The Freedom Revolution Blog

By John Kemp:  Blogs.Reuters.com

Quietly, without fanfare, the (Private Bank Cartel) Federal Reserve has turned on the printing presses. The central bank is flooding the market with enough excess liquidity to refloat the banking system -- and hopes to generate an upturn in both economic activity and inflation in the next 12-18 months to prevent the economy falling into a prolonged slump.

Since the banking crisis intensified in September, the Fed has been rapidly expanding the credit side of its balance sheet, providing an ever-increasing array of facilities to support the financial system (repos, term auction credit, primary discount credit, broker-dealer credit, commercial paper funding, money market mutual fund liquidity and term securities lending).

Total credit extended by the central bank has surged from an average of $885 billion in the week ending August 27 to $2.198 trillion in the week ending November 12. Credit extensions surged another $142 billion last week alone -- mostly in form of increased term auction credit (+$114 billion) and other miscellaneous credits the central bank does not break out (+$41 billion).

Until fairly recently, the expansion on the asset side of the Fed’s balance sheet was matched by increased non-bank liabilities, mostly in the form of higher balances deposited by the US Treasury into its regular and special supplementary financing accounts at the central bank.

Since the Treasury was borrowing this money in the open market by issuing cash management bills, the impact of the Fed’s balance sheet expansion was being fully sterilized.

The Fed was providing liquidity in the narrow sense (helping commercial banks cover short-term funding problems arising from illiquid assets on their books) but not in the broader sense of inflating the money supply (money in circulation plus vault cash plus reserve balances).

But in the last three weeks, something very significant has happened. The non-bank part of the Fed’s liabilities has stopped expanding: combined Treasury deposits with the Fed plus cash in circulation has actually fallen from $1.517 trillion in the week ending Oct 29 to $1.467 trillion in the week ending Nov 12.

Instead, the Fed’s increased lending to the financial system over the last two weeks (+$325 billion) has been matched by an increase in the volume of deposits the commercial banks are hold with the Fed (+$331 billion).

In other words, the Fed is now lending to the banks, which are now lending the funds back to the central bank. The Fed is no longer supplying just narrow liquidity needed to enable the market to function. It is now supplying excess funds (more than the banks need) which are being recycled back into the central bank.

The volume of reserve balances with the Fed, which had jumped from $8 billion at end Aug to $280 billion by mid Oct, has now surged again to a staggering $592 billion in the week ending Nov 12.

The Fed is now very deliberately supplying more liquidity than the banks need (or are willing to lend on to other banks, corporations or homeowners). By paying a low but positive interest rate on these reserve balances, it can ensure that the federal funds rate remains above zero (currently about 35 basis points) even as it floods the banking system with excess funds.

There are several startling implications:

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