Thursday, January 17, 2013

Some Details on the "Extraordinary Measures"


Some further information here about the unique securities that the US Treasury issues to it's own retirement funds, that are figuring into the 'extraordinary measures' that Treasury is using to continue to operate at the 'debt ceiling', here at the Wash Post:
called the G Fund, is available only through the 401(k)-style TSP program for federal employees. It yields returns that are nearly comparable to those of mid-term Treasury bonds, although investments are made daily. In a “disinvestment” period, the Treasury stops issuing the securities that make up the fund.
Currently, as of Tuesday, Treasury is not reissuing a portion of these one day securities that count against the 'debt ceiling'. (They normally must just roll over the entire $146B of fund balances every day...)

If we examine the DTS from Tuesday, we can see that total UST redemptions that day were about 43B and total USTs issued were 65B.  At the 'debt ceiling' this would normally not be mathematically possible as Treasury could only issue what it redeemed.

But on Tuesday, we can see that they issued about 20B more than they redeemed. This was probably made possible by Treasury simply not issuing a 20B portion of the special one-day securities to the retirement fund, while establishing  a different form of pecuniary obligation, a 'make-whole' commitment, to the fund.

Hence, Treasury was able to issue and additional 20B of USTs and the balances accrued to Treasury in the cash account as that account balance increased by a bit over 20B this day.

So the Treasury has another 20B of balances at it's disposal to "pay some bills", if they are presented; but this transaction has done nothing to increase $NFA flow, in fact the monthly deficit fell to 36B this statement day, or over the 10 days in the month, a 3.6B/day rate of $NFA flow.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

DOes anyone know where I can see US Treasury balance sheets online?

I'm looking for where coins are listed as 'equity'.

Matt Franko said...

Here is the Fed's I dont know about Treasury....

http://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/annual-report/2011-federal-reserve-system-audits.htm#FederalReserveSystemAudits-4AF32DDA