Typography

Every few days for the last month or so I've been refreshing a Federal Reserve page that shows data about daylight overdrafts. For some reason the Fed only updates it every few months. I had been getting quite curious to see what happened during the great September interest rate spike. Well, finally the Fed has uploaded the data. If you don't know about the September rate spike, I'd suggest reading Nathan Tankus's tweet , listening to David Beckworth's podcast with Bill Nelson, or picking through this blog post from Stephen Cecchetti and Kermit Schoenholtz. In short, there was a sudden increase in the demand for Fed balances (also known as reserves), and the Fed was slow to react by increasing the supply of balances. And so the rate at which banks were willing to borrow balances spiked to desperation levels. Why did the demand for balances increase? That's where daylight overdrafts can inform us. By way of background, the Fed has had a long-standing policy of...

I finally had some time to read George Selgin's excellent Floored! over the Christmas holiday. Some family members saw me reading the book and asked me what it was about. The subject that George is tackling—two types of central bank operating systems—is quite technical, so I wasn't sure how to break it down for them. But in hindsight, here's how I would go about it. I'm going to explain what the issues are in terms of an instrument we all use and understand: good ol' fashioned banknotes.  ------- Imagine that when you go to your bank this morning to withdraw $200 in cash, you can only get $100 out of the ATM. The bank manager says that it is expecting another shipment of cash later in the day, so come back then. But be early, he warns, since a lineup is sure to develop. What explains this odd situation? The central bank has started to ration the amount of banknotes it issues. For instance, the Bank of Canada currently supplies Canadians with $85 billion in banknote...