Category Archives: Bonds

QE still driving portfolio shifting

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I’ve been watching for a ‘buy the rumor sell the news’ ‘risk off’ reversal, but it happened at best only momentarily after the Fed announcement, when the 10 year tsy note dipped to maybe 2.62 very briefly, stocks dipped, the dollar sort of held, gold was off a touch, etc. But now it looks like it’s ‘risk back on’ with a vengeance as both believers in QE and those who believe others believe in QE are piling on.

The fact remains that QE does nothing apart from alter the term structure of rates.

There are no ‘quantity’ effects, though from the following article and market reactions much of the world still believes there are substantial quantity effects.

And what we are seeing are the effects of ongoing portfolio shifting and trading based on the false notions about QE.

To review,

QE is not ‘money printing’ of any consequence. It just alters the duration of outstanding govt liabilities which alters the term structure of risk free rates.

QE removes some interest income from the economy which the Fed turns over to the Tsy. This works against ‘earnings’ in general.

QE alters the discount rates that price assets, helping valuations.

Japan has done enough QE to keep 10 year jgb’s below 1%, without triggering inflation or supporting aggregate demand in any meaningful way. Japan’s economy remains relatively flat, even with substantial net exports, which help domestic demand, a policy to which we are now aspiring.

QE does not increase commodity consumption or oil consumption.

QE does not provide liquidity for the rest of the world.

QE does cause a lot of portfolio shifting which one way or another is functionally ‘getting short the dollar’

This is much like what happened when panicked money paid up to move out of the euro, driving it briefly down to 118, if I recall correctly.

No telling how long this QE ride will last.

What’s reasonably certain is the Fed will do what it can to keep rates low until it looks like it’s meeting at least one of its dual mandates.

Asians Gird for Bubble Threat, Criticize Fed Move

By Michael Heath

November 4 Bloomberg) — Asia-Pacific officials are preparing
for stronger currencies and asset-price inflation as they blamed
the U.S. Federal Reserve’s expanded monetary stimulus for
threatening to escalate an inflow of capital into the region.

Chinese central bank adviser Xia Bin said Fed quantitative
easing is “uncontrolled” money printing, and Japan’s Prime
Minister Naoto Kan cited the U.S. pursuing a “weak-dollar
policy.” The Hong Kong Monetary Authority warned the city’s
property prices could surge and Malaysia’s central bank chief
said nations are prepared to act jointly on capital flows.

“Extra liquidity due to quantitative easing will spill
into Asian markets,” said Patrick Bennett, a Hong Kong-based
strategist at Standard Bank Group Ltd. “It will put increased
pressure on all currencies to appreciate, the yuan in particular
has been appreciating at a slower rate than others.”

The International Monetary Fund last month urged Asia-
Pacific nations to withdraw policy stimulus to head off asset-
price pressures, as their world-leading economies draw capital
because of low interest rates in the U.S. and other advanced
countries. Today’s reactions of regional policy makers reflect
the international ramifications of the Fed’s decision yesterday
to inject $600 billion into the U.S. economy.

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Bernanke Op-Ed

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What the Fed did and why: supporting the recovery and sustaining price stability

By Ben S. Bernanke

November 4 (Washington Post) — Two years have passed since the worst financial crisis since the 1930s dealt a body blow to the world economy.

Only because policy makers failed to respond with an appropriate fiscal adjustment.

And, worse, they continue to fail to recognize this policy blunder.

Working with policymakers at home and abroad, the Federal Reserve responded with strong and creative measures to help stabilize the financial system and the economy. Among the Fed’s responses was a dramatic easing of monetary policy – reducing short-term interest rates nearly to zero. The Fed also purchased more than a trillion dollars’ worth of Treasury securities and U.S.-backed mortgage-related securities, which helped reduce longer-term interest rates, such as those for mortgages and corporate bonds. These steps helped end the economic free fall and set the stage for a resumption of economic growth in mid-2009.

In Q3 08 the Fed failed to provide sufficient routine bank liquidity for several critical months while it experimented with a variety of poorly thought out open market operations that progressively accepted more and more bank collateral until they eventually did what they should have all along- lend to member banks at their target rate on a continuous, as needed basis. Yet even now they fail to do this to the smaller community banks, whose cost of funds remains at least 1% over the fed funds rate.

