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R.

GLENN

HUBBARD ANTHONY PATRICK

O’BRIEN

Money,
Banking, and
the Financial System

© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall


CHAPTER 10
The Economics of Banking

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

10.1 Understand bank balance sheets


10.2 Describe the basic operations of a commercial bank
10.3 Explain how banks manage risk
10.4 Explain the trends in the U.S. commercial banking industry

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CHAPTER 10
The Economics of Banking

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LOCAL BANKS STOP LOANING MONEY?


• In the recovery from the financial crisis of 2007–2009, banks had
become extremely cautious in making loans.
• Banks were turning away borrowers with flawed credit histories and
avoiding industries that were hard hit by the recession.
• As the value of real estate declined, the collateral that small businesses
could use to borrow against also declined.
• An Inside Look at Policy on page 306 discusses how higher interest
rates may reduce bank profits.

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Key Issue and Question
Issue: During and immediately following the 2007–2009 financial crisis,
there was a sharp increase in the number of bank failures.
Question: Is banking a particularly risky business? If so, what types of risks
do banks face?

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10.1 Learning Objective
Understand bank balance sheets.

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• The key commercial banking activities are taking in deposits from savers
and making loans to households and firms.
• A bank’s primary sources of funds are deposits, and primary uses of funds
are loans, which are summarized in the bank’s balance sheet.

Balance sheet A statement that shows an individual’s or a firm’s financial


position on a particular day.

• The typical layout of a balance sheet is based on the following accounting


equation:

Assets = Liabilities + Shareholders’ equity.

The Basics of Commercial Banking: The Bank Balance Sheet


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The Basics of Commercial Banking: The Bank Balance Sheet
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Asset Something of value that an individual or a firm owns; in particular, a
financial claim.

Liability Something that an individual or a firm owes, particularly a financial


claim on an individual or a firm.

Bank capital The difference between the value of a bank’s assets and the
value of its liabilities; also called shareholders’ equity.

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Bank Liabilities

Checkable Deposits

Checkable deposits Accounts against which depositors can write checks, also
called transaction deposits.

• Demand deposits are checkable deposits on which banks do not pay


interest.
• NOW (negotiable order of withdrawal) accounts are checking accounts that
pay interest.
• Checkable deposits are liabilities to banks and assets to households and
firms.

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Nontransaction Deposits

• The most important types of nontransaction deposits are savings accounts,


money market deposit accounts (MMDAs), and time deposits, or certificates
of deposit (CDs).
• Checkable deposits and small-denomination time deposits are covered by
federal deposit insurance.
• CDs of less than $100,000 are called small-denomination time deposits.
CDs of $100,000 or more are called large-denomination time deposits.
CDs worth $100,000 or more are negotiable, which means that investors can
buy and sell them in secondary markets prior to maturity.

Federal deposit insurance A government guarantee of deposit account


balances up to $250,000.

The Basics of Commercial Banking: The Bank Balance Sheet


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Borrowings
• Banks often make more loans than they can finance with funds they attract
from depositors.
• Bank borrowings include short-term loans in the federal funds market, loans
from a bank’s foreign branches or other subsidiaries or affiliates, repurchase
agreements, and discount loans from the Federal Reserve System.
• Although the name indicates that government money is involved, the loans
in the federal funds market involve the banks’ own funds. The interest rate
on these interbank loans is called the federal funds rate.
• With repurchase agreements—otherwise known as “repos,” or RPs—banks
sell securities, such as Treasury bills, and agree to repurchase them,
typically the next day. Repos are typically between large banks or
corporations, so the degree of counterparty risk is small.

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Making the Connection
The Incredible Shrinking Checking Account
Households hold less in
checking accounts relative
to other financial assets
than they once did, partly
due to the wealth effect.
As wealth has increased
over time, households
have been better able to
afford to hold assets, such
as CDs, where their money
is tied up for a while but on
which they earn a higher
rate of interest.

The Basics of Commercial Banking: The Bank Balance Sheet


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Bank Assets
Bank assets are acquired by banks with the funds they receive from depositors,
with funds they borrow, with funds they acquired initially from their
shareholders, and with profits they retain from their operations.

Reserves and Other Cash Assets

Reserves A bank asset consisting of vault cash plus bank deposits with the
Federal Reserve.

Vault cash Cash on hand in a bank; includes currency in ATMs and deposits
with other banks.

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Required reserves Reserves the Fed requires banks to hold against demand
deposit and NOW account balances.

Excess reserves Any reserves banks hold above those necessary to meet
reserve requirements.

