Daily reminder that bank runs wouldn't be a thing if we did duration matching, forbidding banks from borrowing short and lending long. As always, the underlying problem in banking is that the banks are lying, telling two or more people they own the same dollar at the same point in time. If they locked deposits for a period of time they could safely (and morally) loan that money out without lying, and, in fact, there…
> telling two or more people they own the same dollar This is the main issue, and it's called a "reserve requirement", which is a percentage of the deposits that the bank must keep on hand to mitigate risk of issues like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_requirement#United_Sta... In March 2020 the US Federal Reserve lowered it from 8% to 0%, which is where it is today. Just to give you an idea of how the ec…
Besides a minimum reserve requirement, banks also have liquidity and (risk-weighted) capital adequacy requirements, which are practically much more relevant.
The 2008 financial crisis was effectively caused by "laundering"/structuring the risk weights.