What effect might a financial panic have on the money multiplier and the money supply? Why?

Short Answer

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When there is a financial panic, the amount of deposits (D)decreases due to people's lack of confidence in the financial system and their decision to withdraw their funds from banks. Recall that the currency ratio (c)and excess reserves ratio (e)are calculated as follows:

c=CDwhere Cis the desired holdings of currency e=ERD, where ERis the excess reserves

A decrease in Dwould increase both cand e.

Step by step solution

01

Concept Introduction

The money multiplier mindicates how much the money supply changes for a given change in the monetary base. It is calculated as:

m=1+crr+e+cwhere rris the required reserves ratio

When eand cincrease, mdecreases because the denominator increases more than the numerator. Hence, the money multiplier decreases.

02

Explanation

Money supply can be reduced significantly during a financial panic.

Bank account holders withdraw currency from their bank accounts in order to transfer their checkable deposits into currency.

Money supply theory says that when c increases significantly, there will be a fall in the overall level of deposits, resulting in a contraction of the money supply.

Therefore, the money supply declines as a result of a smaller money multiplier.

03

Final Answer

When e rises, deposits are supported with fewer reserves, causing money to be less plentiful.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

“The Fed can perfectly control the amount of reserves in the system.” Is this statement true, false, or uncertain? Explain.

Go to http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/hist/ and find the historical report of M1 and M2 by clicking on the “Data Download Program.” Compute the growth rate of each aggregate over each of the past three years. Does it appear that the Fed has been increasing or decreasing the rate of growth of the money supply? Is this consistent with your understanding of the needs of the economy? Why?

Suppose that the required reserve ratio is 9%, currency in circulation is 620billion, the amount of checkable deposits is 950billion, and excess reserves are 15billion.

a. Calculate the money supply, the currency deposit ratio, the excess reserve ratio, and the money multiplier.

b. Suppose the central bank conducts an unusually large open market purchase of bonds held by banks of 1300billion due to a sharp contraction in the economy. Assuming the ratios you calculated in part (a) remain the same, predict the effect on the money supply.

c. Suppose the central bank conducts the same open market purchase as in part (b), except that banks choose to hold all of these proceeds as excess reserves rather than loan them out, due to fear of a financial crisis. Assuming that currency and deposits remain the same, what happens to the amount of excess reserves, the excess reserve ratio, the money supply, and the money multiplier?

d. Following the financial crisis in 2008, the Federal Reserve began injecting the banking system with massive amounts of liquidity, and at the same time, very little lending occurred. As a result, the M1 money multiplier was below 1 for most of the time from October 2008 through 2011. How does this scenario relate to your answer to part (c)?

In October 2008, the Federal Reserve began paying interest on the amount of excess reserves held by banks. How, if at all, might this affect the multiplier process and the money supply?

If you decide to hold \(100 less cash than usual and therefore deposit \)100 more cash in the bank, what effect will this have on checkable deposits in the banking system if the rest of the public keeps its holdings of currency constant?

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