Selling stocks short: Ever controversial

Selling securities short has been a controversial practice as long as financial markets have existed, and the recent financial crisis brought short selling to the fore yet again. In the last week, a bill to impose new restrictions on short selling was introduced.

And earlier this month in its inaugural conference, the Atlanta Fed's new Center for Financial Innovation and Stability (CenFIS) provided a forum for discussing the topic of short selling.

Why does short selling have such a bad reputation? Financial economists generally have a positive view of short selling because short sellers take positions with risk of loss based on their view of a firm's prospects. Some others, though, generally do not take such a benign view of short selling.

Attitudes toward short selling reflect views about speculation. As Stuart Banner notes, a common historical view was that "[s]peculation was both productive and wasteful; it satisfied an evident demand, but its practitioners added no value to the community" (Banner 1998, p. 23). Banning short selling also has a long history. In the United Kingdom, "An act to prevent the infamous practice of stock-jobbing" was passed in 1734, an effort that attempted to ban short selling and was not repealed until 1860. In the United States, contracts to sell stock not owned at the time of sale were unenforceable in New York courts from 1792 to 1858.

Possibly short selling has a bad reputation partly because of its association with "bear raids." A bear raid is a set of trades in which a stock is sold short at a high price, negative rumors are spread to cause the price to fall, and then the short sales are covered by purchasing the stock at the lower price. Some discussions of bear raids suggest that buying stock on the way back up is a way of adding to the raider's profits from manipulating the stock price.

Bear raids are similar to speculators' manipulation of foreign exchange (Friedman 1953). Both are based on attempts to move a financial market price independent of any underlying development. Successful instances of bear raids and exchange-rate manipulation are similar in another way: They are far less frequent than complaints about them.

Selling securities short has a long and controversial history. While it's not clear whether proposed legislation on short selling will be enacted, it's a good bet that short selling's risks and benefits will be debated for quite some time.

By Gerald P. Dwyer, director of the Atlanta Fed's Center for Financial Innovation and Stability

References

Banner, Stuart. 1998. Anglo-American Securities Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Friedman, Milton. 1953. "The Case for Flexible Exchange Rates." In Essays in Positive Economics, pp. 157-203. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Contraction, not tightening

Over at Financial Crisis and Recession, Susan Woodward and Robert Hall start a recent post, titled "The Fed contracts," with this:

"The Fed has indicated that it plans to pursue a policy of quantitative easing, that is, expanding its portfolio by borrowing in financial markets at low rates and investing the proceeds in higher-yielding private investments…

"But... the Fed has engaged in quantitative tightening over the past month, reducing its borrowing and reducing its holding of higher-yielding investments…. So far, no explanation for the Fed's announcements of moving in an expansionary direction while actually contracting."

First, it is probably appropriate to point out that the use of the term "quantitative easing" is a bit out of synch with the policy approach embraced by "the Fed." This is from Chairman Bernanke's January 13 Stamp Lecture at the London School of Economics:

"The Federal Reserve's approach to supporting credit markets is conceptually distinct from quantitative easing (QE), the policy approach used by the Bank of Japan from 2001 to 2006. Our approach—which could be described as 'credit easing'—resembles quantitative easing in one respect: It involves an expansion of the central bank's balance sheet. However, in a pure QE regime, the focus of policy is the quantity of bank reserves, which are liabilities of the central bank; the composition of loans and securities on the asset side of the central bank's balance sheet is incidental… In contrast, the Federal Reserve's credit easing approach focuses on the mix of loans and securities that it holds and on how this composition of assets affects credit conditions for households and businesses."

At Economist's View, Tim Duy zeroed right in on the point:

"Woodward and Hall are confused because they do not recognize that the Fed has not initiated a policy of quantitative easing…because the Fed sees their actions as credit market related, they would have no problem with the balance sheet contracting if credit market conditions dictate."

