Brian Sack

One key issue in this regard is whether the market effects mentioned before arise from stock or flow effects. The portfolio balance effects discussed earlier would presumably be associated with changes in the expected stock of assets held by the public. Under this view, even an abrupt end to the Fed’s purchases, if fully anticipated, would not cause an adverse market response, as it would not represent a discrete jump in the outstanding stock of securities held by the public. However, we want to allow for the possibility that the flow of asset purchases, or the ongoing presence of the Fed as a significant buyer, may also be relevant for market pricing. In that case, the end of the Fed’s purchases could cause an increase in longer-term interest rates, at least temporarily until the market has had more of an opportunity to adjust to the Fed’s absence.

On theoretical grounds, it would seem that the main impact of the Federal Reserve purchases reflects stock effects. However, flow effects could matter as well, particularly given the very large MBS purchases we have been making. The bottom line is that we cannot be absolutely sure about the degree to which market effects arise through one channel or the other.

For that reason, the FOMC has adopted a strategy of gradually tapering the size of asset purchases as the programs approach their end. This is a cautious approach. It should help to smooth out any possible market reaction associated with the flow of purchases, and yet it has no cost under a stock-based view. Tapering gives the market time for new investors (or perhaps previously displaced investors) to enter the MBS market in the place of Fed purchases. A tapering strategy was applied to our Treasury purchases with success, as the end of that program did not prompt any notable market response—exactly as we had hoped. However, tapering may be a more important consideration for the termination of the MBS program, given its larger relative size.

For Treasury securities, the reduction in yields would occur through narrowing the term premium, or the expected excess return that investors receive for their willingness to take duration risk. By removing a considerable amount of duration through its asset purchases, the Fed has kept the term premium narrower than it otherwise would have been. In addition, the purchases of mortgage-backed securities remove prepayment risk from the market. Investors generally find it challenging to hold the negative convexity of MBS associated with prepayment risk, and hence they demand an extra return to bear that risk, which keeps MBS rates higher than they would otherwise be. The removal of a considerable amount of this risk by the Fed’s purchases would be expected to lower MBS rates by offsetting this effect.

In particular, {Chairman Bernanke} indicated that he does not currently anticipate that the Fed will sell any of its asset holdings until the economic recovery is more firmly established and policy tightening has gotten underway. Until that time, the portfolio would shrink only through asset redemptions.  Chairman Bernanke noted that the Fed's holdings of agency debt and MBS are being allowed to roll off the balance sheet, without reinvestment, as those securities mature or are prepaid, and that the FOMC may choose to redeem some of its holdings of Treasury securities in the future, as well.

With this approach, the FOMC would be shrinking its balance sheet in a gradual and passive manner. That, in my view, is a crucial message for the markets. It should limit any reversal of the portfolio balance effects described earlier, effectively putting reductions in asset holdings in the background for now as a policy instrument. As long as this approach is maintained, it would leave the adjustment of short-term interest rates as the more active policy instrument—the one that would carry the bulk of the work in tightening financial conditions when appropriate.

This approach is cautious in several dimensions. First, a decision to shrink the balance sheet more aggressively could be disruptive to market functioning. Second, a more aggressive approach would risk an immediate and substantial rise in longer-term yields that, at this time, would be counterproductive for achieving the FOMC's objectives. Third, the effects of swings in the balance sheet on the economy are difficult to calibrate and subject to considerable uncertainty, given our limited history with this policy tool. And fourth, policymakers do not need to use this tool to tighten financial conditions. They can tighten financial conditions as much as needed by raising short-term interest rates, offsetting any lingering portfolio balance effects arising from the still-elevated portfolio

On reverse repos, we have already successfully run small-scale operations using Treasury and agency debt as collateral with primary dealers. However, that leaves two significant steps still to take in preparing the tool. One is developing the capacity to use our MBS holdings as collateral. Work in that area is nearly complete, and we will likely conduct some small-scale operations with MBS collateral in a month or so to exercise that capability. The other step is expanding the set of counterparties that we use for such operations. Earlier today, we published criteria for money market mutual funds to become eligible to participate in reverse repo operations, which was a first and important step in that direction. We are currently working with other types of firms to assess their potential participation in the program, as well. Our expectation is to have arrangements in place and to be ready to transact with some non-dealer firms by the end of the second quarter. This expansion of counterparties is important for boosting the capacity of the program.

