Dealer Intermediation in the Primary Market of Commercial Paper

The commercial paper (CP) market is an important source of short-term funding for highly-rated financial and nonfinancial firms, with over $1 trillion in outstanding assets. The Global Financial Crisis in 2008 and the COVID-19 crisis in March 2020 both demonstrated the fragility of the CP market, which seized up in both crises and only recovered following interventions from the Federal Reserve in the form of several liquidity facilities.