What Woodward and Hall describe is credit easing in the Bernanke lexicon, as "expanding its portfolio by borrowing in financial markets at low rates and investing the proceeds in higher-yielding private investments" is a description of changes in the composition of Federal Reserve assets. But the intent they assume is that of quantitative easing—which in the end is all about expanding the size of the balance sheet (on the liability size specifically).

In our opinion—and we rush here to add that is only our opinion—the key to unwinding the Woodward-Hall "puzzle" is in the last sentence of the Bernanke quotation above: "the Federal Reserve's credit easing approach focuses on the mix of loans and securities that it holds and on how this composition of assets affects credit conditions for households and businesses."

It is instructive to examine the source of the recent reduction in the Fed's balance sheet.

Though several categories of Fed assets have declined in recent weeks, the really large changes have been in currency swaps and the Commercial Paper Funding Facility or CPFF. In simple terms, currency swaps are the provision of dollars to foreign central banks to help satisfy dollar-based liquidity needs in foreign financial markets, the CPFF is a Federal Reserve funding facility to assist in the functioning of domestic commercial paper markets.

As the Chairman suggested in his Stamp Lecture:

"…when credit markets and the economy have begun to recover, the Federal Reserve will have to unwind its various lending programs. To some extent, this unwinding will happen automatically, as improvements in credit markets should reduce the need to use Fed facilities."

At least in U.S. dollar interbank lending markets, liquidity pressures have abated, as LIBOR rates have fallen substantially since last fall and have held relatively steady in recent weeks, and term financing premia have similarly eased.

Commercial paper yield spreads have also narrowed considerably for both asset-backed and financial paper since the introduction of the CPFF last fall:

Interestingly, a large amount of maturing CPFF paper was not reissued into the CPFF or the market in late January. This decline could be a result of some borrowers shifting to other, cheaper sources of credit. From CNNMoney:

"The Fed's commercial paper funding facility was a popular alternative for cash-strapped corporations at the height of the credit crunch, but demand for funding through the program has waned. Another government sponsored program, the FDIC's Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program backs financial institution debt issued up to 10 years, a more attractive alternative for many companies."

There is one additional wrinkle. Agency mortgage-backed securities—which the FOMC has authorized the purchase of, up to $500 billion—show up on the balance sheet at the time the trades settle. As of February 4, the Fed's balance sheet has $7.4 billion in Agency MBS. However, if you sum the purchases that the NY Fed posts on their Web site, the total is closer to $92 billion so far. Thus, roughly $85 billion in MBS the Fed has purchased have yet to show up on the balance sheet because the trades haven't settled. (Hat tip to our colleague Mike Hammill for bringing this to our attention.)

The central bank's balance sheet is in fact contracting. Maybe. But is it policy tightening? Doubtful.

By David Altig, senior vice president and research director, and John Robertson, vice president and senior economist at the Atlanta Fed

Will tax stimulus stimulate investment?

Update: Reader Doug Lee points out that the fixed investment series above is dominated by the extraordinary decline in residential investment over the past several years. For that sector, the questions posed above are in a bit sharper focus. Are firms in the residential investment sector pessimistic about future prospects? Absolutely. Are compromised credit markets behind the low investment levels? Quite possibly, though given the large inventory overhang in housing it is improbable that activity in the sector would be robust in any case. Is the low investment/net worth ratio symptomatic of a general deleveraging within the nonfinancial business sector? Not so clear, as it is pretty hard to see through the effect in residential category.

Here, then is a chart of the history of nonresidential fixed investment relative to corporate net worth:

The recent decline in the ratio, while still there, is much less dramatic and, in fact, seems to be part of a more persistent trend that commenced prior to the 2001 recession (and which may have been temporarily disguised by the housing boom that followed).

Was the nonfinancial nonresidential business sector ahead in the deleveraging game—ahead of residential construction businesses, financial firms, and consumers? And could this bode well for this sector when the recovery begins? Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers.

