Eurodollars, FX reserve managers and the offshore RRP issue

Previously of the NY Fed markets team and now at Credit Suisse, nobody knows repos and shadow banking like Zoltan Pozsar. In his latest co-authored piece with James Sweeney he takes a closer look at how an eventual Fed rate liftoff may play out technically on the ground.

As has been widely reported, the Fed is expected to utilise Reverse Repo (RRPs) facilities with non-bank money market funds as part of its unwind procedure. This is unprecedented to a degree, for it represents the effective expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet beyond the official bank sector.

By offering deposit services to non-banks at positive rates, the Fed will be pulling liquidity from the system by way of transforming excess reserves currently sitting on the books of the formal banking sector into non-bank reserve assets. While the overall amount of liquidity in the system will technically remain the same, what will change is who owns the liabilities.