Now YOU Can Have Bank Reserves, Too.

"As an additional means of draining reserves, the Federal Reserve is also developing plans to offer to depository institutions term deposits, which are roughly analogous to certificates of deposit that the institutions offer to their customers."
(Source: Ben Bernanke's exit strategy testimony)

We have to hand it to this guy, he is one of the most creative bankers in history. In just two sigmas the American people can sink their claws into Federal Reserve excess reserves. Now all we need are 15 million savers willing to lock up their full FDIC insurance allocation in these new instruments, which will probably pay diddly-squat interest.

Of course money market accounts will have direct access, too, so the consumer angle is actually not that important, provided consumers feel compelled to put their money into money markets paying diddly-squat instead.

The real problem with bank reserves is that they don't provide a rate of return. The only way to entice the free market to park their money in reverse repos is to make them more attractive to alternative investments. So this plan can only work if interest rates rise (to attract capital into these instruments) or velocity of money remains low (velocity being the basis for high reserve balances as a threat). If velocity picks up, price inflation will also, and rates will naturally rise. The trillion dollar question is how quickly can rates stifle inflation forces, or will the lag between price increases and rate increases be a kind of self-accelerant of velocity. The feed-back loop could be phenomenal.

But that's all just speculation, isn't it? No doubt the creative genius of Bernanke will devise a plan for that at the right time. Of course Greenspan didn't stop the dot-com bubble, and Bernanke didn't stop the real estate bubble, so it's pretty hard to imagine what will provide Bernanke with the incredible insight and forethought to recognize how to prevent the next bubble. One thing is for sure, it ought to be interesting.

In July of last year we had similar comments on the exit strategy. One might want to compare notes, both ours and Ben's, to see how things have changed.