Rick on Repo market
If FED thinks there is liquidity problem it should show up on LIBOR3 to 3 months Treasury bill rate spread chart.
Around August this spread did breakout and back down. Yesterday it broke above again. “early warning”???
“This time the Fed handled the problem without breaking a sweat. The next time, however, the cost might run into the trillions. Which is to say, more money than even the central bank can come up with on short notice. The banks won’t open the next day, nor will credit card transactions clear. There is no way that even a very prudent person can completely protect him or herself from the fallout, but it seems likely that those who hold Treasury paper and bullion as insurance will fare better than those who don’t.”
“Although these paper-shufflers probably don’t give much thought to the aggregate size of the borrowing they do, it amounts to something like a quadrillion dollars. That is the notional size of the derivatives market, and every dollar of it is tied in some way to all the other dollars. But why even worry about such things? To calm everyone’s nerves if there’s a run on bank reserves, the Fed can simply sacrifice Goldman Sachs or some other financial biggie the way it did Lehman on September 15 (!), 2008.”
Previous post from August and latest chart.