Milton Friedman wasn’t trying to be cagey. Quite the contrary, he was recognizing the complexity of the world we actually inhabit and then stating this in perfectly clear language. Things aren’t so simple as positive versus negative, especially when it comes to moving progress forward – or stopping in its tracks. What if progress merely slows; worse, what if it [...]
In July 2012, the LIBOR manipulation scandal broke wide and before Congress then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke used it to cleverly cover up for his crisis actions (more so inactions). He told the Senate Banking Committee that the LIBOR system was “structurally flawed” before intimating it had been that way for some time. Asked if the rates calculated by the [...]
Ben Bernanke, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve, told Congress in March 2007 that subprime was contained. He will rightfully be remembered in infamy for that, but that wasn’t the most egregious example of being wrong. Even putting it in those terms risks understating the problem and why it stubbornly lingers. Being really wrong is claiming that IOER will establish [...]
When Bear Stearns nearly failed, made to merge, in March 2008 it wasn’t really a surprise. Yes, markets were shocked by the demise of the ancient firm, one of the bulge bracket cartel which suggested surprise over the severity of it more than that things were going bad. For more than a year, starting in early 2007, Bear had been [...]
If you are an enterprising financial firm with spare cash toward the end of the business day, you have several options for it. Primary among them is the Fed’s Reverse Repo (RRP) desk which will pay you 50 bps interest with your cash secured by both the reputation of the Federal Reserve as well as UST collateral. Given that option, [...]
This is a repost; originally published Dec. 22, 2016. The federal funds rate target is essentially nothing more than a communication tool. You don’t have to take my word for it, the same conclusion has been reached at the level of the FOMC itself. There was, in fact, some debate, though limited in scope, in 2013 and 2014 about changing [...]
With 2a7 money market reform only a few weeks from its full implementation, there should be by now visible shifts in all the places where such reform will directly impact. Prominent among these money spaces is commercial paper, where the ranks of prime MMF’s that once lent in this market have been reduced in the shift toward government funds. As [...]
The fact that we are still discussing illiquidity in “dollar” markets everywhere shows just how little has changed despite so much time and effort. It is August 9 again, the ninth anniversary of the day that changed everything. Even though it has been almost a decade, it’s as if “we” learned nothing from the experience. There are indications in 2016 [...]
It is somewhat of a fair criticism that playing armchair quarterback years after events unfolded amounts to lazy or devalued analysis. Picking apart assessments with the full benefit of hindsight is seemingly unfair to the participants and targets of any reproach. It also may appear to be irrelevant to spend so much time when current events demand more attention and [...]
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