Banks, private money creation, and regulatory reform

Gerry Cross

Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance, 2018, vol. 26, issue 1, 20-34

Abstract: Purpose - This paper aims to consider recent arguments that post-crisis regulatory reform has misunderstood the nature of banks’ activities. These arguments suggest that a bank’s role is not that of intermediation between savers and borrowers but the systemically riskier one of private money creation. Design/methodology/approach - The paper assesses whether banks’ activities are best understood as private money creation rather than intermediation. It considers the argument that regulatory reform has not gone far enough to prevent a recurrence of future credit spirals ending in financial crises. Findings - This paper analyses banks’ activities and finds that it is incorrect to consider that they engage in relatively unfettered money creation. While fractional reserve banking does create flows of money through the economy, these flows are tethered to banks’ funding requirements. Multiple use of that money, rather than representing an ill-understood risk, simply reflects the nature of maturity transformation. This has not been missed in designing the post-crisis regulatory framework. The revised framework contains many features that are not fully recognised by proponents of the money creation critique and goes significantly further than they allow. Once completed, it will address many of the concerns they raise. They are right to call for further consideration of whether the countercyclical features of the new framework are sufficiently developed. Originality/value - The paper provides an early detailed response to recent criticism of the post-crisis regulatory reform programme coming from a money creation perspective of banks’ role in the economy.

Keywords: European union; Basel; Financial crisis; Credit; Banking regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jfrcpp:jfrc-06-2016-0046

DOI: 10.1108/JFRC-06-2016-0046

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance is currently edited by Prof John Ashton

More articles in Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().