Friday, September 23, 2005

HoustonChronicle.com - Cash in demand, but supply short

HoustonChronicle.com - Cash in demand, but supply short
"Cash-hungry residents who had to deal with Hurricane Rita also drained automatic teller machines throughout the city.

Machines at some of Chase's 37 Houston branches, which were open for part of Thursday, ran out of cash, spokesman Greg Hassell said. He wasn't sure how many.

'We weren't able to get cash in because of the roadways, and there was very heavy demand,' he said. 'There were some cash shortages.'"
After disasters it has become standard practice for the Fed to increase liquidity (see post 9-11 for textbook response), but it would be interesting to see what the preparation for hurricanes at the Fed is. Or at local banks even. Both the main Federal Reserve page and that of the Atlanta Fed have comments on the hurricanes but neither is very specific. The Dallas Fed page actually is much more informative in this regard but sort of dry for class use.

If anyone has a good contact at either Fed or a major bank in path of Hurricanes who would like to be interviewed for a podcast (and blog entry) please email me. I think it could be very informative and a great way to use current events in a Money and Banking course.

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