Tag Archives: collateral scarcity

It’s never just one thing or another. Take, for example, collateral scarcity. By itself, it’s already a problem but it may not be enough to bring the whole system to reverse. A good illustration would be 2017. Throughout that whole year, T-bill rates (4-week, in particular) kept indicating this very shortfall, especially the repeated instances when equivalent bill yields would go below the RRP “floor” and often stay there for prolonged periods. There was, as I wrote...

If there was a compelling collateral case for bending the Treasury yield curve toward inversion beginning last October, what follows is the update for the twist itself. As collateral scarcity became shortage then a pretty substantial run, that was the very moment yield curve flattening became inverted. Just like October, you can actually see it all unfold. According to the latest FRBNY data taken from Primary Dealers, repo fails during the week of April 6 (most...

The Federal Reserve didn’t just raise the range for its federal funds target by 25 bps, upper and lower bounds, it also added the same to its twin policy tools which the “central bank” says are crucial to maintaining order in money markets thereby keeping federal funds inside the band where it is supposed to be. The FOMC voted to increase IOER from 15 bps to 40 bps, and the RRP from 5 bps to 30 bps. That RRP, or reverse repo program, is meant to be something of a...

Securities lending as standard practice is incredibly complicated, and for many the process can be counterintuitive. With numerous different players contributing various pieces across a wide array of financial possibilities, not to mention the whole expanse of global geography, collateral for collateral swaps have gone largely unnoticed by even mainstream Economics and central banking. This despite the fact, yes, fact, securities lending was the epicenter of the 2008...

With the 7s10s already inverted, and the 5s today mere bps away, making a macro case for the distortion isn’t too difficult. Despite China’s “upside” economic data today, even the Chinese are talking more about their downside worries (shooting/hoping for “stability”) than strength. In the US or Europe, no matter the CPIs in either place there are cyclical (not just inventory) warning signs all over the place. Aside from these economic concerns, is there a pure money...

Back on February 23, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell stopped by (in a virtual, Zoom sense) the Senate Banking Committee to testify as required by law. In the Q&A portion, he was asked the following by Montana’s Senator Steve Daines: SENATOR DAINES. I just was looking at the T bill chart and noticing since the 1st of February, the one month rates have dropped in half from 0.06 to today 0.03, two months went from 0.07, to 0.02. We’re starting to get into that...

Initially, the dots got all the attention. Though these things are beyond hopeless, the media needs them to write up its account of a more fruitful monetary policy outcome because markets continue to discount that entirely. Dots look like inflationary success if possibly even now more likely, whereas yields and especially bills have (re)taken a more skeptical approach pricing almost no chance for it. Buried in the FOMC minutiae on Wednesday was an upward adjustment...