Stagnant puddle

US banks wasting Fed's $2.7 trillion of stimulus

US banks are wasting the Federal Reserve's largesse. The central bank has swollen the cash balances at financial institutions with quantitative easing, but loan growth has not even kept pace with nominal GDP.

The numbers are stark. Since March 2008, the Fed has increased its holdings of Treasury and federally backed mortgage securities from $700 billion to $4 trillion. To pay for these, it mostly printed money. More technically, it provided banks with $2.7 trillion of new reserves, according to St. Louis Fed data.

The banks didn't use the funds to stimulate the economy. Commercial and industrial loans, the principal driver of sustainable expansion, have increased by about 12 per cent, to $1.7 trillion. Consumer debt has jumped 44 per cent, but accounts for a smaller piece of the pie. The banks could have afforded such slow paces of loan growth, well below the 16 per cent increase in nominal GDP, without any help from QE.

Rather, the Fed's money-printing accounts for the extra cash on banks' balance sheets. Their holdings of cash, according to Fed data, have increased by 779 per cent to $2.8 trillion over the past six years. For banks, that does not mean piles of crisp new bills, but the balances at the Fed do pay a 0.25 per cent interest rate. Meanwhile, banks now lend out just three-quarters of their deposits, compared with more than 100 percent in March 2008.

The central bank's purchases may not have contributed directly to economic growth. Still, they have been good for bank profits, because the cash at the Fed earns a little interest income without needing any equity backing, according to the Basel technique of calculating capital strength. QE has also helped keep up financial asset prices, as the ample supply of ready cash probably encouraged banks to increase their investments in longer-term government and so-called agency securities by 63 per cent, to $1.8 trillion.

On the other hand, the Fed's intervention has not been the inflationary disaster feared by monetarist economists. Funds kept in the central bank's isolation ward do not infect the economy with wage and price increases.

If the Fed wants banks to push money out into the real economy, it should stop paying them for cash deposits. Instead, it could start charging. A negative 0.5 per cent interest rate on reserves might encourage lending. It might also stimulate higher inflation.