Das Bemerkenswerte an Tony C.'s Artikel unten ist, dass er normalerweise eher bullisch und beschwichtigend ist. Wenn solche Sätze aus seinem Mund kommen, darf man hellhörig werden. Klingt eher nach Wawidu...
Tony Crescenzi Blog
Financial System on Fed Life Support
By Tony Crescenzi
Street.com Contributor
10/3/2008 11:16 AM EDT
Stretched is hardly the word to describe the Federal Reserve's balance sheet, which was revealed as usual to the public late Thursday in the release titled "Factors Affecting Reserve Balances." The new data make clear that the U.S. financial system is currently on life support, with the Federal Reserve seemingly the only lender of any consequence at the moment.
This was apparent in Thursday's figures on commercial paper issuance, which posted a record weekly drop of $94.9 billion, and in figures on bond issuance ($7 billion in three weeks -- a tenth of the norm), and bank lending, although new data indicate that there has been some shift to bank credit from other sources of borrowing.
Federal Reserve credit, which measures all monies injected into the financial system by the Federal Reserve, increased massively, by an unprecedented daily average of $253.6 billion to $1.388 trillion in the week ended Wednesday, following an equally massive $203.6 billion the previous week. Mind you, this is a figure that tends to increase only a few percent per year. Last week's increase was about five times greater than the last two large infusions, which occurred in September 2001 and the period surrounding Y2K.
Many factors bloated the Fed's balance sheet. For starters, primary dealers increased their borrowing by a daily average of $59.5 billion to a record $147.692 billion, a clear sign of stress amongst dealers. Three weeks ago, this figure was zero.
Second, commercial banks increased their borrowing by a daily average of $5.1 billion to $44.46 billion. Three weeks ago the figure was at $23.4 billion. The loan to AIG also increased, to $61.3 billion from $44.6 billion.
The longer the money injected into the financial system stays in the financial system, the more likely it is that banks will submit requests for actual currency, which would boost the money supply, growth and inflation. In fact, the total amount of currency in circulation grew at a relatively strong pace in the latest week, by $4.6 billion to $841 billion following a gain of $3.3 billion the previous week. These are strong gains considering the fact that the total increase for the past year, including recent weeks was just $20 billion.
The inflation notion that relates to this money creation is certainly nothing to be concerned with at the moment given the massive amount of asset deflation occurring worldwide in all of the major asset classes, and in light of the weak U.S. jobs picture.
The creation of new money in the financial system could help the Treasury's effort to purchase troubled assets by keeping the purchases from being a zero-sum game (if the Treasury sells Treasuries, it will absorb money from the banking system).
Remember the rule on money creation: each dollar of reserves kept in the financial system can multiply tenfold, as the first bank to receive the dollar can lend 90 cents (there is a 10% reserve requirement), and the second bank receiving the 90 cent deposit can lend 81 cents, and so forth.
The Federal Reserve's ability to expand bank credit will increase when Congress passes a financial stabilization bill, which will immediately grant the Fed authorization the ability to pay interest on bank reserves, a means by which the Fed could inject vast amounts of new money into the financial system without the injections pressuring the fed funds rate lower (because the interest rate the Fed pays on excess monies in the banking system would put a floor underneath the funds rate -- banks would "sell" their excess funds to the Fed at the rate announced).