Reading for the Weekend

“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him. We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now. We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case.

God's presence is not discerned at the time when it is upon us, but afterwards, when we look back upon what is gone and over. The world seems to go on as usual. There is nothing of heaven in the face of society, in the news of the day.

And yet the ever-blessed Spirit of God is there, ten times more glorious, more powerful than when He trod the earth in our flesh.

God beholds you. He calls you by your name. He sees you and understands you as He made you. He knows what is in you, all your peculiar feelings and thoughts, your dispositions and likings, your strengths and your weaknesses. He views you in your day of rejoicing and in your day of sorrow. He sympathizes in your hopes and your temptations. He interests Himself in all your anxieties and remembrances, all the risings and fallings of your spirit.

He encompasses you round and bears you in His arms. He notes your very countenance, whether smiling or in tears. He looks tenderly upon you. He hears your voice, the beating of your heart, and your very breathing. You do not love yourself better than He loves you. You cannot shrink from pain more than He dislikes your bearing it; and if He puts it on you, it is as you would put it on yourself, if you would be wise, for a greater good afterwards.

There is an inward world, which none see but those who belong to it. There is an inward world into which they enter who come to Christ, though to men in general they seem as before. If they drank of Christ's cup it is not with them as in time past. They came for a blessing, and they have found a work.

To their surprise, as time goes on, they find that their lot is changed. They find that in one shape or another adversity happens to them. If they refuse to afflict themselves, God afflicts them.

Why did you taste of His heavenly feast, but that it might work in you—why did you kneel beneath His hand, but that He might leave on you the print of His wounds?

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission -- I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught.

I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore I will trust Him.

Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.

He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me -- still He knows what He is about.

Let us feel what we really are--sinners attempting great things. Let us simply obey God's will, whatever may come. He can turn all things to our eternal good. Easter day is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they only who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

Contemplate then yourself, not as yourself, but as you are in the Eternal God. Fall down in astonishment at the glories which are around you and in you, poured to and fro in such a wonderful way that you are dissolved into the Kingdom of God.

The more we do, the more shall we trust in Christ; and that surely is no morose doctrine, that leads us to soothe our selfish restlessness, and forget our fears, in the vision of the Incarnate Son of God.

May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at last.”

John Henry Newman

This is a collection of quotatons woven into a whole thought by Le Proprietaire as a young man for a circle of friends.

Do Ben and Tim = Thelma and Louise?

One cannot help but note that Team Obama is trying to derail serious proposals regarding financial reform for Wall Street at the G20 meeting, as we suggested they would.

The concerns raised by US revelations at the G20 today about new intelligence regarding Iran's secret underground nuclear facility have overshadowed financial reform and economic problems, and Gordon Brown's prescription yesterday that the G20 would become the new governing council for the world. It also stepped rather heavily on the House Hearings on HR 1207 "Audit the Fed" bill sponsored by Ron Paul and a good part of the Congress.

Why waste a crisis indeed. Especially when you can cop a two-fer.

Yesterday we put forward a somewhat lengthy piece on the Fed and reverse repos being considered titled Fed Eyes US Money Market Funds.

There is a key quote in there that we would like to highlight today.

The central bank is now considering dealing with money market funds because it does not think the primary dealers have the balance sheet capacity to provide more than about $100 billion... Money market mutual funds have about $2.5 trillion under management..."

Only 100 billion in available capital for a relatively risk free short term investment in the global banking system including the Primary Dealers, does seem a bit tight for a set of such 'well capitalized' banks, especially since they aren't making many commerical loans, preferring to speculate in the commodity and equity markets for daytrading profits.

BNP Paribas Securities Corp., Banc of America Securities LLC, Barclays Capital Inc., Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Daiwa Securities America Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Goldman, Sachs & Co., HSBC Securities (USA) Inc. , Jefferies & Company, Inc., J. P. Morgan Securities Inc., Mizuho Securities USA, Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated, Nomura Securities International, Inc., RBC Capital Markets Corporation, RBS Securities Inc., UBS SecuritiesLLC.

