Money market, a set of institutions, conventions, and practices, the aim of which is to facilitate the lending and borrowing of money on a short-term basis. The money market is, therefore, different from the capital market, which is concerned with medium- and long-term credit. The definition of money for money market purposes is not confined to bank notes but includes a range of assets that can be turned into cash at short notice, such as short-term government securities, bills of exchange, and bankers’ acceptances.
Every country with a monetary system of its own has to have some kind of market in which dealers in short-term credit can buy and sell. The need for such facilities arises in much the same way that a similar need does in connection with the distribution of any of the products of a diversified economy to their final users at the retail level. If the retailer is to provide reasonably adequate service to his customers, he must have active contacts with others who specialize in making or handling bulk quantities of whatever is his stock-in-trade. The money market is made up of specialized facilities of exactly this kind. It exists for the purpose of improving the ability of the retailers of financial services—commercial banks, savings institutions, investment houses, lending agencies, and even governments—to do their job. It has little if any contact with the individuals or firms who maintain accounts with these various retailers or purchase their securities or borrow from them.
The elemental functions of a money market must be performed in any kind of modern economy, even one that is largely planned or socialist, but the arrangements in socialist countries do not ordinarily take the form of a market. Money markets exist in countries that use market processes rather than planned allocations to distribute most of their primary resources among alternative uses. The general distinguishing feature of a money market is that it relies upon open competition among those who are bulk suppliers of funds at any particular time and among those seeking bulk funds, to work out the best practicable distribution of the existing total volume of such funds.
In their market transactions, those with bulk supplies of funds or demands for them, rely on groups of intermediaries who act as brokers or dealers. The characteristics of these middlemen, the services they perform, and their relationship to other parts of the financial mechanism vary widely from country to country. In many countries there is no single meeting place where the middlemen get together, yet in most countries the contacts among all participants are sufficiently open and free to assure each supplier or user of funds that he will get or pay a price that fairly reflects all of the influences (including his own) that are currently affecting the whole supply and the whole demand. In nearly all cases, moreover, the unifying force of competition is reflected at any given moment in a common price (that is, rate of interest) for similar transactions. Continuous fluctuations in the money market rates of interest result from changes in the pressure of available supplies of funds upon the market and in the pull of current demands upon the market.
Banks and the money market
Commercial banks are at the centre of most money markets, as both suppliers and users of funds, and in many markets a few large commercial banks serve also as middlemen. These banks have a unique place because it is their role to furnish an important part of the money supply. In some countries they do this by issuing their own notes, which circulate as part of the hand-to-hand currency. More often, however, it is checking accounts at commercial banks that constitute the major part of the country’s money supply. In either case, the outstanding supply of bank money is in continual circulation, and any given bank may at any time have more funds coming in than going out, while at another time the outflow may be the larger. It is through the facilities of the money market that these net excesses and shortages are redistributed, so that the banking system as a whole can at all times provide the means of payment required for carrying on each country’s business.
In the course of issuing money the commercial banks also actually create it by expanding their deposits, but they are not at liberty to create all that they may wish whenever they wish, for the total is limited by the volume of bank reserves and by the prevailing ratio between these reserves and bank deposits—a ratio that is set by law, regulation, or custom. The volume of reserves is controlled and varied by the central bank (such as the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, or the Federal Reserve System in the U.S.), which is usually a governmental institution, is always charged with governmental duties, and almost invariably carries out a major part of its operations in the money market.
The reserves of the commercial banks, which are continually being redistributed through the facilities of the money market, are in fact mainly deposit balances that these commercial banks have on the books of the central bank or notes issued by the central bank, which the commercial banks keep in their own vaults. As the central bank acquires additional assets, it pays for them by crediting depositors’ accounts or by issuing its own notes; thus the potential volume of commercial bank reserves is enlarged. With more reserves, the commercial banks can make additional loans or investments, paying for them by entering credits to depositors’ accounts on their books. And in that way the money supply is increased. It may be reduced by reversing the sequence. The central bank can sell some of its marketable assets in the money market or in markets closely interrelated with the money market; payment will be made by drawing down some of the commercial bank reserve balances on its books; and with smaller reserves remaining, the commercial banks will have to sell or reduce some of their investments or their loans. That, in turn, results in a shrinkage of the outstanding money supply. Central bank operations of this kind are called open-market operations.
The central bank may also increase bank reserves by making loans to the banks or to such intermediaries as bill dealers or dealers in government securities. Reduction of these loans correspondingly reduces bank reserves. Although the mechanics of these lending procedures vary widely among countries, all have one feature in common: the central bank establishes an interest rate for such borrowing—the bank rate or discount rate—pivotally significant in the structure of money market rates.
