Monthly Report on Credit and Liquidity Programs
and the Balance Sheet

System Open Market Account (SOMA)

Domestic SOMA Portfolio

Recent Developments

• The SOMA portfolio continued to expand, reflecting ongoing settlements associated with the Federal Reserve's agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) purchase program. As previously announced, the purchase phase of the MBS purchase program was completed on March 31, 2010; settlements are expected to continue over the next few months.
• As of May 26, 2010, the Federal Reserve held approximately $1,113 billion of agency MBS. This represents a $44 billion increase over the level of agency MBS holdings on March 31, 2010, and is attributable to the settlement of previously executed purchases.

Background

Open market operations (OMOs)--the purchase and sale of securities in the open market by a central bank--are a key tool used by the Federal Reserve in the implementation of monetary policy. Historically, the Federal Reserve has used OMOs to adjust the supply of reserve balances so as to keep the federal funds rate around the target federal funds rate established by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). OMOs are conducted by the Trading Desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), which acts as agent for the FOMC. The range of securities that the Federal Reserve is authorized to purchase and sell is relatively limited. The authority to conduct OMOs is granted under Section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act.

OMOs can be divided into two types: permanent and temporary. Permanent OMOs are outright purchases or sales of securities for the SOMA, the Federal Reserve's portfolio. Permanent OMOs traditionally have been used to accommodate the longer-term factors driving the expansion of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet, principally the trend growth of currency in circulation. More recently, the expansion of SOMA securities holdings has been driven by large-scale asset purchase programs (LSAPs). Temporary OMOs typically are used to address reserve needs that are deemed to be transitory in nature. These operations are either repurchase agreements (repos) or reverse repurchase agreements (reverse repos). Under a repo, the Trading Desk buys a security under an agreement to resell that security in the future; under a reverse repo, the Trading Desk sells a security under an agreement to repurchase that security in the future. A repo is the economic equivalent of a collateralized loan; conversely, a reverse repo is the economic equivalent of collateralized borrowing. In both types of transactions, the difference between the purchase and sale prices reflects the interest on the loan or borrowing. The composition of the SOMA is shown in table 2.

Table 2. System Open Market Account (SOMA) Securities Holdings
Billions of dollars, as of May 26, 2010

Each OMO affects the Federal Reserve's balance sheet; the size and nature of the effect depend on the specifics of the operation. The Federal Reserve publishes its balance sheet each week in the H.4.1 statistical release, "Factors Affecting Reserve Balances of Depository Institutions and Consolidated Statement of Condition of Reserve Banks" (www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41). The release separately reports securities held outright, repos, and reverse repos.

In addition, the Federal Reserve has long operated an overnight securities lending facility as a vehicle to address market pressures for specific Treasury securities. Since July 9, 2009, this facility has also lent housing-related government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) debt securities that are particularly sought after. Amounts outstanding under this facility are reported in table 1A of the H.4.1 statistical release.

The FRBNY's traditional counterparties for OMOs are the primary dealers with which the FRBNY trades U.S. government and select other securities. In early 2010, the FRBNY revised its policy regarding the administration of its relationships with primary dealers in order to provide greater transparency about the significant business standards expected of primary dealers and to offer clearer guidance on the process to become a primary dealer. The revised policy offers a more structured presentation of the business standards expected of a primary dealer; a more formal application process for prospective primary dealers; an increase in the minimum net capital requirement, from $50 million to $150 million; a seasoning requirement of one year of relevant operations before a prospective dealer may submit an application; and a clear notice of actions the FRBNY may take against a noncompliant primary dealer.

Large-Scale Asset Purchase Programs (LSAPs)

In November 2008, the Federal Reserve announced that it would buy direct obligations of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks, and MBS guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae. The goal of these debt purchases was to reduce the cost and increase the availability of credit for the purchase of houses. The FOMC authorized purchases of up to $1.25 trillion of agency MBS and up to $200 billion of agency direct obligations. Subsequently, in November 2009, the FOMC announced that agency debt purchases would be about $175 billion. This amount, while somewhat less than the previously announced maximum of $200 billion, was consistent with the path of purchases and reflected the limited availability of agency debt.