They also continue to fail to recognize that their role is setting the term structure of risk free rates, which can be done directly.
By simply offering to buy tsy securities at their target rates in unlimited quantities.
However, they have yet to fully appreciate that it’s the resulting interest rates and not the quantities they purchase that are of further economic consequence. And if they wish to specifically target mortgage rates, this is readily done by lending to their member banks specifically for this purpose at the Fed’s desired target for mortgage rates, with the Fed assuming the ‘convexity’ risk.

Additionally, while the Fed did address the ‘market functioning’ issues that were caused by the Fed’s own initial lack of liquidity provision, they failed to recognize that monetary policy was not going to restore aggregate demand. In fact, they were all but certain it would, as evidenced by their concern their policies carried the risk of generating ‘inflation, etc.’ this led other policy makers to take a ‘wait and see’ attitude which has been monumentally costly with regards to lost real output and all the real costs of unemployment.

Notwithstanding the progress that has been made,

After more than two years the output gap in general remains at near record levels.

when the Fed’s monetary policymaking committee – the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) – met this week to review the economic situation, we could hardly be satisfied. The Federal Reserve’s objectives – its dual mandate, set by Congress – are to promote a high level of employment and low, stable inflation. Unfortunately, the job market remains quite weak; the national unemployment rate is nearly 10 percent, a large number of people can find only part-time work, and a substantial fraction of the unemployed have been out of work six months or longer. The heavy costs of unemployment include intense strains on family finances, more foreclosures and the loss of job skills.

The fed’s responsibility for this is largely that of its failure to do its job of providing continuous and unlimited liquidity to its member banks and to not recognize that monetary policy was not capable of restoring the aggregate demand necessary to support full employment.

Today, most measures of underlying inflation are running somewhat below 2 percent, or a bit lower than the rate most Fed policymakers see as being most consistent with healthy economic growth in the long run. Although low inflation is generally good, inflation that is too low can pose risks to the economy – especially when the economy is struggling. In the most extreme case, very low inflation can morph into deflation (falling prices and wages), which can contribute to long periods of economic stagnation.

Morph? Inflation deteriorates to unwelcome deflation with a lack of aggregate demand. There is no mystery here.

Even absent such risks, low and falling inflation indicate that the economy has considerable spare capacity, implying that there is scope for monetary policy to support further gains in employment without risking economic overheating.

Note the continued failure to recognize monetary policy has no tools to support demand at desired levels.

The FOMC decided this week that, with unemployment high and inflation very low, further support to the economy is needed. With short-term interest rates already about as low as they can go, the FOMC agreed to deliver that support by purchasing additional longer-term securities, as it did in 2008 and 2009. The FOMC intends to buy an additional $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by mid-2011 and will continue to reinvest repayments of principal on its holdings of securities, as it has been doing since August.

This approach eased financial conditions in the past and, so far, looks to be effective again. Stock prices rose and long-term interest rates fell when investors began to anticipate the most recent action. Easier financial conditions will promote economic growth. For example, lower mortgage rates will make housing more affordable and allow more homeowners to refinance. Lower corporate bond rates will encourage investment. And higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can also spur spending. Increased spending will lead to higher incomes and profits that, in a virtuous circle, will further support economic expansion.

These are all very weak channels at best.

What is hoped for is that lower interest rates encourage private credit expansion, where consumers return to borrowing to spend. And while this can happen, and may already be happening to a small degree, there is no reason to believe that QE will promote this outcome.

What the chairman knows and fails to discuss are the interest income channels, which he wrote about in a published paper in 2004. Lower rates cause the treasury to pay less interest on its treasury securities, and the interest the Fed earns on its newly purchased securities is interest no longer earned by the economy which previously held those securities. This reduced interest income paid by govt to the non govt sectors is much like a tax increase that to some degree neutralizes the modest positive effects the Fed is hoping for.

Also ignored is the fact that Japan has had near 0 rates and much lower long rates than the US, also helped by massive QE, and has also had very large net exports helping to support GDP, something the Fed and the US administration aspires to as well, yet has failed to restore desired aggregate demand, growth, and employment.

While they have been used successfully in the United States and elsewhere, purchases of longer-term securities are a less familiar monetary policy tool than cutting short-term interest rates. That is one reason the FOMC has been cautious, balancing the costs and benefits before acting.

Costs?