By David Altig, senior vice president and research director at the Atlanta Fed

Original post:

On Monday, the form of potential fiscal stimulus, 2009-style, took a step forward detail-wise. From the Wall Street Journal:

“President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are crafting a plan to offer about $300 billion of tax cuts to individuals and businesses, a move aimed at attracting Republican support for an economic-stimulus package and prodding companies to create jobs.

“The size of the proposed tax cuts—which would account for about 40% of a stimulus package that could reach $775 billion over two years—is greater than many on both sides of the aisle in Congress had anticipated.”

The plan appears to make concessions to both economic theory—which suggests that consumers will save a relatively large fraction of temporary increases in disposable income—and recent experience—which seems to suggest that what works in theory sometimes works in practice. Again, from the Wall Street Journal:

“Economists of all political stripes widely agree the checks sent out last spring were ineffective in stemming the economic slide, partly because many strapped consumers paid bills or saved the cash rather than spend it. But Obama aides wanted a provision that could get money into consumers’ hands fast, and hope they will be persuaded to spend money this time if the credit is made a permanent feature of the tax code.”

As for the business tax package:

“… a key provision would allow companies to write off huge losses incurred last year, as well as any losses from 2009, to retroactively reduce tax bills dating back five years. Obama aides note that businesses would have been able to claim most of the tax write-offs on future tax returns, and the proposal simply accelerates those write-offs to make them available in the current tax season, when a lack of available credit is leaving many companies short of cash.

“A second provision would entice firms to plow that money back into new investment. The write-offs would be retroactive to expenditures made as of Jan. 1, 2009, to ensure that companies don’t sit on their money until after Congress passes the measure.”

A relevant question here is really quite similar to the one we ask when the tax cuts are aimed at households: Will the extra cash be spent? This graph provides some interesting perspective:

Relative to net worth (of nonfarm nonfinancial corporate businesses), private fixed investment has been in consistent decline since the second quarter of 2006. (The level of fixed investment has declined in each quarter, save one.) In fact, the investment/net worth ratio is currently at a postwar low.

Why? A couple of hypotheses come to mind. (1) Firms are extremely pessimistic about the outlook and see relatively few worthwhile projects in which to commit funds. (2) Credit markets are so impaired that the net worth of firms—a critical variable in mainstream models of the so-called “credit channel” of monetary policy—is supporting increasingly smaller levels of lending. (3) Nonfinancial firms, like financial firms, are deleveraging and hence not expanding.

Of course, even if one of these hypotheses is true, it need not be the case that marginal dollars sent in the direction of businesses will go uninvested. But it makes you wonder.

By David Altig, senior vice president and research director at the Atlanta Fed

Credit storm hitting the high seas?

Now that the mystery has been solved concerning whether we are in recession or not, our attention can turn to monitoring the conditions that might signal the contraction’s end. A nice assist in this endeavor comes from the “Credit Crisis Watch” at The Big Picture, which includes an extensive list of graphs summarizing ongoing conditions in credit markets.

In case that list is not extensive enough for you, allow us to add one more item to the list: the condition of trade finance. International trade amounts to about $14 trillion and, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO), 90 percent of these transactions involve trade financing. Trade-related credit is issued primarily by banks via “letters of credit,” the purpose of which is to secure payment for the exporter. Letters of credit prove that a business is able to pay and allow exporters to load cargo for shipments with the assurance of being paid. Though routine in normal times, the letter of credit of process is yet another example of how transactions between multiple financial intermediaries introduce counterparty risk and the potential for trouble when confidence flags.

This is how it works: Company A located in the Republic of A wants to buy goods from Company B located in B-land. Company A and B draw up a sales contract for the agreed sales price of $100,000. Company A would then go to its bank, A Plus Bank, and apply for a letter of credit for $100,000 with Company B as the beneficiary. (The letter of credit is done either through a standard loan underwriting process or funded with a deposit and an associated fee). A Plus Bank sends a copy of the letter of credit to B Bank, which notifies Company B that its payment is available when the terms and conditions of the letter of credit have been met (normally upon receipt of shipping documents). Once the documents have been confirmed, A Plus Bank transfers the $100,000 to Bank B to be credited to Company B.

