Tuesday, November 16, 2010

$600B Is Just a Drop in the Bucket

So the Fed is going to print $600B to buy Treasuries and keep interest rates down. Yay! This has to work because $600B is a lot!

$13T is more.
Bucking the Federal Reserve's efforts to push interest rates lower, investors are selling off U.S. government debt, driving rates in many cases to their highest levels in more than three months.

The Fed's $600 billion program to buy Treasury bonds began late last week and is kicking into high gear this week, with the central bank buying up tens of billions of dollars of debt.

That should have driven prices up on those bonds and lowered their interest rates, or yields, which move opposite to the price. Instead, yields on almost every Treasury have been rising.
Throughout history, other countries have discovered that trying to manipulate their currency or interest rates in a time of crisis can lead to bankruptcy. Central banks can't print enough money to overcome investor mood swings when there is a lot of debt already in the system. $600B sounds like a big number, but it's less than 5% of our total debt. If just a small percentage of our bondholders start selling, the Fed's actions will be washed away. In fact, the Fed's actions can trigger those sales.

By printing unbacked money, the Fed is devaluing the Dollar. Your Treasury holdings, denominated in Dollars, are worth less and less as the Dollar falls. Your best bet is to sell them and buy something else, something that will hold or increase its value like commodities or foreign assets. In an environment where global investors turn bearish on the Dollar and low-interest Treasuries, the Fed's $600B is puny. Instead of having the desired action - holding interest rates low - it can trigger a loss of confidence or a chance to take profits on previous Treasury purchases. The resultant sell-off leads to higher interest rates.

Instead of printing money, we'd probably be better off if we decided to create things people wanted at prices they were willing to pay. Of course, that might require us to remove some government controls.


Nahhhh. Let's just print more money.

Image from Money Tip Central.

8 comments:

Kelly the little black dog said...

Have you seen this? Its sort of relevant.

tim eisele said...

Kelly: your link doesn't seem to work, did you mean The Budget Puzzle?

Kelly the little black dog said...

Try this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k&feature=player_embedded

K T Cat said...

Tim, I had heard about that calculator, but hadn't used it before. I was able to solve the budget crisis with 98% budget cuts and 2% tax increases. Yay!

K T Cat said...

Kelly, I've seen that one and watched it about halfway through. I'm not sure I buy the Goldman Sachs conspiracy part.

Kelly the little black dog said...

KT,
that solution might have some negative consequences. ;)

Kelly the little black dog said...

Tim,
very cool! I hadn't seen the calculator yet. What makes it a little strange is that about half of the options are dwarfed by the other half.

KT,
I came up with a 53/47 % distribution. So slightly heaver on the cutting side.

As for the video, other than just being funny, I thought it made a compelling argument for not spending the additional $600 million. And even if the claims of their being a Goldman Sachs conspiracy is a complete fantasy, its still a huge conflict of interest. And it isn't like the Fed hasn't repeatedly paid top dollar for things when it does have to, thereby padding corporate pockets.

K T Cat said...

Kelly, the disturbing part about the Goldman Sachs connection is that it's very plausible that in the process of printing $600B that a few tens of millions could find its way into the pockets of various interested parties.

Incidentally, all econo-fascist states are rife with corruption, much moreso than capitalist democracies.