The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises. Over the years, events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s have led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System.
The money market is a component of the economy which provides short-term funds. The money market deals in short-term loans, generally for a period of less than or equal to 365 days.
Fractional-reserve banking is the most common form of banking practised by commercial banks worldwide. It involves banks accepting deposits from customers and making loans to borrowers, while holding in reserve only a fraction of the bank's deposit liabilities. Bank reserves are held as cash in the bank or as balances in the bank's account at the central bank. The minimum amount that banks are required to hold in liquid assets is determined by the country's central bank, and is called the reserve requirement or reserve ratio. Banks usually hold more than this minimum amount, keeping excess reserves.
An open market operation (OMO) is an activity by a central bank to give liquidity in its currency to a bank or a group of banks. The central bank can either buy or sell government bonds in the open market or, in what is now mostly the preferred solution, enter into a repo or secured lending transaction with a commercial bank: the central bank gives the money as a deposit for a defined period and synchronously takes an eligible asset as collateral. A central bank uses OMO as the primary means of implementing monetary policy. The usual aim of open market operations is—aside from supplying commercial banks with liquidity and sometimes taking surplus liquidity from commercial banks—to manipulate the short-term interest rate and the supply of base money in an economy, and thus indirectly control the total money supply, in effect expanding money or contracting the money supply. This involves meeting the demand of base money at the target interest rate by buying and selling government securities, or other financial instruments. Monetary targets, such as inflation, interest rates, or exchange rates, are used to guide this implementation.
The reserve requirement is a central bank regulation employed by most, but not all, of the world's central banks, that sets the minimum amount of reserves that must be held by a commercial bank. The minimum reserve is generally determined by the central bank to be no less than a specified percentage of the amount of deposit liabilities the commercial bank owes to its customers. The commercial bank's reserves normally consist of cash owned by the bank and stored physically in the bank vault, plus the amount of the commercial bank's balance in that bank's account with the central bank.
A lender of last resort (LOLR) is the institution in a financial system that acts as the provider of liquidity to a financial institution which finds itself unable to obtain sufficient liquidity in the interbank lending market and other facilities or sources have been exhausted. It is, in effect, a government guarantee of liquidity to financial institutions. Since the beginning of the 20th century, most central banks have been providers of lender of last resort facilities, and their functions usually also include ensuring liquidity in the financial market in general. The objective is to prevent economic disruption as a result of financial panics and bank runs spreading from one bank to the next from a lack of liquidity in one. Different definitions of the lender of last resort exist in literature. A comprehensive one is that it is "the discretionary provision of liquidity to a financial institution by the central bank in reaction to an adverse shock which causes an abnormal increase in demand for liquidity which cannot be met from an alternative source".
In the United States, federal funds are overnight borrowings between banks and other entities to maintain their bank reserves at the Federal Reserve. Banks keep reserves at Federal Reserve Banks to meet their reserve requirements and to clear financial transactions. Transactions in the federal funds market enable depository institutions with reserve balances in excess of reserve requirements to lend reserves to institutions with reserve deficiencies. These loans are usually made for one day only, that is, "overnight". The interest rate at which these deals are done is called the federal funds rate. Federal funds are not collateralized; like eurodollars, they are an unsecured interbank loan.
The discount window is an instrument of monetary policy that allows eligible institutions to borrow money from the central bank, usually on a short-term basis, to meet temporary shortages of liquidity caused by internal or external disruptions. The term originated with the practice of sending a bank representative to a reserve bank teller window when a bank needed to borrow money.
Bank rate, also known as discount rate in American English, is the rate of interest which a central bank charges on its loans and advances to a commercial bank. The bank rate is known by a number of different terms depending on the country, and has changed over time in some countries as the mechanisms used to manage the rate have changed.
Quantitative easing (QE), also known as large-scale asset purchases, is a monetary policy whereby a central bank buys predetermined amounts of government bonds or other financial assets in order to inject liquidity directly into the economy. An unconventional form of monetary policy, it is usually used when inflation is very low or negative, and standard expansionary monetary policy has become ineffective. A central bank implements quantitative easing by buying specified amounts of financial assets from commercial banks and other financial institutions, thus raising the prices of those financial assets and lowering their yield, while simultaneously increasing the money supply. This differs from the more usual policy of buying or selling short-term government bonds to keep interbank interest rates at a specified target value.
