The Federal Reserve promised to unleash a torrent of liquidity Thursday to fight what it described as “highly unusual disruptions in Treasury financing markets associated with the coronavirus outbreak.”
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in a statement that this week it would offer an additional $1 trillion of repos to banks, loans of cash collateralized by U.S. government securities.
The first $500 billion of three-month repos was offered today at 1:30 p.m. A second round of $500 billion three month repos and a fresh $500 billion of one-month repos will be offered Friday. These three-month and one-month repos operations will continue on a weekly basis for the remainder of the month, at least.
This is in addition to the $175 billion in daily overnight repo operations and at least $45 billion in two-week term repo operations the Fed currently offers twice per week.
In addition, The Fed said announcement saw the Fed widen the scale for its “reserve management” program purchasing $60 billion worth of money Treasury bonds to include longer-term Treasuries and other securities issued by the Treasury. Prior to today, the program was set to purchase only short-term Treasuries.
“Specifically, the Desk plans to distribute reserve management purchases across eleven sectors, including nominal coupons, bills, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, and Floating Rate Notes,” the New York Fed said in a statement.