In general, exporters and importers in emerging economies may be particularly vulnerable since they rely more heavily on trade finance, and in recent weeks, the price of credit has risen significantly, especially for emerging economies. According to Bloomberg, the cost of a letter of credit has tripled for importers in China, Brazil, and Turkey and doubled for Pakistan, Argentina, and Bangladesh. Banks are now charging 1.5 percent of the value of the transaction for credit guarantees for some Chinese transactions. There have been reports of banks refusing to honor letters of credit from other banks and cargo ships being stranded at ports, according to Dismal Scientist.

These financial market woes are clearly spilling over to “global Main Street.” The Baltic Dry Index, an indirect gauge of international trade flows, has dropped by more than 90 percent since its peak in June as a result not only of decreased global demand but also availability of financing that demand, according to Dismal Scientist.

In the words of the WTO’s Director-General Pascal Lamy, “The world economy is slowing and we are seeing trade decrease. If trade finance is not tackled, we run the risk of further exacerbating this downward spiral.” Since about 40 percent of U.S. exports are shipped to developing countries, the inability of the importers in those countries to finance their purchases of U.S.-made goods can’t help the U.S. exports sector, which is already suffering from falling foreign demand as the global economy slows.

At VoxEU, Helmut Reisen sums up the situation thus:

“As a mid-term consequence of the global credit crisis, private debt will be financed only reluctantly and capital costs are bound to rise to incorporate higher risk. Instead, solvent governments and public institutions will become the lenders of last resort.”

That process has begun. In the last 12 months, according to the WTO, export credit agencies have increased their business by more than 30 percent, with an acceleration since the summer. The increase in this activity, the WTO reports, is being backed by governments of some of the world’s largest exporters, such as Germany and Japan.

Most recently, to support exports of products from the United States and China to emerging economies, both countries decided on December 5 to provide a total of $20 billion through their export-import banks. The program will be implemented in the form of direct loans, guarantees, or insurance to creditworthy banks. Together, the United  States and China expect that these efforts will generate total trade financing for up to $38 billion in exports over the next year.

The sense one gets from The Big Picture charts is that at least some hopeful signs have emerged in developed-economy credit markets. Going forward, progress in markets directly related to trade flows between developed and emerging economies may well be an equally key indicator of how quickly we turn the bend toward recovery.

By Galina Alexeenko and Sandra Kollen, senior economic research analysts at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

MMMF, and AMLF, and MMIFF. Part 2 of a 2-part Series

On Tuesday we left off with a promise to do a post focusing on the Fed’s Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (AMLF) and Money Money Market Investor Funding Facility (MMIFF). We’re making good on that promise. Whereas the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) was targeted primarily at issuers of commercial paper and intended to improve market conditions for businesses that rely on the CP market to finance themselves, both the AMLF and MMIFF are targeted at money market funds (MMFs) and helping them meet escalating redemption requests.

A Bloomberg article by Christopher Condon and Bryan Keogh does a nice job of describing the circumstances immediately preceding the creation of the AMLF:

“While money funds were selling commercial paper in the past few months, the exodus accelerated after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. on Sept. 15 and the breakdown of the nation's oldest money-market fund the next day.”

“The $62.5 billion Reserve Primary Fund announced Sept. 16 that losses on debt issued by Lehman had reduced its net assets to 97 cents a share, making it the first money fund in 14 years to break the buck, the term for falling below the $1 a share that investors pay. Over the next two days, investors pulled $133 billion from U.S. money-market funds, according to IMoneyNet.” (emphasis added)

As has been publicized, the large withdrawals from money market funds were not without consequence. MMFs provide a link between investors looking to earn a return on their money and businesses looking to sell their short-term debt. A break in the link can lead to reduced business activity and pose risks to economic growth.

