Global banks can no longer assume access to the Federal Reserve’s discount lending window as an element of their living wills, people familiar with the process have warned.
US regulators set out the specific guidance in confidential letters on August 5 detailing why they recently rejected the living wills of the world’s largest banks. Hundreds of banks took advantage of the discount lending window on many occasions during the 2008 crisis.
Critics say that instead of creating an environment for an orderly resolution that would avoid the kind of panic that ensued after the failure of Lehman Brothers, regulators are creating more risk by making a bank’s failure theoretically inevitable. They added that the prohibition defeats the purpose of the discount window and the Fed’s role as the lender of last resort.