Liquidity and Leverage - The Two Faces of Liquidity [Audio]

Speaker(s): Professor Raghuram Rajan | Lionel Robbins was one of the outstanding men of his time; economist, public servant and supporter of the arts. The lectures, which were established in his name, take place each year and are a major event in the life of the School, featuring eminent economists from around the world. This year Raghuram Rajan, the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth will deliver the Lionel Robbins Lectures. A bank's issuance of short-term demandable or overnight claims in order to finance illiquid loans leads to panics. Since the dawn of banking in Assyria and Sumeria, long before we had central banks, deposit insurance, or a tax advantage to debt, banks have had this structure, and critics have been troubled by it, as they are today. Professor Rajan will argue that this structure of banks - financing illiquid loans with short term or demandable debt - is not just a bug in the system, it is also a feature. This talk will focus on why anticipation of high liquidity can be detrimental for the financial system, increasing leverage, the system's dependence on the liquidity materializing, and lowering good governance practices. Raghuram Rajan was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India between September 2013 and September 2016. Between 2003 and 2006, Dr. Rajan was the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund. The first of this years Lionel Robbins Lectures will take place on Monday 11 March. Established at LSE in 1990 CEP is one of Europe's leading economic research centres. It addresses three related questions: How to foster growth? How to share growth? How to make growth sustainable?