Conditions in the commercial paper market had already been under stress prior to the Reserve Primary Fund’s losses. Weak demand for CP and the massive outflows from MMFs forced some funds to sell the paper in an illiquid market—leading in some cases to losses, something that isn’t supposed to happen in MMFs.

Compounding the issues in the CP market was a reallocation of MMFs’ portfolios toward safer Treasury securities. In addition to the desire of MMFs to shed CP and other assets to meet redemptions, MMFs have been reallocating their assets toward safer, more liquid, Treasuries. MMFs were not alone. The general flight to safety among investors is immediately recognizable in the large drop in Treasury yields (particularly on shorter-dated securities) since Sept 15.

The MMF outflows slowed after the Treasury announced on Sept 19 they would temporarily guarantee money market funds (on amounts held at the close on Sept 19), and after the Fed announced the AMLF on the same day.

The AMLF provides nonrecourse loans at the primary credit rate to U.S. depository institutions, bank holding companies, or U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks. They can then use the loans to purchase eligible A-1/P-1/F-1 ABCP at amortized cost from MMFs. A bank that borrows under the program is at no risk for loss as credit risk is effectively transferred to the Fed. The chart below shows rates on 1, 2, and 3-month ABCP and the primary credit rate and can give an idea of what kind of spread a bank can earn through arbitrage (borrowing at the discount window and purchasing ABCP). So, if a MMF experiences redemptions, it can sell its ABCP to a bank without taking a loss and a bank can make a profit by earning the spread between the discount window rate and the rate on purchased ABCP. A secondary effect is that by reducing risk associated with lack of liquidity in the secondary market for CP, the AMLF provides an incentive for MMFs to resume their purchases of ABCP from issuers.

AMLF borrowing from the Fed to finance ABCP purchases from MMF has grown markedly from $73 billion on Sept 24 to $108 billion on Oct 22. To compare, discount window lending, which has reached record levels, rose from $39 billion to $108 billion over the same period.

To complement the AMLF, the Fed announced on Oct 21 the creation of the MMIFF which will provide funding up to $540 billion in financing to purchase U.S. dollar-denominated certificates of deposit (CDs), bank notes, and CP. Similar to the AMLF, the MMIFFF will support MMFs in meeting redemptions by purchasing assets which might otherwise need to be sold in an illiquid market. It differs from the AMLF primarily because it’s targeted at purchasing a broader set of assets, including unsecured CP. The MMIFF differs from the CPFF in that it aims to help money market funds rather than issuers of CP.

While the MMIFF start date is still being determined, the NY Fed provides a series of helpful FAQs explaining how the program will work.

Recovery in MMF and CP markets may be a significant factor in restoring normalcy to credit markets and should have broader, positive impacts. The Federal Reserve Board states: “Improved money market conditions will enhance the ability of banks and other financial intermediaries to accommodate the credit needs of businesses and households.”

Today’s Fed release showing the first increase in CP outstanding since mid-Sept is a good sign.

By Mike Hammill and Andrew Flowers in the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Research Department.

The Commercial Paper Market and the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility: Part 1 of a 2-part Series

The current financial crisis is a good reminder of how interconnected our financial system really is. The financial tsunami has engulfed seemingly unconnected and obscure corners of the credit market, making them front of mind for a general public that had probably never heard of them before (think SIVs, auction rate securities, monoline insurers, credit default swaps, variable rate demand notes, commercial paper, etc).

Recently, we have heard a lot [here, here, and here] about the issues in the very important but relatively unglamorous commercial paper market. Commercial paper (CP) is a short-term debt instrument issued by large banks and corporations with a maturity of one to 270 days.

Traditionally, companies use CP to finance day-to-day operations, borrowing cash they need to meet payroll or buy materials. Borrowing short-term money gives a company more flexibility to meet short-term needs, and is usually cheaper than issuing long-term debt. Companies can, and often do, roll over their CP as it matures, which effectively turns short-term debt into long-term debt, but at short-term interest rates.

