[incomingpain]

The big question is 'are they assets'? They bought 'assets' which literally nobody else wants.

They did this in 2009 and over 10 years never exited those 'assets'.

Are these in reality liabilities and worse yet, to 'buy' these 'assets' they had to issue liabilities in balance. So really this balance is not so.

[JumpCrisscross]

> The big question is 'are they assets'? They bought 'assets' which literally nobody else wants

The Fed made massive profits on its crisis-era purchases. Many were held to maturity. Your "literally nobody else" is a multi-trillion dollar pool of buyers.

> They did this in 2009 and over 10 years never exited those 'assets'

The Fed has been buying, selling and dollar rolling its Agency MBS portfolio virtually every quarter between the end of the financial crisis and beginning of the pandemic [2]. "Never exited" is false, particularly if you're citing the '09 assets. Even if we amend that to consider net positions, the very article this thread is attached to posits the reduction of those levels.

[1] https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/domestic-market-operation...

[2] https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/omo_transaction_data#ambs

[incomingpain]

>The Fed made massive profits on its crisis-era purchases. Many were held to maturity.

The graph from multiple OPs literally say otherwise.

>Your "literally nobody else" is a multi-trillion dollar pool of buyers.

Like normally there's a multi-trillion dollar pool of buyers and the market is healthy. The fed came in when they stopped buying. That's kind of tautological.

>The Fed has been buying, selling and dollar rolling its Agency MBS portfolio virtually every quarter between the end of the financial crisis and beginning of the pandemic [2]. "Never exited" is false, particularly if you're citing the '09 assets. Even if we amend that to consider net positions, the very article this thread is attached to posits the reduction of those levels.

The balance sheet is not some spot where the government makes investments for profits. Sure they had to cycle assets but they certainly didn't exit anything.

Why did the fed not do this pre-2009. why was this only during economic disasters like covid as well? This isn't some brilliant play by the government. This is them taking on the highest risk securities and eating the cost during bad time.

If they didn't take these actions the situation would have been worse. It's good they did what they did but this was certainly not some brilliant profitable play.

[JumpCrisscross]

> graph from multiple OPs literally say otherwise

Not sure what this refers to. But whoever those OPs are, they're wrong. The Fed has remitted tens of billions of dollars to the Treasury every year since 2011 [1], including from realized (not mark to market) gains.

> normally there's a multi-trillion dollar pool of buyers and the market is healthy

You said the Fed "bought assets which literally nobody else wants." Present tense. Literally.

> balance sheet is not some spot where the government makes investments for profits. Sure they had to cycle assets but they certainly didn't exit anything.

They sold. You can tell because "transaction category," column C, says "sale" versus dollar rolling.

> Why did the fed not do this pre-2009

If by "this" you mean QE, 2008 was the first true American credit crisis since WWII and the first depression-level threat since the Great Depression.

> this was certainly not some brilliant profitable play

Of course not. Making money isn't the Fed's job. It will lose money trimming its balance sheet because its policy goal, higher rates, directly reduce the value of those assets. (In the same way that its 2008 policy goals, lower rates and financial stability, directly increased the value of its purchases.)

The Fed bought assets, in 2009 and '10, which people want to buy and have wanted to buy for a decade. They verifiably sold many of those assets. They're planning to sell much more in the near future. To buy these assets they had to issue liability in the form of money, which is literally their job. Every claim in the original comment [2] is materially incorrect and/or fundamentally misguided.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/othe...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30778464

[FredPret]

I think the other poster might have meant that the fed’s assets have increased. So they did sell, but it was a net inflow of assets.

[JackFr]

The liability to match the asset is money which they create.