QE is intended to put downwards pressure on longer dated yields, but its most obvious impact is on the front end. Repo and short dated bills are pinned around the leaky ON RRP floor, with the zombification spreading up along the bill curve. This outcome stems from of our two-tiered monetary system interacting with the constraints of Basel III. In general, every dollar of QE creates two dollars of money – one dollar of reserves …
Tag: money markets
Published on March 1, 2021 by Joseph Wang Free
It’s likely that bills will trade negative in the coming days as Treasury pays down existing bills, thus reducing their supply by a few hundred billion (see this previous post for more context). In this post I will discuss why large paydowns would push bill yields negative, the mechanics behind how IOR/ON RRP adjustments work and whether they make sense now, and other potential policy options to keep bill yields positive. It does not offer …