In the past few years the commercial-paper market has grown dramatically, increasing by about 56 percent from 2005 until its peak in August 2007. Much of this growth has been in asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP), which jumped 76 percent over the same period. [Here is the Board’s most recent CP report.] In contrast to unsecured CP, which is backed by the name and assets of an entire company, ABCP is backed by a pool of specific assets, such as credit card debt, car loans, and/or mortgages.

CP generally carries low risk because of its short duration. With unsecured CP, the primary risk is some negative event that threatens the viability of an issuing company's business. But for ABCP, the primary risk is a shock to the value of the underlying asset—such as higher-than-expected mortgage defaults, and an uncertain trajectory for defaults in the future. Recently, both unsecured (especially financial firms) and asset-backed (especially mortgage-backed) CP markets have come under considerable stress.

Money market funds are significant buyers of CP because it typically offers a slightly higher yield than, say, short-term Treasury securities. Money market mutual funds and other institutional investors purchase about 60 percent of commercial paper in the market, according to mutual-fund tracking firm Crane Data.

Following the failure of a number of financial institutions and increased uncertainty about the quality of assets underlying some of the asset-backed paper, the problems in the CP market intensified in September. On the one hand, the demand from money market funds declined as they were faced with a rise in redemptions. This development contributed to a sharp decline in CP outstanding (see chart above). At the same time, investors began demanding higher interest rates in order to buy CP, which contributed to a widening of their spreads relative to the risk-free Treasury rate in September (see chart below).

Furthermore, there was a significant shortening in the maturity of new CP issued with only the most trusted programs able to issue out as far as six months at favorable rates, resulting in many firms needing to roll over their paper every day (see chart below).

In response to the deteriorating conditions, the Fed created the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) in early October, which went operational yesterday (10/27). According to the Board of Governors, the new facility “is intended to improve liquidity in short-term funding markets and thereby increase the availability of credit for businesses and households.” The Board also said that “By eliminating much of the risk that eligible issuers will not be able to repay investors by rolling over their maturing commercial paper obligations, this facility should encourage investors to once again engage in term lending in the commercial paper market.”

In the CPFF, the New York Fed will lend to a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) which will purchase eligible highly-rated (A-1, P-1, F-1) 3-month CP and ABCP from U.S. issuers. According to the New York Fed, the rate charged on unsecured commercial paper will be the three-month overnight index swap (OIS) rate plus 100 basis points per annum, and the rate for ABCP will be three-month OIS plus 300 basis points per annum. Additionally, for unsecured commercial paper, the New York Fed said “a 100 basis points per annum unsecured credit surcharge must be paid on each trade execution date.” Looking back before September, three-month CP rates typically traded very close to three-month OIS rates. The jump in CP rates in September led them to trade much wider than the SPV spread.

Short-term debt markets have been under considerable strain in recent weeks as money market mutual funds and other investors have had difficulty selling assets to satisfy redemption requests and meet portfolio rebalancing needs. The CPFF is intended to support the issuers of CP by providing liquidity and supporting term lending in the CP markets. On Oct. 21, the Fed announced the creation of the Money Market Investor Funding Facility, which supplements the previously announced Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, to free balance sheets at money market funds and to encourage them to resume their traditional role in securities lending and participation in other financing markets. This will be the topic of Thursday’s blog.

By Mike Hammill and Andrew Flowers in the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Research Department.

How high is financial risk today?

On a day as brutal as today, it is hard to find any port to hide from the storm. Maybe that is exactly the time for some perspective. At Businomics Blog, Bill Conerly does his best (hat tip, Mark Thoma), making a point that I have heard repeated more than a few times: Taken from the long view, many measures of risk that we take as symptomatic of extreme market stress are not entirely without historical precedent. Dr. Conerly uses this graph of the “TED spread”—the 3-month Libor rate minus the yield on 3-month Treasury bills—to drive the point home:

Here are a couple more graphs on the same theme: The spread between 3-month LIBOR rates and the effective funds rate (which I emphasized in an earlier post)…

… and the spread between yields on commercial paper and secondary-market 3-month Treasury bills.

