Simon M Potter: The implementation of current asset purchases Remarks by Mr Simon M Potter, Executive Vice President of the Markets Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the Annual Meeting with Primary Dealers, New York City, 1 March 2013. *  *  *  Thank you all for attending today’s annual primary dealer meeting. Primary dealers play an important role in financial markets and an integral role as counterparties for operations to implement monetary policy. You are also an important source of market intelligence for the Desk, providing insight into market developments, structure, and functioning dynamics. A meeting like this provides a valuable opportunity to communicate our counterparty expectations, as well as strengthen our ongoing relationship. Given your important role in the implementation of monetary policy, I thought I would take this opportunity to discuss the Federal Reserve’s ongoing purchases of Treasury and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). As you are well aware, at the September 2012 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, the FOMC decided to increase policy accommodation by purchasing $ billion per month of agency MBS and continue the Maturity Extension Program (MEP). Then at its December meeting, the Committee chose to continue buying $ billion per month in longerterm Treasury securities following the completion of the MEP.
As has been widely discussed in the academic literature, one of the most important channels is the portfolio balance channel.5 This theory relies on the premise that financial assets are imperfect substitutes in investors’ portfolios, and, as a result, a rise in the demand for a particular financial asset relative to its supply – reflecting the Federal Reserve’s asset purchase programs, for example – will increase its price and reduce its yield. After selling that asset to the Federal Reserve, investors may rebalance their portfolios by investing in other assets, raising the prices of those assets, lowering their yields, and easing overall financial conditions. The Federal Reserve’s asset purchase programs were designed to remove risk from the portfolios of private investors. For example, Treasury and agency MBS purchases remove duration risk, thereby lowering longer-term interest rates and reducing private sector borrowing costs. Furthermore, agency MBS purchases also remove prepayment risk in the market. Since homeowners can prepay their mortgage at any time, MBS investors do not know when they will receive their cash flows. Investors generally demand an extra return to bear this risk, which is incorporated into MBS yields and in part passed along to borrowers. The removal of a considerable amount of this risk by the Fed’s purchases would be expected to lower MBS rates by lowering this extra return, thereby reducing primary mortgage rates, stimulating demand for housing and prompting increased refinancing activity.