Via Zero Hedge
With Wall Street desperate for the Fed to announce emergency measures on Sunday (after disappointing last week), and ideally before the futures open, Jerome Powell did not disappoint and moments ago the Fed announced a barrage of emergency measures which included:
- Welcome back ZIRP: Fed cuts rates by 100bps to 0-25bps from 1.00 -1.25bps. This is in addition to the 50bps rate cut on March 3, which means that in just under two weeks the Fed has cut rates by 150bps to zero.
- Fed officially launches QE5 (no more “Non-QE” bullshit), consisting of “at least” $500BN in Treasury purchases and $200 billion in MBS.
- Boosting intraday liquidity: The Fed announces Measures related to the discount window, intraday credit, bank capital and liquidity buffers, reserve requirements, and—in coordination with other central banks—the U.S. dollar liquidity swap line arrangements
- Reserve requirements cut to zero: The Fed cuts reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective on March 26.
- Coordinated swap lines: The Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, and the Swiss National Bank announced a coordinated action to enhance the provision of liquidity via the standing U.S. dollar liquidity swap line arrangements. The pricing on the dollar liquidity swap arrangements is cut by 25 basis points, so the new rate will be the US dollar overnight index swap (OIS) rate plus 25 basis points.
Amusingly, the Fed announces that the emergency action wasn’t unilateral, with Loretta J. Mester voting against the action, as she was “fully supportive of all of the actions taken to promote the smooth functioning of markets and the flow of credit to households and businesses but preferred to reduce the target range for the federal funds rate to 1/2 to 3/4 percent at this meeting.”
The full statement is below (link):
Continue reading “Fed Panics: Powell Cuts Rates To Zero, Announces $700BN QE5, Unveils Enhanced Global Swap Lines”