As monopoly provider of net clearing balances (reserves) for the payments system, the Fed is necessarily ‘price setter’ of the term structure of risk free rates. Their notion of ‘cost’ is inapplicable. And all QE does is alter the duration of total govt liabilities. It doesn’t change the quantity of non govt net financial assets.

We will review the purchase program regularly to ensure it is working as intended and to assess whether adjustments are needed as economic conditions change.

Although asset purchases are relatively unfamiliar as a tool of monetary policy, some concerns about this approach are overstated. Critics have, for example, worried that it will lead to excessive increases in the money supply and ultimately to significant increases in inflation.

Agreed! Yet their expressed motivation all along is to prevent deflation, which is the same as ‘causing inflation.’

A problem here is they believe that inflation is caused by rising inflation expectations, and not aggregate demand per se. That is, rising demand per se doesn’t cause inflation until that demand starts to drive inflation expectations.

Until this confused theory of inflation is discarded policy will continue to be confused as well.

Our earlier use of this policy approach had little effect on the amount of currency in circulation or on other broad measures of the money supply, such as bank deposits. Nor did it result in higher inflation.

Correct, which also means the policy failed to generate the desired results.

We have made all necessary preparations, and we are confident that we have the tools to unwind these policies at the appropriate time.

Agreed.

The Fed is committed to both parts of its dual mandate and will take all measures necessary to keep inflation low and stable.

The Federal Reserve cannot solve all the economy’s problems on its own. That will take time and the combined efforts of many parties, including the central bank, Congress, the administration, regulators and the private sector. But the Federal Reserve has a particular obligation to help promote increased employment and sustain price stability. Steps taken this week should help us fulfill that obligation.

How about an obligation to support a sufficient fiscal adjustment to eliminate the output gap rather than supporting deficit reduction?

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next week….

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Getting really bad feelings for the next week or so:

QE believed to be inflationary money printing but doesn’t actually do anything

Gridlock presumed good but is actually bad as it could mean taxes rise at year end

Republican fiscal conservatives deemed ‘good’ but in fact bad with their spending cuts and budget balancing bias.

So three big ‘buy the rumor sell the news’ things coming together?

Could be a reversal of risk on, or even a confused reshuffle of what’s risk on and what isn’t.

For example, could be lower 10 year tsy yields as it will all be perceived to keep the Fed on hold that much longer, as well as gold and commodities and commodity currencies selling off due to the realization that the fed can’t reflate even if it wants to.

That means crude could be selling off and the dollar getting stronger, even with rates lower.

Not a good time to have any risk on, in my humble opinion.

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S&P Says US Should Act to Protect AAA-Rating: Report

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David,

Please do the world a favor and spill the beans.

Please make it clear to the news media ability to pay is not in question, no matter how large the numbers may get.

The US, as issuer of its currency, is not the next Greece, Ireland, or California.

Please tell them ‘funding the debt’ consists of nothing more than debiting a Fed reserve account and crediting a Fed securities account.
And paying down debt, as happens with every maturity, is nothing more than debiting a Fed securities account and crediting a Fed reserve account.

Willingness to pay is an entirely different issue.
Congress can default by not extending the debt ceiling, for example. But that’s an entirely different matter.

Krugman finally came around a few weeks ago conceding ability to pay was not the question.

So now that a Nobel Prize winner is saying it, it’s safe for you all to go public with it?

Let the President know the US has not run out of money, and that there is no such thing.

We have enough real problems in the world without adding this nonsense.

Best,
Warren

S&P Says US Should Act to Protect AAA-Rating: Report

Aug 26 (Reuters) — The United States government needs to take steps to preserve its top AAA-rating, a Standard & Poor’s Ratings (S&P) official told Dow Jones newswire in an interview published on Thursday.

The measures taken in response to recommendations President Barack Obama’s commission on fiscal responsibility would be crucial in the view S&P takes on the U.S. credit rating, he said.

“It is very important for the credit standing of the United States that the Congress considers very carefully what the fiscal commission proposes,” John Chambers, chairman of S&P’s sovereign rating committee, was quoted as saying.

“It is very important for Congress to take the required steps.”

S&P maintains the United States’ top AAA rating with a stable outlook, meaning there is not a significant chance of a change in the near future.

However, it has repeatedly warned about the gigantic deficit and the debt burden in the world’s biggest economy, calling it a challenge for the government.

