FX Swap Lines and Dollar Funding Costs

Abstract

Following a scarcity of dollar funding available internationally to banks and financial institutions, through 2008 the Federal Reserve expanded or established Temporary Reciprocal Currency Arrangements (Swap Lines) with fourteen foreign central banks. These central banks would have the capacity to use funds accessed through the swaps to provide dollar liquidity to institutions in their constituencies. In this paper, we focus on the elements of the dollar funding shortages that arose in 2007 and continued into 2009. In particular, we detail the market forces that contributed to the changing availability of dollars, with some focus on disruptions associated with money market funds and interbank lending activity. We also detail the forces behind the demand for dollars by globally-oriented banks. The paper then turns to the contribution of foreign exchange swap lines among central banks to reducing dollar funding pressures and limiting stresses in money markets, using for this purpose an analysis of high frequency data on funding costs in different currencies and tenors.