How Do Liquidity Conditions Affect U.S. Bank Lending?
he recent financial crisis underscored the importance of understanding how liquidity conditions for banks (or other financial institutions) influence the banks’ lending to domestic and foreign customers.
Cross-Country Evidence on Transmission of Liquidity Risk through Global Banks
Over the past thirty years, the typical large bank has become a global entity with subsidiaries in many countries.
Measuring Global Bank Complexity
Paraphrasing a famous Supreme Court opinion: “I know bank complexity when I see it.”
What’s News?
Linda S. Goldberg Economic news moves markets. Most analyses find that economic news is incorporated quickly (within minutes) into asset prices, with some measurable persistence of these effects, and with some spillovers across national borders. Some types of announcements—for example, U.S. nonfarm payrolls announcements—generate much larger asset price responses than others. Generally, news that is […]
Ring-Fencing and “Financial Protectionism” in International Banking
Some market watchers and academic researchers are concerned about a “Balkanization” of banking, owing to a sharp decline in cross-border international banking activity, and an increased home bias of financial transactions.
Follow That Money! How Global Banks Manage Liquidity Globally
Banks increasingly move money around the world.
How Has the Business of International Banking Changed?
In this post, I focus on the broad historical progression of international banking activity.
What If the U.S. Dollar’s Global Role Changed?
It isn’t surprising that the dollar is always in the news, given the prominence of the United States in the global economy and how often the dollar is used in transactions around the world (as discussed in a 2010 Current Issues article).
Global Banks and Their Internal Capital Markets during the Crisis
As financial markets have become increasingly globalized, banks have developed growing networks of branches and subsidiaries in foreign countries. This expansion of banking across borders is changing the way banks manage their balance sheets, and the ways home markets and foreign markets respond to disturbances to financial markets. Based on our recent research, this post shows how global banks used their foreign affiliates for accessing scarce dollars during the financial crisis—a liquidity strategy that helped transmit shocks internationally while reducing some of the consequences in the stressed locations.
Why Did U.S. Branches of Foreign Banks Borrow at the Discount Window during the Crisis?
To help contain the economic damage caused by the recent financial crisis, the Federal Reserve extended large amounts of liquidity to financial firms through traditional lending facilities such as the discount window as well as through newly designed facilities. Recently released Federal Reserve data on discount window borrowing show that some U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks were among the most active users of the window. In this post, we explain why U.S. branches borrow at the discount window. We also discuss two main reasons why these branches had a large need for dollars during the crisis and how discount window loans to them helped stabilize the financial system and the real economy in the United States.