The Federal Reserve Board on Monday approved a proposal to curb its emergency lending powers, a change demanded by Congress after the central bank’s controversial decision to aid AIG, Citigroup and others in 2008.
The rule, unanimously approved by the Fed’s Washington-based board in an open meeting, requires that any future emergency lending be only “broad-based” to address larger financial market problems, and not tailored to specific firms.
The 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law instructed the Fed to curtail emergency loans to individual companies and prohibited it from lending to firms that were insolvent.
While some at the Fed worry the new rules will hamper the central bank’s response in future crises, some politicians have said the proposed regulations are too imprecise, for example in defining insolvency, to prevent the types of deals done in 2008.
The final regulations approved on Monday tried to address some of those concerns. Under the proposal, at least five firms would have to be eligible to participate in any future crisis lending program. To avoid lending to insolvent companies, the regulations also said no loans would be made to firms that had failed to pay “undisputed debts” in the previous 90 days.
There has been a longstanding tension of confronting moral hazard with wanting to retain flexibility. As the financial crisis intensified in 2008, the Fed invoked its little-used emergency lending power to stave off the failure of AIG and Bear Stearns, and help other “too big to fail” companies including Citigroup and Bank of America
The Fed also enacted a series of more general emergency programs, in all providing $710 billion in loans and guarantees. Those programs were separate from the much larger Fed asset and bond purchases known as quantitative easing.
Hopefully they get it right this time. A level playing field means better rates, more options and greater flexibility for borrowers. This is a welcome turning point.