Under these circumstances, public authorities undertook a series of actions to support the banking sector, in particular the following:   Approval of a law which increased the insured amount of public deposits;    Decisions of the Supervisory Council of the Bank of Albania to limit bank exposure against their foreign bank owner groups and suspend the distribution of dividend for banks during 2008 and 2009;    Implementation of a number of other decisions taken by the Bank of Albania in relation to the establishment of more easing conditions to provide liquidity in the inter-bank market; and    Further improvement of the regulatory supervisory framework, aiming at maintaining banking activity stability. Overall, during this stage, the Bank of Albania has played an essential role for the identification of short-term problems of the banking sector and their immediate addressing. This process was necessary to identify later longer-term implications on the banking activity performance and further alignment of the supervisory framework. Banking activity performance over the past two years, has shown that these measures proved to be effective and the Albanian banking system overcame with success the global crisis effects. The withdrawal of publics deposits from the banking sector was staunched at the end of 2009 Q1 and, from that moment, their return to the banks continues consistently. The current financial situation continues to be stable, overall, compared with previous periods, with a firm public confidence and satisfactory condition of liquidity and capitalisation.
The debate preceding the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 was protracted and intense. Early drafts of reform proposals were careful not to even mention a “central bank” – the 75-year-old scars from the Second Bank’s failed reauthorization battle had still not fully healed. Although there was a strong recognition that the country needed a central bank to forestall and mitigate financial panics, there was considerable disagreement about how it should be structured. Important considerations included what role should be played by  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  private bankers versus government officials, how centralized the new bank should be and the extent of its powers. 1 During this period, the U.S. economy was susceptible to financial panics. Lacking a central bank, the country had no reliable lender of last resort that could provide currency and credit on demand against high-quality assets. Banks had to self-insure against bank runs by holding a high fraction of deposits as cash, and by entering into private liquidity agreements with other banks. Self-insurance was not only expensive relative to the cost of a public backstop provided by a central bank, but it was also limited in its effectiveness. When the business cycle turned down and financial stress intensified, bank runs often ensued as bank customers rushed to convert their deposits into cash. Without a true lender of last resort, cash that banks individually and collectively kept in reserve often proved inadequate to meet demand.