From the Federal Reserve Bank Of New York's Liberty Street Economics blog, April 11:
A 2017 Liberty Street Economics post described the balance sheet effects of the Federal Open Market Committee’s decision to cease reinvestments of maturing securities—that is, the mechanics of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet “runoff.” At the time, the overnight reverse repo (ON RRP) facility was fairly small (less than $200 billion for most of July 2017) and was not mentioned in the post for the sake of simplicity. Today, by contrast, take-up at the ON RRP facility is much larger (over $1.5 trillion for most of 2022). In this post, we update the earlier analysis and describe how the presence of the ON RRP facility affects the mechanics of the balance sheet runoff.
Simplified Balance Sheets
In the exhibit below, we describe simplified balance sheets for the Fed, the Treasury, banks, and money market funds (MMFs). We only show the balance sheet items that are essential for understanding the mechanics related to the Fed’s actions. In a follow-up post, we consider the role of levered nonbank financial institutions and households.
- On the Fed’s balance sheet, the asset side contains Treasury securities; on the liability side, there are reserves held by banks, cash balances held by the Treasury in its “checking account” at the Fed (the Treasury General Account, or TGA), and ON RRP balances held by MMFs.
- On the Treasury’s balance sheet, the asset side contains balances in the TGA; on the liability side, there are Treasury securities.
- On banks’ balance sheet, the asset side contains Treasury securities and reserves held at the Fed; on the liability side, there are deposits held by MMFs (for example, transaction deposits as well as overnight and term deposits placed in wholesale funding markets).
- On MMFs’ balance sheet, the asset side contains Treasury securities, deposits at banks, and investments in the ON RRP facility; on the liability side, there are MMF shares held by households. In contrast to banks and the Treasury, MMFs cannot hold balances in a Fed account; however, MMFs have access to the ON RRP facility (MMFs with ON RRP access accounted for approximately 80 percent of MMF assets under management at the end of 2021)....
....MUCH MORE
HT: FT Alphaville's Further Reading post, April 11
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