Term Auction Facility
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 (longer than overnight) 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 Swi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the semi-exclave of Alaska in the northwest and the archipelago of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States asserts sovereignty over five Territories of the United States, major island territories and United States Minor Outlying Islands, various uninhabited islands in Oceania and the Caribbean. It is a megadiverse country, with the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, third-largest land area and List of countries and dependencies by population, third-largest population, exceeding 340 million. Its three Metropolitan statistical areas by population, largest metropolitan areas are New York metropolitan area, New York, Greater Los Angeles, Los Angel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Repurchase Agreement
A repurchase agreement, also known as a repo, RP, or sale and repurchase agreement, is a form of secured short-term borrowing, usually, though not always using government securities as collateral. A contracting party sells a security to a lender and, by agreement between the two parties, repurchases the security back shortly afterwards, at a slightly higher contracted price. The difference in the prices and the time interval between sale and repurchase creates an effective interest rate on the loan. The mirror transaction, a "reverse repurchase agreement," is a form of secured contracted lending in which a party buys a security along with a concurrent commitment to sell the security back in the future at a specified time and price. Because this form of funding is often used by dealers, the convention is to reference the dealer's position in a transaction with an end party. Central banks also use repo and reverse repo transactions to manage banking system reserves. When the Feder ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lender Of Last Resort
In public finance, a lender of last resort (LOLR) is a financial entity, generally a central bank, 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 international markets in general. The objective is to prevent economic disruption as a result of financial panics and bank runs spreading from one bank to the others due to a lack of liquidity in the first one. There are varying definitions of a lender of last resort, but a comprehensive one is that it is "the discretionary provision of liquidity to a financial institution (or the market as a wh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Term Securities Lending Facility
The Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF) was a 28-day facility managed by the United States Federal Reserve offering Treasury general collateral (GC) (i.e., Treasury bills, notes, bonds and inflation-indexed securities) to the primary dealers in exchange for other program-eligible collateral. It was created to combat the liquidity crisis in American banks as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis and the 2008 financial crisis. The facility was open from March 2008 through January 2010. This is different from the System Open Market Account (SOMA) Securities Lending program which offers specific Treasury securities held by SOMA for loan against Treasury GC on an overnight basis. Dealers bid competitively in a multiple-price auction held every day at noon. The TSLF offers Treasury GC held by SOMA for a 28-day term. Dealers bid competitively in single-price auctions held weekly and borrowers will pledge program-eligible collateral. History TSLF was announced on 11 March 2008. B ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Currency Swap
In finance, a currency swap (more typically termed a cross-currency swap, XCS) is an interest rate derivative (IRD). In particular it is a linear IRD, and one of the most liquid benchmark products spanning multiple currencies simultaneously. It has pricing associations with interest rate swaps (IRSs), foreign exchange (FX) rates, and FX swaps (FXSs). General description A cross-currency swap's (XCS's) effective description is a derivative contract, agreed between two counterparties, which specifies the nature of an exchange of payments benchmarked against two interest rate indexes denominated in two different currencies. It also specifies an initial exchange of notional currency in each different currency and the terms of that repayment of notional currency over the life of the swap. The most common XCS, and that traded in interbank markets, is a mark-to-market (MTM) XCS, whereby notional exchanges are regularly made throughout the life of the swap according to FX rate flu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Collateral (finance)
In lending agreements, collateral is a borrower's pledge of specific property to a lender, to secure repayment of a loan. The collateral serves as a lender's protection against a borrower's default and so can be used to offset the loan if the borrower fails to pay the principal and interest satisfactorily under the terms of the lending agreement. The protection that collateral provides generally allows lenders to offer a lower interest rate on loans that have collateral. The reduction in interest rate can be up to several percentage points, depending on the type and value of the collateral. For example, the Annual Percentage Rate (APR) on an unsecured loan is often much higher than on a secured loan or logbook loan. If a borrower defaults on a loan (due to insolvency or another event), that borrower loses the property pledged as collateral, with the lender then becoming the owner of the property. In a typical mortgage loan transaction, for instance, the real estate ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Auction
An auction is usually a process of Trade, buying and selling Good (economics), goods or Service (economics), services by offering them up for Bidding, bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition exist and are described in the section about different #Types, types. The branch of economic theory dealing with auction types and participants' behavior in auctions is called auction theory. The open ascending price auction is arguably the most common form of auction and has been used throughout history. Participants bid openly against one another, with each subsequent bid being higher than the previous bid. An auctioneer may announce prices, while bidders submit bids vocally or electronically. Auctions are applied for trade in diverse #Contexts, contexts. These contexts include antiques, Art auction, paintings, rare collectibles, expensive wine auction, wines, commodity, commodities, l ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Monetary Policy
Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to affect monetary and other financial conditions to accomplish broader objectives like high employment and price stability (normally interpreted as a low and stable rate of inflation). Further purposes of a monetary policy may be to contribute to economic stability or to maintain predictable exchange rates with other currencies. Today most central banks in developed countries conduct their monetary policy within an inflation targeting framework, whereas the monetary policies of most developing countries' central banks target some kind of a fixed exchange rate system. A third monetary policy strategy, targeting the money supply, was widely followed during the 1980s, but has diminished in popularity since then, though it is still the official strategy in a number of emerging economies. The tools of monetary policy vary from central bank to central bank, depending on the country's stage of development, inst ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Federal Funds
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 transactions occur is called the federal funds rate. Federal funds are not collateralized; like eurodollars, they are an unsecured interbank loan. Federal funds transactions by regulated financial institutions neither increase nor decrease total reserves in the banking system as a whole, instead, they redistribute reserves. Before 2008, this meant that otherwise idle funds could yield a return. (Since 2008, the Fed has pa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Interbank Lending Market
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 (also called the overnight rate if the term of the loan is overnight). A sharp decline in transaction volume in this market was a major contributing factor to the collapse of several financial institutions during the 2008 financial crisis. Banks are typically required to hold reserves of an adequate amount of liquid assets, such as cash, to manage any potential bank runs by customers. To remain compliant, those banks with less than the required liquidity will borrow money and pay interest in the interbank market, while those with excess liquid assets will lend money and receive interest. The interbank rate is the rate of interest charged on short-term loans between banks. Banks borrow and lend money in the interbank lending market in order to ma ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Credit Crunch
A credit crunch (a credit squeeze, credit tightening or credit crisis) is a sudden reduction in the general availability of loans (or credit) or a sudden tightening of the conditions required to obtain a loan from banks. A credit crunch generally involves a reduction in the availability of credit independent of a rise in official interest rates. In such situations the relationship between credit availability and interest rates changes. Credit becomes less available at any given official interest rate, or there ceases to be a clear relationship between interest rates and credit availability (i.e. credit rationing occurs). Many times, a credit crunch is accompanied by a flight to quality by lenders and investors, as they seek less risky investments (often at the expense of small to medium size enterprises). Causes A credit crunch is often caused by a sustained period of careless and inappropriate lending which results in losses for lending institutions and investors in debt when th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Liquidity
Liquidity is a concept in economics involving the convertibility of assets and obligations. It can include: * Market liquidity In business, economics or investment, market liquidity is a market's feature whereby an individual or firm can quickly purchase or sell an asset without causing a drastic change in the asset's price. Liquidity involves the trade-off between the ..., the ease with which an asset can be sold * Accounting liquidity, the ability to meet cash obligations when due * Funding liquidity, the availability of credit to finance the purchase of financial asset * Liquid capital, the amount of money that a firm holds * Liquidity risk, the risk that an asset will have impaired market liquidity See also * Liquid (other) * Liquidation (other) {{SIA ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |