pahunkboy
Posts: 33061
Joined: 2/26/2006 From: Central Pennsylvania Status: offline
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I missed this part of the above link, check this out. --> The cash enters the system and theoretically stimulates the economy because it supplies banks with money to make loans with.A “reverse repurchase agreement” is the exact opposite. It is a method of reducing the money supply by selling bonds to the banks, and taking the cash back out of the system. In this case, the Fed gave banks cash for toxic defaulting mortgage bonds. Then, it took the same cash back by selling the banks new treasury bills just received from the U.S. Treasury. The Fed, in turn, bought these T-bills with the newly printed dollars. The banks, having gotten rid of toxic assets, were allowed to transfer private risk to the taxpayers. This process bolsters bank balance sheets by privatizing bank profits, and socializing bank losses.At the same time, the U.S. Treasury has been very busy selling newly printed Treasury bills to anyone foolish enough to buy them. To a large extent, the fools reside overseas, but some reside inside this country, and the sale of these U.S. bonds has resulted in a substantial inflow of foreign reserves to the Treasury. Banks have also been offered favorable interest rates on both reserve and non-reserve deposits held at the Fed.This was combined with what is probably a tacit agreement by which the banks were given the money and led to redeposit most newly printed cash back into the Fed, in a category known as “Reserve balances with Federal Reserve Banks”. This category has ballooned from $8 billion in September to $578 billion on November 28th.On October 9, 2008, the Federal Reserve began paying interest on deposits at Federal Reserve Banks. The overnight rate happens to have dropped way below the “official” federal funds rate. Meanwhile, rates paid by the Fed on required deposits are only .1% less than the federal funds rate, and on voluntary deposits only .35% less than the federal funds rate. Accordingly, U.S. banks can engage in a dollar based one-nation carry trade, which further sequesters the newly printed dollars.Banks are borrowing from the Fed, then taking the same money, redepositing it, and earning a spread on the interest rate differential. Banks can also deposit newly printed dollars into a category known as “Deposits with Federal Reserve Banks, other than reserve balances.” This category also earns interest in a similar way, and has risen from $12 billion to $554 billion in the same time period. The funds will eventually be used for direct lending from the Fed to open market borrowers, at huge levels of risk that even the free-wheeling cowboys who run things at America’s private banks are not willing to accept. /snip. So they are double dipping and riding the spread. wow. imagine that. what a crock of shit for the peons!!
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