The Federal Reserve also determined that supporting the MBS "dollar roll" market promotes the goals of the MBS purchase program. Dollar roll transactions consist of a purchase or sale of "to be announced" (TBA) MBS combined with an agreement to sell or purchase TBA MBS on a specified future date. Because of principal and interest payments and occasional delays in the settlement of transactions, the Federal Reserve also holds some cash and short-term investments associated with the MBS purchase program.

The FRBNY announced in August 2009 that it would streamline the set of external investment managers for the agency-guaranteed MBS purchase program, reducing the number of investment managers from four to two. As of March 2, 2010, the FRBNY began to use its own staff on select days to transact directly in the secondary market for agency MBS as part of the FOMC's LSAPs, consistent with the announcement of November 2009. These changes were not performance-related: the FRBNY had anticipated that it would adjust its use of external investment managers as it gained more experience with the program.

In September 2009, the Federal Reserve began to purchase on-the-run agency securities--the most recently issued securities--in order to mitigate market dislocations and promote overall market functioning. Prior to this change, purchases were focused on off-the-run agency securities.

On September 23, 2009, the FOMC announced its intention to gradually slow the pace of its purchases of agency-guaranteed MBS and agency debt. In implementing this directive, the Trading Desk of the FRBNY announced that it would scale back the average weekly purchase amounts of agency MBS and reduce the size and frequency of agency debt purchases. As anticipated by the FOMC, these transactions were completed by the end of the first quarter of 2010. The Federal Reserve's outright holdings of MBS are reported weekly in tables 1, 3, 10, and 11 of the H.4.1 statistical release. In addition, detailed data on all settled agency MBS holdings are published weekly on the FRBNY website at www.newyorkfed.org/markets/soma/sysopen_accholdings.html.

In March 2009, the FOMC announced that it would also purchase up to $300 billion of longer-term Treasury securities to help improve conditions in private credit markets. The Federal Reserve has purchased a range of securities across the maturity spectrum, including Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS). The bulk of purchases have been in intermediate maturities. In August 2009, the FOMC announced that it would gradually slow the pace of these transactions in order to promote a smooth transition in markets as purchases of these Treasury securities were completed. As anticipated, the purchases were completed by the end of October 2009.

Reverse Repurchase Agreements (Reverse Repos)

In December 2009, the FRBNY conducted a set of small-scale, real-value, triparty reverse repos with primary dealers. Reverse repos are a tool that could be used to support a reduction in monetary accommodation at the appropriate time. These transactions were conducted to ensure operational readiness at the Federal Reserve, the major clearing banks, and the primary dealers, and had no material impact on the availability of reserves or on market rates.

On March 8, 2010, the FRBNY announced the beginning of a program to expand its counterparties for conducting reverse repos. This expansion is intended to enhance the capacity of such operations to drain reserves beyond what could likely be conducted through primary dealers. The additional counterparties will not be eligible to participate in transactions conducted by the FRBNY other than reverse repos. Over time, the FRBNY expects that it will modify the counterparty criteria to include a broader set of counterparties and anticipates that it will publish criteria for additional types of firms and for expanded eligibility within previously identified types of firms. In this context, the FRBNY published the Reverse Repurchase Transaction (RRP) Eligibility Criteria for Money Funds for the first set of expanded counterparties, domestic money market mutual funds.

On April 30, 2010, the FRBNY published the Reverse Repurchase Program Form Master Repurchase Agreement for Money Market Mutual Funds (MRA), which sets out the legal terms and conditions under which the FRBNY and its money market mutual fund counterparties may undertake reverse repos. Publication of the MRA is part of the Federal Reserve's larger effort to prepare for the potential need to conduct large-scale reverse repos with an expanded set of counterparties in addition to the existing set of primary dealer counterparties. These actions are part of a process of prudent planning by the Federal Reserve and have no implications for monetary policy decisions in the near term.

Liquidity Arrangements with Foreign Central Banks

Recent Developments

• In May 2010, the Federal Reserve re-established temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap facilities with the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank, and the Bank of Japan to address the re-emergence of strains in global U.S. dollar short-term funding markets.
• As presented in table 3, the total amount of liquidity provided under these lines was $1.2 billion, as of May 26, 2010.