Comforting? Maybe not. As Conerly notes, your perceptions of the ugliness of the past month or so depends very much on what you believe to be the appropriate reference point. In the context of the period spanning the 60s and 70s the measures of risk and market stress depicted in these charts are not so impressive. However, if you believe that the world fundamentally changed in the 1980s—at the outset of the so-called “Great Moderation”—things are very dysfunctional at the moment.

For my part, I can’t help but recall the following exchange from the movie “No Country for Old Men” after two characters come across a gruesome murder scene.

Deputy Wendell: “It’s a mess, ain’t it sherriff.”

Sherriff Ed Tom Bell: “If it ain’t, it’ll do until the mess gets here.”

In other words, no matter what you compare it with the current environment is plenty challenging.

By David Altig, senior vice president and research director, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

What’s a swap line?

This morning the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) authorized a $180 billion expansion of its temporary reciprocal currency arrangements (swap lines). According to the Fed’s press release, the changes allow for “increases in the existing swap lines with the ECB and the Swiss National Bank” and for “new swap facilities…with the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, and the Bank of Canada.”

“These measures…are designed to improve the liquidity conditions in global financial markets,” the release continued.

What did the Fed do and how will this action address some of the strain in liquidity conditions that recently have emerged?

A good place to start is by looking at what, exactly, a currency swap line is. A currency swap is a transaction where two parties exchange an agreed amount of two currencies while at the same time agreeing to unwind the currency exchange at a future date.

Consider this example. Today the Fed initiated a $40 billion swap line with the Bank of England (BOE), meaning that the BOE will receive $40 billion U.S. dollars and the Fed will receive an implied £22 billion (using yesterday’s USD/GBP exchange rate of 1.8173).

Currency Swap:

An underlying aspect of a currency swap is that banks (and businesses) around the world have assets and liabilities not only in their home currency, but also in dollars. Thus, banks in England need funding in U.S. dollars as well as in pounds.

However, banks recently have been reluctant to lend to one another. Some observers believe this reluctance relates to uncertainty about the assets that other banks have on their balance sheets or because a bank might be uncertain about its own short-term cash needs. Whatever the cause, this reluctance in the interbank market has pushed up the premium for short-term U.S. dollar funding and has been evident in a sharp escalation in LIBOR rates.

The currency swap lines were designed to inject liquidity, which can help bring rates down. To take the British pound swap line example a step further, the BOE this morning planned to auction off $40 billion in overnight funds (cash banks can use on a very short-term basis) to private banks in England.

In effect, this morning’s BOE dollar auction will increase the supply of U.S. dollars in England, which would work to put downward pressure on rates banks charge each other.

Consistent with this move, the overnight LIBOR rate fell from about 5.03 percent yesterday to 3.84 percent today.

The bottom line is that the Fed, by exchanging dollars for foreign currency, has helped to provide liquidity to banks around the world. This effort can help to bring interbank rates back down at a time when restrictively high rates can choke off access to financing that banks and other businesses need to operate.

By Mike Hammill in the Atlanta Fed’s research department

The left and right of it all

What a wild day it was on Monday in U.S. and global financial markets. We heard it quipped that the problem with financial institution balance sheets is that “on the left hand side nothing is right and on the right hand side nothing is left.” This is clearly an exaggeration, but it does raise the question: What do people look at when gauging the rightness or leftness of balance sheets?

A lot of the discussion about asset quality has focused on mortgage backed securities (MBS). The size of the MBS market has experienced phenomenal growth over the last decade or so—MBS issuance grew from around $500 billion in 1997 to over $2 trillion in 2007. As the name suggests, an MBS is a bond that is backed by the collateral of mortgages—either by mortgages guaranteed by Freddie Mac or similar institutions or other pools of mortgages. The MBS, or pieces of it, are then sold to investors, with the principal and interest payments on the individual mortgages used to pay investors.

