FMI et la fonction "Prêteur-Last Resort" (document en anglais)
Commentaire de texte : FMI et la fonction "Prêteur-Last Resort" (document en anglais). Recherche parmi 300 000+ dissertationsPar azizsaid • 18 Janvier 2015 • Commentaire de texte • 388 Mots (2 Pages) • 617 Vues
issue is whether and how this function can be
adapted to the international environment. Making the rele-vant decisions is no easy task, however, because of all the
functions a central bank may carry out, serving as the lender
of last resort is by far the most difficult to pin down. For one
thing, the desirability and appropriate contours of the func-tion cannot be identified independently of the monetary pol-icy framework. Suppose bank deposits were not defined in
nominal terms, much like mutual fund shares, or that mone-tary policy could be run in a purely discretionary manner
without raising credibility problems. Would a lender of last
resort still be needed? Many would doubt it, to say the least.
But there is more. Intervention by a lender of last resort
amounts to a suspension of market discipline, since it means
lending in situations where other lenders are not. Hence, the
very existence of a lender of last resort raises a potential
moral hazard problem, which can be kept within acceptable
limits only by relying on the broader legal and institutional
setup—on regulation in the broadest sense of the word. In
short, what the Tao Teh Ching says of the wheel could equally
well be said of the lender-of-last-resort function: for all its
complexity, what makes it work lies outside of it. Therefore, if
we are to understand how a lender of last resort can address
financial instability at the national level, as well as whether
the notion of an international lender of last resort makes any
sense, we must first look beyond the function’s boundaries.
Evolution of concept
When Walter Bagehot, the nineteenth-century economist
whose Lombard Streetis still the classic in this field, was writ-ing, the monetary framework was pretty rigid. It was based
on the gold standard and on severe restrictions on the supply
of currency, while the world’s main financial center, the City
of London, was run by a handful of financial institutions in
a clublike fashion. This helps explain the Bagehot doctrine:
when things turn bad, first expel the rotten apple from the
club (that is, let it go broke), then come to the rescue of the
club as a whole by lending freely to all who can supply good
collateral and can afford to pay a penalty rate.
The IMF and the
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