The lede: Since Silicon Valley Bank collapsed after depositors realized it had Treasuries it couldn't turn into cash fast enough, Washington has quietly worked to fix the "stigma" problem: banks avoid the Fed's discount window even when solvent, because borrowing from it signals weakness to markets and counterparties. Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman is pushing "fundamental reform" of the window, and the bipartisan Discount Window Preparedness Act (Sens. Kennedy and Warner) would force banks over $10 billion in assets to test-borrow regularly, count discount-window access toward liquidity requirements, and align Fed collateral rules with the Federal Home Loan Bank System. The explicit goal is normalization — make discount-window borrowing boring, routine, invisible to the market. But routine central-bank liquidity plumbing needs someone to run the pipes: custody the pledged collateral, clear the intraday payments, and stand behind the correspondent relationships that let a $15 billion regional bank move money and post assets to the Fed without building that infrastructure itself. That's a fee business, and it already has an oligopoly.
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