Money market assets may range from those with the highest form of liquidity—deposits at the central bank—through bank deposits to various forms of short-term paper such as treasury bills, dealers’ loans, bankers’ acceptances, and commercial paper, and including government securities of longer maturity and other kinds of credit instruments eligible for advances or rediscount at the central bank. Although details vary among countries, the touchstone of any money market asset other than money itself is its closeness—i.e., the degree of its substitutability for money. So long as the institutions making use of a money market regard a particular type of credit instrument as a reasonably close substitute—that is, treat it as “liquid”—and so long as the central bank acquiesces in or approves of this approach, the instrument is in practice a money market asset. Thus no single definition or list can apply to the money markets of all countries nor will the list remain the same through the years in the money market of any given country.
The international money market
Each central bank usually holds some form of reserve that is acceptable in settling international transactions. International monetary reserves are mainly gold, or “money market assets” in some country whose currency is widely used, such as the United States dollar. The monetary laws of all countries provide for the establishment of some kind of parity between their currencies and those of other countries. This parity may be defined either in terms of gold or in relation to a key currency such as the British pound sterling or the United States dollar, which in turn has a fixed parity with gold. A country maintains the “convertibility” of its currency by standing ready to buy and sell gold or other currencies in exchange for its own at prices within a fixed and rather narrow “spread” above or below the “exchange rate” for its own currency that is implied by the declared parity.
Because world trade continually gives rise to various needs for payment in various currencies, an international money market must exist so that traders with an excess of one currency can use it to buy another currency for which they have a need. Within the scope of convertibility arrangements, this trading in currencies is carried out by skilled intermediaries, usually banks or specialized foreign exchange brokers and dealers. Trading in currencies is extensive both for immediate use (“spot”) and for future (“forward”) delivery. Quotations vary according to changes in supply and demand, over the range between the upper and lower buying and selling prices set by official parity. If no parity has been set quotations may fluctuate widely. If a currency is subject to exchange controls, there may be two or more quotations for different uses of the same nominal currency.
Changes in a country’s balance of payments may affect the usefulness or prestige of its currency. A sustained and substantial balance of payments deficit (outpayments larger than inpayments), for example, will result in continuous large increases in the world supply of its currency, possibly leading to some decline in its acceptability abroad and to a loss of international monetary reserves. At the same time, an outward drain may reduce the reserves of the commercial banks (the base for the domestic money supply), unless the central bank takes offsetting action.
Since 1944 most of the countries that have domestic money markets or that play a role in the international money market have been joined together in the International Monetary Fund, which represents a pooling of part of the foreign exchange reserves (including gold) of more than 100 member countries. Drawings on the pool may be made by member countries to meet some of the reserve drains arising from balance of payments deficits and in amounts related to the quota that each has subscribed.
The internal money markets of a surprisingly high proportion of the countries of the world are quite rudimentary. The work of the money market in these countries is done largely by transfers of deposit balances, government securities, or foreign exchange among a few banks and between them and the central bank. But in nearly all such cases there is genuine discontent with the rigidity of these limited facilities and a desire to develop a structure, as well as instruments and procedures, which would provide the open-market attributes of the arrangements that have evolved in the leading countries. Several of the more fully developed money markets are described below.
The U.S. money market
The domestic money market in the United States carries out the largest volume of transactions of any such market in the world; its participants include the most heterogeneous group of financial and nonfinancial concerns to be found in any money market; it permits trading in an unusually wide variety of money substitutes; and it is less centralized geographically than the money market of any other country. Although there has always been a clustering of money market activities in New York City and much of the country’s participation in the international money market centres there, a process of continuous change during the 20th century has produced a genuinely national money market.
By 1935 the financial crises of the Great Depression had resulted in a basic revision of the banking laws. All gold had been withdrawn from internal circulation in 1933 and was henceforth held by the U.S. Treasury for use only in settling net flows of international payments among governments or central banks; its price was raised to $35 per ounce, and the U.S. dollar became the key currency in an international gold bullion standard. Domestically, the changes included legislative recognition of the primary importance of unified open-market operations by the Federal Reserve System and delegation to the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System of authority to raise or lower the ratios required between reserves and commercial bank deposits. Although about half of the 30,000 separate banks existing in the early 1920s had disappeared by the mid-1930s, the essential character of commercial banking in the U.S. remained that of a “unit” (or single-outlet) banking system in contrast to those of most other countries, which had a small number of large branch-banking organizations.
