Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Steve Randy Waldman — Why (and when) interest-on-reserves matters…


Central banking is chiefly about liquidity provision and monetary policy is about interest rate setting. Reserves function to support these operations and the size of the monetary base has little significance out of this context. Looking at reserves is essentially looking at the wrong thing. Modern central banks are committed to providing enough liquidity for the payments system to clear and use the amount of excess reserves available in interest rate setting when they do not pay IOR and choose to set a target rate greater than zero. That's all that is relevant and trying to make more of reserves is just confused.

Interfluidity
Why (and when) interest-on-reserves matters…
Steve Randy Waldman

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