IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2025-77.html

Central bank preparedness for market-functioning asset purchases as a consideration for long-run balance sheet composition

Author

Abstract

This paper proposes an approach to enhance the Federal Reserve's readiness to undertake market-functioning asset purchases during Treasury market disruptions. It notes that by tilting the SOMA Treasury portfolio toward bills rather than maintaining a maturity structure proportionate to that of outstanding Treasury debt—often viewed as the most neutral portfolio—the Fed can create a larger volume of reinvestments each month that can serve as a “war chest” for undertaking market-functioning asset purchases. This structure of the SOMA Treasury portfolio enables market-functioning asset purchases to be made without expanding the balance sheet or increasing reserves. This avoids the need for close monitoring of reserves when asset purchases are eventually unwound, while also allowing for a clearer differentiation between asset purchases undertaken to support market functioning and asset purchases undertaken to ease financial conditions. Under reasonable assumptions, bills portfolio shares r

Suggested Citation

  • Rochelle M. Edge & Dan Li, 2025. "Central bank preparedness for market-functioning asset purchases as a consideration for long-run balance sheet composition," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2025-077, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2025-77
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2025.077
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2025077pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17016/FEDS.2025.077?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2012. "The Aggregate Demand for Treasury Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(2), pages 233-267.
    2. Sriya Anbil & Mark A. Carlson & Christopher Hanes & David C. Wheelock, 2020. "A New Daily Federal Funds Rate Series and History of the Federal Funds Market, 1928-1954," Working Papers 2020-016, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 13 Jul 2020.
    3. Kenneth D. Garbade & Frank M. Keane, 2020. "Market Function Purchases by the Federal Reserve," Liberty Street Economics 20200820, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    4. Jonathan Goldberg & Elizabeth C. Klee & Edward Simpson Prescott & Paul R. Wood, 2020. "Monetary Policy Strategies and Tools: Financial Stability Considerations," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2020-074, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Falato, Antonio & Goldstein, Itay & Hortaçsu, Ali, 2021. "Financial fragility in the COVID-19 crisis: The case of investment funds in corporate bond markets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 35-52.
    6. Beth Hammack, 2025. "The Federal Reserve’s Balance Sheet: Some Major League Questions," Speech 99903, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    7. Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2025. "Fluctuations in the Treasury General Account and their effect on the Fed’s balance sheet," FEDS Notes 2025-08-06, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    8. Vissing-Jorgensen, Annette, 2021. "The Treasury Market in Spring 2020 and the Response of the Federal Reserve," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 19-47.
    9. Kruttli, Mathias S. & Monin, Phillip J. & Petrasek, Lubomir & Watugala, Sumudu W., 2025. "LTCM Redux? Hedge fund Treasury trading, funding fragility, and risk constraints," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    10. Paul Cochran & Lubomir Petrasek & Zack Saravay & Mary Tian & Edward Wu, 2024. "Assessment of Dealer Capacity to Intermediate in Treasury and Agency MBS Markets," FEDS Notes 2024-10-22, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    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. Dan Li & Lubomir Petrasek & Mary Tian, 2025. "Risk-averse Dealers in a Risk-free Market - The Role of Trading Desk Risk Limits," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2025-034, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Barth, Daniel & Kahn, R. Jay, 2025. "Hedge funds and the Treasury cash-futures basis trade," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    3. Vissing-Jorgensen, Annette, 2021. "The Treasury Market in Spring 2020 and the Response of the Federal Reserve," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 19-47.
    4. He, Zhiguo & Nagel, Stefan & Song, Zhaogang, 2022. "Treasury inconvenience yields during the COVID-19 crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 57-79.
    5. Giovanni Bonfanti & Juri Marcucci, 2026. "A European safe asset? Not without the investors," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 1010, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    6. Valentin Haddad & Alan Moreira & Tyler Muir, 2021. "When Selling Becomes Viral: Disruptions in Debt Markets in the COVID-19 Crisis and the Fed’s Response [Funding value adjustments]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5309-5351.
    7. Choi, Dong Beom & Yorulmazer, Tanju, 2024. "Whatever it takes? Market maker of last resort and its fragility," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    8. Guillermo Calvo & Andrés Velasco, 2021. "Joined at the hip: monetary and fiscal policy in a liquidity-dependent world," BIS Working Papers 967, Bank for International Settlements.
    9. Thomas M. Eisenbach & Gregory Phelan, 2022. "Fragility of Safe Asset Markets," Staff Reports 1026, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    10. Müller, Gernot & Georgiadis, Georgios & Schumann, Ben, 2023. "Dollar Trinity and the Global Financial Cycle," CEPR Discussion Papers 18427, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    11. Ahmed, Rashad & Rebucci, Alessandro, 2024. "Dollar reserves and U.S. yields: Identifying the price impact of official flows," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    12. Thomas M. Eisenbach & Gregory Phelan, 2023. "Fragility of Safe Assets," Working Papers 23-02, Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury.
    13. Acharya, Viral V. & Plantin, Guillaume & Reggiani, Pietro & Yao, Iris, 2024. "Monetary easing, lack of investment and financial instability," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    14. Forbes, Kristin & Friedrich, Christian & Reinhardt, Dennis, 2023. "Stress relief? Funding structures and resilience to the covid shock," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 47-81.
    15. Minoiu, Camelia & Zarutskie, Rebecca & Zlate, Andrei, 2026. "Motivating banks to lend? Credit spillover effects of the Main Street Lending Program," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    16. Sirio Aramonte & Andreas Schrimpf & Hyun Song Shin, 2023. "Non-bank financial intermediaries and financial stability," Chapters, in: Refet S. Gürkaynak & Jonathan H. Wright (ed.), Research Handbook of Financial Markets, chapter 7, pages 147-170, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Berentsen, Aleksander & Huber, Samuel & Marchesiani, Alessandro, 2016. "The societal benefit of a financial transaction tax," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 303-323.
    18. Jason Allen & Milena Wittwer, 2023. "Centralizing Over-the-Counter Markets?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(12), pages 3310-3351.
    19. Anella Munro, 2014. "Exchange rates, expected returns and risk," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series DP2014/01, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    20. Zhengyang Jiang, 2024. "Exorbitant Privilege: A Safe-Asset View," CESifo Working Paper Series 11279, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • 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
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedgfe:2025-77. 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.html .

    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.