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http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h3/Current/

The Federal Reserves Statistical Release, which lists how much money the banks & other financial institutions in the US have in reserve for various purposes. Of particular interest is the column marked "non-borrowed", which is basically the amount of money they have available for when customers make withdrawals, or in layman's terms, how much cash they have in the vault. Note that in the unadjusted tables, this number has gone negative.

In other words, when you go withdraw money from the bank, that money ain't there, and your bank is now borrowing from the Federal Reserve Bank so that your transaction can go through. Can you say "bank run" if word of this gets out?

Posted

Everyone should know that banks are only required to have about 4% of deposits on hand by regulations. Everything else can go toward credit for others to purchase homes and such.

Back in the 80s, the S&L problem was that a concern that S&Ls were not on the same level as banks when they only had to have about 2.5%. So Congress past a regulation requiring them to have the same on hands as banks within 18 months. Well some worked to achieve this level of funds while some knowing the Government would jump in to bale them out did nothing, these were the "problem" S&L of the 80s.

This is a simplistic explanation of the S&L thing in the 80s but today it is the issue with sub-prime loans. If the government changes a regulation slightly it has a huge impact on business.

Posted
Everyone should know that banks are only required to have about 4% of deposits on hand by regulations. Everything else can go toward credit for others to purchase homes and such.

It depends on how much checkable deposits the bank holds, for the first $7 million it's 0%, up to $48 mil it's 3%, and over that it's 10%.

Overall, the Fed tries to keep the number at around 5%, but as of right now the adjusted figure is roughly 0.024%, and the raw numbers are in the negative. That ain't good.

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