Or, Barack Obama sucks at 11-dimensional chess. On July 14, 2011, S&P was assuming that 2001 and 2003 tax fraud deferrals would expire at the end of 2012 [Update: link updated, via MG; PDF–see page 4]. It is no longer making that assumption, which is worth another $4T. Brad DeLong annotates/redlines the press release without […]

I’m writing a few long posts—you’ve been warned—but that machine doesn’t have Internet access right now.* So I’m just going to point to Kash, who writes about something else: In looking at the data I was struck by how small (relatively) the worldwide market for gold really is. That means that relatively small inflows of […]

A lot of trading in the Fixed Income (and especially FX) market is done for “liquidity” purposes. There is often an underlying goal involved (e.g., push prices higher with small lots, sell large ones at the elevated prices) and frequently such strategies are discussed as “algorithmic trading.” (Example: the algorithm estimates that you will need […]

I’ve been working on White Paper on Liquidity and the idea of a “market,” and plan to post some pieces of it here over the next week or so. But this is too good to pass up, and I’m late to the game as is. On 15 September, the CFTC and the SEC held a […]

It was their idea, so it’s no surprise they like paying interest on reserves, even excess reserves: For quite a while, the Fed was quite happy to have that money on its books. Indeed, the power to pay interest on reserves was considered a key tool to keep control over all the liquidity the Fed […]

“Liquidity” is another magic word. I like it rather less than “friction.” In the debate on financial regulatory reform opponents of tight regulations use the word liquidity as a magic spell which, they hope, will make all inconvenient evidence and arguments go away (no links my claim is like saying the Sun emits light). The […]

I have been a Bad Blogger this week. (As opposed to my usual practice, which seems to be described as Blogging Badly.) While I intend to continue the New Tradition (think of me as Waylon, without the speed), following are Snow Day Links: D-Squared was on fire on Wednesday: both Bank Lending Channel and The […]

What Was the Job of the Banks in 2009?

Charlie Stross talks about liquidity: What we’ve just seen, hidden in the euphemism here, is a confession that drug cartels and other organized criminals have gone on a $352Bn asset-buying spree — and the banks and regulators, world-wide, turned a blind eye to this because the alternative was to allow the banks to collapse. And […]

by Rebecca(cross posted at Newsneconomics) Prof. Jim Hamilton at Econbrowser (thanks Mark Thoma for the link) addresses one of the Fed’s standard methods of draining liquidity from the banking system: reverse repurchase agreements. Basically, the Fed will transfer some of its assets to the banking system via short-term loans taken out with its Primary Dealers, […]