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So what you are proposing is that currency speculators should be banned from bank borrowing?

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Tue Jan 31st, 2012 at 03:48:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Technically, no. I'm saying that if banks want to lend to currency speculators, they should go fund those loans in the stock market rather than at the discount window.

Practically, yes, that's what it means.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Jan 31st, 2012 at 04:24:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I don't see how banks are prevented from making those loans without either (1) draining reserves and bank liquidity from the system, contrary to the domestic policy objectives of the time or (2) a massive rollback of banking regulation to the direct account interest rate limits of the 1950's. Otherwise if you constraint banks in their asset management options, they generate the spare reserves via liability management.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Jan 31st, 2012 at 11:35:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Not a rollback to the 1950s regulation, no, but to something similarly intrusive and heavy-handed. To whit:

  1. Raise liquidity requirements to 100 % of insured deposits. By itself, this does nothing of any importance, as liquidity is freely available from the interbank market.

  2. Offer rediscounts for up to [1 - margin requirement] on loans the bank extends as an alternative to obtaining reserves in the interbank market. E.g. "up to 90 % of the face value of the note, but no more than 72 % of the auditor's assessment of the collateral." By itself, this does nothing interesting either, as reserves remain freely available in the interbank market.

  3. Stop supporting the interbank market, thus forcing banks to always fund either at the discount window or with equity.

This will not prevent banks from using equity to fund a speculative attack on the currency. But you do not want to do that anyway, because if they can win an attack on the currency with equity alone, then the currency is probably too high and needs to go down.

This also has two related advantages:

  1. The central bank can reduce the contango in the yield curve. Which is usually greater than is economically optimal when set by the private markets, because the private markets have to hedge against arbitrary changes of the overnight policy rate as well as changes to the economic fundamentals.

  2. The central bank can charge different rediscount rates for different classes of collateral. E.g. hitting real estate with higher risk-free borrowing rates in order to kill a housing bubble, while keeping wind farm financing at the zero bound to head off an electricity squeeze. This might actually turn the central bank into a useful tool for macroeconomic planning, as opposed to the blunt instrument it is today.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Feb 1st, 2012 at 03:36:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]
So the general strategy is for the central bank to abandon its core role of providing liquidity for the system in pursuit of a secondary role of regulating the direction into which that liquidity flows.

But I don't see how (3) above follows ~ indeed, the backing of all insured deposits at 100% would make liability management to free up reserves to back lending easier, since each dollar attracted from a higher reserve account at $0.x reserve requirement into an account with a lower $0.y reserve required frees up $0.(x-y) for a loan account, and if x=100, then that maximizes (x-y).

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Wed Feb 1st, 2012 at 09:20:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]
So the general strategy is for the central bank to abandon its core role of providing liquidity for the system in pursuit of a secondary role of regulating the direction into which that liquidity flows.

No, the point is that the proposed scheme provides precisely the same liquidity to all lawfully managed banking activity as the current one, while activities you don't like are denied liquidity. It's really just an extension of the idea that different loan classes should have different weights when computing core capital for regulatory purposes, except that doing a runaround on your equity requirements is easier than doing a runaround on your liquidity requirements.

But I don't see how (3) above follows ~ indeed, the backing of all insured deposits at 100% would make liability management to free up reserves to back lending easier, since each dollar attracted from a higher reserve account at $0.x reserve requirement into an account with a lower $0.y reserve required frees up $0.(x-y) for a loan account, and if x=100, then that maximizes (x-y).

If the bank can convince people to move their money from a checking account to an uninsured "investment" account, then they can lend the money to Mr. Soros so he can attack the GB£. But Mr. Soros can also just convince them to take the money out of their checking account and lend it to him over the counter. You can't foreclose on that option, unless you want to institute outright hard currency rationing and make buying foreign currency on the open market illegal.

Which you can do, but that's a considerably more far-reaching reform.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Feb 1st, 2012 at 10:02:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]
If the bank can convince people to move their money from a checking account to an uninsured "investment" account, then they can lend the money to Mr. Soros so he can attack the GB£.

Which is just an extension of existing liability management to line up with the new constraints imposed, which means that they can indeed lend the money to Mr. Soros so he can attack the pound.

But Mr. Soros can also just convince them to take the money out of their checking account and lend it to him over the counter.

Its a lot easier for a bank to do it than for an individual to do it.

You can't foreclose on that option, unless you want to institute outright hard currency rationing and make buying foreign currency on the open market illegal.

That's not how border capital controls worked: they worked by requiring that justification be provided to permit a transfer of funds above a specific (large) amount. Typically "I want to make a speculative attack on your currency in an amount exceeding your central bank's hard currency reserves" would not be granted permission.

But of course, not allowed under the EU system, which is part of the halfway there, halfway not muddled economic sovereignty of the EU.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Wed Feb 1st, 2012 at 10:17:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]
If the bank can convince people to move their money from a checking account to an uninsured "investment" account, then they can lend the money to Mr. Soros so he can attack the GB£.

Which is just an extension of existing liability management to line up with the new constraints imposed, which means that they can indeed lend the money to Mr. Soros so he can attack the pound.

That's an excellent argument for not allowing the same institution to manage checking and investment accounts, yes.

But really, if a bank can convince its depositors that foregoing depositor insurance in order to support an attack on the currency is an awesome idea...

... then maybe your currency is overvalued and you should not be defending the current exchange rate in the first place.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Feb 1st, 2012 at 10:24:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]
But really, if a bank can convince its depositors that foregoing depositor insurance in order to support an attack on the currency is an awesome idea...

That's part of why its a lot simpler for a bank to do it ~ Mr. Soros would have to make that pitch, but the bank simply advertises the "attractive rates" on "XYZ accounts". Experience informs it about how much of an interest rate differential it requires in order to attract the amount of interest it needs in order to generate the transfers into those accounts that it requires to generate the excess reserves required to clear the loan check drawn on the loan account.

Unless, as I said, there is a return to 1950's details regulation of what interest rates can be offered on what kinds of accounts ~ that is clearly required if the aim is to tie the banks hands with respect to liability management.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Thu Feb 2nd, 2012 at 11:40:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Or... we could just have floating currencies, and lose the need to protect against speculative attack.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Thu Feb 2nd, 2012 at 12:57:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I'd be inclined to prosecute them for false advertising if they advertise "attractive rates" and "forget" to tell people that they are putting their money in an account that isn't covered by depositor insurance.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Feb 2nd, 2012 at 05:33:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Yes, of  course they would tell people that the account is not insured, but that is substantially different from what you'd portrayed, where the bank would tell customer X "this is so we can lend to Soros", and customer Y that it is for some other loan.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Thu Feb 2nd, 2012 at 10:20:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Some people, including orphans and widows, would still put all their money in the accounts and would then proceed to lose all their money. What then... And most of these people would do it because their "financial advisors" told them to.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Fri Feb 3rd, 2012 at 08:14:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Telling widows and orphans to gamble with their savings would be a violation of the advisor's fiduciary obligations to them, which should make him personally liable for their losses (and there is a case to be made that court awarded compensation should be paid out by the public purse and then collected by the public inkasso).

Oh, and get the financial advisor disbarred from financial advisoring in any official capacity ever again.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Feb 3rd, 2012 at 08:51:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I'll believe that when I see it.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Fri Feb 3rd, 2012 at 09:14:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Why are you asking me what then? I'm not suggesting that bank's normal liability management should be restructured so that the accounts that free up reserves are uninsured.

It seems like what is supposed to be a progressive version of the mentarist fantasy that central banks can and should regulate the money supply.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sat Feb 4th, 2012 at 03:59:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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