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Friday, May 19, 2017

Bad Optics: the Fed's Balance Sheet Edition

Despite the all Fed talk about shrinking its balance sheets, many observers are hoping the Fed keeps it large.  They want the Fed to maintain a large balance sheet for various reasons: it earns a positive return for the government; it provides a financial stability tool via provisions of safe assets; it needs to remain big and accommodative until the economy really starts roaring. There are also complications to shrinking the Fed balance sheet.

Whatever you make of these arguments they all ignore an important political-economy consideration: a large Fed balance sheet makes for bad optics because of interest paid on excess reserve (IOER). 

The figure below explains why. Using data from the Federal Reserve's H8 report, the figure shows the cash assets of "large domestically-chartered" banks and "foreign-related" banks.  The figure reveals the cash assets of these two bank categories combined tracks excess reserves fairly closely. They are, in other words, the main holders of excess reserves and consequently the main recipients of the IOER payment. 


Think about the implications: the banks that were bailed out during the crisis and the banks owned by foreigners are getting most of the IOER payment. This is a perfect storm of financial villains for both the political left and the right. That is why I agree with Ramesh Ponnuru that it politically naive to think the Fed can maintain a large balance. 

And note, the bad optics will only look worse if the Fed's balance sheet does not shrink as interest rates go up. For the IOER payment will go up too. Imagine Fed Chair Janet Yellen having to explain to Congress the growing dollar payments going to these banks.

That is not to say it will be easy to shrink the Fed's balance sheet. There will be big challenges as I have noted elsewhere. But the bad optics do mean that it is likely the Fed will be forced to shrink its balance sheet. 

2 comments:

  1. Would you prefer this predicament or Europe's, the Fed's Big Balance Sheet policy or the EU's austerity, the Marshall Plan or "the Greeks must pay" policy?

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  2. I agree. The Fed should shrink their balance sheet.

    They should also speed up raising rates. Here we are at about 4% unemployment and the Yellen still has rates below inflation.

    The problem isn't the rich and big business needing lower rates to encourage them to invest. The rich and big business have plenty of cash, just don't see good opportunities to invest in r&d, capacity, etc.; so there are stock buybacks and other asset price boosting measures. At the very least, raising rates would reduce the risk of bubbles fueled by buying on margin.

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