The Bubblemeister panicking?

Enrique Diaz-Alvarez enrique at anise.ee.cornell.edu
Mon May 17 13:05:07 PDT 1999


Interst rates have been rising fairly relentlessly for the last few weeks. This means that the basic support for the US bubble, the orgy of borrowing by households and businesses, may be in trouble.

In response, it appears that the Fed has been making coupon passes (outright buying of Treasuries, essentially printing of money) at an unprecedented rate: ten since 4/19, including two today for a total of $1.6 billion. A couple of questions:

1) Is there a whiff of panic in these Fed actions? Is there precedent for them outside major liquidity crises (which does not appear to be the case today, with the DOW at 11k).

2) What are the fundamental limits to the amount of Treasuries the Fed can buy/money it can print? Have these limits ever been tested?


>From

http://cnnfn.com/markets/9905/17/bonds3p/

Traders said the morning's coupon passes, in which the Federal Reserve buys Treasury debt outright, were one of the sole factors keeping the long bond afloat on an otherwise gloomy sea of interest rate fears. Other Treasury issues were lower, led by 10-year notes, down 6/32 to yield 5.65 percent, and five

-- Enrique Diaz-Alvarez Office # (607) 255 5034 Electrical Engineering Home # (607) 272 4808 112 Phillips Hall Fax # (607) 255 4565 Cornell University mailto:enrique at ee.cornell.edu Ithaca, NY 14853 http://peta.ee.cornell.edu/~enrique



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