Background

Because of the global character of bank funding markets, the Federal Reserve has at times coordinated with other central banks to provide liquidity. During the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve entered into agreements to establish temporary reciprocal currency arrangements (central bank liquidity swap lines) with a number of foreign central banks (FCBs). Two types of temporary swap lines were established: dollar liquidity lines and foreign currency liquidity lines. These temporary arrangements expired on February 1, 2010. However, in May 2010, temporary dollar liquidity swap lines were re-established with certain FCBs.

The FRBNY operates the swap lines under the authority granted under Section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act and in compliance with authorizations, policies, and procedures established by the FOMC.

Dollar Liquidity Swaps

On December 12, 2007, the FOMC announced that it had authorized dollar liquidity swap lines with the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank to provide liquidity in U.S. dollars to overseas markets. Subsequently, the FOMC authorized dollar liquidity swap lines between the Federal Reserve and each of the following FCBs: the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Banco Central do Brasil, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of Japan, Danmarks Nationalbank, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Korea, the Banco de Mexico, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Norges Bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Sveriges Riksbank, and the Swiss National Bank. These temporary dollar liquidity swap arrangements expired on February 1, 2010. In May 2010, the FOMC re-authorized dollar liquidity swap lines with the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, and the Swiss National Bank through January 2011.

Swaps under these lines consist of two transactions. When an FCB draws on its swap line with the FRBNY, the FCB sells a specified amount of its currency to the FRBNY in exchange for dollars at the prevailing market exchange rate. The FRBNY holds the foreign currency in an account at the FCB. The dollars that the FRBNY provides are then deposited in an account that the FCB maintains at the FRBNY. At the same time, the FRBNY and the FCB enter into a binding agreement for a second transaction that obligates the FCB to buy back its currency on a specified future date at the same exchange rate. The second transaction unwinds the first at the same exchange rate used in the initial transaction; as a result, the recorded value of the foreign currency amounts is not affected by changes in the market exchange rate. At the conclusion of the second transaction, the FCB compensates the FRBNY at a market-based interest rate.

When the FCB lends the dollars it obtained by drawing on its swap line to institutions in its jurisdiction, the dollars are transferred from the FCB account at the FRBNY to the account of the bank that the borrowing institution uses to clear its dollar transactions. The FCB is obligated to return the dollars to the FRBNY under the terms of the agreement, and the FRBNY is not a counterparty to the loan extended by the FCB. The FCB bears the credit risk associated with the loans it makes to institutions in its jurisdiction.

Table 3. Amounts Outstanding under Dollar Liquidity Swaps
As of May 26, 2010

The foreign currency that the Federal Reserve acquires in these transactions is recorded as an asset on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet. In tables 1, 10, and 11 of the weekly H.4.1 statistical release, the dollar value of amounts that the foreign central banks have drawn but not yet repaid is reported in the line entitled "Central bank liquidity swaps." Dollar liquidity swaps have maturities ranging from overnight to three months. Table 2 of the H.4.1 statistical release reports the maturity distribution of the outstanding dollar liquidity swaps. Detailed information about drawings on the swap lines by the participating FCBs is presented on the FRBNY's website at www.newyorkfed.org/markets/fxswap.

Foreign-Currency Liquidity Swap Lines

On April 6, 2009, the FOMC announced foreign-currency liquidity swap lines with the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, and the Swiss National Bank. These lines were designed to provide the Federal Reserve with the capacity to offer liquidity to U.S. institutions in foreign currency should a need arise. These lines mirrored the existing dollar liquidity swap lines, which provided FCBs with the capacity to offer U.S. dollar liquidity to financial institutions in their jurisdictions. These foreign-currency swap lines provided the Federal Reserve with the ability to address financial strains by providing foreign currency-denominated liquidity to U.S. institutions in amounts of up to £30 billion (sterling), €80 billion (euro), ¥10 trillion (yen), and CHF 40 billion (Swiss francs). The Federal Reserve did not draw on these swap lines, and they expired on February 1, 2010.

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