Introduction to the Floating‑Rate Note Treasury Security
Ezechiel Copic, Luis Gonzalez, Caitlin Gorback, Blake Gwinn, and Ernst Schaumburg Introduction The U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) auctioned its first floating-rate note (FRN) on January 29, 2014. With this auction, Treasury introduced the first new marketable debt instrument since Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS) in 1997. The new two-year FRN is a fixed-principal security with […]
Pick Your Poison: How Money Market Funds Reacted to Financial Stress in 2011
The summer of 2011 was an unsettling period for financial markets. In the United States, Congress was unable to agree to terms for raising the debt ceiling until August, creating considerable uncertainty over whether the government would be forced to default on its debt.
How the Nation Resolved Its First Debt Ceiling Crisis
In the second half of 1953, the United States, for the first time, risked exceeding the statutory limit on Treasury debt. How did Congress, the White House, and Treasury officials deal with the looming crisis?
Primary Dealers’ Waning Role in Treasury Auctions
On December 12, 2012, primary government securities dealers bought just 33 percent of the new ten-year Treasury notes sold at auction.
Innovations in Treasury Debt Instruments
On January 31, 2012, the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee advised the Secretary of the Treasury that it unanimously supported the issuance of floating-rate notes by the U.S. Treasury.
Failure Is No Longer a (Free) Option for Agency Debt and Mortgage‑Backed Securities
A recommended charge on settlement fails for agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) took effect on February 1, 2012.
The Evolution of Federal Debt Ceilings
It’s hardly news that Congress sets a statutory limit on aggregate Treasury indebtedness.
The Debt Ceiling as a “Fiscal Rule”
A few months ago, the federal government was once again confronted with the need to raise the statutory limit on the amount of debt issued by the Treasury.
Sizing Up the Fed’s Maturity Extension Program
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) recently announced its intention to extend the average maturity of its holdings of securities by purchasing $400 billion of Treasury securities with remaining maturities of six years to thirty years and selling an equal amount of Treasury securities with remaining maturities of three years or less.
Will “Quantitative Easing” Trigger Inflation?
The Federal Reserve announced on November 3, 2010, that in the interest of stimulating economic recovery, it would purchase $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities. The announcement led some commentators to conjecture that the Fed’s large-scale asset purchase (LSAP) program—popularly known as “quantitative easing”—is more likely to trigger inflation than stimulate recovery. This post discusses why those concerns may be misplaced, and also why they are not without some basis. A recent Liberty Street Economics post by James J. McAndrews—“Will the Federal Reserve’s Asset Purchases Lead to Higher Inflation?” addressed the same issue from a broader perspective and came to a substantially similar conclusion.