Home » Posts tagged 'bank reserves'

Tag Archives: bank reserves

Central Banks Rush to Protect Themselves from Incoming Disaster

The times, they are a-changin’, as Bob Dylan tells us.

On the global economic stage, the U.S. isn’t the dominant economic superpower that it once was. This conclusion comes from the declining popularity of dollars among global central banks.

Around the world, national central banks stockpile “reserves” in order to back up the value of their own national currency. Here’s how Investopedia explains monetary reserves:

The currency, precious metals, and other assets held by a central bank or other monetary authority

Monetary reserves back up the value of national currencies by providing something of value that the currency can be exchanged or redeemed for by note holders and depositors

Reserves themselves can either be gold or denominated in a specific currency, such as the dollar or euro

In a sense, holding any asset as part of a nation’s monetary reserves is a vote of confidence in it (which is a big reason central banks own tons of gold bars).

Here’s the concern: according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) data, the U.S. dollar (USD) has been hobbling along at a 26-year low in terms of its share of global reserve currencies.

Wolf Richter explained the specifics: “The global share of US-dollar-denominated exchange reserves declined to 59.15% in the third quarter, from 59.23% in the second quarter.”

The world is losing faith in the dollar as a safe, stable store of value. Take a look at the history of the USD share of global reserve currencies since 1967 on the chart below.

Take special note of how high the share was in 1977 (85%) before inflation spiraled out of control. Then note how much of that share disappeared by 1991:

U.S. Dollar share of global reserve currencies

Source

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fiat Money Cannibalization in America

September 22, 2019

Fiat Money Cannibalization in America

An Odd Combination of Serenity and Panic

The United States, with untroubled ease, continued its approach toward catastrophe this week. The Federal Reserve cut the federal funds rate 25 basis points, thus furthering its program of mass money debasement. Yet, on the surface, all still remained in the superlative.

S&P 500 Index, weekly: serenely perched near all time highs, in permanently high plateau nirvana. [PT]

Stocks smiled down on investors from their perch upon what Irving Fischer once called “a permanently high plateau.” As of the market close on Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average held above 27,000, the S&P 500 above 3,000, and the NASDAQ above 8,000. 401k accounts, to the delight of working stiffs of all ages, origins, and orientations, are swollen beyond expectations.

Below the surface, however, the overnight funding market was subject to much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Sometime between Monday night and Tuesday morning the overnight repurchase agreement (repo) rate hit 10 percent. Short-term liquidity markets essentially broke.

After several technical glitches, the Fed executed its first repo operation in a decade – $53 billion – to keep the interbank funding market flowing. Zero Hedge documented the chaos real time.

This was followed up with additional repo operations on Wednesday and Thursday – at $75 billion a pop, and both oversubscribed. Perhaps Fed repo operations will be a daily occurrence, at least until the Fed launches QE4.

US overnight repo rate – as Fed chair Jerome Powell remarked: “Funding pressures in money markets are elevated this week”. Evidently, nothing escapes his eagle eyes. [PT]

At the same time, the effective federal funds rate – the upper range limit of the federal funds rate – continues to push above the rate the Federal Reserve pays on excess reserves (IOER). In other words, the Fed’s primary tool for price fixing credit markets is not behaving according to plan. Greater Fed intervention will be needed to keep things in line.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

These Are The Banks Where The Fed’s $1.4 Trillion In Reserves Are Parked

September 22, 2019

These Are The Banks Where The Fed’s $1.4 Trillion In Reserves Are Parked

Over the past few days there has been much confusion over the repocalpyse that shook the overnight funding market, and just as much confusion over the definition of reserves which some banks were unwilling to part with, other banks were desperate for, and in the end both Powell and the former head of the NY Fed’s markets desk admitted that Quantitative Tightening had been taken too far, and the total amount of reserves in the system was too low and will be increased (welcome back QE).

