The Fed’s Balance Sheet Shows What’s Happening To The Economy

The mother of all charts is below. This is the Federal Reserve balance sheet history straight from their website:

This is where the world’s inflation comes from. Not all, of course, because central banks around the world have done the same. In goes new money and up goes the price of stuff. Now if there is less stuff, then up goes the price even more. However, without new money prices cannot rise across the board, inflation is always about money supply.

This is why the Fed is reining it in. Down goes money supply, down goes asset prices.

Now there is one modifying factor. If you pump new money into an economy and that money goes to drive up the prices of illiquid assets, then the inflationary impact will be in those illiquid assets and the new money will be locked up there and will only dribble into the “real economy.” Let’s say you pump in money and make it easy to be grabbed by people buying houses or stocks but make it hard to be grabbed by people buying groceries, well then up will go the price of houses and stocks but groceries will not be that much affected. The lucky (rich) folk with the stocks and house will get much richer and the people who need to buy groceries will get left behind somewhat but at least there won’t be runaway inflation outside of stocks and houses. Woe betide an economy that hands out money to people to buy groceries because boy is everyone in for a bout of inflation then.

Ring any bells?

So to get prices under control you have to drain money from the system because when there is too much in the wrong places it starts rushing around bidding up the price of everything.

There is too much money in the system and that money is parked and it’s parked at the Federal Reserve where banks who can’t use a big chunk of this new money have kind of handed it back to the Federal Reserve to look after. That is the reverse repo which has gone out of whack with all the new money magicked up to bridge the pandemic.

Here is a chart of it:

Note how it matches the Fed balance sheet in character. This money is a bulwark for the banks if things get tricky as they can pull this cash out and back into play in the real economy, but in normality it would be down at 2014-2018 levels if there was just about the right level of money in the system. The Fed will feel there is plenty of room to tighten while these balances are high because if banks need liquidity, there it is.

This is where the big call lies. If banks were to say to the Fed, nope we aren’t going to lend to anyone but you and turn the real economy into a credit desert while damming up the cash with the Federal Reserve then there is no hope of a “soft landing.” If the money stays in the system as is then inflation should run its course and the new money supply would match new price levels, which wouldn’t be so bad, but the trouble is government fiscal deficits would then necessitate further money supply increases creating further inflation which could only be combatted with more interest rate rises, causing a vicious circle of high inflation and stagnation. That is what happen in the 1970s…

But that is all “what if.”

The real map is the progress of these two charts. If these balances fall without much drama then all is working out well, but if tightening starts to badly disrupt the economy without these levels falling materially then it will be a signal to take cover.

The institutions think inflation is about to fall sharply and that then new QE will restart. I say ‘good luck with that.’ However, these charts will provide the guidance necessary to judge the likely outcome ahead.

For me there needs to be a capitulation to define the new beginning we are entering and that hasn’t happened yet.

Once again these charts will give a solid indication of what’s up next.