Fed Intervenes With $45.55 Billion Weekend Repo, But Overall Liquidity Ticks Down

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York executed a $45.55 billion weekend liquidity operation Friday, which resulted in led overall temporary central bank liquidity to tick lower.

The Fed added the money to financial markets via what’s called a repurchase agreement operation, or repo, that expires on Monday. It took in $28.2 billion in Treasurys, $1 billion in agencies and $16.35 billion in mortgage bonds from eligible banks, known as primary dealers.

With $48.78 billion in outstanding repos maturing Friday, overall temporary liquidity provided by the Fed via repo transactions ebbed $3.2 billion to $170.5 billion.

Fed repo interventions take in Treasurys, agency and mortgage bonds from the dealers, in what is effectively a short-term loan of central-bank cash, collateralized by the bonds. Primary dealers are limited in the amount of liquidity they can take in exchange for their securities, and they pay interest to the central bank to get the funds.

The Repo Market, Explained
The repo market shook the financial world in September when an unexpected rate spike choked short-term lending, spurring the Federal Reserve to intervene. WSJ explains how this critical, but murky part of the financial system works, and why some banks say the crunch could have been prevented. Illustration: Jacob Reynolds for The Wall Street Journal

Fed money-market interventions are aimed at keeping the federal-funds rate within the central bank’s 1.5%-to-1.75% target range. The interventions also limit but not eliminate the volatility in other money-market rates. The Fed controls the fed-funds rate to influence the overall cost of borrowing in the U.S. economy as part of its efforts to achieve the job and inflation goals set for it by Congress.

Facebook’s Libra Must Be Stopped

After years of disregarding privacy, exploiting user data, and failing to control its platform, Facebook has now unveiled a cryptocurrency and payment system that could take down the entire global economy. Governments must intervene before a company that “moves fast and breaks things” ends up breaking everything.

NEW YORK – Facebook has just unveiled its latest bid for world domination: Libra, a cryptocurrency designed to function as private money anywhere on the planet. In preparing the venture, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been in negotiations with central banks, regulators, and 27 partner companies, each of which will contribute at least $10 million. For fear of raising safety concerns, Facebook has avoided working directly with any commercial banks.
Zuckerberg seems to understand that technological innovation alone will not ensure Libra’s success. He also needs a commitment from governments to enforce the web of contractual relations underpinning the currency, and to endorse the use of their own currencies as collateral. Should Libra ever face a run, central banks would be obliged to provide liquidity.

The question is whether governments understand the risks to financial stability that such a system would entail. The idea of a private, frictionless payment system with 2.6 billion active users may sound attractive. But as every banker and monetary policymaker knows, payment systems require a level of liquidity backstopping that no private entity can provide.

Unlike states, private parties must operate within their means, and cannot unilaterally impose financial obligations on others as needed. That means they cannot rescue themselves; they must be bailed out by states, or be permitted to fail. Moreover, even when it comes to states, currency pegs offer only an illusion of safety. Plenty of countries have had to break such pegs, always while insisting that “this time is different.”

What sets Facebook apart from other issuers of “private money” is its size, global reach, and willingness to “move fast and break things.” It is easy to imagine a scenario in which rescuing Libra could require more liquidity than any one state could provide. Recall Ireland after the 2008 financial crisis. When the government announced that it would assume the private banking sector’s liabilities, the country plunged into a sovereign debt crisis. Next to a behemoth like Facebook, many nation-states could end up looking a lot like Ireland.

Facebook is barreling ahead as if Libra was just another private enterprise. But like many other financial intermediaries before it, the company is promising something that it cannot possibly deliver on its own: the protection of the currency’s value. Libra, we are told, will be pegged to a basket of currencies (fiat money issued by governments), and convertible on demand and at any cost. But this guarantee rests on an illusion, because neither Facebook nor any other private party involved will have access to unlimited stores of the pegged currencies.

To understand what happens when regulators sit on their hands while financial innovators create put options, consider the debacle with money market funds in September 2008. Investors in MMFs were promised that they could treat their holdings like a bank account, meaning they could withdraw as much money as they put in whenever they wanted. But when Lehman Brothers collapsed, MMF investors all tried to cash out at the same time, whereupon it became clear that many funds could not deliver. To forestall a widespread run on all MMFs and the banks that backed them, the US Federal Reserve stepped in to offer liquidity support. A run on Libra would require support on a much larger scale, as well as close coordination among all central banks affected by it.

Given these massive risks, governments must step in and stop Libra before it launches next year. Otherwise, as Maxine Waters, the Chairwoman of the US House Committee on Financial Services, has warned, governments may as well start drafting their own living wills. In the parlance of finance and banking, a “living will” is a written plan that banks provide to regulators describing how they will unwind themselves in the event of insolvency. In the case of a government, a living will would have to explain how the relevant authorities would respond to Libra breaking its peg and triggering a global run.

Obviously, this raises a number of pertinent questions. Would governments vow, like former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke in September 2008, followed by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi in July 2012, to do “whatever it takes” to ensure the currency’s survival? Would they even have the capacity to do so, let alone coordinate their actions – and share losses – with all the other countries involved? Would governments be able to seize control of the system if it proves incapable of sustaining itself?