• Excess reserves can provide an important source of liquidity to banks, and


during the financial crisis, bank holdings of excess reserves soared.
• Another important cash asset is claims banks have on other banks for
uncollected funds, which is called cash items in the process of collection.

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Securities
• Marketable securities are liquid assets that banks trade in financial markets.
• Banks are allowed to hold securities issued by the U.S. Treasury and other
government agencies, corporate bonds that received investment-grade
ratings when they were first issued, and some limited amounts of municipal
bonds, which are bonds issued by state and local governments.
• Because of their liquidity, bank holdings of U.S. Treasury securities are
sometimes called secondary reserves.
• In the United States, commercial banks cannot invest checkable deposits in
corporate bonds or common stock.

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Loans
• The largest category of bank assets is loans. Loans are illiquid relative to
marketable securities and entail greater default risk and higher information
costs.
• There are three categories of loans:
(1) loans to businesses—called commercial and industrial, or C&I, loans;
(2) consumer loans, made to households primarily to buy automobiles,
furniture, and other goods; and
(3) real estate loans, including both residential and commercial mortgages.
• The development of the commercial paper market in the 1980s meant that
banks also lost to that market many of the businesses that had been using
short-term C&I loans.

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Loans Figure 10.1
The Changing Mix of
Bank Loans, 1973–2010
The types of loans granted by
banks have changed
significantly since the early
1970s.
Real estate loans have grown
from less than one-third of
bank loans in 1973 to two-
thirds of bank loans in 2010.
Commercial and industrial
(C&I) loans have fallen from
more than 40% of bank loans
to less than 20%.
Consumer loans have fallen
from more than 27% of all
loans to about 20%.

The Basics of Commercial Banking: The Bank Balance Sheet


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Other Assets

Other assets include banks’ physical assets, such as computer


equipment and buildings. This category also includes collateral
received from borrowers who have defaulted on loans.

The Basics of Commercial Banking: The Bank Balance Sheet


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Bank Capital

• Bank capital, also called shareholders’ equity, or bank net worth, is the
difference between the value of a bank’s assets and the value of its
liabilities.
• In 2010, for the U.S. banking system as a whole, bank capital was about
12% of bank assets.
• A bank’s capital equals the funds contributed by the bank’s shareholders
through their purchases of stock the bank has issued plus accumulated
retained profits.
• Note that as the value of a bank’s assets or liabilities changes, so does the
value of the bank’s capital.

The Basics of Commercial Banking: The Bank Balance Sheet


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Solved Problem 10.1
Constructing a Bank Balance Sheet
The following entries are from the actual balance sheet of a U.S. bank as
of December 31, 2009.

a. Use the entries to construct a balance sheet similar to the one in Table 10.1,
with assets on the left side of the balance sheet and liabilities and bank
capital on the right side.
b. The bank’s capital is what percentage of its assets?
The Basics of Commercial Banking: The Bank Balance Sheet
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Solved Problem 10.1
Constructing a Bank Balance Sheet
Solving the Problem
Step 1 Review the chapter material.

Step 2 Answer part (a) by using the entries to construct the bank’s balance
sheet, remembering that bank capital is equal to the value of assets
minus the value of liabilities.

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Solved Problem 10.1
Constructing a Bank Balance Sheet

Step 3 Answer part (b) by calculating the bank’s capital as a percentage of


its assets.

Total assets = $2,223 billion


Bank capital = $231 billion
$231
Bank capital as a percentage of assets = = 0.104, or 10.4%
$2,223

The Basics of Commercial Banking: The Bank Balance Sheet


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10.2 Learning Objective
Describe the basic operations of a commercial bank.

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T-account An accounting tool used to show changes in balance sheet items.
The T-accounts below show what happens when you open a checking account
with $100 at Wells Fargo.

In this example, Wells Fargo uses its excess reserves to buy Treasury bills
worth $30 and make a loan worth $60.
The Basic Operations of a Commercial Bank
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Making the Connection
The Not-So-Simple Relationship between Loan Losses and Bank Profits
• During the term of the loan, if the bank decides that the borrower is likely to
default, the bank must write down or write off the loan.
• Banks set aside part of their capital as a loan loss reserve to anticipate
future loan losses and avoid large swings in its reported profits and capital
from write-offs.
• During the financial crisis of 2007–2009, banks set aside enormous loan loss
reserves as they anticipated write-downs on mortgage-related loans.
• The SEC has argued that banks will sometimes increase their loan loss
reserves more than is justified during an economic expansion, when defaults
are relatively rare. The banks can then draw down the reserves during a
recession, evening out their reported profits.
• If true, this practice would amount to “earnings management,” which is
prohibited under accounting rules because it may give a misleading view of
the firm’s profits.

