The reserve requirement (or cash reserve ratio) is a central bank regulation that sets the minimum reserves each commercial bank must hold (rather than lend out) of customer deposits and notes. These required reserves are normally in the form of cash stored physically in a bank vault (vault cash) or deposits made with a central bank.
The required reserve ratio is sometimes used as a tool in monetary policy, influencing the country's borrowing and interest rates by changing the amount of funds available for banks to make loans with. Western central banks rarely alter the reserve requirements because it would cause immediate liquidity problems for banks with low excess reserves; they generally prefer to use open market operations (buying and selling government-issued bonds) to implement their monetary policy. The People's Bank of China uses changes in reserve requirements as an inflation-fighting tool, and raised the reserve requirement ten times in 2007 and eleven times since the beginning of 2010. As of 2006 the required reserve ratio in the United States was 10% on transaction deposits and zero on time deposits and all other deposits.
An institution that holds reserves in excess of the required amount is said to hold excess reserves.
Read more about Reserve Requirement: Effects On Money Supply
Famous quotes containing the words reserve and/or requirement:
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.”
—John Major (b. 1943)