Fed Pretends It Is Preparing To Soak Up Excess Reserves, Even As Currency Swaps Are Sure To Add About $500 Billion To Fed's Assets

by Tyler Durden

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Less than 24 hours after bailing out Europe for the latest time with hundreds of billlions of liquidity swaps (full terms TBD still, record short covering certainly not TBD), the Fed is pretending to be a prudent monetary power, by announcing that it will "conduct 5 small-value term deposit offers." As a reminder, in its January 2010 minutes, the Fed noted that it would "eventually" move to a less accomodative policy "using a term deposit facility (TDF) to absorb excess reserves." So the schizos at the Eccles building want the gullible public to believe that just like all those micro reverse repos that it conducted in late 2009 (which led nowhere), the TDF tests will be critical to withdrawing some of the $2.5 trillion in assets on the Fed's balance sheet. Well guess what: with about $500 billion in liquidity swaps about to hit the asset side of the ledger (that's a conservative estimate based on the last time the Fed went full bore on bailing out Europe, and sorry, that European bailout does not come cheap), Excess Reserves (fed liabilities) are about to skyrocket by a comparable amount to match the assets. And here is the double whammy: $500 billion in new excess reserves earning 0.25% for holder banks, means US banks are about to earn an additional $1.25 billion a year risk-free courtesy of US taxpayers, who already are getting the shaft by paying more for gas thanks to the privilege of having bailed out Europe and drowned the world in new and unprecedented gobs of excess liquidity! Simply stated, the Greek "bailout" is a roundabout way of funneling over another extra billion to US banks! Direct cost to US taxpayers to bailout Europe via IMF: $50 billion; Indirect cost to fund incremental bank excess reserves: $1.25 billion; The joy of being raped daily by the Fed-Wall Street complex and assuring another year of record Wall Street bonuses: priceless. Some things money can't buy. For everything else there are trillions in Federal Reserve Notes appearing each and every day out of thin air.
Full text of Fed statement:

The Federal Reserve Board has authorized up to five small-value offerings of term deposits under the Term Deposit Facility (TDF) to be conducted in coming months. The Board had indicated in its announcement on April 30 that it anticipated conducting such small-value offerings. These small-value offerings are designed to ensure the effectiveness of TDF operations and to provide eligible institutions with an opportunity to gain familiarity with term deposit procedures. The development of the TDF and the small-value TDF offerings are a matter of prudent planning and have no implication for the near-term conduct of monetary policy.

The Board also approved a basic structure for the small-value TDF offerings. Similar to many money market instruments, the term deposits offered will be simple fixed-rate instruments with maturities of 84 days or less and will be issued primarily through competitive single-price auctions. TDF offerings will also include a noncompetitive bidding option to ensure access to term deposits for smaller institutions.

The first small-value TDF offering could be held as early as mid-June. More information about the timing and other details of these small-value TDF offerings will be announced at a later date. Terms and conditions for the small-value TDF offerings as well as information about the steps that institutions must complete to be eligible to bid for term deposits are available at http://www.frbservices.org/centralbank/term_deposit_facility.html