The overnight rate is generally the interest rate that large banks use to borrow and lend from one another in the overnight market. In some countries, the overnight rate may be the rate targeted by the central bank to influence monetary policy. In most countries, the central bank is also a participant on the overnight lending market, and will lend or borrow money to some group of banks.
In finance, an asset–liability mismatch occurs when the financial terms of an institution's assets and liabilities do not correspond. Several types of mismatches are possible.
The Term Auction Facility (TAF) is a temporary program managed by the United States Federal Reserve designed to "address elevated pressures in short-term funding markets." Under the program the Fed auctions collateralized loans with terms of 28 and 84 days to depository institutions that are "in generally sound financial condition" and "are expected to remain so over the terms of TAF loans." Eligible collateral is the same as that accepted for discount window loans and includes a wide range of financial assets. The program was instituted in December 2007 in response to problems associated with the subprime mortgage crisis and was motivated by a desire to address a widening spread between interest rates on overnight and term interbank lending, indicating a retreat from risk-taking by banks. The action was in coordination with simultaneous and similar initiatives undertaken by the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank.
The U.S. central banking system, the Federal Reserve, in partnership with central banks around the world, took several steps to address the subprime mortgage crisis. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stated in early 2008: "Broadly, the Federal Reserve’s response has followed two tracks: efforts to support market liquidity and functioning and the pursuit of our macroeconomic objectives through monetary policy." A 2011 study by the Government Accountability Office found that "on numerous occasions in 2008 and 2009, the Federal Reserve Board invoked emergency authority under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to authorize new broad-based programs and financial assistance to individual institutions to stabilize financial markets. Loans outstanding for the emergency programs peaked at more than $1 trillion in late 2008."
An overnight indexed swap (OIS) is an interest rate swap where the periodic floating payment is generally based on a return calculated from a daily compound interest investment. The reference for a daily compounded rate is an overnight rate and the exact averaging formula depends on the type of such rate.
The interbank lending market is a market in which banks extend loans to one another for a specified term. Most interbank loans are for maturities of one week or less, the majority being overnight. Such loans are made at the interbank rate. A sharp decline in transaction volume in this market was a major contributing factor to the collapse of several financial institutions during the financial crisis of 2007–2008.
The overnight policy rate is an overnight interest rate set by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) used for monetary policy direction. It is the target rate for the day-to-day liquidity operations of the BNM. The overnight policy rate (OPR) is the interest rate at which a depository institution lends immediately available funds to another depository institution overnight. The amount of money a bank has fluctuates daily based on its lending activities and its customers’ withdrawal and deposit activity, therefore the bank may experience a shortage or surplus of cash at the end of the business day. Those banks that experience a surplus often lend money overnight to banks that experience a shortage so the banking system remains stable and liquid. This is an efficient method for banks around the world to practice 'Accessing short-term financing' from the central bank depositories. The interest rate of the OPR is influenced by the central bank, where it is a good predictor for the movement of short-term interest rates. In 2014, Malaysia’s central bank raised its key interest rate for the first time in more than three years, to help temper inflation and rising consumer debt.
Central bank liquidity swap is a type of currency swap used by a country's central bank to provide liquidity of its currency to another country's central bank.
The Chinese Banking Liquidity Crisis of 2013 was a sudden credit crunch affecting China's commercial banks evidenced by a rapid rise on 20 June 2013 in the Shanghai interbank overnight lending rates to a high of 30 percent from its usual rate of less than 3%. The ensuing panic affected gold markets and stock. China's regulation of the foreign exchange market had caused a decline in inflow of cash. On 19 June 2013, instead of injecting additional funds and easing its monetary policy, China's central bank People's Bank of China (PBOC) told commercial banks to "make full use of incremental funds and revitalize stock options." On 24 June 2014 the PBOC told commercial banks to "control the risk associated with credit expansion" effectively increasing the scrutiny of shadow banks' lending practices. This resulted in a sudden shortfall in the cash market resulting in short term repo rates in excess of 25%. In effect China was using market forces to manage the economy.
Dual interest rates refers to a policy implemented by central banks which aims to influence lending rates independently of deposit rates as a means of stimulating economic activity. Policies similar to this have long been a feature of Chinese monetary policy. More recently dual interest rates have been introduced by the European Central Bank (ECB), under its TLTRO II scheme as an unconventional monetary policy. More aggressive use of these policies has been suggested as an effective alternative to negative interest rates, quantitative easing (QE) and forward guidance.
