The economic crisis and its aftermath have posed significant challenges to policymakers. To help meet those challenges, the Federal Reserve deployed several innovative policy tools to help relieve the stress in financial markets during the crisis. These tools have created their own significant...

What are "reserves," and why do banks hold them? What are "sweep accounts," and how do they work? What’s the relationship between the two? And what’s the Fed’s role in all of this? In this article, Jeff Wrase considers the effect sweep accounts have had on the market for bank reserves and...