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Much good that does the common stock. Remember BofA's preferreds are senior to common stock. For all they care, CFC goes bankrupt tomorrow, they buy out the other creditors and take control in receivership. 900 retail branches and a lot of servicing business, without having to pay a penny to...

Here's monthly statistics for foreign holdings of US Treasuries: http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt Interestingly, it looks like most of the foreign buying in the last year has been done by the UK. In the last few months, China's actually been trimming their holdings. 12 month change in...

The "float" in US Treasury bills, notes and bonds is just under 4.4 trillion dollars. The Chinese hold almost ten percent of that, $414 billion. If Paulson thinks the Chinese could dump ten percent of the publicly held debt on the open market without serious repercussions, he's nuts. Martin

So would I. Since Dr. Krugman isn't here, maybe you can start by disproving it. :) Martin

All Americans are criminals. At the very least, we have all violated traffic laws. Every good sophistry deserves another. :) Incarceration rates are statistically useful because they measure the seriousness of a crime through the lens of the justice system and the political system which...

Paul Krugman responds: "Strangely, nobody seems to be trying to make a national political issue out of other horrifying crimes, like the Connecticut home invasion in which two paroled convicts, both white, are accused of killing a mother and her two daughters. Oh, and by the way: over all...

Trefoil, I agree with you except the part about buying a t-bill. :) When a bank does an overnight repo, or borrows from the discount window, they are borrowing cash at 5.25% or 5.75%. The t-bill is collateral. But they aren't borrowing cash at the t-bill rate, nobody except the U.S...

They can borrow by buying 13-week bills at 3.7. That's called lending, not borrowing. :) Only the government can borrow at those rates. The frustration on this thread, and in virtually all of the other threads on this subject that have been opened, is proof that it was a truly deft move...

The reserve statistics are out: http://www.federalreserve.gov/Releases/h41/Current/ As of yesterday, primary credit outstanding was $2,001 million. In other words, aside from this $2B publicity stunt done at the behest of the Fed, only $1 million in actual primary credit was sought by...

Here's what this is about. The Fed desperately wants to avoid cutting the funds rate, because they are rightly concerned about stagflation and the dollar. If they can give the market the impression that they are doing something, without actually doing anything, then they hope the credit...

Can you argue that it was material? Last week there was an average of $10m/day lent out at the discount rate, obviously immaterial. We'll find out this week's numbers on Thursday and I'll bet it's less than $100m. Martin

If the entire banking system collapses, it won't matter whether you get your money back or not. The government is always capable of giving you money, that's what fiat currency means. The question is whether you can buy anything with that money. But discussing crises on that scale is no longer...

Interesting post Scribe, thanks. Here's an alternative interpretation of the Fed's actions. I think they are still quite concerned about stagflation and desperately do not want to lower the funds rate. Today's move was a head-fake, trying to break the credit logjam without actually doing...

Search and you will find. The Fed's weekly release of reserve balances contains the average daily balance of open market repos and discount window credit outstanding over the past week. It is released on Thursdays. http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/Current/ For the last week, the...

So, just how significant is a 50bps cut in the discount rate, really? This week the Federal Reserve Board was lending a daily average of $36.3 billion in open market repos at the Fed Funds rate, versus $11 million in primary credit at the discount rate. The target interest rate on the $36...

Is there a site where we can see the daily volume of discount window operations, or other summary statistics? I searched but did not find... Thanks, Martin

I don't have TAQ. I'm just looking at IB TWS window. Martin

Here's a pretty obscure order execution question. I'm trying to get filled on a sell order for a thinly traded stock on NYSE. I should be at the head of the queue because my order was inside the spread when I entered it. The reported last trade is above the spread, so it looks like no trades...

Cutting the discount rate is a tiny, tiny gesture. It means nothing. Nobody <i>ever</i> borrows at the discount window. Wall Street completely misread this. Cutting the discount window is the Fed's way of saying, "We're going to take the tiniest possible utterly symbolic and meaningless...

It's still true. IB's policies on proceeds from short sales of stock have not changed. The fact that they offer EFP is unrelated to interest they pay on short balances. Not all traders can use EFP, most of the stocks I short are not available as SSFs. Martin