IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ijc/ijcjou/y2015q2a7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet and Earnings: A Primer and Projections

Author

Listed:
  • Seth Carpenter

    (Federal Reserve Board)

  • Jane Ihrig

    (Federal Reserve Board)

  • Elizabeth Klee

    (Federal Reserve Board)

  • Daniel Quinn

    (Federal Reserve Board)

  • Alexander Boote

    (Federal Reserve Board)

Abstract

Over the past few years, the Federal Reserve’s use of unconventional monetary policy tools has received a vast amount of public attention, from discussing how these asset purchases have put downward pressure on longer-term interest rates and thus supported economic activity to evaluating the implications for Federal Reserve remittances to the Treasury and the effect on monetary and fiscal policy. As the economic recovery has gained some momentum of late, the focus has turned to issues associated with the normalization of monetary policy. In this paper, we begin by providing a primer for the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet and income statement. With that foundation in place, we then consider a variety of scenarios consistent with statements by Federal Reserve officials about how the FOMC will normalize policy, including whether to sell mortgage-backed securities, whether to change the composition of Federal Reserve liabilities, and the timing of lifting the federal funds rate off from the zero lower bound. In each of these scenarios, we discuss the implications of these normalization policies on the size and composition of Federal Reserve asset and liability holdings and on remittances of earnings to the Treasury, which capture the interest rate risk of these normalization policies. We show that under a baseline normalization strategy described by policymakers, the balance sheet should slowly return to a more normal composition and size, while remittances should remain sizable. With some alternative normalization plans, especially if faced with high interest costs, remittances could drop to zero for some time.

Suggested Citation

  • Seth Carpenter & Jane Ihrig & Elizabeth Klee & Daniel Quinn & Alexander Boote, 2015. "The Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet and Earnings: A Primer and Projections," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 11(2), pages 237-283, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:ijc:ijcjou:y:2015:q:2:a:7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ijcb.org/journal/ijcb15q2a7.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://www.ijcb.org/journal/ijcb15q2a7.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mr. Peter Stella & Mr. Ulrich H Klueh, 2008. "Central Bank Financial Strength and Policy Performance: An Econometric Evaluation," IMF Working Papers 2008/176, International Monetary Fund.
    2. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2011. "The Effects of Quantitative Easing on Interest Rates: Channels and Implications for Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(2 (Fall)), pages 215-287.
    3. Canlin Li & Min Wei, 2013. "Term Structure Modeling with Supply Factors and the Federal Reserve's Large-Scale Asset Purchase Progarms," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 9(1), pages 3-39, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ramaprasad Bhar & Malliaris & Mary Malliaris, 2015. "The impact of large-scale asset purchases on the S&P 500 index, long-term interest rates and unemployment," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(55), pages 6010-6018, November.
    2. Lutz, Chandler, 2015. "The impact of conventional and unconventional monetary policy on investor sentiment," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 89-105.
    3. Neely, Christopher J., 2015. "Unconventional monetary policy had large international effects," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 101-111.
    4. Song, Zhaogang & Zhu, Haoxiang, 2018. "Quantitative easing auctions of Treasury bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(1), pages 103-124.
    5. Dimitri Vayanos & Jean‐Luc Vila, 2021. "A Preferred‐Habitat Model of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(1), pages 77-112, January.
    6. Simon Gilchrist & Vivian Z. Yue & Egon Zakrajšek, 2016. "The Response of Sovereign Bond Yields to U.S. Monetary Policy," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Elías Albagli & Diego Saravia & Michael Woodford (ed.),Monetary Policy through Asset Markets: Lessons from Unconventional Measures and Implications for an Integrated World, edition 1, volume 24, chapter 8, pages 257-283, Central Bank of Chile.
    7. Hess Chung & Etienne Gagnon & Taisuke Nakata & Matthias Paustian & Bernd Schlusche & James Trevino & Diego Vilán & Wei Zheng, 2020. "Monetary Policy Options at the Effective Lower Bound: Assessing the Federal Reserve’s Current Policy Toolkit," CARF F-Series CARF-F-483, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    8. Belke, Angar & Gros, Daniel & Osowski, Thomas, 2017. "The effectiveness of the Fed’s quantitative easing policy: New evidence based on international interest rate differentials," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(PB), pages 335-349.
    9. Guidolin, Massimo & Orlov, Alexei G. & Pedio, Manuela, 2017. "The impact of monetary policy on corporate bonds under regime shifts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 176-202.
    10. Ms. Yevgeniya Korniyenko & Ms. Elena Loukoianova, 2015. "The Impact of Unconventional Monetary Policy Measures by the Systemic Four on Global Liquidity and Monetary Conditions," IMF Working Papers 2015/287, International Monetary Fund.
    11. De Santis, Roberto A., 2020. "Impact of the Asset Purchase Programme on euro area government bond yields using market news," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 192-209.
    12. Simon Gilchrist & Vivian Yue & Egon Zakrajšek, 2019. "U.S. Monetary Policy and International Bond Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(S1), pages 127-161, December.
    13. Jens H. E. Christensen & Signe Krogstrup, 2022. "A Portfolio Model of Quantitative Easing," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 12(04), pages 1-39, December.
    14. Malliaropulos, Dimitris & Migiakis, Petros, 2023. "A global monetary policy factor in sovereign bond yields," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 445-465.
    15. Philippe Andrade & Christophe Cahn & Henri Fraisse & Jean-Stéphane Mésonnier, 2019. "Can the Provision of Long-Term Liquidity Help to Avoid a Credit Crunch? Evidence from the Eurosystem’s LTRO," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 1070-1106.
    16. Jeff W. Huther & Jane E. Ihrig & Elizabeth C. Klee, 2017. "The Federal Reserve's Portfolio and its Effect on Interest Rates," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-075, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    17. Aguilar-Argaez Ana María & Diego-Fernández Forseck María & Elizondo Rocío & Roldán-Peña Jessica, 2020. "Term Premium Dynamics and its Determinants: The Mexican Case," Working Papers 2020-18, Banco de México.
    18. Sophocles N. Brissimis & Evangelia A. Georgiou, 2022. "The effects of Federal Reserve's quantitative easing and balance sheet normalization policies on long-term interest rates," Working Papers 299, Bank of Greece.
    19. Iryna Kaminska & Gabriele Zinna, 2014. "Official Demand for U.S. Debt: Implications for U.S. Real Interest Rates," IMF Working Papers 2014/066, International Monetary Fund.
    20. Kiley, Michael T., 2016. "Monetary policy statements, treasury yields, and private yields: Before and after the zero lower bound," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 285-290.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E47 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ijc:ijcjou:y:2015:q:2:a:7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bank for International Settlements (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ijcb.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.