Ben's Tool Box

In his prepared testimony, today, Fed Chairman Bernanke gave a pretty good summary of what is in his tool box, although he has created so many new tools that it appears it is even difficult for him to keep track of them all. He forgot to mention that the Fed now has the Treasury issue Treasury securities and deposit the Funds with the Fed, which drains the system of funds:

The Federal Reserve has also been developing a number of additional tools to reduce the large quantity of reserves held by the banking system, which will improve the Federal Reserve's control of financial conditions by leading to a tighter relationship between the interest rate paid on reserves and other short-term interest rates. Notably, our operational capacity for conducting reverse repurchase agreements, a tool that the Federal Reserve has historically used to absorb reserves from the banking system, is being expanded so that such transactions can be used to absorb large quantities of reserves.3 The Federal Reserve is also currently refining plans for a term deposit facility that could convert a portion of depository institutions' holdings of reserve balances into deposits that are less liquid and could not be used to meet reserve requirements.4 In addition, the FOMC has the option of redeeming or selling securities as a means of reducing outstanding bank reserves and applying monetary restraint. Of course, the sequencing of steps and the combination of tools that the Federal Reserve uses as it exits from its currently very accommodative policy stance will depend on economic and financial developments. I provided more discussion of these options and possible sequencing in a recent testimony.5