{"id":52372,"date":"2020-04-10T09:54:04","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T14:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52372"},"modified":"2020-04-10T09:54:09","modified_gmt":"2020-04-10T14:54:09","slug":"qe-4-cut-in-half-this-week-feds-helicopter-money-for-wall-street-the-wealthy-hits-1-8-trillion-in-4-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52372","title":{"rendered":"QE-4 Cut in Half this Week. Fed\u2019s Helicopter Money for Wall Street &#038; the Wealthy Hits $1.8 Trillion in 4 Weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2020\/04\/09\/qe-4-cut-in-half-this-week-but-still-1-8-tn-helicopter-money-for-wall-street-and-wealthy-in-4-weeks-of-federal-reserve-balance-sheet-money-printing-and-bailouts\/\">QE-4 Cut in Half this Week. Fed\u2019s Helicopter Money for Wall Street &amp; the Wealthy Hits $1.8 Trillion in 4 Weeks<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Regular folks need not apply.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Total assets on the Fed\u2019s weekly balance sheet jumped by $272 billion in one week, to $6.08 trillion, according to the Fed\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.federalreserve.gov\/releases\/h41\/\">release<\/a>&nbsp;Thursday afternoon. Since the Fed started this&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2020\/03\/23\/what-are-all-the-feds-corporate-investor-bailout-programs-and-spvs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">spree of Wall Street and asset-holder bailout programs<\/a>&nbsp;four weeks ago, total assets have exploded by $1.77 trillion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But note: This increase of $272 billion is&nbsp;less than half&nbsp;of the increases in the prior two weeks. You can see this in the chart as the distance between the two markers this week shrank by half compared to the prior two weeks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/US-Fed-Balance-sheet-2020-04-09-total-assets.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-59272\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The assets on the Fed\u2019s balance sheet are mostly composed of Treasury securities, mortgage-backed securities (MBS), repurchase agreements (repos), \u201cforeign central bank liquidity swaps,\u201d and \u201cloans.\u201d We\u2019ll go through them one at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Treasury securities.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Fed added $293 billion in Treasury securities during the week of the balance sheet. But the total balance sheet increased by \u201conly\u201d \u2013 so to speak \u2013 $272 billion. So some of the other assets actually declined. And we\u2019ll get to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This $293 billion spike in Treasury securities this week was also lower than the spikes in the prior weeks which averaged about $350 billion. This is one factor in the cut-in-half QE-4. For now, the Fed is sticking to its announcement that it would drastically cut QE from the prior weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Fed is now adding only Treasury securities with maturities of&nbsp;over one year&nbsp;(coupon Treasury securities, TIPS, and Floating Rate Notes). The balance of T-bills (non-coupon securities with maturities of one year or less) has remained roughly flat for four weeks, at $326 billion, and the Fed has only bought enough to replace T-bills that matured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/US-Fed-Balance-sheet-2020-04-09-treasuries.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-59273\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>QE-4 Cut in Half this Week. Fed\u2019s Helicopter Money for Wall Street &amp; the Wealthy Hits $1.8 Trillion in 4 Weeks Regular folks need not apply. Total assets on the Fed\u2019s weekly balance sheet jumped by $272 billion in one week, to $6.08 trillion, according to the Fed\u2019s&nbsp;release&nbsp;Thursday afternoon. Since the Fed started this&nbsp;spree of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[303,661,3650,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-52372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-fed","tag-qe","tag-us-federal-reserve","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52374,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52372\/revisions\/52374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}