The Basic Operations of a Commercial Bank


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Bank Capital and Bank Profits

Net interest margin The difference between the interest a bank receives on its
securities and loans and the interest it pays on deposits and debt, divided by
the total value of its earning assets.

• An expression for the bank’s total profits earned per dollar of assets is called
return on assets.

Return on assets (ROA) The ratio of the value of a bank’s after-tax profit to
the value of its assets.

After−tax profit
ROA =
Bank assets

The Basic Operations of a Commercial Bank


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• To judge how a bank’s managers are able to earn on the shareholder’s
investment, we use the return on equity.

Return on equity (ROE) The ratio of the value of a bank’s after-tax profit to the
value of its capital.

After−tax profit
ROE =
Bank capital

• ROA and ROE are related by the ratio of a bank’s assets to its capital:

Bank assets
ROE = ROA ×
Bank capital

The Basic Operations of a Commercial Bank


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• Managers of banks and other financial firms may have an incentive to hold a
high ratio of assets to capital.
• The ratio of assets to capital is one measure of bank leverage, the inverse of
which (capital to assets) is called a bank’s leverage ratio.

Leverage A measure of how much debt an investor assumes in making an


investment.

Bank leverage The ratio of the value of a bank’s assets to the value of its
capital, the inverse of which (capital to assets) is called a bank’s leverage
ratio.

• A high ratio of assets to capital—high leverage—is a two-edged sword:


Leverage can magnify relatively small ROAs into large ROEs, but it can
do the same for losses.

The Basic Operations of a Commercial Bank


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• Moral hazard can contribute to high bank leverage.
• If managers are compensated for a high ROE, they may take on more
risk than shareholders would prefer.
• Federal deposit insurance has increased moral hazard by reducing the
incentive depositors have to monitor the behavior of bank managers.
• To deal with this risk, government regulations called capital
requirements have placed limits on the value of the assets commercial
banks can acquire relative to their capital.

The Basic Operations of a Commercial Bank


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10.3 Learning Objective
Explain how banks manage risk.

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Managing Liquidity Risk

Liquidity risk The possibility that a bank may not be able to meet its cash
needs by selling assets or raising funds at a reasonable cost.

• Banks reduce liquidity risk through strategies of asset management and


liquidity management.
• Asset management involves lending funds in the federal funds market,
usually for one day at a time.
• A second option is to use reverse repurchase agreements, which involve a
bank buying Treasury securities owned by a business or another bank while
at the same time agreeing to sell the securities back at a later date, often the
next morning. These very short term loans can be used to meet deposit
withdrawals.
• Liability management involves determining the best mix of borrowings from
other banks or businesses using repurchase agreements or from the Fed by
taking out discount loans.

Managing Bank Risk


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Managing Credit Risk
Credit risk The risk that borrowers might default on their loans.

Diversification
• By diversifying, banks can reduce the credit risk associated with lending too
much to a single borrower, region, or industry.

Credit-Risk Analysis
Credit-risk analysis The process that bank loan officers use to screen loan
applicants.

• Banks often use credit-scoring systems to predict whether a borrower is


likely to default. Historically, the high-quality borrowers paid the prime rate.
Today, most banks charge rates that reflect changing market interest rates
instead of the prime rate.

Prime rate Formerly, the interest rate banks charged on six-month loans to
high-quality borrowers; currently, an interest rate banks charge primarily to
smaller borrowers.
Managing Bank Risk
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Collateral

• Collateral, or assets pledged to the bank in the event that the borrower
defaults, is used to reduce adverse selection.
• A compensating balance is a required minimum amount that the business
taking out the loan must maintain in a checking account with the lending
bank.

Credit Rationing
Credit rationing The restriction of credit by lenders such that borrowers cannot
obtain the funds they desire at the given interest rate.
• Loan and credit limits reduce moral hazard by increasing the chance a
borrower will repay.
• If the bank cannot distinguish the low- from the high-risk borrowers, high
interest rates risk dropping the low-risk borrowers out of the loan pool,
leaving only the high-risk borrowers—a case of adverse selection.
Managing Bank Risk
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Monitoring and Restrictive Covenants
• Banks keep track of whether borrowers are obeying restrictive
covenants, or explicit provisions in the loan agreement that prohibit the
borrower from engaging in certain activities.

Long-Term Business Relationships


• The ability of banks to assess credit risks on the basis of private
information on borrowers is called relationship banking.
• By observing the borrower, the bank can reduce problems of
asymmetric information. Good borrowers can obtain credit at a lower
interest rate or with fewer restrictions.