David Beers, S&P’s global head of sovereign ratings said in a July report the U.S. does not have unlimited fiscal flexibility and the best-case scenario for the U.S. would be for its debt-GDP ratio to peak at around 80 percent, although there was a chance it could exceed 100 percent.

“So we don’t think these political decisions on tackling the public finances can be put off forever,” Beers said in the report.

Chambers also disagreed with Ireland’s criticism of its downgrade in the Dow Jones interview.

Chambers said S&P does not consider the bad loans the government’s asset management agency is buying from banks as liquid assets in the near term, but added further rating action was unlikely in the near term.

On Tuesday, S&P cut Ireland’s long-term rating by one notch to ‘AA-‘, the fourth highest investment grade, and assigned the country a negative outlook saying the cost to the government of supporting the financial sector had increased significantly.

That drew criticism from the National Treasury Management Agency which said it disagreed with S&P’s view that Ireland faced substantially higher costs to bail out its ailing banking sector.

“In terms of the specific analysis by S&P, this is largely predicated upon an extreme estimate of bank recapitalization costs of up to 50 billion euros,” the NTMA said. “We believe this approach is flawed.”

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markets looking grim

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>   
>   (email exchange)
>   
>   On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 8:32 AM, Seth wrote:
>   
>   stocks look bad
>   looks like another panic
>   

It doesn’t look good technically.

Must be coming out of europe with gold up/euro down dynamic, etc.

Insiders there must be bailing.

Maybe they know something we don’t, or maybe they are wrong.

History is no help as in the past it’s been both.

Austerity is trimming growth there a bit around the edges, but deficits remain reasonably high, so GDP’s are probably at least muddling through, with overall growth probably positive.

The ECB keeps the short term funding channels open for the member nations, but that may not be fully appreciated yet.

On a mark to market basis bank capital is probably below requirements, and they may not realize that doesn’t have to matter to the real economy for as long as the ECB continues to fund them.

Lower crude oil prices support consumption of other things. With US crude oil product consumption up and Saudi output rising, demand must be ok. Maybe Saudis are worried and want lower prices to help world growth as well. Hard to ever say what they are actually up to. They may see the Iraqi production coming on stream and are trying to engineer an increase in demand. Again, no way to tell what they are up to.

The lower 10 year rates reflects expectations of ‘low for longer’ from the Fed due to high unemployment and falling rates of inflation as measured by the Fed. And the possibility of more QE that could flatten the curve further.

There is also the notion that there’s nothing left that the Fed can do of any consequence regarding aggregate demand, and Congress thinks it’s run out of money, which means flying without a net. That increases the weight of the downside in the balance of risks.

If markets and Congress knew that fiscal policy had no nominal limit and deficit spending was not dependent on being able to borrow from the likes of China to be paid by our grandchildren, the balance of risks would be viewed very differently. But they don’t know that.

With the elections coming and California reverting to vouchers again, the time is right for my per capita revenue sharing. But it’s not even a consideration.

Q3 and Q4 GDP estimates are looking more like 1.5%, and Q2 looks to be revised down toward 1% Friday. Not a double dip but no drop in unemployment either as productivity might be at least that high. That’s worse politically than it is for equities, and adds support for a ‘second stimulus’ type of reaction. But that’s way down the road. More likely it causes most of the expiring tax cuts to be extended.

Thursday’s claims can make a big difference as well. The jump to 500,000 last week added an element of fear internationally.

Also, in thin summer markets technicals often cause exaggerated moves. Volume is very low, and a given size buying or selling causes larger moves to find someone willing to take the other side, and momentum type traders can easily overwhelm investors.

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China reduces long term treasuries by record amount

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Notice US Tsy yields fell to their lows even with China reducing holdings.
The fear mongerers will just tell us to thank goodness someone else came in to replace them, and that without the Fed buying it’s all over for the US, etc.
To which I say, it’s just a reserve drain, get over it!
And if you don’t understand that, try educating yourself before you sound off.

Interesting they are letting overseas banks invest in their bond markets.
Maybe a move to help strengthen their currency?
They can see the $ reserves aren’t coming in as before?
Or overseas banks bought their way in, looking to profit?
Or the next generation western educated Chinese thinks an expanded financial sector is a prerequisite to growth?
In any case, looks like another western disease has spread to China.

