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Journal Article
The Fed’s Central Bank Swap Lines and FIMA Repo Facility
Building on the facility design and application experience from the global financial crisis, in March 2020 the Federal Reserve eased the terms on its standing swap lines in collaboration with other central banks, reactivated temporary swap agreements, and introduced the new Foreign and International Monetary Authorities (FIMA) Repo Facility. While these facilities have similarities, they differ in their operations, breadth of counterparties, and range of potential effects. This article provides key details on these facilities and highlights evidence that they can reduce strains in global ...
Report
Reference guide to U.S. repo and securities lending markets
This paper is intended to serve as a reference guide on U.S. repo and securities lending markets. It begins by presenting the institutional structure, and then describes the market landscape, the role of the participants, and other characteristics, including how repo and securities lending activity has changed since the 2007-09 financial crisis. The paper then discusses vulnerabilities in the repo and short-term wholesale funding markets and the efforts to limit potential systemic risks. It next provides an overview of existing data sources on securities financing markets and highlights ...
Report
A pilot survey of agent securities lending activity
This paper reports aggregate statistics on securities lending activity based on a recently concluded pilot data collection by staff from the Office of Financial Research (OFR), the Federal Reserve System, and staff from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In its annual reports, the Financial Stability Oversight Council identified a lack of data about securities lending activity as a priority for the Council. This pilot data collection was a step toward addressing this critical data need. The voluntary pilot collection included end-of-day loan-level data for three non-consecutive ...
Report
Repo over the Financial Crisis
This paper uses new data to provide a comprehensive view of repo activity during the 2007-09 financial crisis for the first time. We show that activity declined much more in the bilateral segment of the market than in the tri-party segment. Surprisingly, we find that a large share of the decline in activity is driven by repos backed by Treasury securities. Further, a disproportionate share of the decline in repo activity is connected to securities dealer’s market-making activity in Treasury securities. In particular, the evidence suggests that at least part of the decline is not driven by ...
Report
ECB monetary operations and the interbank repo market
We examine the relationship between monetary policy operations and interbank borrowing and lending of funds using sovereign bonds as collateral. We first establish that, in the precrisis period, there are important but rather weak relations between these funding sources and that this relationship varies within maintenance periods and at the end of the year. Official funding conditions did not meaningfully constrain repo market activity in the 2003-05 period but, in the immediate precrisis period, rate increases led to a sharp contraction in repo activity. Focusing on the crisis period, we ...
Report
Repo and securities lending
We provide an overview of the data required to monitor repo and securities lending markets for the purposes of informing policymakers and researchers about firm-level and systemic risk. We start by explaining the functioning of these markets and argue that it is crucial to understand the institutional arrangements. Data collection is currently incomplete. A comprehensive collection would include, at a minimum, six characteristics of repo and securities lending trades at the firm level: principal amount, interest rate, collateral type, haircut, tenor, and counterparty.
Journal Article
The Fed and Its Shadow: A Historical View
Central bank policies have always incorporated both a discretionary or active component and a passive component. Successful central banking has required a coordination of the two components. After a period of apparent dormancy, the passive component of monetary policy has emerged from the shadows and become relevant for Federal Reserve policy today.
Report
Overnight RRP operations as a monetary policy tool: some design considerations
We review recent changes in monetary policy that have led to development and testing of an overnight reverse repurchase agreement (ON RRP) facility, an innovative tool for implementing monetary policy during the normalization process. Making ON RRPs available to a broad set of investors, including nonbank institutions that are significant lenders in money markets, could complement the use of the interest on excess reserves (IOER) and help control short-term interest rates. We examine some potentially important secondary effects of an ON RRP facility, both positive and negative, including ...
Discussion Paper
How Competitive are U.S. Treasury Repo Markets?
The Treasury repo market is at the center of the U.S. financial system, serving as a source of secured funding as well as providing liquidity for Treasuries in the secondary market. Recently, results published by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) raised concerns that the repo market may be dominated by as few as four banks. In this post, we show that the secured funding portion of the repo market is competitive by demonstrating that trading is not concentrated overall and explaining how the pricing of inter-dealer repo trades is available to a wide range of market participants. By ...
Working Paper
Liquidity Windfalls: The Consequences of Repo Rehypothecation
This paper presents a model of repo rehypothecation in which dealers intermediate funds and collateral between cash lenders (e.g., money market funds) and prime brokerage clients (e.g., hedge funds). Dealers take advantage of their position as intermediaries, setting different repo terms with each counterparty. In particular, the difference in haircuts represents a positive cash balance for the dealer that can be an important source of liquidity. The model shows that dealers with higher default risk are more exposed to runs by collateral providers than to runs by cash lenders, who are ...