The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises. Over the years, events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s have led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System.
An interest rate is the amount of interest due per period, as a proportion of the amount lent, deposited, or borrowed. The total interest on an amount lent or borrowed depends on the principal sum, the interest rate, the compounding frequency, and the length of time over which it is lent, deposited, or borrowed.
The money market is a component of the economy that provides short-term funds. The money market deals in short-term loans, generally for a period of a year or less.
A repurchase agreement, also known as a repo, RP, or sale and repurchase agreement, is a form of short-term borrowing, mainly in government securities. The dealer sells the underlying security to investors and, by agreement between the two parties, buys them back shortly afterwards, usually the following day, at a slightly higher price.
In macroeconomics, an open market operation (OMO) is an activity by a central bank to give liquidity in its currency to a bank or a group of banks. The central bank can either buy or sell government bonds in the open market or, in what is now mostly the preferred solution, enter into a repo or secured lending transaction with a commercial bank: the central bank gives the money as a deposit for a defined period and synchronously takes an eligible asset as collateral.
In the United States, the federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight on an uncollateralized basis. Reserve balances are amounts held at the Federal Reserve to maintain depository institutions' reserve requirements. Institutions with surplus balances in their accounts lend those balances to institutions in need of larger balances. The federal funds rate is an important benchmark in financial markets.
A lender of last resort (LOLR) is the institution in a financial system that acts as the provider of liquidity to a financial institution which finds itself unable to obtain sufficient liquidity in the interbank lending market when other facilities or such sources have been exhausted. It is, in effect, a government guarantee to provide liquidity to financial institutions. Since the beginning of the 20th century, most central banks have been providers of lender of last resort facilities, and their functions usually also include ensuring liquidity in the financial market in general.
In the United States, federal funds are overnight borrowings between banks and other entities to maintain their bank reserves at the Federal Reserve. Banks keep reserves at Federal Reserve Banks to meet their reserve requirements and to clear financial transactions. Transactions in the federal funds market enable depository institutions with reserve balances in excess of reserve requirements to lend reserves to institutions with reserve deficiencies. These loans are usually made for one day only, that is, "overnight". The interest rate at which these deals are done is called the federal funds rate. Federal funds are not collateralized; like eurodollars, they are an unsecured interbank loan.
Lombard credit is the granting of credit to banks against pledged items, mostly in the form of securities or life insurance policies. The pledged items must be readily marketable; in particular, the securities 'eligible for collateral' which are registered on lists. Lending is via central banks. In the US, the Lombard rate has been at the top of the Federal Open Market Committee target range for the federal funds rate since March 16, 2020.
Bank rate, also known as discount rate in American English, is the rate of interest which a central bank charges on its loans and advances to a commercial bank. The bank rate is known by a number of different terms depending on the country, and has changed over time in some countries as the mechanisms used to manage the rate have changed.
Injections in economics are introductions of income into circular flow from sources outside households and businesses, such as additions to investment, government expenditure and exports. When a central bank makes a short-term loan to a member institution, it is said to be injecting liquidity. In the United States, the Federal Reserve maintains a target federal funds rate for banks to loan money overnight. If the lending banks are unwilling to offer enough credit at this rate, the central bank may step in and make loans itself through the discount window. In this role, the central bank is operating as the lender of last resort and is said to be injecting liquidity.
The Term Auction Facility (TAF) was a temporary program managed by the United States Federal Reserve designed to "address elevated pressures in short-term funding markets." Under the program the Fed auctions collateralized loans with terms of 28 and 84 days to depository institutions that are "in generally sound financial condition" and "are expected to remain so over the terms of TAF loans." Eligible collateral is the same as that accepted for discount window loans and includes a wide range of financial assets. The program was instituted in December 2007 in response to problems associated with the subprime mortgage crisis and was motivated by a desire to address a widening spread between interest rates on overnight and term interbank lending, indicating a retreat from risk-taking by banks. The action was in coordination with simultaneous and similar initiatives undertaken by the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank.
On March 17, 2008, in response to the subprime mortgage crisis and the collapse of Bear Stearns, the Federal Reserve announced the creation of a new lending facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF). Eligible borrowers include all financial institutions listed as primary dealers, and the term of the loan is a repurchase agreement, or "repo" loan, whereby the broker dealer sells a security in exchange for funds through the Fed's discount window. The security in question acts as collateral, and the Federal Reserve charges an interest rate equivalent to the Fed's primary credit rate. The facility was intended to improve the ability of broker dealers to access liquidity in the overnight loan market that banks use to meet their reserve requirements.
The Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF) was a 28-day facility managed by the United States Federal Reserve offering Treasury general collateral (GC) to the primary dealers in exchange for other program-eligible collateral. It was created to combat the liquidity crisis in American banks that had begun in late 2007, part of the broader financial crisis of 2007-2008. The facility was open from March 2008 through January 2010.
The U.S. central banking system, the Federal Reserve, in partnership with central banks around the world, took several steps to address the subprime mortgage crisis. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stated in early 2008: "Broadly, the Federal Reserve’s response has followed two tracks: efforts to support market liquidity and functioning and the pursuit of our macroeconomic objectives through monetary policy." A 2011 study by the Government Accountability Office found that "on numerous occasions in 2008 and 2009, the Federal Reserve Board invoked emergency authority under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to authorize new broad-based programs and financial assistance to individual institutions to stabilize financial markets. Loans outstanding for the emergency programs peaked at more than $1 trillion in late 2008."
An overnight indexed swap (OIS) is an interest rate swap (IRS) over some given term, e.g. 10Y, where the periodic fixed payments are tied to a given fixed rate while the periodic floating payments are tied to a floating rate calculated from a daily compounded overnight rate over the floating coupon period. Note that the OIS term is not overnight; it is the underlying reference rate that is an overnight rate. The exact compounding formula depends on the type of such overnight rate.
The interbank lending market is a market in which banks lend funds to one another for a specified term. Most interbank loans are for maturities of one week or less, the majority being overnight. Such loans are made at the interbank rate. A sharp decline in transaction volume in this market was a major contributing factor to the collapse of several financial institutions during the financial crisis of 2007–2008.
Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) was a system created by the United States Federal Reserve Board during the financial crisis of 2007–08 to improve liquidity in the short-term funding markets. It was reauthorized in March 2020 in reaction to the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the 2020 stock market crash. The CPFF ceased purchasing commercial paper on March 31, 2021.
Dual interest rates refers to a policy implemented by central banks which aims to influence lending rates independently of deposit rates as a means of stimulating economic activity. Policies similar to this have long been a feature of Chinese monetary policy. More recently dual interest rates have been introduced by the European Central Bank (ECB), under its TLTRO II scheme as an unconventional monetary policy. More aggressive use of these policies has been suggested as an effective alternative to negative interest rates, quantitative easing (QE) and forward guidance.
On September 17, 2019, interest rates on overnight repurchase agreements, which are short-term loans between financial institutions, experienced a sudden and unexpected spike. A measure of the interest rate on overnight repos in the United States, the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR), increased from 2.43 percent on September 16 to 5.25 percent on September 17. During the trading day, interest rates reached as high as 10 percent. The activity also affected the interest rates on unsecured loans between financial institutions, and the Effective Federal Funds Rate (EFFR), which serves as a measure for such interest rates, moved above its target range determined by the Federal Reserve.