The unit banking system
This system has led inevitably to striking differences between money market arrangements in the United States and those of other countries. At times, some smaller banks almost inevitably find that the wholesale facilities of the money market cannot provide promptly the funds needed to meet unexpected reserve drains, as deposits move about the country from one bank to another. To provide temporary relief, pending a return flow of funds or more gradual disposal of other liquid assets in the money market, such banks have the privilege, if they are members of the Federal Reserve System, of borrowing for reasonable periods at their own Federal Reserve bank. At times some large banks, which serve as depositories for part of the liquid balances of many of the smaller ones (including those that are not members of the Federal Reserve System) also find that demands converging on them are much greater than expected. These large banks, too, can borrow temporarily at a Federal Reserve bank if other money market facilities are not adequate to their needs. Because these borrowing needs are unavoidably frequent in a vast unit banking system and, as a rule, do not indicate poor management, the discount rate charged by the Federal Reserve banks on such borrowing is not ordinarily put at punitive or severe penalty levels—thus, contrary to practice in many other countries, the central bank does not always maintain its interest rate well above those prevailing on marketable money market instruments. To avoid abuse, there is continuous surveillance of the borrowing banks by the Federal Reserve banks.
Along with this practice of borrowing at a Federal Reserve bank has developed the market for “federal funds.” This specialized part of the money market provides for the direct transfer to a member bank of balances on the books of a Federal Reserve bank in return for payment of a variable rate of interest called the “federal funds rate.” These funds are immediately available. There are transactions, too, in funds that are on deposit at commercial banks—by means of loans between banks, or through loans by one large depositor to another. Because these must be collected through a clearing process, they are usually called “clearinghouse funds.”
Money market instruments
Transactions in federal funds and clearinghouse funds are further supplemented by transactions in which either kind of money is exchanged for some other liquid, money market instrument, most frequently government securities. The magnitude of the market for government securities became so great after World War II that it overshadowed all other elements of the money market. Trading in outstanding “governments” is virtually all done through dealers who buy and sell for their own account at prices which they quote on request (standing ready to “bid” for or to “offer” any outstanding issue). Most of these dealers have head offices located in New York City, but all are engaged in nationwide operations. Their transactions and the lending arrangements through which they finance their own inventories of government securities have evolved into a particularly sensitive indicator of the pressures of supply and demand on the money market from day to day. The most common form of dealer financing is the repurchase agreement, through which dealers sell parts of their inventory temporarily, subject to repurchase.
Closely interrelated, often through trading operations conducted by the same dealers, are the much smaller markets for bank drafts, bills of exchange, and commercial paper. Alongside these other markets and actually somewhat larger in outstanding volume are the markets for securities issued by various “agencies” created by federal statute, such as the Federal Home Loan banks and Federal Land banks. Another money market instrument is the negotiable time certificate of deposit (CD), issued in large volume by commercial banks, which first became significant in 1962. While the owner of a time CD cannot withdraw his deposit before the maturity date initially agreed upon, he can sell it at any time in a secondary market that is conducted by government securities dealers.
The Federal Reserve System conducts day-to-day operations in the money market on its own initiative in order to assist the smooth working of the nation’s financial machinery and to exert a general influence aimed at fostering economic growth and limiting economic instability. Its transactions include substantial outright purchases or sales of government securities, relatively small purchases and run-offs of bankers’ acceptances, and a considerable volume of loans made for a few days at a time to dealers in government securities or acceptances in the form of repurchase agreements. While it is still the commercial banks as a group that have the greatest continuing need for the combined facilities of the nationwide money market, there is frequent and continuous participation by a great variety of institutional investors who channel the public’s savings into various uses and who must always also make some provision for their own liquidity.
Perhaps the most unusual feature in the composition of the U.S. money market is the great importance attained by nonfinancial business concerns and local units of government since World War II. Corporate treasurers and the treasurers of many states and local political subdivisions and authorities have become so keenly sensitive to the profitable possibilities of managing their own liquid holdings instead of relying on the commercial banks as most had done formerly that this group at times provides nearly as large a part of the volatile financing needs of government securities dealers, for example, as comes from the banks. Moreover, banks outside New York City sometimes supply more of the financing needed by these dealers than do the traditional “money market banks” in New York City. The nationwide character of the money market is also shown by the participation of nearly 200 banks in the federal-funds market—banks that are widely scattered among all Federal Reserve districts, although the bulk of all transactions is executed through facilities located in New York.
While the U.S. money market has become truly national, it still needs a final clearing centre upon which the net impact of changes in overall supply or demand can ultimately converge and where the final balancing adjustments of the market as a whole can be accomplished. In filling that need, New York City continues to be the centre of the national money market.Robert Vincent Roosa