Peter Federico
Analyst · Green Street
Yes. Thank you for that question, Harsh, and that's related to the Fed's balance sheet. And you're right, there is a task force on that. I think that's one of the two really interesting task force. I think the one related to how they measure inflation and performance, that's obviously a really critical one to monetary policy. And then obviously, from our perspective, the task force on the balance sheet. So just what I would say largely is that when you think about the balance sheet, the balance sheet peaked at $8.4 trillion, and today, it's about a little under $6.4 trillion. And the Fed now is growing their balance sheet again. And what's important, and I think this is -- you can understand if I'm listening to Chairman, Warsh is there's 2 reasons why the Fed grows its balance sheet. One is to respond to market instability and they did that through all their QE, and that's why they got to $8.4 trillion. And then once they reduced it down to about the current level, the purpose of the balance sheet shifted from monetary policy stimulation to reserve management. And what they're using their balance sheet for now and they're growing their balance sheet at $10 billion a month in treasury bills in order to maintain the right amount of reserves in the system. Bank reserves are at like $3 trillion, and they have now a $6.4 trillion balance sheet. What they're doing is they're making sure that there are "ample" reserves in the system to allow for the funding markets to remain stable. And very -- when I talk funding markets, I'm talking the repo market for U.S. treasuries and Agency MBS, and make sure that, that rate stays essentially within the Fed funds range. They want that repo rate to be right in the middle of their Fed funds target. Just last quarter, for example, for mortgages, it was a little elevated for us. I think it was 3.74%. So you would expect the repo rate to be somewhere right around 3.65%, 3.68%. That's what the Fed wants. And so they're using their balance sheet to maintain that stability. In order for them to reduce their balance sheet going forward, and they have talked about this, the first thing they would have to do is they have to reduce the amount of bank reserves required in the system. So like our previous question, they could change the bank requirements that would allow banks to hold less than $3 trillion of bank reserves, and that would allow them to reduce their balance sheet further. That would be important. The other thing that they could do, and this is really important from our perspective is that rather than providing this excess liquidity to the market through their balance sheet like they are today, they could in a sense, use their funding capabilities to provide liquidity in an alternative form. Like, for example, rather than just buying mortgage securities and treasury securities and putting cash into the system, they could expand their repo facilities and allow greater access to those repo facilities and the market could gain its funding from those facilities rather than the sort of the permanent injection of liquidity through their balance sheet. They could do open market operations, they could do that. That would allow -- that would be really positive for the funding markets for U.S. treasuries and agency and allow the bank and allow the Fed to have a lower balance. So those would be really important. The other last point would be that we'll be interested is what the Fed will decide about the long-term composition of their assets in their portfolio. And right now, we know and the market is pricing the expectation that the Fed will gradually allow their balances of mortgage-backed securities to decline organically, which is fine and the markets price that in, and that would be -- that's not an issue for the market. But they could also conclude that it would be valuable to own some portion of mortgages in their portfolio sort of indefinitely because that would allow them to maintain the constant presence and keep all the sort of processes up and running, which they will need at some point perhaps in the future because the Fed will continue to use its balance sheet for market stabilization if it needs it. And so it's always worth I think, while having those processes up and functioning. So perhaps there's a scenario where they own mortgages, at least in some portion of their portfolio going forward. But I think the key is making sure that they -- on the liquidity side, if they make changes to the liquidity market, that would allow them to have a lower balance sheet and not have any negative impact on the financial markets for the funding of both Agency MBS and U.S. treasuries, and that would be a really great outcome.