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To Clarify, Main Street Is Not Wall Street

After all the destructive policies we have seen coming out of the Eccles Building, it may be time to ask Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, “Do you even know what the economy is?” All the easing and stimulus has taken us to a place we could call Bubbleville. It has bolstered asset prices and speculation but done little to help Main Street or generate a strong economy. This destructive force was unleashed long before Covid-19 came into the picture and hanging our economic misfortunes on the pandemic may sound reasonable but is far from accurate.History shows that misguided financial policies often end in a crisis, in this case, it is likely to play out in massive inflation. Milton Friedman knew a bit about this, he said; The government benefits the first from new money creation, massively increases its imbalances, and blames inflation on the last recipients of the new money created, savers and the private sector, so it “solves” the inflation created by the government by taxing citizens again. Inflation is taxation without legislation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeIeFUJ9EY

A comical Progressive Insurance commercial has a smooth-faced fella going on about his beard and apologizing for how he looks. Finally, a coworker asks him, “Jamie, do you even know what a beard is?” Over the months we have watched Fed Chairman Jerome Powell time and time again cut rates and increase the Fed’s balance sheet. This has hurt savers, forced investors into risky investments in search of yield, damaged the dollar, encouraged politicians to spend like drunken sailors, and increased inequality.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

bruce wilds, advancing time blog, jerome powell, fed, us federal reserve, bubble, financial policies, fed balance sheet, inflation, taxation, inequality

Update on Fed’s QE: The Crybabies on Wall Street, which Clamored for More, Are Disappointed

January 31, 2021

Update on Fed’s QE: The Crybabies on Wall Street, which Clamored for More, Are Disappointed

And five SPVs expired, including the one that bought corporate bonds and bond ETFs.

The Fed has now put on ice five of its SPVs (Special Purpose Vehicles) which had been designed back in March to bail out the bond market. It unwound its repo positions last June. Its foreign central bank liquidity swaps are now down to near-nothing except with the Swiss National Bank, which seems to have a need for dollars. The Fed has been adding to its pile of Treasury securities at the rate spelled out in its FOMC statements, thereby monetizing part of the US government debt. And it has been adding to its pile of Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS).

The result is that total assets on its weekly balance sheet through Wednesday, at $7.4 trillion, are roughly flat with the level in mid-December and are up by $200 billion from early June, with an average growth rate over the six-plus months of $30 billion a month.

And the crybabies on Wall Street that have for months been clamoring for more QE have been disappointed. It’s still a huge amount of QE, but for the crybabies on Wall Street, it’s never enough:

But the long-term chart shows just how hog-wild the Fed had gone, furiously trying to bail out and enrich the asset holders, which are concentrated at the very top, thereby creating in the shortest amount of time the largest wealth disparity the US has ever seen. From crisis to crisis, from bailout to bailout, and even when there is no crisis:

Repurchase Agreements (Repos) remained at near-zero:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fed Assets Eke Out New Record for First Time Since June 10. But Repos, Dollar Liquidity Swaps, SPVs Mothballed

October 24, 2020

Fed Assets Eke Out New Record for First Time Since June 10. But Repos, Dollar Liquidity Swaps, SPVs Mothballed

Only Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) are still active.

The Fed has now reduced to zero or to near-zero or essentially mothballed and thrown the towel in on three of its five QE and bailout strategies: repos, dollar liquidity swap lines, and special purpose vehicles (SPVs). It has maintained its activity in Treasury securities and mortgage backed securities (MBS).

Total assets on the Fed’s balance sheet for the week ended October 21, released this afternoon, rose by $26 billion from the prior week, to $7.177 trillion, for the first time edging past the June 10 high of $7.168 trillion:

Repurchase Agreements (Repos) remained at zero:

Central-bank liquidity-swaps dropped to near-zero.

The Fed’s “dollar liquidity swap lines” by which it provided dollars to a select group of other central banks, fell out of use and are down to just $7.6 billion, a mere rounding error on the Fed’s $7 trillion balance sheet, from a peak of $448 billion in early May:

SPVs inching lower for months, now at $196 billion, mostly mothballed.

The Fed loans to the SPVs. The Treasury Department provides the equity capital. The amounts reflected in each of those SPVs is the sum of those loans from the Fed and the equity capital from the Treasury Department. But the Fed has barely lent to them, and most of the amounts you see is the equity capital from the Treasury, much of it unused, and these SPVs have now been mothballed.

Even the SPV that holds corporate bonds and bond ETFs (Corporate Credit Facilities or CCF) has been mothballed. The Fed bought its last ETF in July and only added minuscule amounts of bonds in August and September.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What’s Behind the Fed’s Project to Send Free Money to People Directly?