Couple that with the revelation reported some time ago at ZeroHedge and covered here, that the Fed is taking on more than 50 percent of the longer dated Treasuries, and there is only about Ten Billion left on their balance sheet for expansion, and you get the picture of a financial system not cruising into recovery but heading straight at a confrontation with harsh reality.

We have considered the possibility that the Fed is doing this to place exclusively AAA and Treasuries on the balance sheets of the Funds, aka the Shadow Banking System, who are holding some seriously awful garbage. But this does not quite make sense unless those reverse repos are of a very long duration or rolled over automatically for a long period of time. A proper program such as was extended to the banks where the Fed buys the assets outright would be that solution. It made more sense to us that the banking system is still very tight on good capital assets and liquidity.

Here is an update from ZH that is somewhat compelling if one understand the implications. Visualizing the Upcoming Treasury Funding Crisis.

"Summary: foreign purchasers are congregating exclusively around the front end of the Treasury curve, meaning that the primary net purchaser of dated bonds has been the Federal Reserve. As everyone knows by now, the Fed only has $10 billion left out of the $300 billion total allotted for Treasury QE. That should expire next week. ... The time of unravelling may be upon us sooner than most think."

Do Tim and Ben = Thelma and Louise?

As the Eagles sang:

"Take it, to the limit, one more time..."

Federal Reserve Eyes the US Money Market Funds

The Fed is holding a significant amount of assets on its books in the form of Treasuries. For example, the Fed has purchased an enormous amount of US Treasury issuance in the past six months as part of its quantitative easing program, aka monetization. It has also taken on tranches of mortgage debt obligations from the banks, purportedly to improve the banks capitalization profile because of the dodgy nature of the assets.

This has added significant short term liquidity to the system, much of it held by the banks for interest at the Federal Reserve itself.

At some point the Fed will wish to reduce the levels of liquidity in the system. One way to do this is by increasing interest rate targets. It can achieve this, for example, by increasing the amount it pays for reserves.

The traditional way for the Fed to drain liquidity is to conduct what is known as a reverse repurchase agreement, or reverse repo.

In a normal repurchase agreement or repo, the Fed purchases assets held by the banks, normally Treasuries, which obviously increases the 'cash' being held by the bank. A repurchase agreement is by definition for a specific amount of time. At the end of the period the Fed sells the asset back to the bank. The difference in amounts is the 'interest' which changes hands for the transaction.

There is also a type of purchase agreement with no buyback. It is known as a PMO, or Permanent Market Operation. These are used to add liquidity as the name implies, permanently.

A reverse repo is just the opposite. In this case, the Fed sells an asset from its balance sheet to an institution for 'cash' and thereby drains or takes cash liquidity out of the system.

Aren't Treasuries as good as 'cash?' Why does it matter whether a bank is holding Treasuries or cash on its books? Apparently not the case, at least for accounting and regulatory purposes. Remember that the next time someone tells you that banks do not need depositors. Sometimes they do.

Typically the Fed has only done this type of operation with a group of about twenty or so financial institutions known as the Primary Dealers.

According to this news piece, the reason the Fed is looking to the Money Markets is that, just like Willie Sutton, that's where the money is. There, and in the 401k's, and the IRA's.

The central bank is now considering dealing with money market funds because it does not think the primary dealers have the balance sheet capacity to provide more than about $100 billion... Money market mutual funds have about $2.5 trillion under management..."

To digress, please note that somewhat startling statistic. The Fed is going to the money market funds, because they think that the primary dealers among them cannot raise more than $100 billion dollar in liquid capital to take repos from the Fed, without impairing the banking system. If you look it up in the dictionary, try looking under 'fragile' or 'insolvent.'

