Federal Reserve Off Balance Sheet Lending
By Barry Ritholtz - February 20th, 2009, 3:00PM
Yesterday, we looked at ECB and BoE balance sheets. Let’s update the chart for the Fed’s books:
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via David Kotok, Cumberland Advisors
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Previously:
Reserves and Off Balance Sheet Securities Lending (June 27th, 2008)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/06/reserves-and-off-balance-sheet-securities-lending/
ECB, BoE Assets (February 19th, 2009)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/ecb-boe-assets/
February 20th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
As Kudlow would say, “It’s coming down!” lol
February 20th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
What a fool! He’s finally has done it to me; I’ve blown my lid…fool exemplar!
February 20th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Looking at this graphic and yesterday’s view of the Bank of England’s balance sheet, I think of a boa constrictor that has swallowed a monstrous turducken that has been packed full of rat poison, and sewage and large bags of DDT and hell knows what. I am not confident that the central banks can digest and process these things producing a wonderful manure that will fertilize our financial garden. I suspect rather it slither off, crawl into a hole, die and poison the water table for a long time.
What happens when a critical mass of economic actors on the world stage realize or rather can no longer deny the fact that ownership of these currencies represent certain ineluctable total loss?
February 20th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
The Fed’s safety net is starting to look more like a sieve. (SIV: geddit??).
February 20th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Ha ha ha, what in the world would we do without your wit, LB?
February 20th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
@MRegan
What’s a turducken?
To answer your question, “What happens…?” Well you implicitly answered it yourself. But think silver and gold and you’d be close. And barter.
This keeps up and it looks like we’re gonna get some real change, and by that I mean more than just another plutocrat in a suit whose skin tone is a shade darker than the usual plutocrat’s.
February 20th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken
in the middle east they do it on a larger scale starting with a camel down through goats sheep and miscellaneous smaller delicacies
February 20th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
The politicians like to do things through the back door if they can.
If this thing goes sour, they can just blame Bernanke.
No one could have seen it coming!
(Or so they will say).
February 20th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Thanks Batmando.
I am trying to figure out how this(ese) problem(s) are resolved. My questions are in good faith and basically spontaneous.
I don’t know see how it works out. So I have been asking myself what if questions for a while.
I was living in Peru between 87 and 91 (dec 91) and experienced the 88 to 91 hyperinflation the aug 90 shut down (Fujishock) and all the attendant things that happen in those circumstances- was even in a place called Mazamari (la 48 comandancia -sinchis) and it was all strange, but the scale of things is beyond stunning to me. Until everything gets as beat up as it’s going to, I see little reason for hope. I guess Kunstler has convinced me.
February 20th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Hmmmm…
If it smells like a lot of toxic waste
If it looks like a lot of toxic waste
If it bloats like a lot of toxic waste
It must be high quality Fiat…
February 20th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Curmudgeon,
Turducken– is a boned Chicken stuffed in a Duck, the Duck then stuffed into a Turkey..
a Foodstuff innovation thought to have been cooed-up down Cajun-way..
http://www.icerocket.com/search?tab=web&fr=h&q=Turducken
and now I see batmando stepped to the fore, O Well..
I’ll just say, again, these:
http://blogs.icerocket.com/search?tab=web&q=Hard+Times+Tokens
will make a 21st C. (re-)appearance..
February 20th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
So that’s how much regime change costs these days huh?
February 20th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
I guess their banker buddies are now giving them lessons on “creative accounting” as if they needed any more instruction. This movie ended badly for LEH, BSC and some others and it will end badly for the U.S. as well.
February 20th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
@ MRegan
If economics was a real science, they’d have the decency to run some simulations of where their ‘postulates’ and ‘conjectures’ may deliver us (much of economics does not merit the label ‘theory’ as define by the hard sciences).
But economics is more a branch of political science than it is a true science or a branch of mathematics.
If you’ve read TBP, Mish, and CR, regularly for about 12 months, you can conjecture a number of scenarios ultimately ending NOT with riots & pitchforks (how Hollywood!) or massive sprawls of smelly tent cities with raggedy & disheveled men and women, possessing BAs, BSs and MBAs, waiting in lines for government cheese and apples.
What’s more likely to crop up with great frequency, if you ran simulations, is an economic future that often resembles something akin to a dull static Britain circa 1972: stagnant, no growth, and much of its economy state run and many folks on the dole.
The many many paths from 2009 to this likely vignette of our more likely future is hard to sketch out with timelines…and even this future will be “in motion” along its own timelines, moving towards or away some thing. Still, I wager 3 shares each of of C, G, FNMA, and AIG that multiple paths from today, 2009, may deliver us to this same future via a very powerful “basin of attraction”. That is based on a great attractor model where the basin of attraction is a result of an undeclared defacto sovereign default manifested by stingy global ‘borrowing’, government control of swaths of the economy, and job rolls that rise more than fall as we struggle to re-animate the lifeless corpse of a debt-fueled consumer-spending GDP model where manufacturing remains kicked to the curb overseas while China, Japan, and other overseas holders (suckers!) of our government and corporate debt fume for decades over the defacto sovereign default (and corporate defaults) that we spun as a “mutual-agreed-upon restructuring of obligations”.
Again, nothing is fixed or will be fixed with regards to “our likely future”. All futures are in motion along paths or wallowing in large basins of attractions. The times spent on ridges, by our ‘probable future’ will be short for ridges, unlike basins, do not lend themselves to dwelling. More impotantly, a nation of 1,000+ metros/cities, 50 states and 300+ million people will also feature numerous mini and regional economies that are also in motion.
February 20th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
“impotantly “? or importantly.
Hmm, I caught my own Freudian slip there.