Category: 1 – Liquidity Trader- Macro Liquidity

On February 23, the US Treasury pumped $55 billion in cash into the accounts of Primary Dealers, banks, money market funds, and other institutions who had held the T-bills that were expiring that day. These redemptions began the US Treasury’s series of massive, twice weekly paydowns of the US government’s short term debt.

The purpose of the paydowns was twofold. First, the Treasury is required by the current budget law to whittle down its cash from a peak of $1.8 trillion last year, to $133 billion by August.  Treasury Minister Janet opted to start the process by paying down existing short term debt.

That accomplished the second goal, which was to force holders of the expiring paper to buy longer term debt. Despite their protestations that all is well, economic policy makers know that the crash in Treasury note and bond prices is causing a crisis in the Primary Dealer system.

Minister Janet works very closely with Lord Jaysus of the Fed, of course. They expected that the T-bill paydowns would help to reverse the decline in the prices of Treasury notes and bonds by forcing cash into the accounts of dealers and investors. It didn’t work. At least not to the extent that they needed. The full report is reserved for subscribers. 

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What else is new?

Tomorrow, the Fed talks. But Fed talk is cheap. The Fed wants you to think that talk – its talk – moves the markets, or keeps them stable. That’s just utter bull. You and I know that from simply tracking the data for as many years as we have. Bottom line, as always, is, money talks, and the Fed’s BS is just that.

All of the discussion and paralysis by analysis in the media is a sideshow. Mass confusion that consistently misses the point. It all boils down to one simple fact. When the Fed pumps money into the financial markets via the Primary Dealers, stock prices follow the money. Everything else that happens in the economy is tangential and irrelevant to trading.

I started tracking and charting the data that goes into this in 2002, courtesy of the NY Fed print shop. Here’s the chart that started it all. It was made famous in 2012 when Rick Santelli featured it in one of his rants on CNBC.

Many, many people have copied this in the years since I began publishing it about 17 years ago. But they all fail one basic test. Here’s what it is and why it matters. It matters so much that it could mean that the end of the financial system as we know it is at hand.

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The bear market in Treasuries that started in August devolved into an outright crash last week. Meanwhile, evidence shows that cash in Primary Dealer accounts has exploded to the highest level in history, with the biggest weekly increase in history. There’s also circumstantial evidence that that cash came directly from US Treasury, away from the publicly visible means that we already saw last week.

We are not surprised there’s a crisis. You and I have been watching the situation deteriorate for months. My first guess was that the trouble would start when the 10 year yield crossed 0.8%, That was premature. It was just a preliminary. Then I guessed it would be 1%. Sure enough, within a few weeks after crossing that level, things deteriorated rapidly into last week’s climax.

While the Fed sat on its hands, saying, “Nothing to see here, all is well,” the US Treasury sent in the cavalry. As I covered in the bulletins I sent you over the past week, the Treasury has announced $160 billion in T-bill paydowns. These put cash directly into the accounts of those who hold the expiring bills. This includes dealers, banks, and big investment firms of all types.

Two of those paydowns, totaling $96 billion settled on February 23 and 25. The Treasury, no doubt working with the Fed, absolutely wants the crash in bond prices to reverse. They know damn well that the stability of the system is at stake here. I believe that we have passed the point of no return. They must get Treasury prices back up, or else.

The Treasury will almost certainly continue these cash injections. They still have plenty of money left to do it. It is still sitting on $1.38 trillion in cash.

But oddly, dealer cash accounts rose by more, and Treasury cash fell by more, than what we can account for with these paydowns, and the other things we know about. Here’s the evidence, the implications of it, and a strategy to potentially profit from the coming crisis.

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