China Headlines,
China Threatened By Export Risk After Eclipsing Japan

China Reduces Long-Term Treasuries by Record Amount

China Economic Index Rises, Conference Board Says

China to Let Overseas Banks Invest in Bond Market

China Lags Behind on Key Measures After Surpassing Japan: Govt

Foreign Investment in China Climbs for 12th Month

Yuan Gains Most Since June as China Favors Greater Volatility

China Copper Consumption Growth to Slow, Antaike Says

Hong Kong Jobless Rate Slides to Lowest in 19 Months

Singapore Exports Cool as Government Predicts Slowing Demand

China Reduces Long-Term Treasuries by Record Amount

By Wes Goodman and Daniel Kruger

August 17(Bloomberg) — China cut its holdings of Treasury notes and bonds by the most ever, raising speculation a plunge in U.S. yields has made government securities unattractive.

The nation’s holdings of long-term Treasuries fell in June for the first time in 15 months, dropping by $21.2 billion to $839.7 billion, a U.S. government report showed yesterday. Two- year yields headed for a fifth monthly decline in August, falling today to a record 0.48 percent.

Two-year rates will rise to 0.85 percent by year-end as the U.S. economy rebounds in 2010 from a contraction in 2009, according to Bloomberg surveys of financial companies. Reports today will show improvement in housing and manufacturing, signs of stability even as growth is less than expected, analysts said.

“Buying now is a big risk,” said Hiroki Shimazu, an economist in Tokyo at Nikko Cordial Securities Inc., a unit of Japan’s third-largest publicly traded bank. “I don’t recommend it. The economy is stable.”

Investors who purchased two-year notes today would lose 0.4 percent if the yield projection is correct, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The economy will expand at a 2.55 percent rate in the last six months of 2010, according to the median of 67 estimates in a Bloomberg survey taken July 31 to Aug. 9, down from the 2.8 percent pace projected last month.

Housing, Production

China’s overall Treasury position fell for a second month in June to $843.7 billion.

“This may have been opportunistic,” said James Caron, head of U.S. interest-rate strategy at Morgan Stanley in New York, one of 18 primary dealers that trade with the Federal Reserve. “Look at the level of yields. If you’ve held a lot of Treasuries, you’ve done well.”

The People’s Bank of China on June 19 ended a two-year peg to the dollar, saying it would allow greater “flexibility” in the exchange rate. The currency has since strengthened 0.5 percent.

The central bank limits appreciation by selling yuan and buying dollars, a policy that has contributed to its accumulation of the world’s largest foreign-exchange reserves and led to the build-up of its Treasury holdings.

Domestic Investors

Treasury yields fell as U.S. investors increased their holdings to 50.5 percent, the biggest share of the debt since August 2007 at the start of the financial crisis, amid signs that a recovery from the longest contraction since the Great Depression has lost momentum.

U.S. reports last week showed retail sales increased in July less than economists forecast and inflation held at a 44- year low.

The two-year note yielded 0.50 percent as of 12:19 p.m. in Tokyo. The 0.625 percent security due in July 2012 traded at a price of 100 7/32, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

China, with $2.45 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, turned bullish on Europe and Japan at the expense of the U.S.

The nation has been buying “quite a lot” of European bonds, said Yu Yongding, a former adviser to the People’s Bank of China who was part of a foreign-policy advisory committee that visited France, Spain and Germany from June 20 to July 2. Japan’s Ministry of Finance said Aug. 9 that China bought 1.73 trillion yen ($20.3 billion) more Japanese debt than it sold in the first half of 2010, the fastest pace of purchases in at least five years.

Diversification Strategy

“Diversification should be a basic principle,” Yu, president of the China Society of World Economy, said in an interview last week, adding a “top-level Chinese central banker” told him to convey to European policy makers China’s confidence in the region’s economy and currency. “We didn’t sell any European bonds or assets. Instead we bought quite a lot.”

China held 10 percent of the $8.18 trillion of outstanding Treasury debt as of July. Investors in Japan hold the second- largest position in Treasuries with $803.6 billion of the securities, or 9.8 percent. Total foreign holdings rose 1.2 percent to a record $4.01 trillion, the Treasury said. China’s holdings peaked in July 2009 at $939.9 billion.