Underlying the performance of MBS is the performance of mortgages themselves. Mortgage delinquency has been rising for some time, and especially for subprime mortgages.

At the same time, the value of the mortgages, as indicated by home prices have been falling.

One of the features of the U.S. financial system is that the debt of financial institutions tends to be weighted toward long-term obligations while the financing has been predominately from short-term borrowing. As the performance of the assets has deteriorated the need for liquidity has risen sharply.

The demand for cash was especially acute on Monday, as can be seen in the large intra-day variability in the federal funds market. Federal funds are the reserve balances of depository institutions held at the Federal Reserve. At times on Monday the federal funds rate traded well above the target of 2 percent before the New York desk intervened with an additional $50 billion injection of reserves. This Bloomberg news story describes Monday’s large movements in the federal funds market.

The demand for liquidity at 1 and 3 month horizons also surged, as indicated by the dollar LIBOR spread over OIS at 1 and 3 month horizons. LIBOR (the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate) is the interest rate at which banks in London are prepared to lend unsecured funds to first-class banks. As such it is a guide world-wide for the rate banks use to lend to each other. In the U.S., it is usually not far off from the fed funds rate. But after the emergence of the financial turmoil last fall the LIBOR has risen relative to the fed funds rate. The OIS (Overnight Index Swap) rate is a measure of the expected overnight fed funds rate for a specified term (1 or 3 months, for example). The LIBOR/OIS spread can be used as measure of the amount of liquidity or stress in short-term unsecured cash markets.

LIBOR spreads edged higher last week amid uncertainty about financial firms, and both spreads jumped higher on Monday and Tuesday, with both at or close to new highs.

Tuesday is another day, but some things will remain the same, including the focus of attention on the left and right of financial institution balance sheets, and the debate about the appropriate role of government in all this.

By John Robertson and Mike Hammill in the Atlanta Fed’s research department

US Assets: Still Looking Tasty

It appears that the appetite for dollar-denominated assets is not sated quite yet.  From Bloomberg:

International buying of U.S. financial assets unexpectedly climbed to a record in May as investors snapped up American stocks and corporate bonds.

Total holdings of equities, notes and bonds climbed a net $126.1 billion, from $80.3 billion the previous month, the Treasury said today in Washington...

Brad Setser does his usual fine job with the details: 

Demand for US equities and corporate bonds was particularly strong, which does suggest the persistence of private demand for US assets abroad.  Private investors tend to buy corporate bonds and equities; central banks tend to buy Treasuries and Agencies -- though that is changing.

What causes me trouble is the split between private and official purchases, and specifically the absence of any official inflows in the May TIC data.

In case you need visual confirmation:

   

   

Brad isn't buying it:

I have a hard time believing that. May was a record month for official reserve growth. China, Russia and Brazil all added to their reserves like crazy.   Those three together combined to add close to $100b to their reserves – and a host of other countries were adding to their reserves too. That money has to go somewhere...

... the Fed’s custodial data doesn’t show a comparable fall off in official demand in May (June is another story).   

The Treasury helpfully explains why the custodial data may differ from its own data:

1. Differences in coverage: The most important reason for differences between holdings reported in the TIC and the FRBNY custody accounts is a difference in coverage. First, not all foreign official holdings of Treasury securities as reported by the TIC system are held at FRBNY. In particular, Treasury securities held by private custodians on the behalf of foreign official institutions are included in the TIC but not in the FRBNY figures. In this sense, the coverage of the TIC system is broader than that of the FRBNY custody holdings. Second, the custody holdings at FRBNY include securities held for some international organizations as well as for foreign official institutions. In this sense, the coverage of the FRBNY custody holdings is broader than the foreign official designation in the TIC system.

That description suggests advantage Treasury to me, but Brad offers other reasons for distrusting the official (that is, government) flows reported in the TIC data, and sticks to his guns on the belief that central bank diversification continues on.  I won't -- can't really -- argue.  But at the very least the latest report does little to vanquish the sense that global asset demand retains a strong attraction to the USA.