2,518% e 2,04% ci siamo quasi
il FEDdayn pescatore in più ha gettato un pò di secchiate di acqua fredda sullo spoore
Fed to Conduct Second Round of Agency Debt Buying This Week
By Jody Shenn
Dec. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve said it will buy Fannie Mae,
Freddie Mac and Federal Home Loan Bank debt for a second time this week, doubling the pace of the central bank’s purchases under a program aimed at reducing mortgage costs.
The central bank today bought $2.4 billion of the debt and will seek to buy more bonds tomorrow at 10:30 a.m., according to the New York Fed’s
Web site. Dealers offered $4.4 billion of the securities today. The central bank has bought $10.4 billion of so-called agency debt since the program began three weeks ago.
The Federal Open Market Committee on Dec. 16 said the central bank still “stands ready to expand” its plan to lower home-loan rates by buying as much as $100 billion of agency debt and $500 billion of mortgage bonds, according to a statement announcing a U.S. interest rate target of zero to 0.25 percent.
The Fed, which has said it would rely more on asset purchases to fight a yearlong recession sparked by soaring foreclosures and tumbling home prices, bought $5 billion of agency debt on Dec. 5 as dealers offered $12.9 billion of the securities. It bought $3 billion last week.
The central bank’s buying follows a retreat by foreign central banks, Fed data show. Their
holdings of agency debt and mortgage bonds have shrunk by $125 billion from a July record to $859 billion amid concern U.S. support for Fannie and Freddie may lapse, asset sales to support currencies and market turmoil.
Differences between yields on agency debt and benchmark rates set all-time highs in October as the U.S. and other countries said they would guarantee bank debt and create more government-supported investments. Spreads have since experienced record drops, with the debt this month returning 1.59 percentage points more than Treasuries through yesterday, more than any month in at least 18 years, Barclays Capital
index data show.
Washington-based Fannie and Freddie of McLean, Virginia, the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies, were taken over by the government in September. The Federal Home Loan Bank system, the largest U.S. borrower after the federal government, is a series of government-chartered cooperatives that lend at below-market rates to their financial-company owners.