October 3, 2020

What’s Behind the Fed’s Project to Send Free Money to People Directly?

A lump-sum payment in digital dollars for all Americans during a recession or to raise inflation, as an alternative to QE and negative interest rates, which have failed.

By Wolf Richter. This is the transcript of my podcast last Sunday, THE WOLF STREET REPORT. You can listen to it on YouTube or download it wherever you get your podcasts.

There is a lot of discussion suddenly about a Federal Reserve project to make direct payments to households during an economic crisis. In March, legislation was proposed in the House and in the Senate to authorize the Fed to do this.

At the beginning of August, two former Fed officials floated a trial balloon of this type of operation with some specifics as to how it would work and how it would be accounted for on the Fed’s balance sheet.

And now, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Loretta Mester, gave a speech on the modernization of the decades-old, slow, and cumbersome payment systems we have in the United States. The Fed has been working on this modernization since long before the Pandemic. And near the end of that speech, she said that the Fed was looking into ways in which it could make direct and instant payments to every American, even those that don’t have bank accounts.

So free money for all Americans. This is very different from the stimulus checks because the government had to borrow the money that it sent to consumers. The Fed would just create the money and send it to consumers. And this is getting pretty serious now.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fourth Turning Accelerating Towards Climax

May 12, 2020

FOURTH TURNING ACCELERATING TOWARDS CLIMAX

“At some point, America’s short-term Crisis psychology will catch up to the long-term post-Unraveling fundamentals. This might result in a Great Devaluation, a severe drop in the market price of most financial and real assets. This devaluation could be a short but horrific panic, a free-falling price in a market with no buyers. Or it could be a series of downward ratchets linked to political events that sequentially knock the supports out from under the residual popular trust in the system. As assets devalue, trust will further disintegrate, which will cause assets to devalue further, and so on. Every slide in asset prices, employment, and production will give every generation cause to grow more alarmed.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

Economists Predict Great Depression II for US Economy: Fast or V ...

I’ve been writing articles about the Fourth Turning for over a decade and nothing has happened since its tumultuous onset in 2008, with the global financial collapse, created by the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street co-conspirator owners, that has not followed along the path described by Strauss and Howe in their 1997 book – The Fourth Turning.

Like molten lava bursting forth from a long dormant (80 years) volcano, the core elements of this Fourth Turning continue to flow along channels of distress, long ago built by bad decisions, corrupt politicians and the greed of bankers. The molten ingredients of this Crisis have been the central drivers since 2008 and this second major eruption is flowing along the same route. The core elements are debt, civic decay, and global disorder, just as Strauss & Howe anticipated over two decades ago.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: When Money Died

April 15, 2020

Weekly Commentary: When Money Died

Sitting at the dinner table, our eleven-year old son inquired: “If a big meteor was about to hit the earth, how much money would the Fed print?” I complimented his sense of humor. Yet it was a sad testament to the historic monetary fiasco that will haunt his generation.

Federal Reserve Assets surpassed $6.0 TN for the first time, having inflated another $272 billion for the week (to $6.083 TN). Fed Assets inflated an astonishing $1.925 TN, or 46%, in only six weeks. Bank of American analysts this week suggested the Fed’s balance sheet could reach $9.0 TN by year-end.

M2 “money supply” surged another $371 billion for the week (ending 3/30) to a record $16.669 TN. M2 expanded an unprecedented $1.136 TN over five weeks (up $2.123 TN, or 14.6%, y-o-y). For some perspective, M2 has expanded more during the past six months than it did the entire nineties (no slouch of a decade in terms of monetary inflation). Not included in M2, Institutional Money Fund Assets expanded an unparalleled $676 billion in five weeks to a record $2.935 TN. Total Money Fund Assets were up $1.375 TN, or 44%, over the past year to a record $4.473 TN.

There was a sordid process – rather than a specific date – for When Money Died. But it’s dead and buried. There are a few things that should remain sacrosanct. Money is absolutely one of them. Money is special. Sound Money is precious – to be coveted and safeguarded. As a stable and liquid store of value, Money is the bedrock of Capitalism, social cohesion and stable democracy. Society trusts Money – and with that trust comes great responsibility and risk.

Analysis I read some years back on the Gold Standard resonates even more strongly today: Limiting the capacity for inflating its supply, the structure of backing Money with the precious metal worked to promote monetary and economic stability.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Fed’s Balance Sheet: The Other Exponential Curve

April 11, 2020

The Fed’s Balance Sheet: The Other Exponential Curve

As the threat of COVID-19 keeps millions of Americans locked down at home, businesses and financial markets are suffering.