China needs a strong U.S. dollar, said Kenneth Lieberthal, a senior fellow specializing in China at the Brookings Institution, a research group on Washington.

“I don’t think we’re going to see any massive flight from China’s holdings of U.S. debt,” Lieberthal said on Bloomberg Television. “That would be self defeating and they well recognize that.”

China to Let Overseas Banks Invest in Bond Market

August 17 (Bloomberg) — China will let overseas financial institutions invest yuan holdings in the nation’s interbank bond market in a pilot program to spur currency flows from abroad.

The People’s Bank of China will start with foreign central banks, clearing banks for cross-border yuan settlement in Hong Kong and Macau, and other international lenders involved in trade settlement, according to a statement on its website today.

“It’s a big boost for the offshore renminbi market,” said Steve Wang, a credit strategist for Bank of China International Securities Ltd. in Hong Kong. It “would allow offshore holders of yuan to invest the money directly in China rather than going through middlemen. It’s a step in the right direction that really opens the domestic securities market.”

The move comes as China seeks to broaden the use of its currency. The nation approved use of the yuan to settle cross- border trade with Hong Kong in June 2009, part of a drive to reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar. The popularity of that program was limited by the investments available in the currency.

Each overseas bank needs a special account at a local lender for debt transaction clearing, according to the regulations, which come into effect from today. Overseas banks must first apply for investment quotas on the interbank market, the central bank said. Foreign central banks should disclose funding sources and investing plans in their applications, according to the central bank.

There were a total 14.3 trillion yuan ($2.1 trillion) of bonds on the interbank market as of June, including debt issued by the central government, banks and companies, the central bank said July 30. That amount accounted for 97 percent of total debt outstanding.

Yuan Deposit Growth

Yuan deposits in Hong Kong climbed 4.8 percent in June to a record as China ended a two-year peg against the dollar. Currently, trade is the main way for offshore holders of yuan to return money to China, Wang said.

The program is a step forward to internationalization of the renminbi, said Dariusz Kowalczyk, a currency strategist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong. The Chinese currency, the yuan, is also known as the renminbi.

“By opening the new avenue to invest Chinese yuan funds, the currency will become more attractive and may come under further upward pressure in the offshore market in Hong Kong,” Kowalczyk said. “Foreign central banks may decide to begin the process of diversifying their reserves into Chinese yuan.”

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EU

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This is what I was writing about last week-

China and others buying euro to support exports to that region.

The euro member nations want their debt sold, but they don’t want the loss of ‘competitiveness’ that necessarily comes with it, as the moves to eliminate solvency issues continue to drive up the euro:

China offers vote of confidence in euro

(FT) China delivered a strong vote of confidence in the euro on Friday when Premier Wen Jiabao said that Europe would always be one of the main investment markets for China’s foreign exchange reserves. Mr Wen said “Europe will certainly overcome its difficulties”. “The European market has been in the past, is now and will be in the future one of the main investment markets for China’s foreign exchange reserves,” Mr Wen said. “I want to say that at this time, when some European countries are suffering sovereign debt crises, China has always held out a helping hand,” he added. “We believe that with the joint hard work of the international community, Europe will certainly overcome its difficulties,” he said. According to people familiar with Spain’s recent bond issue, China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange was allocated up to €400m ($505m) of Spanish 10-year bonds in a debt deal last Tuesday.

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corrected post on IMF operations

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I now understand it this way:

The IMF creates and allocates new SDR’s to its members.

There is no other source of SDR’s.

SDR’s exist only in accounts on the IMF’s books.

SDR’s have value only because there is an informal agreement between members that they will use their own currency to lend against or buy SDR’s from members the IMF deems in need of funding who also accept IMF terms and conditions.

Originally, in the fixed exchange rate system of that time, this was to help members with balance of payments deficits obtain foreign exchange to buy their own currencies to keep them from devaluation.

The system failed and now the exchange rates are floating.

Currently SDR’s and the IMF are used by members needing help with foreign currency funding needs.

Looks to me like Greece will be borrowing euro from other euro nations using its SDR’s as collateral or selling them to other euro nations.

Either way it’s functionally getting funding from the other euro members.

Greece is also accepting IMF terms and conditions.

The only way the US is involved is if a member attempts to use its SDR’s to obtain $US.

The US is bound only by this informal agreement to accept SDR’s as collateral for $US loans, or to buy SDR for $US.

