Search Results
Report
Responses to the financial crisis, treasury debt, and the impact on short-term money markets
Several programs have been introduced by U.S. fiscal and monetary authorities in response to the financial crisis. We examine the responses involving Treasury debt?the Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF), the Supplemental Financing Program, increases in Treasury issuance, and open market operations?and their impacts on the overnight Treasury general collateral repo rate, a key money market rate. Our contribution is to consider each policy in light of the others, both to help guide policy responses to future crises and to emphasize policy interactions. Only the TSLF was designed to ...
Report
The case for TIPS: an examination of the costs and benefits
Several studies have shown that, ex-post, the issuance of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) has cost U.S. taxpayers money. We propose that evaluations of the TIPS program be more comprehensive and focus on the ex-ante costs of TIPS issuance versus nominal Treasury issuance and, especially when these costs are negligible, the more difficult-to-measure benefits of the program. Our study finds that the ex-ante costs of TIPS issuance versus nominal Treasury issuance are currently about equal and that TIPS provide meaningful benefits to investors and policymakers.
Journal Article
The introduction of the TMPG fails charge for U.S. Treasury securities
The TMPG fails charge for U.S. Treasury securities provides that a buyer of Treasury securities can claim monetary compensation from the seller if the seller fails to deliver the securities on a timely basis. The charge was introduced in May 2009 and replaced an existing market convention of simply postponing?without any explicit penalty and at an unchanged invoice price?a seller?s obligation to deliver Treasury securities if the seller fails to deliver the securities on a scheduled settlement date. This article explains how a proliferation of settlement fails following the insolvency of ...
Journal Article
Liquidity effects in the bond market
The authors find that supply risk in the market for Treasury bills adds between 10 basis points and 40 basis points to the standard deviation of the T-bill interest rate. The risk will probably increase unless the Fed expands the set of assets that it uses to conduct open market operations.
Speech
The implementation of recent monetary policy actions
Testimony before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives.> .
Report
Buybacks in Treasury cash and debt management
This paper examines the use of buybacks in Treasury cash and debt management. We review the mechanics and results of the buyback operations conducted in 2000-01, during a time of budget surpluses, and assess the prospective use of buybacks in the absence of a surplus. Possible future applications include (i) managing the liquidity of the new-issue markets when deficits are declining (by allowing Treasury officials to postpone a decision to discontinue a series without also being compelled to shrink new-issue sizes); (ii) actively promoting the liquidity of the new-issue markets (by ...
Speech
Preparing for a smooth (eventual) exit
Remarks at the National Association for Business Economics Policy Conference, Arlington, Virginia
Working Paper
QE Auctions of Treasury Bonds
The Federal Reserve (Fed) uses a unique auction mechanism to purchase U.S. Treasury securities in implementing its quantitative easing (QE) policy. In this paper, we study the outcomes of QE auctions and participating dealers' bidding behaviors from November 2010 to September 2011, during which the Fed purchased $780 billion Treasury securities. Our data include the transaction prices and quantities of each traded bond in each auction, as well as dealers' identities. We find that: (1) In QE auctions the Fed tends to exclude bonds that are liquid and on special, but among included bonds, ...
Working Paper
The scarcity value of Treasury collateral: Repo market effects of security-specific supply and demand factors
In the special collateral repo market, forward agreements are security-specific, which may magnify demand and supply effects. We quantify the scarcity value of Treasury collateral by estimating the impact of security-specific demand and supply factors on the repo rates of all outstanding U.S. Treasury securities. We find an economically and statistically significant scarcity premium. This scarcity effect is quite persistent, passes through to Treasury market prices, and explains a significant portion of the flow-effects of LSAP programs, providing additional evidence for the scarcity channel ...
Journal Article
The institutionalization of treasury note and bond auctions, 1970-75
The substitution of auctions for fixed-price offerings was expected to lower the U.S. Treasury's cost of financing the federal debt. Despite this and other potential benefits, the Treasury failed in both 1935 and 1963 in its attempts to introduce regular auction sales of coupon-bearing securities. This article examines the Treasury's third and successful attempt between 1970 and 1975. The author identifies three likely reasons why the Treasury succeeded in the early 1970s: it closely imitated its successful and well-understood bill auction process, it extended the maturity of auction ...