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Bank run

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A poster for the 1896 Broadway melodrama The War of Wealth depicts a typical 19th-century bank run in the U.S.
2007 bank run on Northern Rock, a UK bank

A bank run (also known as a run on the bank) is a type of financial crisis. It is a panic which occurs when a large number of customers of a bank withdraw their deposits because they fear it is, or might become, insolvent. This action can destabilize the bank to the point where it becomes insolvent. Banks retain only a fraction of their deposits as cash (see fractional-reserve banking): the remainder is invested in securities and loans. No bank has enough reserves on hand to cope with more than the fraction of deposits being taken out at once. As a result, the bank faces bankruptcy; with some loan types the bank will call in loans it has offered, which can cause the bank's debtors to face bankruptcy themselves, if the loan is invested in a plant or other items that cannot easily be sold.

A banking panic or bank panic occurs if many banks suffer runs at the same time. The resulting chain of bankruptcies can cause a long economic recession.[1]

As a bank run progresses, it generates its own momentum, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. As more people withdraw their deposits, the likelihood of default increases, so other individuals have more incentive to withdraw their own deposits.

Theory

Main article: Diamond-Dybvig model

Diamond and Dybvig developed an influential model to explain why bank runs occur and why banks issue deposits that are more liquid than their assets. They view the bank as an intermediary between borrowers who prefer long-maturity loans and depositors who prefer liquid accounts.[2][3]

In their model, business investment requires expenditures in the present to obtain returns that take time in coming, for example, spending on machines and buildings now for production in future years. A business or entrepreneur that needs to borrow to finance investment will want to give their investments a long time to generate returns before full repayment, and will prefer long maturity loans, which offer little liquidity to the lender. The households and firms who have the money to lend to these businesses may have sudden, unpredictable needs for cash, so they require fast access to their money in the form of liquid demand deposit accounts, that is, accounts with shortest possible maturity. Since borrowers need money and depositors fear to make these loans individually, banks provide a valuable service by aggregating funds from many individual deposits, portioning them into loans for borrowers, and spreading the risks both of default and sudden demands for cash.[3]

If only a few depositors withdraw at any given time, this arrangement works well. Depositors' unpredictable needs for cash are unlikely to occur at the same time; that is, by the law of large numbers banks can expect only a small percentage of accounts withdrawn on any one day because individual expenditure needs are largely uncorrelated. A bank can make loans over a long horizon, while keeping only relatively small amounts of cash on hand to pay any depositors who may demand withdrawals.[3]

However, if many depositors withdraw all at once, the bank itself (as opposed to individual investors) may run short of liquidity, and depositors will rush to withdraw their money, forcing the bank to liquidate many of its assets at a loss, and eventually to fail. If such a bank calls in its loans early, this may force businesses to disrupt their production, or individuals to sell their homes, causing further losses to the larger economy.[3]

A bank run can occur even when started by a false story. Even depositors who know the story is false will have an incentive to withdraw, if they suspect other depositors will believe the story. The story becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.[3] Indeed, Robert K. Merton, who coined the term self-fulfilling prophecy, mentioned bank runs as a prime example of the concept in his book Social Theory and Social Structure.[4]

The Diamond-Dybvig model provides an example of an economic game with more than one Nash equilibrium, where it is logical for individual depositors to engage in a bank run once they suspect one might start, even though that run will cause the bank to collapse.[3]

Prevention

Several techniques can be used to help prevent bank runs.

Individual banks

Some prevention techniques apply to individual banks, independently of the rest of the economy.

  • A bank can take deposits from depositors who do not observe common information that might spark a run. For example, in the days before deposit insurance, it made sense for a bank to have a large lobby and fast service, to prevent a line of depositors from extending out into the street, causing passers-by to infer that a bank run is occurring.[3]
  • A bank can temporarily suspend withdrawals to stop a run. In many cases the threat of suspension prevents the run, which means the threat need not be carried out.[3]
  • The obvious way to prevent bank runs is to prohibit the banks from altering the liquidity of their assets when making loans. Then bank runs would be theoretically impossible. For instance to make a five year loan the bank must also sell a five year certificate of the same amount. The owner of the certificate then cannot run to the bank at any time. He has to wait until the five years have elapsed to get his money back. At that time the loan ends and the bank gets the liquidity it needs for the certificate payment.

Collective prevention

Some prevention techniques apply across the whole economy, though they may still allow individual institutions to fail. These techniques create moral hazard, since they reduce incentives for banks to avoid making risky loans; the goal is for the benefits of collective prevention to outweigh the costs of excessive risk-taking.[6]

  • Central banks act as a lender of last resort. To prevent a bank run, the central bank guarantees that it will make short-term loans to banks, to ensure that, if they remain economically viable, they will always have enough liquidity to honor their deposits.[3]

History

File:Montreal City Bank Run.gif
The run on the Montreal City and District Savings Bank. The Mayor addressing the crowd. Printed in 1872 in the Canadian Illustrated News.

Bank runs first appeared as part of cycles of credit expansion and its subsequent contraction. In the 16th century onwards, English goldsmiths issuing promissory notes suffered severe failures due to bad harvests plummeting parts of the country into famine and unrest. Other examples are the Dutch Tulip manias (1634-1637), the British South Sea Bubble (1717-1719), the French Mississippi Company (1717-1720), the "Post Napoleonic Depression" (1815-1830) and the Great Depression (1929-1939).

Bank runs have also been used to blackmail individuals or governments; for example in 1830 when the British Government under the Duke of Wellington overturned a majority government under the orders of the king, George IV, to prevent reform (the later 1832 Reform Act), he angered reformers and so a run on the banks was threatened under the rallying cry "To stop the Duke go for gold!".