SDR’s have no intrinsic value and are not accepted for tax payments.

It’s a lot like the regional ‘currencies’ like ‘lets’ and ‘Ithaca dollars’ that are also purely voluntary and facilitate unsecured lending of goods and services with no enforcement in the case of default.

It’s a purely voluntary arrangement which renders all funding as functionally unsecured.

There is no IMF balance sheet involved.

While conceptually/descriptively different than what I erroneously described in my previous post, it is all functionally the same- unsecured lending to Greece by the other euro nations with IMF terms and conditions.

The actual flow of funds and inherent risk is as I previously described.

No dollars leave the Fed, euro are transferred from euro members to Greece.

I apologize for the prior incorrect descriptive information and appreciate any further information anyone might have regarding the actual current arrangements.

Prior post:

I understand it this way:

The US buys SDR’s in dollars.
those dollars exist as deposits in the IMF’s account at the Fed.

The euro members buy SDR’s in euro.
Those euro sit in the IMF’s account at the ECB

The IMF then lends those euro to Greece
They get transferred by the ECB to the Bank of Greece’s account at the ECB.

The IMF’s dollars stay in the IMF’s account at the Fed.

They can only be transferred to another account at the Fed by the Fed.

U.S. taxpayers are helping finance Greek bailout

By Senator Jim DeMint

May 6 — The International Monetary Fund board has approved a $40 billion bailout for Greece, almost one year after the Senate rejected my amendment to prohibit the IMF from using U.S. taxpayer money to bailout foreign countries.

Congress didn‚t learn their lesson after the $700 billion failed bank bailout and let world leaders shake down U.S taxpayers for international bailout money at the G-20 conference in April 2009. G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors asked the United States, the IMF‚s largest contributor, for a whopping $108 billion to rescue bankers around the world and the Obama Administration quickly obliged.
Rather than pass it as stand-alone legislation, President Obama asked Congress to fold the $108 billion into a war-spending bill to send money to our troops.

It was clear such an approach would simply repeat the expensive mistake of the failed Wall Street bailouts with banks in other nations. Think of it as an international TARP plan, another massive rescue package rushed through with little planning or debate. That‚s why I objected and offered an amendment to take it out of the war bill. But the Democrat Senate voted to keep the IMF bailout in the war spending bill. 64 senators voted for the bailout, 30 senators voted against it.

Only one year later, the IMF is sending nearly $40 billion to bailout Greece, the biggest bailout the IMF has ever enacted.

Right now, 17 percent of the IMF funding pool that the $40 billion bailout is being drawn from comes from U.S. taxpayers. If that ratio holds true, that means American taxpayers are paying for $6.8 billion of the Greek bailout. Although the $108 billion extra that Congress approved for the IMF in 2009 hasn‚t yet gone into effect, you can bet that once it does Greek bankers will come to the IMF again with their hat in hand. And, if other European Union countries see free money up for grabs they could ask the IMF for bailouts when they get into trouble, too. If we‚ve learned anything from the Wall Street bailouts it‚s that just one bailout is never enough.
To hide the bailout from Americans already angry with the $700 billion bank bailout, Congress classified it as an „expanded credit line.‰ The Congressional Budget Office only scored it as $5 billion because IMF agreed to give the United States a promissory note for the rest of the bill.
As the Wall Street Journal wrote at the time, „If it costs so little, why not make it $200 billion. Or a trillion? It‚s free!‰

Of course, money isn‚t free and there are member nations of the IMF that won‚t be in a hurry to pay it back. Three state sponsors of terrorism, Iran, Syria and Sudan, are a part of the IMF. Iran participates in the IMF‚s day-to-day activities as a member of its executive board.

If the failed bank bailout and stimulus bill wasn‚t enough to prove to Americans the kind of misguided, destructive spending that goes on in Washington this will: The Democrat Congress, aided by a few Republicans, used a war spending bill to send bailout money to an international fund that‚s partially-controlled by our enemies.

America can‚t afford to bail out foreign countries with borrowed dollars from China and certainly shouldn‚t allow state sponsors of terror a hand in that process.

This has to stop if we are going to survive as a nation. Congress won‚t act stop such foolishness on its own. The only way Americans can stop this is by sending new people to Washington in November who will.

Sen. Jim DeMint is a Republican U.S. Senator from South Carolina.

