According to John Authers at Bloomberg, data from CrossBorder Capital, going back to January 1969, shows that we have been recently experiencing Fed’s greatest liquidity boost ever. I have no reason to doubt CrossBorder Capital or their proprietary model of measuring liquidity. But there are many ways of defining, as well as measuring, liquidity. So, I decided to simply look at what exactly the Fed has done since it started expanding its balance sheet in September last year.

Fed has indeed been doing more than $100Bn worth of repo operations on a daily basis recently, but those operations are only temporary, i.e. they can not be taken cumulatively in ascertaining the effect on liquidity. In fact, the Fed’s balance sheet has increased by $380Bn, and only 55% of which came from O/N and term repo operations ($211Bn). The other 45% came from asset purchases. On the asset purchases, the Fed bought mostly T-Bills ($182Bn), some coupons ($55Bn) while letting its MBS portfolio slowly mature (-$81Bn).

However, not all of that increase went towards interbank liquidity. In fact, only about 50% of that increase ($198Bn) went towards bank deposits. The TGA account increased by $167Bn; that drained liquidity. Reverse repos decreased by $20Bn (FRP by $17Bn and others by $3Bn), which added liquidity. Finally, $37Bn went towards the natural increase in currency in circulation.

Fed actually started increasing its T-Bill and UST portfolio already in mid-August, three weeks before the repo spike. Part of that increase went towards MBS maturities. But by the end of August, Fed’s balance sheet had already started growing. By the third week of September, also the combined assets portfolio (T-Bills, USTs, MBS) started growing as well, even though MBS continued to decrease on a net basis.  

Fed’s repo operations started the second week of September. They reached a high of $256Bn in the last week of December. At the moment they are at the same level where they were in the first week of December ($211Bn).

On the liability side, the TGA account actually bottomed out two weeks before the Fed started buying USTs and T-Bills, while the FRP account topped the week the Fed started the repo operations. Could it be a coincidence? I don’t think so. My guess is that the Fed knew exactly what was going on and took precautions on time (we might find eventually if it did indeed nudge foreigners to start moving funds away from FRP).

Finally, while currency in circulation naturally increases with time, bank deposits also bottomed out the week the Fed started the repo operations in September, but strangely enough, they topped the first week of December (for the time being).

So, while the Fed’s liquidity injection since last September was substantial relative to both the decrease in liquidity before that (starting in 2018 when the decrease in the Fed’s balance sheet became consistent) and, to a certain extent, since the end of the 2008 financial crisis, it is difficult to make a claim that this is the greatest liquidity boost ever. The charts below show the 4-week and 3-month moving average percentage change in the Fed’s balance sheet. The 4-week change in September was indeed the largest boost in liquidity since the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The 3-month change though isn’t.

The Fed pumped more liquidity in the system during the European debt crisis. In the first four months of 2013, not only the growth rate of the Fed’s balance sheet was higher than in the last four months now since September 2019, but also the absolute increase in Fed’s assets and US bank deposits. Moreover, there were no equivalent increases in either the TGA or the FRP accounts.

Final note, if the first week of January is any guide, it might be that a big chunk of the Fed’s balance sheet increase might be behind us, if only for the time being. Fed’s balance sheet decreased by $24Bn, which is the largest absolute decrease since the last week of July 2019, i.e. before the start of the most recent boost in liquidity. I actually do expect the Fed’s balance sheet to keep growing but at a much smaller scale and mostly through asset purchases rather than repos.