The Institutional Risk Analyst

“A higher money price of gold is best read as a symptom of a weaker currency. It isn't really the gold going up, it's the dollar or fiat currency in general going down.” That seems to me to be right. And then he says, “The value of gold lies in being independent from political discretion. Fiat money is a claim on the future discretion of politicians.” Isn't that good?

The story is that the Fed’s quantitative easing program injected large amounts of liquidity into financial markets, causing bond rates to fall and stock prices to accelerate. Consequently, the argument goes that, the shrinking of the Fed’s balance sheet through maturity runoff will cause bond rates to increase and, presumably, stock prices to retreat. But what are the essential mechanics of Federal Reserve asset purchases, and how might they affect liquidity in the market?

December 16, 2018 | In this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst, we feature an important comment by Robert Eisenbeis, PhD., Vice Chairman & Chief Monetary Economist at Cumberland Advisors. Eisenbeis raises a key question at the end of his commentary, namely whether the Federal Open Market Committee is going to run down the level of excess reserves back to pre-crisis levels. Should the FOMC refuse to allow the extraordinary levels of excess reserves to run off, then it im