Managing Bank Risk


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Managing Interest-Rate Risk
Interest-rate risk The effect of a change in market interest rates on a bank’s
profit or capital.

A rise (fall) in the market interest rate will lower (increase) the present value
of a bank’s assets and liabilities.

Managing Bank Risk


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Measuring Interest-Rate Risk: Gap Analysis and Duration Analysis

Gap analysis An analysis of the difference, or gap, between the dollar value of
a bank’s variable-rate assets and the dollar value of its variable-rate liabilities.

• Gap analysis is used to calculate the vulnerability of a bank’s profits to


changes in market interest rates.
• Most banks have negative gaps because their liabilities—mainly deposits—
are more likely to have variable rates than are their assets—mainly loans
and securities.

Managing Bank Risk


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Duration analysis An analysis of how sensitive a bank’s capital is to changes
in market interest rates.

• If a bank has a positive duration gap, the duration of the bank’s assets is
greater than the duration of the bank’s liabilities. In this case, an increase in
market interest rates will reduce the value of the bank’s assets more than
the value of the bank’s liabilities, which will decrease the bank’s capital.

Managing Bank Risk


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Reducing Interest-Rate Risk

• Banks with negative gaps can make more adjustable-rate or floating-rate


loans. That way, if market interest rates rise and banks must pay higher
interest rates on deposits, they will also receive higher interest rates on their
loans.
• Banks can use interest-rate swaps in which they agree to exchange, or
swap, the payments from a fixed-rate loan for the payments on an
adjustable-rate loan owned by a corporation or another financial firm.
• Banks have available to them futures contracts and options contracts that
can help hedge interest-rate risk.

Managing Bank Risk


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10.4 Learning Objective
Explain the trends in the U.S. commercial banking industry.

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The Early History of U.S. Banking

The National Banking Act of 1863 made it possible for a bank to obtain a
federal charter.

National bank A federally chartered bank.

Dual banking system The system in the United States in which banks are
chartered by either a state government or the federal government.

Trends in the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry


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Bank Panics, the Federal Reserve,
and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
• The Federal Reserve plays the role of a lender of last resort by making
discount loans to banks suffering from temporary liquidity problems.
• Before the Fed existed, banks were subject to bank runs.
• If many banks simultaneously experienced runs, the result would be a bank
panic, which often resulted in banks being unable to return depositors’
money and having to temporarily close their doors.
• Bank panics typically resulted in recessions. After the severe bank panic of
1907, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.
• The Great Depression led to bank panics, and Congress responded with the
creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), established in
1934.

Trends in the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry


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Figure 10.2
Commercial Bank Failures in the United States, 1980–2010
Bank failures in the United States were at low levels from 1960 until the savings and loan
crisis of the mid-1980s. By the mid-1990s, bank failures had returned to low levels, where
they remained until the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007.

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The Rise of Nationwide Banking

• In the early 1900s, banks were prohibited from crossing state lines.
Unit banking meant that banks were kept small, serving the local area.
• In 1900, of the 12,427 commercial banks in the United States, only 87
had any branches.
• The U.S. system of many small, geographically limited banks failed to
take advantage of economies of scale in banking.
• Restrictions on branching within the state loosened after the mid-
1970s, and in 1994, Congress passed the Riegle-Neal Interstate
Banking and Branching Efficiency Act, which allowed for the phased
removal of restrictions on interstate banking.
• These changes led to rapid consolidation of banks, from 14,384 in
1975 to only 6,839 by 2009. In 2010, concerns about bank size and
banks “too big to fail” were discussed in Congress, but no limits on size
were finally enacted.
Trends in the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry
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Trends in the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry
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Expanding the Boundaries of Banking
• Between 1960 and 2010, banks increased their funds and borrowings; they
relied less on C&I and consumer loans, and more on real estate loans; they
expanded into nontraditional lending activities and activities generating
revenue from fees instead of interest.

Off-Balance-Sheet Activities

Off-balance-sheet activities Activities that do not affect a bank’s balance


sheet because they do not increase either the bank’s assets or its liabilities.

Trends in the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry


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Off-Balance-Sheet Activities
Four important off-balance-sheet activities that banks have come to rely on
to earn fee income include:
1. Standby letters of credit.
Standby letter of credit A promise by a bank to lend funds, if necessary, to
a seller of commercial paper at the time that the commercial paper matures.

2. Loan commitments.
Loan commitment An agreement by a bank to provide a borrower with a
stated amount of funds during some specified period of time.

