Bazooka Fired: Fed Unleashes $1.5 Trillion Repo Bailout, Expands "Not QE" To QE5

Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ny-fed-conduct-1-trillion-repo-over-two-days-stabilize-treasury-financing-market
Published: Mar 12, 2020
Author: Tyler Durden
Post Date: 2020-03-12 13:43:55 by Horse
Views: 103

These changes are being made to address highly unusual disruptions in Treasury financing markets associated with the coronavirus outbreak...

After increases in its repo facility twice already this week, from $100billion to $150billion to $175billion per day, and adding added a new 1-month term repo facility, the New York Fed just stunned the market and fired its biggest bazooka since Lehman (not coincidentally, just moments before today's 30Y Treasury auction, as a failed auction would mean, well, game over), by announcing a total of $1 trillion in 3-month repos over two days ($500BN today, $500BN tomorrow), as well as an additional $500BN in one-month repos offered weekly, which means up to $3 trillion in cumulative repos (if fully allotted) may be online by the end of the month.

But wait, there's more, because the fed also finally threw in the towel on the semantics bullshit it was pulling since Sept 2019 by pretending that "QE" is "NOT QE", when it officially expanded not-QE/QE4 to Q5, when it announced it would start purchasing coupon Treasuries as part of its POMO operations, which as a reminder, was the official trigger transforming Not QE into QE .

For some context of how that compares to what they have been doing, assuming full allotment on the 2 $500BN repos...

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#1: Horse    To: All (#0)

(missed this part)

Some parting thoughts following this historic announcement: this was by far the biggest bazooka the Fed has fired since the financial crisis, and... it may not be enough. In fact, stocks are still deep in the red, which means one of two things:

i) The Fed's credibility is now shattered

The market expects a fiscal bailout, or some MMT-esque combination of both.

Until and unless the markets gets what it needs, the Fed is now a sideshow and in fact, if this bazooka fails, Powell may consider submitting his resignation this week.

Horse posted on 2020-03-12 13:45:47   Reply   Private Reply