Insisting on buying trillions of dollars in assets, including MBS into a supply constrained housing market during a time of record fiscal stimulus causing a historic asset bubble while purposefully targeting to run inflation above their target was a colossal boneheaded mistake.
— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) October 21, 2022
Tag: Fed has no credibility
‘Big Short’ investor Michael Burry called out the Fed for not shrinking its balance sheet enough in June — and compared its love of stimulus to a drug addiction
Michael Burry called out the Federal Reserve for not shrinking its balance sheet as much as planned in June, comparing its failure to resist stimulating the economy to a drug addiction.
“Drugs are hard to kick,” Burry said in a now-deleted tweet. “Fed was supposed to sell $30B Treasuries and $17.5B Mortgage-Backed Securities per month starting June 1. QT.”
“During June, MBS holdings rose almost $3B. Treasury holdings fell less than $10B,” the investor of “The Big Short” fame added.
Burry’s tweet refers to the Fed’s plan to reduce security holdings by up to $30 billion worth of Treasuries and $17.5 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities each month, with deeper cuts to follow. However, the central bank managed less than one-third of its Treasuries target in June, and actually added $3 billion of mortgage-backed securities to its stockpile.