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Run on the European banks?

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When/if word gets out that depositors can lose, that contagion spreads across the euro zone with a general run on the banking system to actual cash, gold, and other currencies, which doesn’t create a cash shortage but drives the euro down further, and further weakens the credit worthiness of all the national govts.

As previously suggested, the endgame is a shut down of the payments system and a reorganization of the entire system with credible deposit insurance and central funding.

My proposal still seems the only one I’ve seen that makes any sense at all, and it’s still not even a consideration.

Europe-wide carnage we saw today.

This is not just about sovereign debt. This is about a concern about the banking system.

The word from S&P is that Greek debt holders will take a major haircut on their holdings, and that means serious problems for banks. (See the full list of victims here)

The surging CDS of Portuguese and Spanish banks is a major red flag.

From CMA Datavision:

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Starving the beast

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How to fight back against Wall Street

Much like we killed the buffalo to defeat the American Indians, we can work to tame Wall Street by working to reduce its food supply. And a large part of that food supply is the US pension system. Created and sustained by the innocent fraud that savings funds investment in a ‘loans create deposits’ world, the powerful attraction of being able to accumulate ‘savings’ on a pre-tax basis has generated nearly $20 trillion in US pension assets in thousands of scattered plans, from the giant State retirement funds to the small corporate pension funds, to the various smaller individual retirement funds.

Before I get to the way we can eliminate these bloated whales being eaten alive by the sharks, let me first suggest a few ways to whales from becoming shark food. The first is to get back to ‘narrow investing’ and public purpose by creating a list of investments deemed legal for any government supported pension funds. And ‘government supported’ would include any funds that are in any way tax advantaged. Legal investments would be investments that are in line with further public purpose. Not a lot comes to mind. If the public purpose is safety for the investors government securities would be appropriate, as government securities are functionally government guaranteed annuities. New issue equities might make sense if portfolio managers were required to be sufficiently educated and tested to make sure they are up for the responsibility of deciding where new real investment is best directed. But that’s a major and impractical undertaking. And there is no public purpose in simply trading new issues for relatively short term gain with no longer term stake in the merits of the underlying business. Nor is there any public purpose to investing in the secondary equity markets. In fact, with the rules and corporate governance stacked against shareholders, there is public purpose to not investing in those markets. Nor are these my first choice for the institutions I’d want investing in corporate bonds. It makes more sense to utilize the 8,000 regulated and supervised Fed member banks, all of which already specialize in credit analysis. If there is public purpose to buying corporate bonds, better the banks perform that function and not the pension funds.

So it looks like the only investments that make sense are government securities. The problem there, however, is I’m also advocating the government stop issuing securities. So that would mean the only investments for pension funds that make sense from a public purpose point of view are insured, overnight bank deposits. And that would go a long way towards taking away Wall Street’s food supply, thereby greatly reducing the troubling kinds of activities that we’ve been witnessing. This drastic reduction in financial sector activity would make regulation and supervision of what’s left a lot less complex and far more effective, and at the same time work to stabilize the financial aspects of the real economy.

Longer term, with the recognition that we don’t need savings to have money for investment, we can change the tax laws that are fostering these problematic pools of savings, and let them wind down over time.

Racing to the bottom

Government is about public infrastructure for further public purpose. That includes the usual suspects such as the military and the legal system, but Federal public infrastructure also includes regulation to stop what are called ‘races to the bottom,’ which usually involve what are known as ‘fallacies of composition.’ The textbook example is the football game, where if one person stands up he can see better, but if all stand up not only is nothing is gained, and no one gets to sit and watch. Allowing anyone to stand to see better is what creates that race to the bottom, where all become worse off. A ‘no standing’ rule would be a regulation that supports the public purpose of preventing this race to the bottom.

Another example is pollution control. With no Federal regulation, the States find themselves in a race to the bottom where the State that allows the most pollution gets the most business. The need to attract business drives all the States to continuously lower their pollution standards resulting in minimal regulation and unthinkable national pollution. Again, Federal regulation that sets national minimum standards is what it takes to prevent this race to the bottom.

Insurance regulation has been at the State level, which was deemed too lax only after the failure of AIG, which was the end result of a race to the bottom the Federal Government should have addressed long ago. Discussion has now begun regarding national insurance regulatory standards.

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