As Prepared By: Secretary Scott Bessent
As Delivered By: Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Jonathan McKernan
The Regulatory Reset
Good afternoon, it is great to be here.
Let me begin by thanking Hal Scott for convening this roundtable on bank liquidity and the lender of last resort.
Under President Trump’s leadership, the Treasury Department has coordinated a fundamental reset of financial regulation. And the regulators have certainly not wasted time.
They have ended decades of regulation by reflex and rolled back the Biden administration’s regulatory excesses.
They have tackled the problem of “too small to succeed” and affirmed a commitment to preserving the community bank model.
They have refocused bank supervision on material financial risk.
They have recommitted to regulatory tailoring.
They are clearing the way for digital assets and other responsible innovation.
And very soon, they will propose a modernization of bank capital that simplifies and rationalizes the framework, ends the capital arbitrage that drives financial activity to nonbanks, and ensures competitive parity for smaller banks.
Bank liquidity is the next big-ticket item.
This roundtable is on a critically important topic with immediate real-world implications for this historic time. Artificial intelligence is no longer science fiction. The onshoring of American manufacturing is no longer aspirational. The competition for critical minerals is no longer abstract.
To unlock the vast promise of this transformation and secure America’s Golden Age, we confront the pressing necessity of unlocking hundreds of billions-potentially trillions-in new lending capacity to finance AI infrastructure, domestic supply chains, and the defense industrial base.
The problem, however, and the reason this roundtable is timely, is that the framework for supervising and regulating bank liquidity created in response to the 2008 financial crisis has excessively and unnecessarily limited banks’ ability to do what they are supposed to do-lend.
The debate on bank liquidity goes directly to whether we will have a financial system that supports growth and economic security-or quietly stifles it under the guise of prudence.
Which is all to say, liquidity regulation1 is an area of steady and serious focus for the Treasury Department.
The Case for a Fresh Look
During the 2008 crisis, liquidity evaporated suddenly. Wholesale funding froze. Fire sales impaired balance sheets across the system. Governments and central banks were compelled to step in. The legitimacy of the financial system and our institutions generally came into question.
Post-crisis liquidity regulation has succeeded in reducing the likelihood of a redux of 2008.
But its genesis also gives us cause for a fresh look. Liquidity regulation was novel and even muddled guesswork, an inevitable overcorrection written in the dark shadow of the crisis.
On this first point, liquidity had historically been the province of supervision, not formula. There was simply no precedent for prescribing numerical liquidity buffers in rule.
There also was no settled conceptual framework for calibrating those numerical requirements, as even then-Governor Tarullo recognized.2 Capital regulation rests on a calibration framework for assigning exposure-specific requirements. The architects of liquidity regulation, in contrast, assigned inflow and outflow rates based on historical experience and intuition. Call it two parts data, one part gut, and a heavy dash of post-crisis trauma.
Another reason for a fresh look is that things have changed considerably since. The speed at which liquidity stress can be triggered and transmitted-already fast in 2008-has only accelerated, as we saw in March 2023.
After March 2023, almost everyone now agrees that operational readiness and discount window stigma need a better solution. SVB, Signature, and First Republic each had substantial holdings of Treasuries and agency MBS. But that liquidity existed only on paper. Collateral was not fully prepositioned. Discount window access was untested. That was in part because the policymakers who had designed the framework were so keenly focused on reducing dependence on the lender of last resort so as to mitigate moral hazard.3
Then reality intervened in March 2023. Now, the conversation is about reducing discount window stigma, incentivizing collateral prepositioning, and normalizing routine testing of central bank facilities.
The upshot is that we should not treat post-crisis liquidity regulation as somehow sacrosanct. These rules are working drafts, not tablets handed down from the mountain. With the benefit of some distance from the crisis, it is time for a fresh look.
Re-assessing the Costs and Benefits
Shifting then to the costs and benefits. At its core, liquidity regulation necessarily draws a line: to what extent should banks self-insure liquidity risk, and how much of that risk should be borne by the lender of last resort?
Requiring banks to fully self-insure even severe liquidity risk comes at a steep cost. When 25 percent of large banks’ balance sheets are allocated to safe assets-up from roughly 10 percent before the crisis-that necessarily means less lending for mortgages, small businesses, AI hyperscalers, and critical infrastructure.
Those costs must be balanced against the benefits. To foster resiliency, we should guard against the run risks posed by excessive reliance on short-term wholesale funding. That lesson from 2008 remains intact.
Liquidity regulation should also support orderly resolution. As SVB’s Thursday turmoil reminds us, buffers buy time-ideally until the Friday close-so that authorities can arrange a sale or otherwise implement an orderly wind-down.
Liquidity regulation also should enhance operational readiness for stress. In particular, banks should be encouraged to preposition collateral and test central bank facilities.
Given these objectives, one clear shortcoming is that banks generally have proven unwilling to draw down buffers during stress periods. The architects of liquidity regulation were explicit that buffer useability was critical to achieving their intended effect.4 But in practice, both regulators and markets have treated the buffers as untouchable hard minimums. As a result, instead of acting as shock absorbers, buffer requirements can actually exacerbate the hoarding of liquid assets, accelerating the transmission of liquidity stress throughout the system.
And here’s an irony: by driving banks to exhaust regulatory buffers before accessing the discount window, we have entrenched discount window stigma. If you only go to the window when things are really bad, then going to the window signals that things are really bad.
The framework has also done little to enhance readiness and willingness to use the central bank’s facilities. Indeed, as policymakers at the time made clear, the intent was 180 degrees the opposite, in effect deputizing large banks as liquidity insurers for the financial system writ large. That was a mistake.
