Fed Continues to Pump Reserves into Foreign-Reated Institutions in United States

Over the past thirteen week period the Federal Reserve has pumped roughly $350 billion of excess reserves into the banking system. 

From February 2, 2011 to May 4, 2011, cash assets at commercial banks rose by $400 billion.  (Cash assets at commercial banks can serve as a rough proxy for the measure excess reserves.)   

During the same time period, $306 billion of the $400 billion increase in cash assets of commercial banks in the United States went to foreign-related financial institutions.

On May 4, 2011, of the $1,586 billion of cash assets in commercial banks in the United States, 50%, or exactly half of these cash assets, resided on the balance sheets of foreign-related financial institutions.   

The quantitative easing of the Federal Reserve continues to support, in large part, the “carry trade” where funds generated in the United States continue to find their way into foreign markets. 

This is not the first time I have written on this subject: http://seekingalpha.com/article/265481-large-foreign-related-banks-now-hold-776-billion-in-cash-assets.  Actually, this is the third time I have written about the subject: http://seekingalpha.com/article/254004-why-is-most-of-the-fed-s-qe2-cash-going-to-foreign-related-banking-institutions.

Over the past four-week period, cash assets at all commercial banks actually declined by about $9 billion.  However, cash assets at the foreign-related institutions rose by $27 billion during this time period while cash assets at the largest 25 commercial banks in the United States fell by approximately $21 billion and they fell at smaller domestically chartered United States banks by $14 billion.

There is some good news, however!

The good news is that business loans, commercial and industrial loans, at commercial banks really seem to be on the up swing.  Over the past thirteen-week period, C&I loans have increased by $35 billion.  Roughly two-thirds of this increase, or about $23 billion, of the loans came from the largest 25 banks in the country.  However, C&I loans were only up modestly at the smaller commercial banks over this period. 

In the past four-week period business loans were up $10 billion and 60 percent of these, or $6 billion, came from the largest banks.  Again, C&I loans were up at the smaller institutions by a modest amount. 

So, banks, especially the larger banks, seem to be lending again to business, something that is vitally needed if the economic recovery now under way is to really pick up. 

If the goal of the Federal Reserve in conducting QE2 was to get business loans increasing again, then it seems to have succeeded.  Sure, we will have to wait a little longer to get more confirmation of this trend, but this is the first time in this cycle that business loans really do seem to be increasing.

The not-so-good news: the volume of real estate loans on the books of commercial banks continues to tank.  Over the past thirteen-week period, real estate loans at all commercial banks dropped by almost $90 billion.  Over the past four-week period, these loans declined by over $18 billion. 

Almost all of the decline has come at the largest 25 domestically chartered banks in the country.

Over the past thirteen weeks, the major part of the decline came in the area of residential loans ($41 billion), which was closely followed by the fall in commercial real estate loans ($34 billion).  In the past four weeks, the bulk of the decline came in the residential area ($12 billion). 

So, business loans appear to be picking up but the real estate market continues to decline: mixed signals for any sustainable economic recovery.

Maybe, however, this is all the Federal Reserve hoped to achieve at this time.  It seems as if almost everyone believes that it will still be a while before the real estate markets, both residential and commercial, bottom out and start to pick up steam. 

Maybe all the Federal Reserve thinks it can do is to get businesses borrowing again and with that borrowing put some people back to work.  And, it seems that if the Fed can achieve this small win it would think that flooding the rest of the world with United States dollars has been worth it.   

It would be too bad if a substantial part of the uptick in business lending was just going to finance the merger and acquisition activity of large businesses: http://seekingalpha.com/article/269056-the-latest-merger-binge-and-the-economy.