Supply Chains, Student Debt, and Stablecoins—The Top 5 Liberty Street Economics Posts of 2022
“Kitchen table” issues were on the minds of our readers in 2022, though what was labeled as such was perhaps a bit broader than in the past. Supply chains—now firmly placed on the radar of Main Street—were the subject of the year’s top post by number of page views and accounted for three of the top five (we’ll consider them as one for this roundup). Student debt forgiveness and inflation were also in the news, drawing readers to our preview of various possibilities for the (subsequently announced) federal student loan forgiveness program and a quarterly update of a New York Fed economic forecast model. Posts on more technical topics were popular as well, including an update on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet “runoff” and a discussion of stablecoins. Underscoring their broad appeal, the year’s top two posts rank among the top five in the history of Liberty Street, which dates back to 2011. Read on to see which posts resonated most with readers.
The Fed’s Balance Sheet Runoff: The Role of Levered NBFIs and Households
In a Liberty Street Economics post that appeared yesterday, we described the mechanics of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet “runoff” when newly issued Treasury securities are purchased by banks and money market funds (MMFs). The same mechanics would largely hold true when mortgage-backed securities (MBS) are purchased by banks. In this post, we show what happens when newly issued Treasury securities are purchased by levered nonbank financial institutions (NBFIs)—such as hedge funds or nonbank dealers—and by households.
The Fed’s Balance Sheet Runoff and the ON RRP Facility
A 2017 Liberty Street Economics post described the balance sheet effects of the Federal Open Market Committee’s decision to cease reinvestments of maturing securities—that is, the mechanics of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet “runoff.” At the time, the overnight reverse repo (ON RRP) facility was fairly small (less than $200 billion for most of July 2017) and was not mentioned in the post for the sake of simplicity. Today, by contrast, take-up at the ON RRP facility is much larger (over $1.5 trillion for most of 2022). In this post, we update the earlier analysis and describe how the presence of the ON RRP facility affects the mechanics of the balance sheet runoff.