Use of the lender of last resort during severe stress is not a policy failure. That’s what the central bank is designed to do-prevent liquidity spirals. When banks monetize liquid assets through sales or repo, that simply redistributes reserves, potentially even spreading liquidity stress across the system. Because only the central bank can create new reserves, only the central bank can add the aggregate system-wide base liquidity that typically is necessary to counteract a flight to safety. That unique power positions the central bank as the natural insurer against severe liquidity stress.
Potential Reforms
Given this misalignment in liquidity regulation, there is a strong case for a wholesale revisiting of the framework. But that should not hold up near-term reforms to restore the lender of last resort to its intended role. To that end, the liquidity coverage ratio requirements and other liquidity rules5 should give appropriate capped recognition of borrowing capacity associated with collateral prepositioned at the discount window.
This is a targeted, sensible reform that simply recognizes that prepositioned, collateralized borrowing capacity is real, monetizable liquidity. This reform would help rebalance the boundary between self-insurance and the lender of last resort. It also would enhance operational preparedness by creating strong incentives for prepositioning collateral and regular testing. And it could reduce discount window stigma by normalizing access.
The cap on recognized discount window borrowing capacity is a critical feature. Self-insurance against idiosyncratic liquidity risk remains critical for resiliency and orderly resolution.
In designing and calibrating the cap, regulators could explore whether it should be sized for each bank based on the bank’s demonstrated usage of the discount window. For example, recognized borrowing capacity could be capped at the lesser of the overall ceiling and some multiple of the bank’s discount window borrowing over a specified period of time. That approach could ensure that this borrowing capacity is indeed real liquidity while helping to reduce discount window stigma.
Regulators could also explore a mechanism to adjust the cap during severe stress. Temporarily increasing recognition could enhance buffer useability by temporarily adjusting banks’ liquidity metrics. Increasing the cap during stress also could interact with incentives for ongoing, limited use to create automatic structural stabilizers that involve the discount window early on when stress is incipient.
Importantly, none of this need undermine market or regulatory discipline. Central bank borrowing would remain collateralized, subject to conservative haircuts, and limited to solvent institutions. Capital requirements would remain appropriately calibrated. Supervisors would retain their access and discretion.
What this would do is align liquidity regulation with the appropriate role of the lender of last resort. The central bank can, should, and indeed must, step in to provide liquidity during periods of severe stress. We should design the framework accordingly.
Conclusion
Over the last year, the regulators have made significant progress toward a financial system that supports Parallel Prosperity for both Wall Street and Main Street. Liquidity reform will be a critical step toward getting banks back into lending-back into financing homes, factories, infrastructure, and innovation.
In parallel with this work, Treasury will continue to coordinate complementary reforms. The administration will continue to advocate for targeted deposit insurance reform, in particular expanded coverage for noninterest-bearing transaction accounts. I expect FinCEN and the bank regulators will soon propose a rule to recenter AML/CFT supervision on program effectiveness, and enhance FinCEN’s role in AML/CFT supervision and enforcement. I expect the bank regulators will soon revamp the model risk governance guidance that has constrained responsible AI adoption. And we will continue to push for agreements among the bank regulators to reduce duplicative examinations.
With this progress, I would encourage you to think ambitiously about the future of finance and financial regulation. To that end, Treasury will begin to rethink the appropriate activities of banking organizations, with an eye in particular toward facilitating responsible adoption of new technologies.
Thank you for the time today, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
1. Liquidity regulation includes the liquidity coverage ratio requirement, the net stable funding ratio requirement, internal liquidity stress tests conducted pursuant to rule, the resolution liquidity adequacy and positioning requirement, and the resolution liquidity execution need requirement, as well as the related supervisory expectations with respect to liquidity risk management.
2.In November 2014, then-Governor Tarullo said, “Liquidity regulation is still a relatively new undertaking . . . . There is still need for conceptual work on such questions as how to specify the extent to which banks should be required to self-insure against liquidity risk . . . .” Daniel K. Tarullo, Governor, Bd. of Governors of the Fed. Reserve Sys., Liquidity Regulation, Remarks at The Clearing House 2014 Annual Conference (Nov. 20, 2014).
3.At the time, then-Governor Stein argued that “liquidity regulation . . . reflect[s] a desire to reduce dependence on the central bank as a lender of last resort (LOLR)” and that “a central premise must be that the use of LOLR capacity in a crisis scenario is socially costly.” He rationalized that premise in part on the assumption that “the use of an LOLR to support banks when they get into trouble can lead to moral hazard problems.” Jeremy C. Stein, Governor, Bd. of Governors of the Fed. Reserve Sys., Liquidity Regulation and Central Banking, Remarks at “Finding the Right Balance,” 2013 Credit Markets Symposium Sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (Apr. 19, 2013). Governor Stein did however express an openness to counting some committed LOLR capacity in the liquidity coverage ratio requirement, but only to the extent it had an upfront fee.
4.Id. (“The [Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision] has also made clear its view that, during periods of stress, it would be appropriate for banks to use their [high-quality liquid assets], thereby falling below the minimum. However, creating a regime in which banks voluntarily choose to do so is not an easy task. A number of observers have expressed the concern that if a bank is held to an [liquidity coverage ratio] standard of 100 percent in normal times, it may be reluctant to allow its ratio to drop below 100 percent when facing large outflows, even if regulators were to permit this temporary deviation, for fear that a decline in the ratio could be interpreted as a sign of weakness.”).
5.The regulators could consider adjustments to other liquidity regulations, including the internal liquidity stress tests and the resolution-related liquidity requirements.