For example, a survey of small-business owners found that 51% did not believe they could survive the pandemic for longer than three months. At the same time, the S&P 500 posted its worst first-quarter on record.

In response to this havoc, the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed) is taking unprecedented steps to try and stabilize the economy. This includes, as Visual Capitalist’s Marcu Lu details below, a return to quantitative easing (QE), a controversial policy which involves adding more money into the banking system. To help us understand the implications of these actions, today’s chart illustrates the swelling balance sheet of the Fed.

How Does Quantitative Easing Work?

Expansionary monetary policies are used by central banks to foster economic growth by increasing the money supply and lowering interest rates. These mechanisms will, in theory, stimulate business investment as well as consumer spending.

However, in the current low interest-rate environment, the effectiveness of such policies is diminished. When short-term rates are already so close to zero, reducing them further will have little impact. To overcome this dilemma in 2008, central banks began experimenting with the unconventional monetary policy of QE to inject new money into the system by purchasing massive quantities of longer-term assets such as Treasury bonds.

These purchases are intended to increase the money supply while decreasing the supply of the longer-term assets. In theory, this should put upward pressure on these assets’ prices (due to less supply) and decrease their yield (interest rates have an inverse relationship with bond prices).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

#MacroView: Is The “Debt Chasm” Too Big For The Fed To Fill?

April 11, 2020

#MacroView: Is The “Debt Chasm” Too Big For The Fed To Fill?

Over the last month, the Federal Reserve, and the Government, have unleashed a torrent of liquidity into the U.S. markets to offset a credit crisis of historic proportions. Here is a list of programs already implemented which have already surpassed all programs during the “Financial Crisis.”

March 6th – $8.3 billion “emergency spending” package.
March 12th – Federal Reserve supplies $1.5 trillion in liquidity.
March 13th – President Trump pledges to reprieve student loan interest payments
March 13th – President Trump declares a “National Emergency” freeing up $50 billion in funds.
March 15th – Federal Reserve cuts rates to zero and launches $700 billion in “Q.E.”
March 17th – Fed launches the Primary Dealer Credit Facility to buy corporate bonds.
March 18th – Fed creates the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility
March 18th – President Trump signs “coronavirus” relief plan to expand paid leave ($100 billion)
March 20th – President Trump invokes the Defense Production Act.
March 23rd – Fed pledges “Unlimited QE” of Treasury, Mortgage, and Corporate Bonds.
March 23rd – Fed launches two Corporate Credit Facilities:
- A Primary Market Facility (Issuance of new 4-year bonds for businesses.)
- A Secondary Market Facility (Purchase of corporate bonds and corporate bond ETF’s)
March 23rd – Fed launches the Term Asset-Backed Security Loan Facility (Small Business Loans)
April 9th – Fed launches several new programs:
- The Paycheck Protection Program Loan Facility (Purchase of $350 billion in SBA Loans)
- A Main Street Business Lending Program ($600 billion in additional Small Business Loans)
- The Municipal Liquidity Facility (Purchase of $500 billion in Municipal Bonds.)
- Expands funding for PMCCF, SMCCF and TALF up to $850 billion.

Here is the Fed’s balance sheet through this past Wednesday (estimated at time of writing)

It is currently expected that over the course of the next several quarters, the Fed’s balance sheet will grow to $10 Trillion in total. Such would be a $6 Trillion expansion from the previous levels.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Major Bank Admits QE4 Has Started, And That Stocks Are Rising Because Of The Fed’s Soaring Balance Sheet

December 31, 2019

A Major Bank Admits QE4 Has Started, And That Stocks Are Rising Because Of The Fed’s Soaring Balance Sheet

There was a period of about two months when some of the more confused, Fed sycophantic elements, would parrot everything Powell would say regarding the recently launched $60 billion in monthly purchases of T-Bills, and which according to this rather vocal, if always wrong, subsegment of financial experts, did not constitute QE. Perhaps one can’t really blame them: after all, unable to think for themselves, they merely repeated what Powell said, namely that “growth of our balance sheet for reserve management purposes should in no way be confused with the large-scale asset purchase programs that we deployed after the financial crisis. Neither the recent technical issues nor the purchases of Treasury bills we are contemplating to resolve them should materially affect the stance of monetary policy. In no sense, is this QE.“

As it turned out, it was QE from the perspective of the market, which saw the Fed boosting its balance sheet by $60BN per month, and together with another $20BN or so in TSY and MBS maturity reinvestments, as well as tens of billions in overnight and term repos, and soared roughly around the time the Fed announced “not QE.”

