{"id":32483,"date":"2012-09-21T16:16:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-21T20:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/2012\/09\/us-fed-balance-sheet-to-grow-5-to-2-9-trillion-end-2012-cleveland-fed-study\/"},"modified":"2012-09-21T16:16:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-21T20:16:00","slug":"us-fed-balance-sheet-to-grow-5-to-2-9-trillion-end-2012-cleveland-fed-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2012\/09\/21\/us-fed-balance-sheet-to-grow-5-to-2-9-trillion-end-2012-cleveland-fed-study\/","title":{"rendered":"US Fed balance sheet to grow 5% to $2.9 trillion end-2012 &#8211; Cleveland Fed study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Central Bank News<br \/>\n&nbsp; &nbsp;The balance sheet of the U.S. Federal Reserve will expand about 5 percent to around $2.9 trillion by the end of 2012 as a result of its latest plan to purchase additional mortgage-backed securities (MBS), according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; The Federal Reserve&#8217;s policy-making body, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), decided on Sept. 13 to expand its purchase of assets to strengthen the U.S. economy and improve the jobs market, a move known as QE3 (Quantitative Easing 3).<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; The Federal Reserve&#8217;s balance sheet was just under $900 billion in early 2008 but it has expanded to just over $2.8 trillion currently, following earlier rounds of purchases of assets, such as Treasury bonds, MBSs and other debt issued by government agencies.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Under the latest asset purchase program, the Federal Reserve will purchase $40 billion of agency MBSs a month. Unlike earlier asset purchase programs, the Federal Reserve did not put a time or size limit on the program, but said it would continue to purchase the securities until the outlook for the labor market improved substantially.<br \/><a name='more'><\/a><br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&#8220;Looking ahead to next year, if the Committee continues to purchase MBS to support the economic recovery, the size of the Federal Reserve&#8217;s balance sheet will likely continue to expand,&#8221; the authors, Bill Bednar and Todd Clark, wrote in &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.clevelandfed.org\/research\/trends\/2012\/1012\/01monpol.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">Balance Sheet Implications of New Fed Policies<\/a>.&#8221;<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The Federal Reserve will also continue its current policy of reinvesting proceeds from its current holdings of agency debt and MBSs in new mortgage-backed securities, which means that there would be no reduction in the holdings of MBSs over time.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &#8220;Assuming a constant level of current holdings through the end of the year, the decision to purchase an additional $40 billion each month will expand the Fed&#8217;s portfolio of MBSs by about $145 billion during that time. This would bring the total value of MBS holdings up to nearly $987 billion, a 17 percent increase from the value in early September,&#8221; the authors said, adding:<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &#8220;Assuming that the level of the other assets on the Fed&#8217;s balance sheet remain somewhat constant throughout the remainder of the year &#8211; a reasonable assumption &#8211; the $145 billion in additional mortgage -backed securities should lead to a comparable increase in the size of the balance sheet overall. The resulting size of approximately $2.9 trillion would be about a 5 percent increase from the balance sheet&#8217;s current level,&#8221;<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\" target=\"_blank\"> www.CentralBankNews.info<\/a><\/p>\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/8290544642025682538-5466535070121403506?l=www.centralbanknews.info\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Central Bank News &nbsp; &nbsp;The balance sheet of the U.S. Federal Reserve will expand about 5 percent to around $2.9 trillion by the end of 2012 as a result of its latest plan to purchase additional mortgage-backed securities (MBS), according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.&nbsp; &nbsp; The Federal Reserve&#8217;s &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2012\/09\/21\/us-fed-balance-sheet-to-grow-5-to-2-9-trillion-end-2012-cleveland-fed-study\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;US Fed balance sheet to grow 5% to $2.9 trillion end-2012 &#8211; Cleveland Fed study&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}