Monday, November 17, 2008

Weekly update on Monetary Base and Reserves



Reserves on deposit at the Fed


Reserve balances now $600 billion even with recent sales of securities. These are the funds that will be used to buy more securities as the Treasury sells them.

Monetary Base

7 comments:

Billy said...
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Billy said...

Mark Cuban charged with insider trading.

I always thought this guy was good for a few laughs in the past but Mike pointed him out as a problem a while back.

I have respect for Billionaires and I want people to make money but I wonder why he wanted more money made this way.

Billy

STF said...

Mike . . .

Thanks for posting as it reminds me to keep track of this.

Suggestion . . . when you look at data on the MB, don't use the "St. Louis Adjusted" numbers, as they are "adjusted" for hypothesized changes in reserve requirements, which is an ideological adjustment related to the irrelevant money multiplier and monetary base targeting framework of the traditional monetarists. (The St. Louis Fed is the "monetarist" Fed, going back to the 1960s.) I don't know that the "adjusted" and unadjusted numbers would be too different now, given the large increases unrelated to any multiplier framework, but in any case the unadjusted numbers are the actual monetary base numbers, while the "adjusted" numbers are not. Same goes for "St. Louis adjusted" vs. unadjusted measures of reserves (though you didn't post those).

Best,
Scott Fullwiler

mike norman said...

Yeah, Billy, I agree. He's become unbelievably cocky and just acts like he can get away with everything.

mike norman said...

Scott,

Thanks for the information. I updated it with the unadjusted base.

-Mike

Matt Franko said...

Mike,

This graph on reserve balances is stunning.

I dont yet understand the full significance, but I know how to read a graph and the current levels are historic.

Could you perhaps go in to this more in depth on a Myths & Facts seg. or somewhere, with focus on perspective of these reserve levels. It looks like the pump is really primed by any historic standards.

And when we come out of this market slump it could fuel quite a rally.

Resp,

PS bring back "the prospector"!:)

mike norman said...

Matt,

Yes of course. I will do that.

-Mike