It looks like SLR relief is ending, even as the Fed is set to continue turbo QE. A bank’s balance sheet is like an office building – it can only accommodate so many tenants, and the bank wants the best tenants it can get. The size of the building is set by the leverage ratio, and tenants are judged by metrics that include their commercial value and costs. Right now there are many more potential tenants than vacant offices, so banks maximize returns by forcing the least profitable tenants out. As discussed before, banks will use negative rates to do this. The Liquidity Coverage Ratio (“LCR”) is one of the key metrics banks use to assess the costs of their tenants. In this post I sketch out why banks will push some deposits outs, how deposits are judged under the LCR, and where those deposits will end up.

Continue reading