With tonight’s action, the central bank is trying to carve a firebreak around this financing and the vehicle is somewhat complimentary to the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, which also aims to protect non-bank short-term funding.
It will be administered by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
In the U.S., money funds have been under stress as investors have rushed into cash. Households, businesses and other institutions use money funds to park cash they may need in the short term. Reforms to the industry passed in 2016 forced a tiering of investments into funds with differing levels of safety and segregated retail customers from institutional.
Break the Buck
Similar steps were taken during the global financial crisis to shore up money funds when a run on them helped cripple credit markets. Under Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the department guaranteed more than $3 trillion of fund holdings against losses for almost a year using its Exchange Stabilization Fund.
Money market mutual funds proved a crucial weak spot in 2008 after the industry’s largest fund, the Reserve Primary Fund, suffered losses on debt issued by investment bank Lehman Brothers. When its share price fell below the stable $1 promised to customers, investors began scrambling out of most other money funds, forcing their managers into a fire sale of assets.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.