News reader Peter Armstrong’s efforts this morning on CBC Radio 1 were most instructive. Someone important needs the GOP nomination process to come to a conclusion.

Now.

Well, the Fed’s own MBS holdings swung to a strong $11.810 billion reduction, but that might have simply been a few re-po’d chickens going back to roost at some banks that didn’t want to admit to owning the stuff during year-end reporting season Except for that it was a pretty dull week, with small increases all around in foreign cenbank holdings of risk-free paper.

December 29th Reuters report¹ was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed’s H.4.1 table site,² but they seem to be among the missing yet again this week. Here is Doom’s updated CSV version³ of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings data set.

Treasuries up $2.072 billion, more eke than eek!

Agencies (**yawn**) up $1.638 billion

*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 grew $3.710 billion, about 1/2 of healthy.

Twist’s ratio graphs were flat.

The Setser agencies number sagged just a bit, don’t know if Doom can stand the excitement …

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Notes and References

[1]: “Foreign central banks’ U.S. debt holdings fall: Fed”, by Steven C. Johnson, Reuters, December 29, 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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