Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Treasury issuance is collapsing. A liquidity crisis is coming!

So here's what's happening. There is a massive Treasury shortage because of the austerity, debt ceiling, and the huge reduction in the deficit. We talked about the liquidity crisis that hit the banking system a few weeks ago. The Fed had to inject nearly $700 billion of Treasuries into the market in a single week because of a shortage.

Look at these tables. Last fiscal year (just concluded, Sep 30) the Treasury redeemed $60.4 trillion of Treasuries while it issued $60.8 trillion. That was a mere, $400 billion of net new supply.
Daily Treasury Statement/Mike Norman Economics
FY 2015
Now look at this...

Daily Treasury Statement/Mike Norman Economics
FY 2014


In contrast, look at fiscal year 2014. Treasury redeemed $68.7 trillion, but it issued $69.8 trillion for a net addition of $1.1 trillion.

Issuance has collapsed and it's about to collapse further because we're hitting the debt ceiling. The Fed will be forced to conduct massive repo's, perhaps exhausting its holdings quickly.

3 comments:

mmcosker said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mmcosker said...

For a moment, I thought there was typo on "trillion" instead of billion. Then I figured it out. Not an easy thing for most common folk to understand the $ amount of treasuries that are cycled in a given year.

Matt Franko said...

M,

Issue >> redeem >> issue >> redeem >> issue .....