And so, as the Fed’s balance sheet exploded by over $400 billion in under four months, a rate of balance sheet expansion that surpassed QE1, QE2 and Qe3…

… stocks blasted off higher roughly at the same time as the Fed’s QE returned, and are now up every single week since the start of the Fed’s QE4 announcement when the Fed’s balance sheet rose, and are down just one week since then: the week when the Fed’s balance sheet shrank.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“The Fed Hasn’t Expanded Its Balance Sheet At This Speed Since The Financial Crisis”

December 6, 2019

“The Fed Hasn’t Expanded Its Balance Sheet At This Speed Since The Financial Crisis”

The Fed’s balance sheet is expanding at a faster rate than during QE1, QE2 or QE3.

* * *

Submitted by Howard Wang of Convoy Investments

Has QE4 begun? The $1.2 trillion per month hole in the repo market.

In the two months since the repo market blow up, the Fed has been making repo open market operation purchases at a rate of $1.2 trillion per month.

Below is the monthly rate of Fed open market purchases since 2000. In the era of QE and ample reserves, the Fed has not touched open market operations for more than 10 years before 2019. Prior to that, the highest rate of open market operations we saw in history was roughly $300 billion/month briefly after the September 11 attacks, with long‐term averages of around $50 billion/month. To say the current rate of $1.2 trillion/month is unprecedented would be an understatement

The planned QE unwinding has hit a brick wall and the Fed balance sheet is now expanding at a rate matched only briefly by QE1, and faster than QE2 or QE3.

Is this a temporary rescue of the repo market or the start of a sustained QE4? To answer that question, we must look at how monetary policy has evolved since the Financial Crisis.

1. Pre‐2008, scarce reserves regime:

Total reserves: small (<$50 billion)
Excess reserves: none
Interest on excess reserves: 0%
Managing interest rates: to increase rates, Fed sells securities on the open market and reduces supply of reserves, vice versa to decrease rates.
Banks: regulations are lax and risk tolerance is high
Treasury department: carefully manages its cash flows to not impact the total reserve levels.

2. 2008‐2019, ample reserves regime:

Total reserves: large ($trillions)
Excess reserves: large ($trillions)
Interest on excess reserves: positive at around Fed funds rate

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Not QE”, Monetization, & “Definitely Asset Inflation”

November 11, 2019

“Not QE”, Monetization, & “Definitely Asset Inflation”

Chart below shows the Federal Reserve holdings of Treasuries, a weekly change (black columns) and total holdings (red line) during QE1, QE2, Operation Twist, QE3, QT, and “Not QE”. Got it?!? This current “Not QE” explosion in QE is like some kind of old time vaudeville act (like the old Abbott and Costello bit, “who’s on first, what’s on second, I don’t know’s on third”).

But looking more widely, the chart below shows the total Federal Reserve balance sheet (blue shaded area), bank excess reserves (red line), and the delta between the Fed’s balance sheet and excess reserves…also known as direct monetization. As the Fed restarted “not QE” but did not go through the façade of attempting to stock the new money away as “excess reserves”, this new money is flowing straight into assets, like monetary heroine.

Below, a close up of the components above solely in 2019 (through November 6th). Balance sheet soaring once again since the Fed’s sudden pivot, excess reserves continue falling…and the difference in freshly digitized cash in the hands of banks and the like…ready to be levered up.

So, monetization (yellow line) versus the Wilshire 5000 (green line) from 2014 through last week. For those not familiar, the Wilshire 5000 total market index, is a market-capitalization weighted index of the market value of all US stocks actively traded in the US.

And fascinatingly, since the beginning of 2018, the Wilshire 5000 and direct monetization are becoming more attuned to one another. And in mock shock, the new record close in the Wilshire just happens to be accompanied by a new record in direct monetization!?! Almost as if the addition of $320 billion in fresh digital cash since mid August Fed U-turn had something to do with the $2.2 trillion rise in US equities over the same period (a leverage ratio of about 7x). Hmmm.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Collapse In Global M1 Signals A Worldwide Recession Has Arrived

January 14, 2019

Collapse In Global M1 Signals A Worldwide Recession Has Arrived

By now everyone has seen some iteration of this chart showing that the annual change in central bank liquidity is now negative.

Another way to visualize just the Fed’s balance sheet contraction is courtesy of this chart from Morgan Stanley which shows specifically which assets – Treasurys and MBS – are declining on a monthly basis.

