如何理解美联储重启扩表？

Group 1: Federal Reserve Actions - The Federal Reserve announced the restart of the Reserve Management Purchases (RMP) tool, starting December 12, with an initial plan to purchase $40 billion in short-term Treasury securities in the first month[2] - The RMP is expected to inject approximately $150 billion in reserves into the market, continuing until Q2 2026[4] - The purchase structure will focus on ultra-short-term Treasury securities, with 75% of purchases planned for maturities of 1-4 months[4] Group 2: Economic Implications - The RMP aims to improve short-term liquidity, benefiting the U.S. stock market's "loose trading" environment[5] - However, RMP is not equivalent to quantitative easing (QE) and is expected to have limited effects on long-term interest rates and the cost of financing for the real economy[5] - The RMP's operational scale may need to be adjusted based on seasonal fluctuations in the Treasury General Account (TGA) and overall liquidity demands[4] Group 3: Current Liquidity Conditions - The current reserve levels are slightly below the reasonable range, with reserves to nominal GDP ratio at 9.5% and reserves to total bank assets at 11.8%[7] - The reasonable reserve balance is estimated to be around $3 trillion, indicating a need for the RMP to maintain adequate liquidity levels[22] - Compared to the end of QT-1, the current reserve levels are more ample, as they were 6.4% and 7.9% respectively at that time[7] Group 4: Market Indicators - The effective federal funds rate (EFFR) and the secured overnight financing rate (SOFR) have shown signs of liquidity tightening, with SOFR recently exceeding the interest on excess reserves (IOER) for consecutive weeks[8] - The EFFR-IOER spread has been narrowing, indicating a potential liquidity shortage in the banking system, although the situation is better than in 2019[9]