The Fed’s own holdings of MBS dropped again this week, but by a tiny $0.180 billion and foreign central banks’ holdings of US obligations also dipped by less than $1 billion. For all the sound and fury of the markets, the official institutions don’t seem to be in any hurry to move.

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.

Treasury Debt holdings have now advanced $104.217 billion above their 11/17 ’10 level.

Treasury Debt turned to a modest $3.213 billion drop after last week’s big buy.

Agencies gained $2.729 billion, making up a bit less than half of last week’s biggish loss.

*Agen-FM: The dotted line is the foreign central banks’ Agency Debt holdings reduced by the level of the Fed’s own MBS holdings. Since the FRBNY itself is a lightly audited peculiar amalgam of foreign & domestic, central and private bank I think it might be useful to consider the hypothesis that for a while starting in January 2009 the Fed’s MBS holdings were being quietly deemed to be “foreign.” That is, for the first half of ’09 the dotted line seems more sensible than the red one.

The net of US obligations was really flat, sliding a mere $0.484 billion.

Twist’s ratio graphs rebounded a bit.

The Setzer numbers actually diverged again in the anniversary date’s radically opposed numbers.

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Notes and References

[1]: “Foreign central banks’ US debt holdings fall – Fed”, by Nick Olivari, Reuters, June 23, 2011.

[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 (includes Fed’s own MBS holdings).

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