Finansiella Insikter

De som har genomskådat Federal Reserves monetära politik, såsom Jim Rickards, har tidigare påpekat att centralbanken teoretiskt skulle kunna bli insolvent med tanke på de gigantiskt stora tillgångar som man lagt till balansräkningen på skattebetalarnas bekostnad. Bara en liten ökning av räntorna skulle resulterar i gigantiska förluster för Federal Reserve.

De som förväntade sig att Federal Reserve ännu en gång skulle komma undan fick givetvis rätt. Federal Reserve, genom sk ‘kreativ bokföring’, har nämligen sett till så att framtida förluster på dessa tillgångar istället kommer att hamna under vad man kallar ‘negative interest owed to the Treasury’, istället för en reducering av det egna kapitalet. Genom detta trolleri kan det egna kapitalet aldrig reduceras och banken aldrig riskera att bli insolvent. Voila!

Är är ett utdrag från Reuters:

“Could the Fed go broke? The answer to this question was ‘Yes,’ but is now ‘No,’” said Raymond Stone, managing director at Stone & McCarthy in Princeton, New Jersey. “An accounting methodology change at the central bank will allow the Fed to incur losses, even substantial losses, without eroding its capital.”

Helt otroligt! Om det inte vore så tragiskt så skulle man gapskratta. Hur kan människor gå på sånt här gång på gång?

Här är en kommentar från Jim Sinclair:

This is fancy accounting at the world’s major central bank to hide losses. What makes this any different, in intention, than what Greece did on OTC derivatives?

What are those OTC derivatives on the Federal Reserve Assets Balance Sheet crap worth if you had to mark to NO market them?

You do this only if you anticipate problems, or you are in trouble. Ron Paul is going to have a field day with this totally outrageous development.

Och här är en kommentar från ZeroHedge:

To all who thought that the FASB gives leeway only to banks when fudging their numbers, and boosting their equity capital in ways previously unheard of, we have a surprise. The latest entrant in the “accounting gimmickry” club is none other than the Fed. And since the Fed is not auditable by anyone, it gives itself permission to change and bend the rules in any way it desires.

Following on recent speculation that the Fed could in theory have a equity capital deficiency due to its massive asset book, and its tiny equity buffer, both discussed many times previously on Zero Hedge, the Fed recently announced as part of its January 6 H.4.1 release “an important accounting policy change with the release of its weekly H.4.1 report on January 6 that effectively prevents it from facing a negative capital position even in the event that it incurs substantial losses.”

Here is how Bank of America’s Priya Misra explains this curious, and most certainly politically-motivated development: “The Fed remits most of its net earnings on a weekly basis. Prior to this accounting change, any unremitted earnings due to the Treasury would accrue in the “Other capital” account, but will now be shown in a separate liability line item called “Interest on Federal Reserve notes due to the Treasury.” As a result, any future losses the Fed may incur will now show up as a negative liability (negative interest due to Treasury) as opposed to a reduction in Fed capital, thereby making a negative capital situation technically impossible regardless of the size of the Fed’s balance sheet or how the FOMC chooses to tighten policy.”

And there you have it: instead of reducing the left side of the balance sheet upon the incurrence of losses, the Fed has decided to fudge the right side. And presto. No more possibility of insolvency ever again. Which only means that the Fed’s now ridiculous DV01 of just under $2 billion will in no way prevent the world’s biggest hedge fund from taking proactive steps to actually mitigate rate risk, and in fact will likely encourage it to gamble even more with taxpayer capital.

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