Eduardo Levy Yeyati
The arrival of Covid-19 instigated financial turmoil in March 2020. As in previous episodes of financial instability, the uncertainty made investors rush to hold US dollar-denominated assets, creating a dollar shortage. To mitigate acute strains in the offshore dollar funding markets and avoid a global systematic financial crisis, the Federal Reserve (‘Fed’) made US dollar liquidity readily available. They did so by reducing the pricing of swap operations, extending the maturity, and increasing the frequency of swap operations with the major central banks. The Fed had numerous swap lines with other central banks including the Bank of Canada (BOC), the Bank of England (BOE), the Bank of Japan (BOJ), the ECB, and the Swiss National Bank (SNB). On 19 March 2020, the Fed reactivated the swap lines it had established with nine central banks at the time of the 2008 Global Crisis and doubled their maximal lines.