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Finance and capital markets
Course: Finance and capital markets > Unit 8
Lesson 2: Quantitative easingAnother quantitative easing video
More on quantitative easing. Created by Sal Khan.
Want to join the conversation?
What if...
1. Fed prints money 500billion(assets) = 500billion(liability)
2. Fed purchases Treasuries: Mortgage Backed Securities: Corporate Bonds
Money is now stimulated into the economy.
3.The fiat money that was originally printed is now replaced with alternative assets:
500billion worth of MBS's, Treasuries and Corporate Bonds
4. New balance sheet (500BillionAsset) MBS's: Treasuries: Corporate Bonds =(500BillionLiability)
5. 3 years later... FED makes a profit on those 'investments' through interest say 200billion
6. New balance sheet : assets(700billion): liabilities(500billion)
7. 7-5 = 3
8. When the FED decides to cash in on the investments 500billion of the money is literally burnt or destroyed because it was accounted for as a liability right from the start.
9. FED makes 300billion profit
10. Inflation is dramatically reduced from skyrocketing in the next decade or so...
11. The economy can grow with a modest 2% inflation year on year with a couple of deflations here and there in about the next twenty years. Also, the lower the profit margins for the FED the better. Okay, tell me what I missed.(4 votes)
The money going into the economy is just reserves that sit on deposit at the Fed. The money doesn't stimulate the economy unless a bank loans those funds out. If there is no demand for loans then 500 billion in reserves has entered the economy and 500 billion of bonds leave. There is no increase in assets and therefor no threat of inflation. The only thing that has changed is the make up of the assets in the economy.(8 votes)
What is a "log jam"?(2 votes)
I've seen articles claiming the Federal Reserve is neither Federal and actually has few or even no reserves. Is their any truth to these claims?(1 vote)
That is partly true and partly false. The way it works is that there are twelve federal reserves banks. Each of those reserve banks deals with a specific portion of the country and has its own board of directors. Six of the nine directors are chosen by the member banks, and the other three are appointed by the Board of Governors. The board of directors manages the day to day business of the Federal Reserve such as making loans and handling bank-to-bank transactions. That is the part that is clearly not federal. They also appoint the president of the regional federal reserve bank.
On the other hand, the seven members of the Board of Governors are chosen by the President, and approved by the Senate. This part, therefore, is clearly federal. The Board of Governors controls the operations of all twelve banks, and decides on both the discount rate and the reserve requirement, and it also creates regulations that all member banks must follow. The Open-Market Committee, made up of the seven governors, the president of the reserve bank of New York, and four other reserve bank presidents, basically manage the money supply. Notice, here, that even the Open-Market Committee has a majority that is appointed by Washington.
As for the reserves issue, it depends on what you call reserves. You could claim that the federal reserve banks have no reserves, because the little cash that they hold is technically not part of the money supply while it is held by the central bank. You could claim that the federal reserve banks have very few reserves, because it has very little cash and it has no reserve accounts (at itself). You can also claim that it has infinite reserves, because the reserve banks can simply create reserves on its ledgers at will. Of course, the reason it is called the Federal Reserve is because it was originally designed to carry reserves of gold, when the United States was still on the gold standard.
If you want to learn more, then I would recommend going to the Federal Reserve's website at federalreserve.gov. It explains entirely how the system operates.(3 votes)
- what if they run out of money to buy more securities ?(1 vote)
- Sal frequently mentions that FED prints money, however only US Treasury can print money. So how is FED controlling the money supply by QE while not physically printing money? I would appreciate if one can clarify this.
Thanks.(1 vote)
The Fed buys any currency it needs from the Treasury. It pays the cost to produce the currency, not the value of the currency. So for example maybe it pays 1c for a quarter and a few cents for a twenty dollar bill.
It really doesn't matter who does the printing. What matter is how the money is put into circulation. The Fed buys securities in exchange for dollars, and that increases the money supply.(1 vote)
- would credit easing akin to debt easing? essentially easing debt the debt burden in the economy?(1 vote)
- What is the sign or factor to stop the open market option or QE?(1 vote)
- What factors does FED watch to determine when it is the time for open market option or QE? Debt/GDP ratio, pure GDP, or something else?
By my understanding, open market option happens during the normal boom-bust cycle, while the QE happens during deleveraging process. However, I don't understand how the FED determines when to do the corresponding option.(1 vote)- Mostly they look at GDP growth and inflation
But of course they will look at whatever they think they need to look out to try to understand the outlook for those two.(0 votes)
Video transcript
Let's say the United
States economy is going into a
recession or maybe even worse than a recession. And you are the Chairman
of the Federal Reserve and you need to do
something about it. Well, the first
thing you would do is that you would lower
the federal funds rate. And that's the rate that banks
lend to each other overnight. And the way that you lower
it, if the banks don't do it on their own after you
say you want to lower it, is that you print money
as the Federal Reserve. And you use it to buy usually
short-term treasury securities. And then that money
gets deposited in banks. So the demand for
reserves, because that's what these things are, the
demand for reserves goes down, supply goes up, and the federal
funds rate should go down. But what happens if
you keep doing this and you keep lowering the
federal funds rate all the way down so that the
overnight borrowing rate is approximately 0%? What do you do then
if the economy still looks like it's in
a bit of a tailspin? Well you could
still print money, but using that money
to buy short-term debt won't help any
because you're not going to lower the short-term
overnight interbank interest rate anymore. So you can go out
and buy other things. And those other things can
be longer term treasuries or it could be other
types of securities. You could buy
mortgage-backed securities. You could buy commercial debt. And this idea of printing money,
not just for target interest rate, but essentially, to get
that money into circulation and maybe to affect other
parts of the market, this is called
quantitative easing. And in Bernanke's mind, although
that's exactly what he's doing, he's printing money
to buy other things than what the Fed traditionally
does when he cares about the overnight
borrowing rate, he calls it, not necessary
quantitative easing, but credit easing. And in his mind, even
though mechanically they are the same thing, in
his mind, he saying, look, I'm printing this money not
just for the sake of printing the money and putting
it into circulation, I'm printing money so that I
can buy particular assets where it seems like there might be a
log jam in the credit markets. Because with just printing
money and buying government securities, maybe the interest
rates on government debt goes down, but maybe
because of panic or crisis, interest or the prices on these
things don't behave properly. So in order to fix that, credit
easing, in the Bernanke sense, would be to go out and
buy this type of asset.