I have made a distinction between “illiquid” and “liquid” banks without specifying much in the way of an institutional frame work for distinguishing between the two classes. Indeed, banks that are illiquid in any one period need not be in the next. Being illiquid seems pejorative, but it is not if, at any point in time, it includes banks with the better (forward) retail lending opportunities. Also, with the government’s massive injections of new equity into large banks, their counterparty risk may have been substantially eliminated—as shown by the convergence of LIBOR to the federal funds rate in 2009