Many of the recessions in the United States were caused by banking panics. The Great Depression contained several banking crises consisting of runs on multiple banks from 1929 to 1933; some of these were specific to regions of the U.S.[1] Much of the Depression's economic damage was caused directly by bank runs,[7] and institutions put into place after the Depression have prevented runs on U.S. commercial banks since the 1930s,[2] even under conditions such as the U.S. savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.[8] The Depression's bank runs left a lasting mark on the American psyche, exhibited in sometimes disturbing images such as the bleak scenes where the fictional hero George Bailey contemplates suicide in the movie It's a Wonderful Life.[9]

Recent incidents

  • On 13 September 2007, the British bank Northern Rock arranged an emergency loan facility from the Bank of England, which it claimed was the result of short-term liquidity problems. The bank's defenders claimed its cash shortage was the result of over-exposure to the failing US sub-prime mortgage market, while its critics argued that it was the result of NR's own careless lending practices. A run began the following day, Friday, with reports of its internet banking site being overloaded,[12] and long queues outside branches that day, Saturday morning and the following Monday.[13] News reports on 17 September stated that an estimated £2 billion GBP of retail deposits had been withdrawn by customers since the bank had applied for emergency funds. [14]
  • On Tuesday, 11 March 2008, a bank run began on the securities and banking firm Bear Stearns. While Bear Stearns was not an ordinary deposit-taking bank, it had financed huge long-term investments by selling short-maturity bonds (Asset Backed Commercial Paper), making it vulnerable to panic on the part of its bondholders. Credit officers of rival firms began to say that Bear Stearns would not be able to make good on its obligations. Within two days, Bear Stearns's capital base of $17 billion had dwindled to $2 billion in cash, and Bear Stearns told government officials that it saw little option other than to file for bankruptcy the next day. By 07:00 Friday, the Federal Reserve decided to lend Bear Stearns money, the first time since the Great Depression that it had lent to a nonbank. Stocks sank, and that day JPMorgan Chase began an effort to buy Bear Stearns as part of a government-sponsored bailout. The deal was arranged by Sunday in an effort to calm markets before overseas markets opened.[15]
  • On 11 July, 2008, U.S. mortgage lender IndyMac Bank was seized by federal regulators. IndyMac had been a stressed institution for months[16]. The bank was capital-constrained and possibly heading for regulatory intervention[17]. However, both regulators and the bank itself blamed its troubles on a letter from Sen. Charles E. Schumer questioning its viability.[18][19] Following the public release of the letter on June 26, IndyMac customers withdrew amounts averaging $100 million a day from the bank, or a total of $1.3 billion in cash.[19] The run caused a liquidity crisis which forced IndyMac to announced it was halting new loan submissions, closing its retail and wholesale lending divisions, and laying off 3,800 employees.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Wicker E (1996). The Banking Panics of the Great Depression. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521663466.
  2. ^ a b Diamond DW, Dybvig PH (1983). "Bank runs, deposit insurance, and liquidity" (PDF). J Pol Econ. 91 (3): 401–19. Reprinted (2000) Fed Res Bank Mn Q Rev 24 (1), 14–23.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Diamond DW (2007). "Banks and liquidity creation: a simple exposition of the Diamond-Dybvig model" (PDF). Fed Res Bank Richmond Econ Q. 93 (2): 189–200.
  4. ^ Merton RK (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure (enlarged ed. ed.). New York: Free Press. pp. p. 477. ISBN 9780029211304. OCLC 253949. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |origdate= ignored (|orig-date= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ Heffernan S (2003). "The causes of bank failures". In Mullineux AW, Murinde V (ed.). Handbook of international banking. Edward Elgar. pp. 366–402. ISBN 1840640936.
  6. ^ Brusco S, Castiglionesi F (2007). "Liquidity coinsurance, moral hazard, and financial contagion". J Finance. 62 (5): 2275–302. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6261.2007.01275.x.
  7. ^ Bernanke BS (1983). "Nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in the propagation of the Great Depression". Am Econ Rev. 73 (3): 257–76.
  8. ^ Cooper R, Ross TW (2002). "Bank runs: deposit insurance and capital requirements". Int Econ Rev. 43 (1): 55–72. doi:10.1111/1468-2354.t01-1-00003.
  9. ^ Maland CJ (1998). "Capra and the abyss: self-interest versus the common good in Depression America". In Sklar R, Zagarrio V (ed.). Frank Capra: Authorship and the Studio System. Temple University Press. pp. 95–129. ISBN 1566396085.
  10. ^ McCandless G, Gabrielli MF, Rouillet MJ (2003). "Determining the causes of bank runs in Argentina during the crisis of 2001" (PDF). Revista de Análisis Económico. 18 (1): 87–102.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  11. ^ A Rush to Pull Out Cash, Los Angeles Times, 17 August 2007
  12. ^ Anxious Customers Crash Lender's Website, Financial Times, 14 September 2007
  13. ^ Northern Rock Savers Queue to Get Cash, The Daily Telegraph, 14 September 2007
  14. ^ Northern Rock besieged by savers, BBC News, 17 September 2007
  15. ^ Sidel R, Ip G, Phillips MM, Kelley K (2008-03-18). "The week that shook Wall Street: inside the demise of Bear Stearns". Wall Street Journal.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. ^ Office of Thrift Supervision Fact Sheet on IndyMac
  17. ^ IndyMac 10-Q, Capital Ratios section
  18. ^ "Struggling Indymac Says Depositors Pulling Cash". Reuters. 2008-07-08. Retrieved 2008-07-08.
  19. ^ a b Story L (2008-07-12). "Regulators seize mortgage lender". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-07-12.
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