Since 2004 the Fed has raised short-term interest rates in numerous baby steps, but--and this is key--it has failed to mop up the excess money it created.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Since 2004 the Fed has raised short-term interest rates in numerous baby steps, but--and this is key-- it has failed to mop up the excess money it created.

FORBES: Unindicted Blunderer

If the Fed truly wants to tighten, there's an easy, time-tested way to do it: sell bonds from its portfolio to mop up the excess money it's mistakenly spilled onto the financial markets for the past 18 months.

FORBES: Fact and Comment

The Central Bank of Iraq recently broadened the range of tactics it uses to mop up excess liquidity in the system and maintain the dinar's de facto peg to the dollar, which, given the primitive state of Iraq's financial system, is the best mechanism the bank has to keep prices stable.

ECONOMIST: Struggling to pick up the pieces | The

Its job is greatly complicated by its desire to maintain a pegged currency: buying dollars at the fixed rate of 8.3 yuan creates a lot of extra liquidity that it then struggles to mop up.

ECONOMIST: A $45 billion shot in the arm

Celtic Crusaders and Salford used to mop up all the talent, but now it has evened itself out because there is no immediate prospect of promotion to Super League.

BBC: Ready to rumble with Thunder

But the pace of bank lending is unsustainable, and America's recent experience suggests that it is better to prevent bubbles forming than to mop up the mess afterwards.

ECONOMIST: Is the economic stimulus too much of a good thing?

It will be down to the big City institutions to mop up all the so-called lapsed shares.

BBC: Deadline looms for BT shareholders

These then morphed into "banks for bankers" - clearing houses which would mop up liquidity among the middle and upper classes and spread it through the private banking system (in the lobby of the Bank of England there is a nice painting of the English bourgeoisie queuing up at Threadneedle Street on Dividend Day by George Elgar Hicks).

BBC: Central banks are part of the state