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Working Paper
Monetary Policy 101: A Primer on the Fed's Changing Approach to Policy Implementation
The Federal Reserve conducts monetary policy in order to achieve its statutory mandate of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates as prescribed by the Congress and laid out in the Federal Reserve Act. For many years prior to the financial crisis, the FOMC set a target for the federal funds rate and achieved that target through purchases and sales of securities in the open market. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, with a superabundant level of reserve balances in the banking system having been created as a result of the Federal Reserve's large scale ...
Working Paper
How Have Banks Been Managing the Composition of High-Quality Liquid Assets?
We study banks' post-crisis liquidity management. We construct time series of U.S. banks' holdings of high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) and examine how these assets have been managed in recent years to comply with the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) requirement. We find that, in becoming LCR compliant, banks initially ramped up their stock of reserve balances. However, once the requirement was met, some banks subsequently shifted the compositions of their liquid portfolios significantly. This raises the question: What drives the compositions of banks? HQLA? We show that a risk-return framework ...
Working Paper
Currency ratios and U.S. underground economic activity
Cagan's classic currency ratio suggests that underground economic activity in the U.S. surged starting in 1994. In contrast, we show that a ratio adjusted to take care of two distorting developments -- retail sweep programs and overseas demand for U.S. currency -- did not surge, and that movements in the adjusted ratio owe primarily to the differential effects of interest rates on currency and checkable deposits. As a result, we are skeptical of monetary-based claims that the underground economy has expanded significantly in recent years and believe that any claims that is has must rely on ...
Working Paper
How Does the Fed Adjust its Securities Holdings and Who is Affected?
The Federal Open Market Committee indicated in its September 2017 post-meeting statement that it will initiate in October a balance sheet normalization program to gradually reduce its securities holdings. This action will put in place a policy of reinvesting and redeeming portions of the principal payments received by the Federal Reserve from its holdings of Treasury and agency securities. How are these adjustments to the Federal Reserve?s securities holdings transacted and who is affected? This paper provides a primer regarding how the Federal Reserve accounts for these securities ...
Working Paper
The Fed’s “Ample-Reserves” Approach to Implementing Monetary Policy
We describe the Federal Reserve’s (the Fed’s) approach to implementing monetary policy in an ample-reserves regime. We use a stylized model to explain the factors the Fed considers and the tools it uses to ensure interest rate control when the quantity of reserves is ample. Then, we take a close look at the Fed’s experience operating in this regime in the post-crisis period, both as it has raised and lowered its policy rate. Looking ahead, we highlight some considerations relevant for maintaining a level of reserves consistent with the efficient and effective implementation of ...
Discussion Paper
What Happened in Money Markets after the Fed's December Rate Increase?
At its December 2015 meeting, the Fed's policymaking committee, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), announced an increase in the target range for the federal funds rate of 25 basis points, the first increase in the policy rate since June 2006.
Discussion Paper
The Federal Reserve's New Approach to Raising Interest Rates
At its December 2015 meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)--the Federal Reserve's monetary policy committee--raised its target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points, marking the end of an extraordinary seven-year period during which the federal funds target range was held near zero to support the recovery of the U.S. economy from the worst financial crisis and recession since the Great Depression.
Discussion Paper
How Have the Fed's Three Rate Hikes Passed Through to Selected Short-term Interest Rates?
Since December 2015, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has increased the target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points three times, bringing the target range from 0 to 25 basis points in late 2015 to 75 to 100 basis points in March 2017. This Note examines how this cumulative 75 basis point increase in the target range for the Fed's policy rate has transmitted to other short-term interest rates.
Discussion Paper
Implementing Monetary Policy in an "Ample-Reserves" Regime: The Basics (Note 1 of 3)
The FOMC has stated that it intends to continue implementing monetary policy in a regime with an ample supply of reserves. This Note, the first in a three-part series, provides an introductory discussion of what it means to implement policy in such a regime and how the Fed ensures interest rate control in an environment with an ample supply of reserves in the banking system.
Discussion Paper
Implementing Monetary Policy in an "Ample-Reserves" Regime: Maintaining an Ample Quantity of Reserves (Note 2 of 3)
In this second note, we describe some important influences on the supply of and demand for reserves and how the Fed will need to account for these influences in maintaining an ample quantity of reserves over the long run. These considerations are most relevant in normal times, not in periods in which there are severe strains in financial markets or weakness in economic activity that necessitate aggressive policy actions by the Fed that substantially increase reserves.