Silence in response to Facebook’s announcement this week is tantamount to endorsing its dangerous new venture. Governments must not allow private, profit-seeking parties to put the entire global financial system at risk. If banks are “too big to fail,” then states definitely are. If governments fail to protect us from Facebook’s latest act of hubris, we will all pay the price for it.

Trump May Kill the Global Recovery

In a sharp departure from this time last year, the global economy is now being buffeted by growing concerns over US President Donald Trump’s trade war, fragile emerging markets, a slowdown in Europe, and other risks. It is safe to say that the period of low volatility and synchronized global growth is behind us.

.. In 2017, the world economy was undergoing a synchronized expansion, with growth accelerating in both advanced economies and emerging markets. Moreover, despite stronger growth, inflation was tame – if not falling – even in economies like the United States, where goods and labor markets were tightening.
.. Stronger growth with inflation still below target allowed unconventional monetary policies either to remain in full force, as in the eurozone and Japan, or to be rolled back very gradually
.. Markets gave US President Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt during his first year in office; and investors celebrated his tax cuts and deregulatory policies. Many commentators even argued that the decade of the “new mediocre” and “secular stagnation” was giving way to a new “goldilocks” phase of steady, stronger growth.
.. Though the world economy is still experiencing a lukewarm expansion, growth is no longer synchronized. Economic growth in the eurozone, the United Kingdom, Japan, and a number of fragile emerging markets is slowing.
.. while the US and Chinese economies are still expanding, the former is being driven by unsustainable fiscal stimulus.
..with the US economy near full employment, fiscal-stimulus policies, together with rising oil and commodity prices, are stoking domestic inflation.
.. the US Federal Reserve must raise interest rates faster than expected, while also unwinding its balance sheet.
.. the prospect of higher inflation has led even the European Central Bank to consider gradually ending unconventional monetary policies, implying less monetary accommodation at the global level. The combination of a stronger dollar, higher interest rates, and less liquidity does not bode well for emerging markets.
..  Despite strong corporate earnings – which have been goosed by the US tax cuts – US and global equity markets have drifted sideways in recent months.
.. The danger now is that a negative feedback loop between economies and markets will take hold. The slowdown in some economies could lead to even tighter financial conditions in equity, bond, and credit markets, which could further limit growth.
.. Since 2010, economic slowdowns, risk-off episodes, and market corrections have heightened the risks of stag-deflation (slow growth and low inflation); but major central banks came to the rescue with unconventional monetary policies as both growth and inflation were falling.
.. These risks include the negative supply shock that could come from a trade war; higher oil prices, owing to politically motivated supply constraints; and inflationary domestic policies in the US.
.. this time the Fed and other central banks are starting or continuing to tighten monetary policies, and, with inflation rising, cannot come to the markets’ rescue this time.
Another big difference in 2018 is that Trump’s policies are creating further uncertainty. In addition to
  • launching a trade war, Trump is also
  • actively undermining the global economic and geostrategic order that the US created after World War II.

.. the Trump administration’s modest growth-boosting policies are already behind us, the effects of policies that could hamper growth have yet to be fully felt. Trump’s favored fiscal and trade policies will crowd out private investment, reduce foreign direct investment in the US, and produce larger external deficits.

  • His draconian  will diminish the supply of labor needed to support an aging society.
  • His environmental policies will make it harder for the US to compete in the green economy of the future.
  • And his bullying of the private sector will make firms hesitant to hire or invest in the US.

.. Even if the US economy exceeds potential growth over the next year, the effects of fiscal stimulus will fade by the second half of 2019, and the Fed will overshoot its long-term equilibrium policy rate as it tries to control inflation; thus,

achieving a soft landing will become harder.

.. By then, and with protectionism rising, frothy global markets will probably have become even bumpier, owing to the serious risk of a growth stall – or even a downturn – in 2020.

.. With the era of low volatility now behind us, it would seem that the current risk-off era is here to stay.

Big Banks Get a Big Win in Senate Rollback Bill

Nation’s largest banks would gain incentive to buy more municipal bonds in legislation targeting smaller banks

.. a section aimed at making it easier for them to buy state and local bonds.

The provision, championed by Citigroup Inc. and other large banks, would ease a new rule aimed at ensuring banks can raise enough cash during a financial-market meltdown to fund their operations for 30 days, requiring them to hold more cash or securities that are easily salable.

Under federal banking rules approved in 2014, those “high quality liquid assets” included cash, Treasury bonds and corporate debt—but not municipal debt. Banks historically like to hold municipal bonds because of their safety and tax advantages.

.. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and 31 other Democrats who opposed the procedural vote.

.. State and local officials have praised the move, saying their securities could suffer if banks begin to shun them.

.. Analysts have said changing the rule for municipal products would be a mistake because it would erode the core of a bank-safety rule put in place after the 2010 Dodd-Frank law. While municipal securities have relatively low default rates, they are traded thinly and shouldn’t count as liquid assets, critics say.

.. “It’s an outrageously bad idea,” said Phillip Swagel, a professor at the University of Maryland who served in the George W. Bush Treasury, characterizing the provision as an implicit federal guarantee of the municipal market. In the next crisis, banks will have trouble selling their municipal securities, freezing up the market for them and requiring the government to step in to backstop it, he predicted.