Yet while the book has yet to be written on the causes for last week’s shocking move higher in repo rates, which sent general collateral as high as 10%, a record print in a time of $1.4 trillion in excess reserves, we can shed some clarity on the definition of “reserves.” While there is a universe of semantic gymnastics when it comes to explaining what reserves are, the most basic definition is quite simply “cash”, however not cash in circulation but rather cash (and deposits) held in the bank’s account with the Federal Reserve (which the US central bank’s name comes from).

This means that there should be a de facto identity between the total amount of cash in the US banking system and the amount of total (minimum required plus excess) reserves. Sure enough, if only looks at the Fed’s weekly H.8 statement, which lists the “Assets and Liabilities of Commercial Banks in the United States“, and adds across the various banking cash aggregates in the US, what one gets is precisely the total amount of reserves.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

For Canada’s Banks This Is “The Next Shoe To Drop”, And Why It Will Drop This Spring

March 31, 2016

For Canada’s Banks This Is “The Next Shoe To Drop”, And Why It Will Drop This Spring

Roughly around the time the market troughed in early February, we asked “After The European Bank Bloodbath, Is Canada Next?” The reason for this question was simple: we said that “when compared to US banks’ (artificially low) reserves for oil and gas exposure, Canadian banks are…not.”

Stated otherwise, we warned that the biggest threat facing Canada’s banking sector is how woefully underreserved it is to future oil and gas loan losses.

We added that unlike their US peers, “Canadian banks like to wait for impairment events to book PCLs rather than build reserves, in effect throwing the entire process of reserving for future losses out of the window.”

We then cited an RBC analysis according to which a 7% loss reserve would be sufficient to offset loan losses in what is shaping up as the biggest commodity crash in history. We disagreed:

We wish we could be as confident as RBC that this is sufficient, however we are clearly concerned that if and when Canada’s banks finally begin to write down their assets and flow the impariments though the income statement, that things could go from bad to worse very quickly, and not necessarily because Canada’s banks are under or over provisioned, but for a far simpler reason – once the market focuses on Canadian energy exposure, it will realize just how little information is freely available, and if European banks are any indication, it will sell first and ask questions much later if at all.

However, indeed assuming a worst case scenario, one in which the banks will have to “eat” the losses and suffer impairments, then the question emerges just how much capital do these banks truly have, which in turn goes back full circle to our post from the summer of 2011 which led to much gnashing of teeth at the Globe and Mail.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Bubble Finance Cycle: What Our Keynesian School Marm Doesn’t Get, Part 2

November 14, 2015

The Bubble Finance Cycle: What Our Keynesian School Marm Doesn’t Get, Part 2

In Part 1 of The Bubble Finance Cycle we demonstrated that a main street based wage and price spiral always proceeded recessions during the era of Lite Touch monetary policy (1951 to 1985). That happened because the Fed was perennially “behind the curve” and was therefore forced to hit the monetary brakes hard in order to rein in an overheated economy.

So doing, it drained reserves from the banking system, causing an abrupt interruption of household and business credit formation. The resulting sharp drop in business CapEx, household durables and especially mortgage-based spending on new housing construction caused a brief recessionary setback in aggregate economic activity.

To be sure, that discontinuity and the related unemployment and loss of output was wholly unnecessary and by no means a natural outcome on the free market.

Under a regime of free market interest rates, in fact, the pricing mechanism for credit would have operated far more smoothly and continuously, meaning that credit-fueled booms would be nipped in the bud. Flexible, continuously adjusting money market rates and yield curves would choke off unsustainable borrowing and induce an uptake in private savings due to higher rewards for the deferral of current period spending.

Accordingly, the recessions of the Lite Touch monetary era were mainly a “payback” phenomenon that reflected the displacement of economic activity in time caused by monetary intervention. That is, the artificial “stop and go” economy lamented by proponents of sound money was a function of central bank intrusion in the pricing of money and the ebb and flow of credit.

