This has eased banks’ balance sheet constraints, and encouraged them to extend new credit or continue rolling over maturing loans to firms. As the inflationary pressures that we were still observing until last summer, receded rapidly, we have also been able to grant unlimited access to central bank credit at a sharply decreasing cost.
Well, relative to its counterparts around the world, the U.S. central bank is highly decentralized. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis is one of 12 regional Reserve Banks that, along with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the Federal Reserve System.