reserve Banks, 1913-1960

By Barry Eichengreen, Arnaud J. Mehl, Livia Chițu, & Gary Richardson

This paper reconstructs the forgotten history of mutual assistance among Reserve Banks in the early years of the Federal Reserve System. We use data on accommodation operations by the 12 Reserve Banks between 1913 and 1960 which enabled them to mutualise their gold reserves in emergency situations. Gold reserve sharing was especially important in response to liquidity crises and bank runs. Cooperation among reserve banks was essential for the cohesion and stability of the US monetary union. But fortunes could change quickly, with emergency recipients of gold turning into providers. Because regional imbalances did not grow endlessly, instead narrowing when region-specific liquidity shocks subsided, mutual assistance created only limited tensions. These findings speak to the current debate over TARGET2 balances in Europe.

Read rest here (subscription required).

Gerald Epstein: Too-Big-To-Fail Advantage Remains Intact For Big Banks

Gerald Epstein:

Yeah, well, I think there are some noteworthy things. First of all, just to explain what this means, what it means is that these largest banks, like Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and so forth get an advantage when they borrow money in the financial markets, because the people who lend them money believe that if they get into trouble, the government will bail them out, that the taxpayers will bail them out. And this has been known since at least 1984, when Continental Illinois Bank almost went under and the government bailed them out, and then the government said, well, we're going to bail out the 11 biggest banks that are too big to fail, and we're going to bail them out in the future. And, of course, that's exactly what happened in the financial crisis of 2007-2008. So when investors lend money to these big banks, we've thought for a long time that they expect that they're going to get bailed out if they get into trouble, so they'll charge less money to these big banks...

Basel III and the BIS

Two news from Basel this Monday. None good. First, in their just released Annual Report, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) complements the IMF's demands for fiscal contraction, with their own calls for monetary contraction.  In their view:

"Inflation risks have been driven up by the combination of dwindling economic slack and increases in the prices of food, energy and other commodities. The spread of inflation dangers from major emerging market economies to the advanced economies bolsters the conclusion that policy rates should rise globally. At the same time, some countries must weigh the need to tighten with vulnerabilities linked to still-distorted balance sheets and lingering financial sector fragility. But once central banks start lifting rates, they may need to do so more quickly than in past tightening episodes."

It is bad enough not to have sufficient fiscal stimulus in the developed world, but to export the behavior of the ECB to other central banks would be a terrible idea.  In this case, they think that developing countries are exporting inflation, and developed countries should act swiftly.

In part, the misguided recommendation of the BIS follows from an incorrect view of what caused the crisis.  For them low rates of interest now will create new risks in the financial system.  Yet, the crisis was not the result of low rates of interest, but a consequence of deregulation.

And that leads to the second news.  The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has added a surcharge of extra capital (on top of the Basel III ones) requirements between 1 and 2.5% of the value of risk adjusted assets for large banks (here; subscription required).  I'm sure people more qualified will discuss the nitty gritty details of this proposal, but from my point of view the problem is that this perpetuates large institutions, and avoids the old New Deal commitment to break them up and separate the speculative activities from the financing of productive activities.  There is no reversing of the so-called "revenge of the rentiers."