来源： 作者：飞人 发布时间：2008-05-12

[飞人按语] 以下文章指出美国联储局向国会申请支付银行储备金利息的权力，这的确是一个值得注意的新动向。美联储自己积累的8000多亿国债中，近来已经使用了大半来交换了许多垃圾债券，速度如此之快，已经不剩下多少了（下图所示最新数据是剩下2755亿，过去两个月减少了三分之二左右！)，只有做出这一举动来增加实质上继续增加货币供应(流动性)的权力。这虽然不能对美国的负债问题和消费者的实际支付能力有什么帮助，但是可以继续接手商业银行和投行的垃圾债券。如果美联储获得这样的权力，对华尔街显然是大有帮助，当然代价是由纳税人支付的。同时，各国已经纷纷议论美元信用的问题，中国的专家和官员开始讨论人民币国际化和区域债券市场的问题，这将促使国际货币的多极化，加速各国投资人逃离美元的进程，因为没有人愿意用自己辛辛苦苦的血汗劳动成果，换来仅仅是廉价印刷的美元，和白条差不多。

http://www.interfluidity.com/posts/1210513606.shtml

Let's not write the Fed a blank check

Last week, the Fed decided to ask Congress for the right to pay interest on bank reserves. (Hat tip Barry Ritholtz, see also William Polley, Mark Thoma, Brad DeLong) This is a very big deal.

Don't be misled into thinking that the Fed's proposal is just some arcane, technocratic change. The Federal Reserve is asking taxpayers for a big pile of signed, blank checks. That's far too much power to put in the hands of a quasipublic organization with little democratic accountability. This authority should not be granted without some strong strings attached.

First, some background. There is a trend among central banks to move from old-fashioned, fractional-reserve banking to a system whereby interest rates are managed via a "channel" or "corridor", and under which fixed reserve requirements might be dispensed with entirely. The basic idea is simple. The Fed currently manages interest rates indirectly, by manipulating the supply and demand for cash in the banking system. But the Fed could adopt a more direct approach. It could choose two interest rates, a "floor rate" at which the Fed would stand ready to borrow funds, and a "ceiling rate" at which the Fed would stand ready to lend. As long as there is no stigma attached to transacting with the Fed, banks would never lend for less than the floor rate or borrow for more than the ceiling rate. The interbank interest rate would necessarily lie within a "corridor" defined by these two interest rates. The Fed would continue to adjust the money supply to keep interest rates somewhere inside the desired range. But the corridor would serve as a fail-safe. When banks have more cash than would be consistent with the policy interest rate, they would lend the excess money back to the Fed, causing it to disappear in a poof of green smoke. When banks have too little cash, they would borrow more into existence, until the quantity on hand becomes consistent with the Fed's desired interest rate. The level of borrowing from or lending to the Fed would provide feedback, telling central bankers whether they need to add or remove cash from the banking system to achieve their targetted interest rate, usually at the center of corridor.

A corridor system would represent a meaty change to how central banking is done in the US, but the approach seems to work okay in other countries. Advantages for central banks include more robust control of short-term rates, and the ability to fine-tune monetary policy by altering the "spread" between the central bank borrowing and lending rates without changing the core interest rate. A disadvantage, from taxpayers' perspective, is that the loss of zero-interest reserves amounts to a stealth tax cut for banks. On the back of my napkin, the cost to taxpayers would be between $190M to $530M per year if the level of reserves is unchanged. (I'm assuming "floor rates" between 1.75% and 4.75% against reserves of $11B). The Wall Street Journal reports estimates of $150M and $280M per year. If one assumes that corridor interest rates will roughly match the Treasury's average cost of financing over time, and that the Fed invests reserves in Treasuries, then the total cost of the program in NPV terms would be the value of the current (interest-free) reserves. This amounts to a one time cost of about $11 billion. A more serious drawback is that a channel system paves the way for the getting rid of reserve requirements entirely, which seems a perverse thing to do in a credit crisis caused by too much leverage. But reserve requirements have already been eviscerated, and nothing prevents regulators from maintaining or strengthening reserve requirements in a channel system.