Friday, February 12, 2010

Say Goodbye to Primary Dealers

Primary Dealers will be bypassed by the Fed as it attempts to sell the securities in its portfolio.

There is no need for this.

All primary dealers have relationships with Money Market funds and the deals could go through them.

The Fed's dealer network just got a lot bigger.

* * * * * J B K * * * * *

San Francisco

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is in talks with money-market mutual funds on agreements to help drain as much as $1 trillion from the financial system as policy makers prepare for the first interest-rate increase since June 2006, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

The central bank is looking to the money-market mutual fund industry which manages $3.2 trillion in assets because the 18 so-called primary dealers that trade directly with the Fed have a capacity limited to about $100 billion, estimates Joseph Abate, a money-market strategist at Barclays Capital in New York.

Money-market funds may welcome the opportunity to trade with the Fed after the financial crisis reduced the supply of safe assets in which they can invest. In one example of demand for such assets, auctions on four-week Treasury bills have attracted an average of $5.47 in bids for every dollar sold this year, compared with an average of $3.77 last year, according to Bloomberg data. Yields on the four-week bill were quoted at four basis points at 3:47 p.m. in New York trading from 18 basis points a year ago.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=a4dF3zbh_YUs