Search Results
Working Paper
The Federal Home Loan Bank System: the lender of next-to-last resort?
The Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) System is a large, complex, and understudied government-sponsored liquidity facility that currently has more than $1 trillion in secured loans outstanding, mostly to commercial banks and thrifts. This paper first documents the significant role played by the FHLB System at the outset of the ongoing financial crisis and then provides evidence about the uses of these funds by their bank and thrift members. We then identify the trade-offs faced by FHLB member-borrowers when choosing between accessing the FHLB System or the Federal Reserve's discount window during ...
Conference Paper
Deposit insurance and lender-of-last-resort functions
Working Paper
Lessons of the past and prospects for the future in lender of last resort theory
A history of the changes in the theory of the role of the lender of last resort--as a source of solvency versus liquidity support--and a discussion of the distinction between necessity and convenience (the American and European versions of lender of last resort theory) in mounting rescue operations through the central bank.
Working Paper
Liquidity creation without a lender of last resort: clearing house loan certificates in the Banking Panic of 1907
We employ a new data set comprised of disaggregate figures on clearing house loan certificate issues in New York City to document how the dominant national banks were crucial providers of temporary liquidity during the Panic of 1907. Clearing house loan certificates were essentially ?bridge loans? arranged between clearing house members. They enabled and were issued in anticipation of gold imports, which took a few weeks to arrive. The large, New York City national banks acted as private liquidity providers by requesting (and the New York Clearing House issuing) a volume of clearing house ...
Working Paper
Close but not a central bank: The New York Clearing House and issues of clearing house loan certificates
The paper examines the New York Clearing House (NYCH) as a lender of last resort by looking at clearing-house-loan-certificate borrowing during five banking panics of the National Banking Era (1863?1913). In that system, adequate aggregate liquidity provision was passive and dependent upon member bank borrowing. We document bank borrowing behavior using bank-level data for clearing-house loan certifi cates issued to NYCH member banks. The historical record reveals that the large New York City banks behaved in ways that resembled those of a central bank in 1884 and in 1890, but less so in the ...
Working Paper
How New Fed Corporate Bond Programs Dampened the Financial Accelerator in the COVID-19 Recession
In the financial crisis and recession induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, many investment-grade firms became unable to borrow from securities markets. In response, the Fed not only reopened its commercial paper funding facility but also announced it would purchase newly issued and seasoned bonds of corporations rated as investment grade before the COVID pandemic. A careful splicing of different unemployment rate series enables us to assess the effectiveness of recent Fed interventions in these long-term debt markets over long sample periods, spanning the Great Depression, Great Recession and ...
Journal Article
The Federal safety net for commercial banks: pt. I
Journal Article
Risk, insurance and central banking