The first potential concern is that the exit strategy could simply cause confusion among market participants, prompting volatility in asset prices...  The recent changes to the discount rate and the Treasury's Supplementary Financing Program balances highlight this concern, as the amount of attention that those actions received was outsized relative to their significance for the economy or for the path of short-term interest rates.

[S]ecuritization is a powerful vehicle that should play an important role in the intermediation of credit in the economy. Securitization can be quite effective at transforming illiquid assets into negotiable securities and transferring risk to a more diversified set of holders. To be sure, the expansion of securitized credit was much too extensive, and its subsequent collapse was terribly disruptive, contributing significantly to the damage to the economy. However, those developments do not mean that securitized credit, if structured properly, should not return in size. Reform efforts, to be effective, should foster development of a securitization market that properly aligns incentives and provides adequate transparency about risk transfer.

Some research studies have estimated that the effects of the earlier expansion of our securities holdings by just over $1.5 trillion lowered longer-term Treasury yields by about 50 basis points through this portfolio balance channel.  These effects on Treasury yields appear to have been transmitted into lower rates on private credit instruments and higher asset prices more broadly.

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If the market were to begin having trouble digesting that prepayment risk, the spread between MBS rates and Treasury yields could widen. A significant widening of MBS spreads to Treasuries, whether due to this or other factors, could affect policymakers’ decisions about which assets to purchase. The Chairman’s speech in Jackson Hole and the August FOMC minutes both indicated that reinvesting in MBS rather than Treasury securities might become desirable if market conditions were to change.

Dealers then submit offers to sell those securities, either for their own accounts or on behalf of their customers, over a 45-minute period on the morning of the operation. Those offers are assessed by the Desk based on two criteria: their proximity to market prices at that time, and an internal methodology for comparing the relative value of the securities at the offered prices.

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Our success at purchasing such large volumes of securities without causing significant market strains reflects some of the operational decisions that were made in the design of the program. One key issue was determining an appropriate speed for purchasing assets. The pace of purchases under the announced plan reflected a judgment by the Desk that it could purchase as much as $100 billion to $125 billion per month without significantly disrupting the functioning and liquidity of the Treasury market. So far, that appears to be the case, given the evidence just described.

Implementing the program over an eight—month period would not be expected to significantly reduce the speed or magnitude of its effects on financial conditions and, ultimately, on the real economy under the view that the program's effects arise from the expected stock of our holdings rather than the flow of our purchases. Under this view, financial conditions react immediately to the announcement of the program, bringing forward its effects on financial conditions. This view provides policymakers with some flexibility regarding the amount of time to implement the total amount of purchases.

Some of the staff work that calibrates the economic impact of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet policies assumes that the effects on yields and financial conditions are driven by the amount of ten-year equivalents that the Fed takes into its portfolio.

By that metric, the effect of the Maturity Extension Program is about equal in size to that of the large-scale asset purchase program that ended in June of this year (what we have referred to as LSAP2). This fact was highlighted in a recent post to the Liberty Street Economics blog.⁴ In both cases, the effect of the program was to remove about $400 billion of 10-year equivalents from the market.

Third, the program requires the Desk to actively sell Treasury securities maturing over the next three years. This element of the program was not intended to put upward pressure on shorter-term Treasury yields. Indeed, with the FOMC indicating that it anticipates that economic conditions are likely to warrant the current level of the federal funds rate through mid-2013, I would have expected the 2-year Treasury yield to remain well anchored. However, there has been some modest upward pressure on the 2-year Treasury yield since the FOMC meeting—a development that the Desk will continue to monitor.