This latest potential step would be a hit to depositors, already earning close to zero interest on checking and savings accounts.
But the banks say it’s a side effect of the Fed’s quantitative-easing strategy and its eventual tapering of its asset purchases of $85 billion a month, which has created high liquidity within banks. The report cited executives at two of the top five U.S. banks, who said a cut in the 0.25 percent rate of interest on the $2.4 trillion in reserves they hold at the Fed would lead them to pass on the cost to depositors.
If you look at the chart, the amount of cash held at the Fed used to be negligible but is now in excess of $2.3 trillion. The logic is that the Fed wants the banks to stop parking their “lazy cash” at the Fed and start doing something with it, say experts.
In the last few years, the debit-fee legislation coming out of the Durbin Amendment as part of the Dodd Frank Act has limited transaction fees imposed on merchants by debit card issuers. That has effectively hit consumer-banking revenues pretty hard, say analysts.
But the interest on excess reserves was a temporary stop-gap measure allowing banks to earn interest by holding money at the Fed. What the Fed is now saying is that it was never meant to be permanent.
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