By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Federal Reserve Building, Washington, D.C.The Fed’s unprecedented experiments with years of ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) and QE (Quantitative Easing), where it bought up trillions of dollars of low-yielding U.S. Treasuries and agency Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) and quietly parked them on its balance sheet, are now posing a threat to the Fed’s flexibility in conducting monetary policy. (Since 2008, the Fed’s concept of conducting monetary policy has come to enshrine serial Wall Street mega bank bailouts as a regular part of its monetary policy. Large and growing cash losses at the Fed may seriously crimp such future bailouts.)
As of last Wednesday, according to Fed data, the Fed was sitting on $6.97 trillion of debt instruments it had predominantly purchased at very low fixed rates of interest. Because the interest rate (coupon) is fixed for these past purchases, when new bonds are issued in the marketplace at higher interest rates, they become more attractive and the current market value of the low-yielding fixed-rate bonds fall. U.S. Treasuries and agency MBS guarantee principal at maturity but if the securities have to be sold prior to maturity they will be sold at their current market value. This is what triggered the death spiral at Silicon Valley Bank in March of last year.