199 posts on "Monetary Policy"
November 6, 2017
Mission Almost Impossible: Developing a Simple Measure of Pass‑Through Efficiency
Short-term credit markets have evolved significantly over the past ten years in response to unprecedentedly high levels of reserve balances, a host of regulatory changes, and the introduction of new monetary policy tools. Have these and other developments affected the way monetary policy shifts “pass through” to money markets and, ultimately, to households and firms? In this post, we discuss a new measure of pass‑through efficiency, proposed by economists Darrell Duffie and Arvind Krishnamurthy at the Federal Reserve’s 2016 Jackson Hole summit.
October 12, 2017
Just Released: New York Fed Markets Data Dashboard
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York releases data on a number of market operations, reference rates, monetary policy expectations, and Federal Reserve securities portfolio holdings. These data are released at different times, for different types of securities or rates, and for different audiences.
October 11, 2017
U.S. Monetary Policy as a Changing Driver of Global Liquidity
International capital flows channel large volumes of funds across borders to both public and private sector borrowers. As they are critically important for economic growth and financial stability, understanding their main drivers is crucial for both policymakers and researchers. In this post, we explore the evolving impact of changes in U.S. monetary policy on global liquidity.
September 27, 2017
Why Pay Interest on Excess Reserve Balances?
In a previous post, we described some reasons why it is beneficial to pay interest on required reserve balances. Here we turn to arguments in favor of paying interest on excess reserve balances. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Vice Chairman Donald Kohn recently discussed many potential benefits of paying interest on excess reserve balances and some common misunderstandings, including that paying interest on reserves restricts bank lending and provides a subsidy to banks. In this post, we focus primarily on benefits related to the efficiency of the payment system and the reduction in the need for the provision of credit by the Fed when operating in a framework of abundant reserves.
September 25, 2017
Why Pay Interest on Required Reserve Balances?
The Federal Reserve has paid interest on reserves held by banks in their Fed accounts since 2008. Why should it do so? Here, we describe some benefits of paying interest on required reserve balances. Since forcing banks to hold unremunerated reserves would be akin to levying a tax on them, paying interest on these balances is a way to eliminate or greatly reduce that tax and its negative effects.
September 8, 2017
The New York Fed DSGE Model Forecast—August 2017
This post presents our quarterly update of the economic forecasts generated by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. We describe very briefly our forecast and its change since May 2017.
August 16, 2017
Counterparty and Collateral Policies of Central Bank Lending Facilities
In a previous post, we compared the Federal Reserve’s discount window with the standing lending facilities (SLFs) at the Bank of England (BoE), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the Bank of Japan (BoJ). We showed that the Fed’s discount window was less integrated with monetary policy than the SLFs of the other central banks. In this post, we observe that the counterparty and collateral policies of the Fed’s discount window are similarly less integrated with the practices involved in monetary policy operations, in comparison with the other central banks.
August 4, 2017
A Closer Look at the Fed’s Balance Sheet Accounting
An earlier post on how the Fed changes the size of its balance sheet prompted several questions from readers about the Federal Reserve’s accounting of asset purchases and the payment of principal by the Treasury on Treasury securities owned by the Fed. In this post, we provide a more detailed explanation of the accounting rules that govern these transactions.
Posted at 7:00 am in Central Bank, Federal Reserve, Monetary Policy, Treasury | Permalink | Comments (6)
July 11, 2017
How the Fed Changes the Size of Its Balance Sheet: The Case of Mortgage‑Backed Securities
In our previous post, we considered balance sheet mechanics related to the Federal Reserve’s purchase and redemption of Treasury securities. These mechanics are fairly straightforward and help to illustrate the basic relationships among actors in the financial system. Here, we turn to transactions involving agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS), which are somewhat more complicated. We focus particularly on what happens when households pay down their mortgages, either through regular monthly amortizations or a large payment covering some or all of the outstanding balance, as might occur with a refinancing.
July 10, 2017
Just Released: Updated SOMA Portfolio and Income Projections
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Markets Group today published a report presenting updated staff projections [LINK TO REPORT] for the future path of domestic securities held in the System Open Market Account (SOMA) and portfolio-related income. The updated projections incorporate very recent information and are provided as a tool for the public to further understand factors affecting the evolution of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet.
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