The Federal Reserve Bank of New York issued a "Statement Regarding Reverse Repurchase Agreements" yesterday, which says, "As noted in the October 19, 2009 Statement Regarding Reverse Repurchase Agreements, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed) has been working internally and with market participants on operational aspects of triparty reverse repurchase agreements to ensure that this tool will be ready if the Federal Open Market Committee decides it should be used. In the November 30, 2009 statement, the New York Fed announced a series of small-scale, real-value transactions with primary dealers using U.S. Treasury and direct agency debt securities from the System Open Market Account (SOMA) portfolio as collateral. Beginning tomorrow, the New York Fed intends to conduct a similar series of small-scale, real-value reverse repurchase transactions with primary dealers using all eligible collateral types, including, for the first time, agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from the SOMA portfolio.... Like the earlier operational readiness exercises, this work is a matter of prudent advance planning by the Federal Reserve. It does not represent any change in the stance of monetary policy, and no inference should be drawn about the timing of any change in the stance of monetary policy in the future."