During bank credit fueled inflationary booms, businesses tended to over-invest in fixed assets and inventory and to over-hire in anticipation that the good times would just keep rolling along. But when the central bank was forced to correct for its too heavy foot on the monetary accelerator (i.e. the provision of fiat credit reserves to the banking system) and slam on the credit expansion brakes, businesses dutifully went about reeling-in the prior excesses.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If We Don’t Change the Way Money Is Created and Distributed, Rising Inequality Will Trigger Social Disorder

November 13, 2015

If We Don’t Change the Way Money Is Created and Distributed, Rising Inequality Will Trigger Social Disorder

Centrally issued money optimizes inequality, monopoly, cronyism, stagnation, low social mobility and systemic instability.

If we don’t change the way money is created and distributed, wealth inequality will widen to the point of social disorder.

Everyone who wants to reduce wealth inequality with more regulations and taxes is missing the key dynamic: the monopoly on creating and issuing money necessarily widens wealth inequality, as those with access to newly issued money can always outbid the rest of us to buy the engines of wealth creation.

Control of money issuance and access to low-cost credit create financial and political power. Those with access to low-cost credit have a monopoly as valuable as the one to create money.

Compare the limited power of an individual with cash and the enormous power of unlimited cheap credit.

Let’s say an individual has saved $100,000 in cash. He keeps the money in the bank, which pays him less than 1% interest. Rather than earn this low rate, he decides to loan the cash to an individual who wants to buy a rental home at 4% interest.

There’s a tradeoff to earn this higher rate of interest: the saver has to accept the risk that the borrower might default on the loan, and that the home will not be worth the $100,000 the borrower owes.

The bank, on the other hand, can perform magic with the $100,000 they obtain from the central bank. The bank can issue 19 times this amount in new loans—in effect, creating $1,900,000 in new money out of thin air.

This is the magic of fractional reserve lending. The bank is only required to hold a small percentage of outstanding loans as reserves against losses. If the reserve requirement is 5%, the bank can issue $1,900,000 in new loans based on the $100,000 in cash: the bank holds assets of $2,000,000, of which 5% ($100,000) is held in cash reserves.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Credit Growth – the First Cracks?

September 24, 2015

US Credit Growth – the First Cracks?

Inflationary Bank Lending and Money Supply Growth

Given that there is currently no “QE” program underway – with the exception of the reinvestment scheme designed to prevent the Fed’s balance sheet from shrinking (if it were to shrink, the money supply would decline as well) – money supply growth depends primarily on the amount of fiduciary media created ex nihilo by commercial banks.

Putting it differently, it depends on the growth in bank lending, since new uncovered deposit money comes into being by the extension of credit by banks. This deposit money is a money substitute that is only partially covered by standard money, or potential standard money (i.e., bank reserves). However, it has to be regarded as part of the money supply, given that it is used for the final payment of goods and services. From the perspective of its users, it is money.

financial-bubble-credit

Photo credit: .Kai

Since the crisis of 2008 and the collapse of the mortgage credit bubble, the following trends have been in evidence: lending to corporations has quickly reached growth rates usually associated with boom conditions. Consumer lending has by contrast been more subdued, with mortgage credit growth not surprisingly only very slowly moving back into positive territory. Most of the acceleration in bank lending could be observed once “QE” was tapered and ended – as a result, broad US money supply growth has remained brisk, even though it is far below its peak levels of recent years.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is This The Start Of India’s Gold Confiscation

September 10, 2015

Is This The Start Of India’s Gold Confiscation

On April 5, 1933, FDR signed Executive order 6102 which made illegal “the Hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States” in the process criminalizing the possession of monetary gold by any individual or corporation.

This was de facto gold confiscation; De jure it wasn’t, because as compensation for the relinquished gold, Americans would receive 20.67 in freshly printed US dollars for every troy ounce. Anybody who objected faced a fine of $10,000 (just under $200,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars) and up to 10 years in prison.

Once the government was confident it has confiscated enough gold, it turned around and raised the official price of a gold ounce to $35 (about $600 in today’s dollars) devaluing the US Dollar by 40% overnight at a time when currencies were still backed by hard assets.