When it comes to markets – where the events of December were a vivid reminder that just as QE blew the world’s biggest asset bubble, so QT will deflate it – there is a simple explanation of this negative effect of QT on Markets – in terms of both flow and stock – and it is laid out as follows from Morgan Stanley:

THE STOCK EFFECT (SE) – GROUP 1
- The SE relates to the long-term impact on Group 1 asset prices from the overall change to the central bank’s balance sheet and its impact on the stock of available Group 1 assets.
THE FLOW EFFECT (FE) – GROUP 1
- The FE relates to the short-term impact on Group 1 asset prices from each flow that changes the size of the central bank’s balance sheet.
THE PORTFOLIO BALANCE CHANNEL EFFECT (PBCE) – GROUP 1 AND 2
- The PBCE impacts both Group 1 and Group 2 assets and incorporates the pricing elements of both the stock effect and the flow effect.

But while the immediate effect of the expansion and shrinkage of the Fed’s balance sheet on various asset classes is rather intuitive – if not to Fed presidents of, course – a more pressing question is how will the upcoming liquidity shrinkage affect the global economy.

Unfortunately, the answer appears to be ominous.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Fed Is Tightening More Than It Realizes

November 28, 2018

The Fed Is Tightening More Than It Realizes

Fed’s Balance Sheet Shrinks The Most Since Start Of QT; QE Unwind Hits $321 Billion

November 2, 2018

Fed’s Balance Sheet Shrinks The Most Since Start Of QT; QE Unwind Hits $321 Billion

On Monday, when discussing the two key, opposing forces facing stocks this week, we said that while on one hand stock buybacks will make a triumphant return, as companies with $50bn of quarterly buybacks exited their blackout periods, and the total number of permitted stock repurchases jumps to $110bn by the end of next week and to $145bn the following…

… the offset of the favorable flows from corporate buybacks would be the Fed itself, as the largest Fed balance-sheet reduction-to-date ($-33.3B) would take place on Halloween.

And sure enough, one month after the Fed quantitative tightening entered its peak monthly unwind phase, during which the Fed’s balance sheet is scheduled to shrink by “up to” $30 billion in Treasuries and “up to” $20 billion in MBS a month, for a total of “up to” $50 billion a month, on October 31 the balance sheet declined by $33.8 billion – the biggest weekly total yet – consisting of $23.8 billion in Treasuries, $8 billion in Mortgage Backed Securities, and a modest decline in various other assets.

As a result of Wednesday’s maturities, the Fed’s balance sheet has now shrunk by $321 billion to $4.140 trillion, the lowest since February 12, 2014; since October 2017, when the Fed began its QE unwind, it has now shed $321 billion, or just over 7% from its all time highs.

While MBS totals shifted around over the month, the Treasury decline took place in one day as there were no Treasury securities maturing on Oct. 15, while three security issues matured all in one day on Oct. 31, totaling $23 billion. Those were allowed to “roll off” entirely without replacement. In other words, the Treasury Department paid the Fed $23 billion for them, money which the Fed will promptly “shred”, digitally speaking.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Plunge in Interbank Lending: The Straw that Broke the Fed’s Back

February 13, 2018

Plunge in Interbank Lending: The Straw that Broke the Fed’s Back

Interbank lending took a historic dive. Readers ask “What’s happening?” Let’s investigate.

Interbank Lending Long Term

The plunge in interbank lending is both sudden and dramatic. What’s going on?

Fed Tightening Two Ways

The short answer is a straw broke the Fed’s back.

A more robust explanation is the Fed is tightening two ways: The first by hiking, the second by letting assets on the balance sheet roll off.

Both measures have a tendency to push up long-term interest rates. This is another explanation for the long-end rising. Despite conventional wisdom, inflation and wages have little to do with it.

We can see the effect in other charts.

LIBOR

Year-Over-Year M2 Growth

Money supply growth is falling as are excess reserves.

Excess Reserves

The Fed started balance sheet reduction in October of 2017. Unwinding the balance sheet escalates greatly in 2018.

The treasury unwind started at $6 billion per month, increasing by $6 billion at three-month intervals over 12 months until it reaches $30 billion per month.
The mortgage debt unwind started at $4 billion per month, increasing in steps of $4 billion at three-month intervals over 12 months until it reaches $20 billion per month.

Does the Fed Know What It’s Doing?

Janet Yellen answered that question directly in her speech A Challenging Decade and a Question for the Future, at the Herbert Stein Memorial Lecture National Economists Club on October 20, 2017.

The FOMC does not have any experience in calibrating the pace and composition of asset redemptions and sales to actual and prospective economic conditions. Indeed, as the so-called taper tantrum of 2013 illustrated, even talk of prospective changes in our securities holdings can elicit unexpected abrupt changes in financial conditions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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By Wolf Richter. This is the transcript of my podcast last Sunday, THE WOLF STREET REPORT. You can listen to it on YouTube or download it wherever you get your podcasts.

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