The Federal Reserve's discount window--through which it lends cash to liquidity-constrained solvent banks--is key to keeping credit flowing in the economy and avoiding financial crises when banks are under stress, but banks are often reluctant to use it, and those who do so find it frustratingly clunky. At a March 2024 Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy event, Susan McLaughlin, who oversaw lending to banks at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, offered several suggestions for fixing the discount window.
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