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Report
The Treasury Market Practices Group: creation and early initiatives
Modern money and capital markets are not free-form bazaars where participants are left alone to contract as they choose, but rather are circumscribed by a variety of statutes, regulations, and behavioral norms. This paper examines the circumstances surrounding the introduction of a set of norms recommended by the Treasury Market Practices Group (TMPG) and pertinent to trading in U.S. government securities. The TMPG is a voluntary association of market participants that does not have any direct or indirect statutory authority; its recommendations do not have the force of law. The ...
Discussion Paper
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. This follows the successful introduction of a charge on settlement fails for U.S. Treasury securities in 2009. With a fails charge, a seller of securities that doesn’t deliver on time must pay a charge to the buyer. The practice is meant to ensure that sellers have adequate incentive to deliver securities without undue delay and thereby reduce the level of settlement fails. In this post, I discuss how and why the fails charge was implemented.