Re:FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank
by cyberax on Saturday March 11, 2023 @04:45AM
(#35106905)
> Most of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet is Treasury securities.
That's true, simply because they're the most convenient way to manipulate the monetary supply. Not much else is readily available in the volumes needed.
But they are not _essential_.
> Saying that the Fed can arbitrarily create and destroy money misses the point, that they then have to buy SOMETHING with those money, and there are strict rules about what they can buy
Sure, the invariant: "money goes out, asset goes in" holds.
That's true, simply because they're the most convenient way to manipulate the monetary supply. Not much else is readily available in the volumes needed.
But they are not _essential_.
> Saying that the Fed can arbitrarily create and destroy money misses the point, that they then have to buy SOMETHING with those money, and there are strict rules about what they can buy
Sure, the invariant: "money goes out, asset goes in" holds.
But they can buy quite a lot of different securities if needed. E.g. the Fed directly bought about $3T of MBS: https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/programs-archive/large-sc...