The fed removes liquidity every time it receives a coupon payment or a bond matures (ie, it gets paid cash by the government). It could stop all open market operations and it would continue to remove liquidity from the system by virtue of that process. So, no, it doesn’t need to sell any assets in order to remove liquidity from the system, it simply needs to have lower net outflows of cash than its inflows of cash. As the headline states, since mid April it’s net outflows of cash have been $140 billion less than its inflows.
RC_ITR|3 years ago
The Fed reduces liquidity by receiving coupon payments? So then, unless it's growing its balance sheet by the amount of those payments (i.e. returning that cash to market), it's removing liquidity?
Interesting take, I like the moxy.
EDIT: You have QE/QT backwards. QE increases the money the Treasury sends to the Fed as coupon, which you said removes liquidity.
My entire point was that you are backwards in one of your two conflicting arguments.
wbsss4412|3 years ago
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing?wprov=sfti...