Fast forward 82 years to a time when the barbarous relic continues to be seen as the safest store of value among India’s vast population (roughly 20% of the world’s total), not to mention the main source of financial headaches for local authorities, one of the biggest importers of gold due to its “traditional” values and where relentless Indian demand for offshore purchases of the shiny yellow metal so plagues the government’s current account and capital flow strategy, that the government may be preparing to pull a page right out of the FDR playbook.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet implemented the selling of “gold-backed bonds” when it approved the gold monetization plan and sale of sovereign bonds proposed several months ago by the Reserve Bank of India, the government said in a statement. The plans were first announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in February as measures to woo Indians away from physical gold. As Jaitley explained yesterday, the deposited gold would be auctioned, used to replenish the Reserve Bank of India’s reserves or be lent to jewelers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bank Reserves and Loans: The Fed is Pushing On a String

May 7, 2015

Bank Reserves and Loans: The Fed is Pushing On a String

The money multiplier effect no longer works.

As you (hopefully) know, we live in a fractional reserve banking system: if the bank is required to have $1 in cash reserves for every $10 in loans, it means the bank creates $10 of new money when it issues a $10 loan. When the $10 loan is paid off, that money vanishes from the system.

At that point, the bank is insolvent, i,e, its losses exceed its assets.The problem with fractional reserve lending is the leverage. A 10-to-1 reserve ratio means that if the bank issues a $10 loan, the borrower defaults and the borrower’s collateral (home, auto, etc.) only fetches $8 on the open market, the bank lost $2, which is more than the bank’s cash reserves ($1).

In credit bubbles, the reserve requirements may reach absurd levels of leverage. At a reserve ratio of 100-to-1, a $2 loss of value in a $100 loan will push the bank into insolvency, as it only held $1 in cash as reserves against the $100 loan.

Reserve requirements and leverage are one set of constraints on new loans; the other constraint is the income, creditworthiness and willingness of the borrower.If households and businesses decide not to borrow more, regardless of the interest rate, then raising or lowering the reserve requirements will have no effect.

This is where the Federal Reserve finds itself today. The Fed is anxious to spark more lending/borrowing, and it has lowered interest rates to near-zero and made it easy for banks to build reserves–two things that in previous eras would have sparked increased borrowing.

But in our debt-saturated, stagnant-income era, the Fed is pushing on a string.Frequent contributor Dave P. explains why with the aid of two of his charts:

Banks can create new money, but only within the limits of the reserve requirements set by the Fed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Banking System Can’t Lend Out Reserves, But a Bank Can – Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada

December 28, 2014

The Banking System Can’t Lend Out Reserves, But a Bank Can – Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada.

This post will seem simple to some, but I want to correct a slight confusion I’ve seen over the last several years in the economics blogosphere. (I was motivated to write because of an exchange with Nick Freiling, who loves the Austrian School but thought I had made a basic mistake in a recent piece I wrote about the Federal Reserve’s policies.) Specifically, Freiling and many others have challenged the standard claim that commercial banks lend out reserves when they make loans to customers. The critics argue that since the public will generally end up depositing their checks with their own respective banks, the granting of loans will merely rearrange which banks hold certain levels of reserves, but the banking system as a whole can’t “lend them out” because there would be nowhere for them to go. Hence, the critics allege, the talk of the Fed (say) raising the interest rate that it pays on reserves in order to discourage lending is nonsense; in Freiling’s words, there is (allegedly) no tradeoff between loans and reserves.

This argument from the critics is wrong. It rests on a confusion between micro-incentives and system-wide outcomes. In particular, the interest rate that the Fed pays on reserves can most definitely affect the willingness of commercial banks to make loans on the margin.

Before jumping directly into the issue, let me start with an analogy with actual currency held in people’s wallets or purses. (I see Nick Rowe thought of the same analogy last summer.) Forget about banks. Suppose there are $100 billion in actual currency in the economy, held by a population of 100 million people, and that this is the only money that these people use. That means on average each person holds $1,000 in currency.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: bank reserves

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Latest Posts