Back on topic, there has been a longtime animosity between the banks, or at least what used to pass as a bank, and the money market funds. The funds are not covered by FDIC, are not regulated as banks, and typically pay higher rates of interest to depositors than conventional commercial banks. They tend to invest their funds in the commerical paper markets. It was the seizure of the short term paper markets that brought the money market funds to the brink, and a potential run on the funds, as fears grew that they would 'break the buck,' that is, the Net Asset Value of One Dollar for every dollar deposited.

Obviously this entire proposition is a bit puzzling on the surface, and is certain to raise fears of Fed shifting toxic assets from the banking system to the more 'public funds.' It is not a huge concern if these are truly repurchase agreements since the value of the assets will be backed 100 percent by the Fed. We would also assume that the Funds might be able to express some preference for Treasuries, rather than bundles of sludge backed by Joe Subprime Sixpack LLC.

It was also interesting today that in his testimony before the Congress which was widely ignored by the mainstream media, Paul Volcker had some very strong words about what is a bank, and what is not. Money market funds are not banks, and banks have no business using their banking platforms to fund proprietary trading operations that are merely seats at a rather risky virtual casino known as Wall Street.

We admit now as before that we do not fully understand the accounting system of the banking industry, having grown up on the productive side of the economy, but are learning quickly.

One thing we can judge is character, and the character of many of the actors on this stage appear to be less than trustworthy to say the least, especially in the Obama Administration and their cronies on Wall Street. In reviewing the biographies of many of the key players, we were struck by how few of them have ever done anything, built anything, in the productive economy. Its all about FIRE institutions and governments, and revolving doors where one is paid for connections and influence, and following orders.

Increasingly it seems that the Wall Street financial institutions, led by the gang of four, will push their power grip on the nation until something stops them. What that will be, no one can know for sure. The Ponzi scheme they have been running is starting to fall apart. The target bag holders, the Chinese, Japanese, and Europeans seem to be slipping towards the exit. When the music stops, someone may be left with a big pile of worthless paper. It looks to us like the Fed is interviewing candidates.

And this is why we say:

The banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, and the economy brought back into a balance between the productive and administrative sectors, before there can be any sustained recovery.

Reuters
Fed's exit strategy may use money market funds
Thu Sep 24, 4:02 am ET

LONDON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Reserve is studying the idea of borrowing from money market mutual funds as part of eventual steps to withdraw stimulus, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

The Fed would borrow from the funds via reverse repurchase agreements involving some of the huge portfolio of mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasuries that it acquired as it fought the financial crisis, the newspaper reported, without citing any sources.

This would drain liquidity from the financial system, helping to avoid a burst of inflation as the economy recovered.

The FT said Fed officials had in recent days held discussions with market participants on how it might implement such a scheme.

The Fed is considering whether to conduct a pilot scheme, but worries such a test might be seen as a signal that the central bank was about to drain liquidity on a large scale, the newspaper said. In the near term, a big drain remains unlikely, it added.

The central bank held interest rates at close to zero on Wednesday and upgraded its assessment of the U.S. economy, saying growth had returned after a deep recession.

The Fed also said it would slow its purchases of mortgage debt to extend that program's life until the end of March, in a move toward withdrawing the central bank's extraordinary support for the economy and markets during the contraction.

The idea of the Fed using reverse repos to help unwind policy is not new; Fed chairman Ben Bernanke identified them as a potential means of soaking up liquidity in July. But the market had previously expected the repos to be done with primary dealers, including former Wall Street investment banks.

The central bank is now considering dealing with money market funds because it does not think the primary dealers have the balance sheet capacity to provide more than about $100 billion, the Financial Times said.

Money market mutual funds have about $2.5 trillion under management so they could plausibly provide between $400 billion and $500 billion, it said.

The newspaper added that the Fed did not think it would need to drain liquidity all the way to where it was before the crisis, because it was confident it could raise interest rates even with a much larger amount of reserves in the system than existed before the crisis.