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Off-Balance-Sheet Activities
Four important off-balance-sheet activities that banks have come to rely on
to earn fee income include:
3. Loan sales.
Loan sale A financial contract in which a bank agrees to sell the expected
future returns from an underlying bank loan to a third party.

4. Trading activities.

• Banks earn fees from trading in the multibillion-dollar markets for futures,
options, and interest-rate swaps.
• Bank losses from trading in securities became a concern during the
financial crisis of 2007-2009.

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Electronic Banking

• The first important development in electronic banking was the spread of


automatic teller machines (ATMs).
• By the mid-1990s, virtual banks, or banks that carry out all their banking
activities online, began to appear.
• By the mid-2000s, most traditional banks had also begun providing online
services.
• Check clearing is now done electronically.

Trends in the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry


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Making the Connection
Can Electronic Banking Save Somalia’s Economy?
• For a market economy to function, a government needs to maintain a
minimum level of order.
• Banks are particularly vulnerable to robberies. Not surprisingly, brick-
and-mortar banks are scarce in Somalia, which has been subjected to
incessant civil wars and rampant violence.
• But for the past three years, Somali GDP has been growing, and
entrepreneurs have realized that they can provide virtual banking
services through cell phones and Internet access.
• Somalis are now able to keep deposits online, transfer money, and
obtain credit.
• While electronic banking appears to have contributed to the welcome
economic progress, the country’s other problems present significant
obstacles to maintaining that growth.

Trends in the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry


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The Financial Crisis, TARP, and Partial Government
Ownership of Banks
• As the financial crisis unfolded, residential real estate mortgages began to
decline in value.
• The market for mortgage-backed securities froze, meaning that buying and
selling of these securities largely stopped, making it very difficult to
determine their market prices. These securities became known as “toxic
assets.”
• Evaluating balance sheets and determining the true value of bank capital
was difficult.
• Banks responded to their worsening balance sheets by tightening credit
standards for consumer and commercial loans. The resulting credit crunch
helped bring on the recession that started in December 2007, as households
and firms had increased difficulty funding their spending.

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Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) A government program under which
the U.S. Treasury purchased stock in hundreds of banks to increase the banks’
capital.

Another initiative to inject capital into banks, called the Capital Purchase
Program (CPP), also relied on the U.S. Treasury to purchase stock in hundreds
of troubled banks.

Trends in the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry


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Making the Connection
Small Businesses: Key Victims of the Credit Crunch
• Small businesses play a key role in the economy. Businesses with fewer
than 500 employees generate most of the jobs in the economy.
• During the financial crisis, banks were building their reserves and
tightening lending requirements, so it became increasingly difficult for
small firms to fund their operations.
• As commercial real estate values declined, borrowing against the value of
stores or factories became more difficult.
• Banks worried that the severity of the recession would increase adverse
selection and moral hazard. Pressure from government regulators to avoid
making risky loans and credit limits on credit cards also limited the
borrowing ability of small businesses.
• The large employment losses during the recession came in part from the
difficulty of small businesses to obtain loans.

Trends in the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry


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Answering the Key Question
At the beginning of this chapter, we asked the question:
“Is banking a particularly risky business? If so, what types of risks do
banks face?”
In a market system, businesses of all types face risks, and many fail.
Economists and policymakers are particularly concerned about the risk
and potential for failure that banks face because they play a vital role in
the financial system.
In this chapter, we have seen that the basic business of commercial
banking—borrowing money short term from depositors and lending it long
term to households and firms—entails several types of risks: liquidity risk,
credit risk, and interest-rate risk.

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AN INSIDE LOOK AT POLICY
Interest-Rate Hikes Threaten Bank Profits
REUTERS, U.S. Regulators Warn Banks on Interest Rate Risk

Key Points in the Article

• In early 2010, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC)


urged commercial banks to protect themselves against a likely increase in
interest rates.
• Banks had profited by borrowing funds at low rates and purchasing assets
such as Treasury securities that had higher yields.
• Some institutions are expecting interest rates to remain at historic lows, but it
is unlikely that the Fed will keep rates near zero forever.
• As interest rates rise, banks relying heavily on short-term funds could see
their funding costs accelerate. Longer-term assets may no longer be
profitable to own, forcing banks to sell securities en masse and potentially
weakening the financial sector again.

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AN INSIDE LOOK AT POLICY

Evidence of U.S. banks’ profits can be found in their balance sheets. Bank
capital as a percentage of assets was lower when interest rates were higher
prior to the financial crisis.

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