The Board’s H.4.1 statistical release, "Factors Affecting Reserve Balances of Depository Institutions and Condition Statement of Federal Reserve Banks," has been modified to include information related to TALF LLC, a limited liability company formed to purchase and manage any asset-backed securities that might be received by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) in connection with the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF). This information will be presented in a new table 8, "Information on Principal Accounts of TALF LLC." … – For release2 at 4:30 p.m. EDT November 19, 2009
Looks like the H.4.1 table itself is a bit newsworthy this week. If I’m reading the above correctly, they’re now providing a bit more transparency on some of their bailout numbers. Should be a long weekend for the number crunchers 
After last week’s nothingburger the central banks really came alive. The Fed’s own MBS holdings surged $74.469 billion, and the cenbanks bought big in treasuries, and even added a fair hunk to their agencies holdings. This week’s Reuters report1 was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed’s H.4.1 table site.2 Here is Doom’s updated CSV version3 of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings data set.
The treasuries buy rebounded to a big $12.557 billion.
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The agencies number increased $4.616 billion, the biggest up move in a long time. Interestingly, the Agency Debt number has been pretty stable for the last 7 weeks. Are we entering another extended period where that figure barely moves?
This week the total US obligations number for the cenbanks blasted up $17.173 billion.
Twist’s ratios graphs went down on the bigger treasuries gain.
The Setser 52-week chart converged in both lines, but much more in the agencies.
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Notes and References
[1]: "Foreign c.banks US debt holdings rise in week-Fed", by Chris Reese, Reuters, November 19, 2009.
[2]: "H.4.1 Factors Affecting Reserve Balances", Federal Reserve Statistical Release (weekly), Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
[3]: The updated data set as a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file is here.
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