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The Fed’s Swap Bailout of the Eurozone
The Fed's Swap Bailout of the Eurozone
On Tuesday, March 26, 2012, I was invited by Ron Paul and his staff to assist a meeting of the Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee of the House Committee on Financial Services. The title of the hearing was "Federal Reserve Aid to the Eurozone: Its Impact on the U.S. and the Dollar."
Unfortunately, Ben Bernanke had not come to the hearing, being busy with propaganda lectures in favor of the Fed. Instead, two of his colleagues, Mr. William C. Dudley (president and chief executive officer, Federal Reserve Bank of New York) and Dr. Steven B. Kamin (director, Division of International Finance, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System), showed up to answer the committee's questions on currency swaps with other central banks.
The hearing dealt mainly with the Fed's currency swap with the ECB, which amounts to a covert bailout of European banks.
But why did European banks need help from the Fed in the first place? European banks had borrowed dollars short term in international wholesale markets and lent these dollars for the long term to US companies or households. The maturity mismatch is highly risky, because once a bank cannot renew its short-term debts it becomes illiquid.
We approached such a situation last year. European banks had been pressured by their governments to buy their governments' debts. Italian banks are loaded with Italian government bonds, Spanish banks with Spanish bonds and so on. As the sovereign-debt crisis increased once again in the summer of 2011 with governments short of collapsing, European banks had increasing difficulties renewing their short-term dollar loans.
As the ECB can only print euros, not dollars, European banks got nervous. While US banks did not want to lend to European banks anymore, in September 2011, the Fed stepped in and bailed out European banks through currency swaps. Through the swaps, the Fed assumed its role as the international lender of last resort…Read more>> The Fed's Swap Bailout of the Eurozone
