While we’ve been dealing with ObamaCare and assorted thuggery, here’s some very important news that’s passed under the radar.
During the last week in July, the Treasury had its regular debt auction. Tuesday the 28th was of two-year instruments, Wednesday the 29th was of five-year. Prior to the auction of seven-year instruments on Thursday, I noted that Tuesday’s auction was tepid and Wednesday’s was – in the words of Rick Santelli – a “bow-wow”.
But to everyone’s great surprise – and for no particular reason – Thursday’s auction of seven-year debt was good. Everybody shrugged and thought it a fluke.
But now it appears that the auction was a sham – and that the Fed used straw purchasers to buy the debt. From Zero Hedge via Chris Martensen:
In a brilliant piece of investigative reporting, Chris Martenson (original article here) has uncovered that the Fed, merely a week after issuing $28 billion in 7 year bonds (which Zero Hedge discussed previously) via its puppet, the US Treasury, of which $10 billion ended up being purchased by primary dealers, has turned and bought 47% of the primary allocated bonds in Open Market Purchases. This is undisputed monetization removed simply via one primary dealer and less than 5 days of temporal separation in order to leave no easy trace. As Martenson points out:
“A more honest and open approach would have been for the Fed to simply buy them outright at the auction but this way, using “primary dealers” and “POMOs” and all these other extra steps the basic fact that the Fed is openly monetizing US government debt is effectively hidden from a not-too-terribly inquisitive US press and public.”
The question is did the Fed implicitly tell the primary dealers they are merely holding the treasuries for a flip, and that it would acquire them immediately. Absent this $4.8 billion in effectively monetized bonds, what would the Bid To Cover have been for the primaries? Would this have been the second practically failed auction for USTs after the deplorable 5 year auction results a day prior? One wonders if there would have been 62% indirect interest in these bonds (which the day before had a measly 32.5% indirect bid) if the purchasers were aware of the Fed’s immediate prompt monetization of a large part of the directs’ balance.
It is truly a sad state of affairs when the Fed has to manipulate public and media perception in this way, and has to cover up for the complete lack of interest in US Treasuries.
Here’s Chris Martensen’s chart:
As Martensen and the Zero Hedge guys point out, all that new money has to go somewhere – like the stock market?
Other hat tips to Doug Ross and Market Ticker.
