Link: https://www.thewealthadvisor.com/article/larry-summers-treasury-borrowing-has-gotten-bizarre
Excerpt:
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said the Federal Reserve’s massive bond-buying program is resulting in a “bizarre” situation in which the government’s funding structure is overly focused on the short-term.
Under its quantitative easing program, the Fed purchases longer-term Treasuries and the money it creates to buy them ends up in the accounts that banks hold with the central bank, in the form of overnight reserves.
These reserves earn a rate of interest that’s linked to changeable overnight benchmarks — currently 0.15% per year. That, in effect is the rate the government, through the Fed, is paying to borrow this money.
At the same time, any payments the government makes on Treasury bonds to the Fed is ultimately a flow from one part of the government to another and, arguably, cancels itself out in the end. So the upshot is the government owes, in real terms, less longer-term fixed-rate debt and more shorter-term floating-rate debt.
Author(s): Bloomberg
Publication Date: 15 August 2021
Publication Site: The Wealth Advisor