IPFS News Link • Federal Reserve

6-1-11: Fed will hold more Treasuries than China and Japan Combined

02-02-2011 • EconomicPolicyJournal.com

No wonder Geithner called in all the Treasury secretaries for a dinner meeting this past Sunday. The Federal Reserve has surpassed China as the leading holder of US Treasury securities even though it has yet to reach the halfway mark in its latest round of quantitative easing, according to official figures. Based on weekly data released on Thursday, the New York Fed’s holdings of Treasuries in its System Open Market Account, known as Soma, total $1,108bn, made up of bills, notes, bonds and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or Tips, reports FT. According to the most recent US Treasury data on foreign holders of US government paper, China holds $896bn and Japan owns $877bn. And get this. "By June [the Fed] will have accumulated some $1,600bn of Treasury securities, likely tobe in the vicinity of China and Japan’s combined holdings,” Richard Gilhooly, a strategist at TD Securities, told FT. I hope you are ready for inflation. This is not going to stop anytime soon. Remember, Social Security, which used to buy up to 25% of all Treasury securities is now a net liquidator of them. If not the Fed, then who is going to buy this paper? We are headed into an extremely dangerous inflationary period.