3min chapter

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The Debt Ceiling Drama is Approaching

The Macro Trading Floor

CHAPTER

The Fed's Debt Ceiling and the US Dollar

We're in within four weeks of the ultimate showdown on the debt ceiling, causing a lot of negative headlines for the US dollar. Once the debt ceiling is signed, we know that the US treasury will swiftly bring the treasury general account back to what $600 billion. The FDIC now removes liquidity as well, while repaying emergency loans on behalf of banks under receivership. So we have a trio of agents or authorities all removing liquidity at the same time from three weeks from now and on. To me, that's a positive dollar story, because you remove an obstacle, which is the debt ceiling,. You get followed liquidity withdrawals from all major agents at the sameTime.

00:00
Speaker 2
Let's do it. I also think it relates a bit to the ongoing soap opera, politically speaking in the US. At least I get loads of questions from people outside of the US whether we should be scared of the US actually running out of money without having a solution this time around. And my question is always that you cannot have that as a base case because, I mean, ultimately if we get into a partial shutdown scenario when the US treasury runs out of money by late May or early June. I mean, come on, they will decide on something. Maybe a short term deal to get more time to discuss, but they will decide to kick the can down the road a little bit. I don't see anyone having an incentive to blow things up at their watch. So ultimately what I'm saying here is that we're currently in a situation where the liquidity is actually plentiful since the US treasury has emptied its own cash balance at the Fed. We're in within four weeks of the ultimate showdown on the debt ceiling, causing a lot of negative headlines in the US causing a lot of negative headlines for the US dollar. But once the debt ceiling is signed, we know that the US treasury will swiftly bring the treasury general account back to what $600 billion. They wrote that explicitly a week ago in the quarterly treasury funding report, the funding report, and that will basically mean that they will withdraw more than $500 billion from private markets. We know that the Federal Reserve is still of the view that they can allow the balance sheet to shrink towards an excess liquidity level of $2.5 trillion. That's a trillion from here, more or less, 800, 900 billion from here. And they expect it to be a smooth ride as long as there is a plentiful liquidity relative to their rule of thumb of 10% of GDP. Chris Waller invented that rule of thumb, right? So that's $95 billion a month from the Federal Reserve deal to QT. On top of that, the FDIC now removes liquidity as well, while repaying emergency loans on behalf of banks under receivership. So we have a trio of agents or authorities all removing liquidity at the same time from three weeks from now and on, which to me, that's a positive dollar story, because you remove an obstacle, which is the debt ceiling, and you get followed liquidity withdrawals from all major agents at the same time.
Speaker 1
Yeah. I think this chart that you put up here when you try to basically calculate the liquidity proxy or a proxy for bank reserves and how much dollar liquidity gets taken out of the system. If you're right on that ceiling resolution, which brings up the general account at the Federal Reserve, so the government basically takes the money away from the system to pump up its own account at the Fed. The Federal Reserve takes money away from the system as well for quantitative tightening, combination is well shown in your chart. The trend is down, and the other line on there is basically the funding costs for entities outside the United States that then need to come up and fund. And where are these dollars? If they're taking away all of a sudden, it becomes more difficult to fund than generally the dollar does well in that environment than the rest, right?
Speaker 2
Yeah.

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