The conventional wisdom is that the big jump in interest rates since the beginning of May is the result of a poorly conceived or poorly communicated shift in policy by the U.S. Federal Reserve. The conventional wisdom is wrong.
Category Archives: Federal Reserve
The end of low interest rates
The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury securities averaged 1.8% during 2012, the lowest levels in 60 years. But that episode may now be behind us.
It’s not just the Fed
The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries has jumped 50 basis points since the start of May, leading some to speculate that the market is already starting to price in anticipation of an end to the Fed’s bond-buying program. There may be some truth to that, but it’s only part of the story.
Bernanke says no change for now
In testimony before Congress today, Bernanke explained why the Fed’s large-scale asset purchases are continuing.
Who is holding all those U.S. dollars?
If recent trends continue, in a few months there will be $1.2 trillion in Federal Reserve notes (otherwise known as dollar bills) in circulation. Who is holding all these?
Guest Contribution: “Is the Federal Reserve Breeding the Next Financial Crisis?”
Today, we are fortunate to have a guest contribution by Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi and Alessandro Rebucci. It is based upon Does Easing Monetary Policy Increase Financial Instability?. The views expressed in this column are the authors’ and not necessarily those of the institutions with which they are affiliated.
What’s going to happen to the Fed’s balance sheet?
The Federal Reserve has increased its assets from $900 billion in 2007 to over $3,150 billion and still climbing today. On the liabilities side of the Fed’s balance sheet, reserve balances held by banks have gone from $10 B in 2007 to $1,750 B and climbing today. My expectation had always been that this would be a temporary situation, with a return to historical norms when economic conditions improved. Recently, three different teams have independently studied what that transition back to normal might look like. One study was carried out by Robert Hall and Ricardo Reis (professors at Stanford and Columbia, respectively) and another by Seth Carpenter, Jane Ihrig, Elizabeth Klee, Alexander Boote, and Daniel Quinn (all economists at the Federal Reserve Board). I participated in a third study with David Greenlaw at Morgan Stanley, Peter Hooper at Deutsche Bank, and Frederic Mishkin at Columbia. Our analysis used a similar methodology to that conducted by the Fed staff, and we reached similar conclusions to theirs, while Hall and Reis took a broader and more theoretical perspective. Here I describe the methods and findings of our study.
Bernanke on long-term interest rates
On Friday I attended a conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which included a very interesting presentation by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on long-term interest rates.
QE3 and beyond
Now that we’ve closed the books on 2012, I thought it might be useful to take a look at where monetary policy has led us over the last four years.
U.S. government profits from AIG bailout
A key player in the financial crisis was insurance giant AIG, which sold a huge volume of credit default swaps supposedly protecting buyers of mortgage-backed securities from losses due to default. But AIG had nowhere near the capital necessary to honor these guarantees when things went bad, and much of AIG’s liabilities ended up being picked up by the Fed and the Treasury. On Tuesday the U.S. Treasury announced that it had sold the last of the common shares in AIG that it had acquired as compensation for its emergency assistance to AIG and reported that the Treasury and the Fed had together earned a profit of $22.7 billion as a result of their assistance to AIG. I was curious to take a look at how this story ended up having a happy ending.