Yikes, this is kind of scary. This could magnify the losses dramatically as lenders start to implode due to the cascade of defaults. If anything, they should increase the reserve requirements to prevent instability and encourage a flight from risky assets. Yes, this will make the stocks go down now, but it would probably result in fewer people getting laid off and going broke in the future. I'd rather see highly leve…
The Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26
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Re: The Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26
#22ELI5?
> 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 an amount equal to 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
It's a mighty pillar of our global economic systems or the biggest scam ever or both depending on who you ask.
Anyway, if I understand correctly (and I don't, IANAEconomist), now the fraction is zero. But I don't know what that means and I suspect few do. It sounds like it means that banks can just write loans all day long and "poof" money into existence, but I've been told that that is somehow not the case. Higher economics is indistinguishable from numerology (in terms of semantic analysis) to me, so I shouldn't comment further. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will show up and read the tea leaves for us.
Re: The Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26
#23With the caveat that I’m by no means an economist... The table at the bottom puts this in context: reserve requirements, which have never been reduced by more than $2 billion across the economy in any year prior, are suddenly reduced by $200 billion - the entire regulatory program seems to have been unwound. Presumably this will give late banks desperately needed liquidity and ability to lend, but it also increases s…
Re: The Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26
#24Re: The Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26
#25It would seem that the logical response to this announcement is go run the banks right now, before March 26, and before anyone on Fox and Friends thinks to mention to their viewers what this really means.
Re: The Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26
#26Re: The Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26
#27With the caveat that I’m by no means an economist... The table at the bottom puts this in context: reserve requirements, which have never been reduced by more than $2 billion across the economy in any year prior, are suddenly reduced by $200 billion - the entire regulatory program seems to have been unwound. Presumably this will give late banks desperately needed liquidity and ability to lend, but it also increases s…
It's completely insane that they describe this in linear terms. The effects of reducing the reserve requirement is inverse-linear with respect to the ratio. Since the money multiplier is 1/r, reducing the reserve requirement to 0 means that any dollar has an unbounded limit as to how far it can be re-lent. That is quite literally infinitely more unprecedented than a 100x bigger dislodging of the "reduction in the res…
Re: The Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26
#28ELI5?
Re: The Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's completely insane that they describe this in linear terms. The effects of reducing the reserve requirement is inverse-linear with respect to the ratio. Since the money multiplier is 1/r, reducing the reserve requirement to 0 means that any dollar has an unbounded limit as to how far it can be re-lent. That is quite literally infinitely more unprecedented than a 100x bigger dislodging of the "reduction in the res…
It won't reach infinity right away though. Monetary velocity is finite, and right now, I'd guess rather slow.
Re: The Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26
#30ELI5?
Before this change, reserve requirements in the US were at 10% which means the bank could lend out $90. Now in general this is problematic because if everyone were to try to withdraw their money at once, the bank could not produce it. Thus we have the FDIC, which is a government program that insures bank account deposits up to $250k so people don't lose all their money if a bank run happens. A cynical way of looking at this is that taxpayers are on the hook for the bank's bad behavior if they go bust, and the lower the reserve ratio the more likely the bank is to overdo it.
Things also get really weird when other banks are in the picture. If you deposit $100 at bank A which has 10% reserve ratio, it will lend out $90 - so total money in the system is now $190. That $90 might end up deposited at bank B, which also has a 10% reserve ratio, so it lends out $81 making the total amount of money in the system $190 + $81 = $271. This process continues until it approaches the value of principal * (1 / reserve ratio), so in our case $100 * (1 / 0.1) = $1000 [0]. At 0% this means technically infinite money can be lent/created, although banks will presumably keep some percentage as reserves due to internal risk requirements (interesting assumption, I know).
Reserve requirement ratios are viewed as one of the levers the government can use to help steer the economy. Reducing the reserve requirement ratio has the effect of increasing the overall money supply, which has some nonlinear effect on the economy that the government wants to happen. This move to 0%, in addition to various other recent moves by the federal reserve, are all geared toward flooding the economy with cheap easy money to prop it up. They will all fail.
[0] https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/67/money/money-multiplier...