Containing banking panics under tbe National Banking System: Discretion versus coordination

Elmus Wicker draws a picture of banking panics under the National Banking System (NBS). He considers that the New York Clearing House (NYCH) was responsible for the aggravation of banking crises because of its incapacity to coordonnate banks and to equalize their reserves. A description of the structural characteristics of the NBS challenges this thesis. Moreover, a theory of the high-poweredmoney help to show why equalization of reserves is overwhelmed by NYCH loan certificates issuance. Our demonstration leads to a controversy, actually the opposition between discretion and coordination, and to the idea that the discretion logic excludes coordination log