Transcript
A (0:02)
This is the Human Action Podcast where we debunk the economic, political and even cultural myths of the days. Here's your host, Dr. Bob Murphy. Robert, welcome back to the Human Action Podcast.
B (0:16)
Thanks for having me.
A (0:18)
So the specific reason that I invited you here again is because I came across your recent mises.org article, daily article, which of course we'll link to, folks called why the Crash was Delayed. Yeah. So I think maybe if we just kind of walk through that and we'll, if folks are watching the video version of this interview, you know, we'll flash up charts as appropriate. But let me just read the opening paragraph then maybe, Robert, I'll let you kind of take it from there. You say whatever happened to the mother of all crashes that was supposed to arrive when the Federal Reserve began tightening its balance sheet back in 2022. For several years I've been scratching my head convinced that draining the balance sheet by trillions of dollars should have triggered a systemic banking failure or some other black swan event in the past. Crises like Lehman AIG or the 2020 lockdowns took the blame, when in reality the root cause was always monetary. And so I was instantly intrigued and you know, wanted to see what, what you had to say on this topic because likewise, I've been watching this stuff and you know, on paper, yeah, it looked like, geez, they pumped in a boatload of money, especially after 20, 20, 20, and then they started, you know, letting the balance sheet shrink. In fact, even M2 was coming down, which typically doesn't happen. It's usually just like, you know, the rate of increase slows way down and, and the yield curve inverted and everything. And yet, you know, we're so, interestingly, we'll maybe get to this later that we may get a thing and people will blame it on Iran or something. But in any event, yes, had there been a major crash last year, none of us would have been surprised from an Austrian point of view. So I'll let you take it from here. Maybe if you want to first just make sure people understand just how significant that tightening was and then give your, the other element involved.
B (2:00)
Okay, sounds good. Yeah. So I mean, the last, was it four years or so, the Fed, they did unofficial QT quantitative tightening and that was your classic, you know, we're going to drain the balance sheet, we're gonna let the mortgage backed securities and Treasuries roll off. So essentially or literally the Fed was draining, was it 2.3 trillion in that time? So it was about every month a billion or so treasuries were coming back to the Fed and then the Fed would quite literally delete the money. So the balance sheet, as we said, it's shrinking. It literally was shrinking. When you look at the chart, you'll see that the 2.3 trillion decline happened in that time. And again, it must have been maybe four years. Just like you and probably everyone else, we're just wondering, where is the crash? Right? We know when they tighten the yield curve inverts and everything that follows the offshore business cycle that typically leads to a crash. And not only do we not get a crash, but we had the stock market soar in that time. And honestly I was, you know, it stunned me for a good while and I kept looking at the balance sheet and when we say balance sheet, we're talking about the asset side. And then, I don't know, I just must have missed it before. But then I looked at the liability side to see what's the other side of the balance sheet, because we always focus on the asset side. And then I saw the reverse repos. I remember maybe one time a few years ago I did an article called Don't Fear the Repo Man. That was probably the only time I talked to the repo. And then when I looked at that, I saw that they had a balance of 2.5 trillion. And in that same time that the Fed was tightening that 2.5 trillion on the liability side, it went down, it decreased, and now it's at zero. And then I just kept digging and digging and then that's where we are now, right? And lo and behold, we thought that on one hand the Fed was tightening, they're reducing their assets, but on the other side they're also reducing the liabilities, which is to say the 2.5 trillion other repos was entering the market. So it was kind of like revolving door tightening on one hand and then letting the market, you know, and liquidity come back in on the other.
