Bank reserves in the United States increased dramatically at the end of 2008 and have undergone another significant increase between November 2010 and June 2011. These increases in reserves required major adjustments in banks' balance sheets. We study the evolution of reserve holdings across banks since the fall of 2008 and how some of the other main components of banks' balance sheets changed concurrently. Motivated by the potential implications for monetary policy of operating with a high

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... l of reserves, we investigate the situation of those banks holding significant quantities of reserves. We find that those banks have increased their total liquidity holdings and that a large fraction of the reserves is held by banks with sufficient capital to increase lending without confronting binding capital requirements.