The U.S. dollar clearing and settlement system received little attention during the recent financial crisis, mainly because it performed reliably, processing record volumes and values of trades made in stressed financial markets. This article shows how Federal Reserve policy measures aimed at...

This paper develops a model of bank behavior that focuses on the interaction between the incentives created by fixed-rate deposit insurance and a bank's choice of its loan portfolio and its market-traded financial instruments. The model is used to analyze the consequences of the Federal Reserve...