热点思考 | 美联储扩表与QE时代的终结——“流动性笔记”系列之七（申万宏观·赵伟团队）

Core Viewpoint - The Federal Reserve's initiation of the Reserve Management Purchase (RMP) after the December 2025 FOMC meeting signals the end of the QE era rather than a restart, despite both leading to an expansion of the Fed's balance sheet. The RMP and QE have fundamental differences in policy and market implications [2][7]. Group 1: Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet Expansion - The Federal Reserve announced a restart of balance sheet expansion at the December FOMC meeting, with the pace slightly exceeding expectations, aligning with liquidity management needs. By the end of 2025, reserves may have fallen to ample levels, necessitating early expansion to accommodate economic growth and seasonal demand fluctuations [3][8][14]. - The RMP is a new phase of "normalization" in balance sheet expansion, with two methods of providing reserves: RMP and reinvestment of agency securities. The RMP will start at a scale of $40 billion per month, expected to remain high until April 2026, then slow to an average of $20-25 billion per month [3][18][69]. Group 2: Nature of RMP - The RMP is a technical operation aimed at assisting the effective implementation of monetary policy without altering the Fed's policy stance. It primarily refers to interest rate policy, allowing market rates to fluctuate narrowly around the policy rate without frequent open market operations [4][41][69]. - RMP and QE both lead to balance sheet expansion but differ fundamentally. While they have similar quantitative impacts on the Fed's and commercial banks' balance sheets, they differ qualitatively. RMP is a conventional liquidity management operation, while QE is a broad "yield curve management" tool [4][65][69]. Group 3: Conclusion on QE - QE is not likely to restart until interest rates are lowered to near zero, as this is the inherent order of monetary easing. Not all balance sheet expansions are classified as QE; the precondition for QE is that monetary policy faces a zero lower bound constraint [5][71]. - Historical instances of QE-style expansions by the Fed occurred only after interest rates were lowered to zero or near zero, including during the Great Depression, post-World War II, after the 2008 financial crisis, and following the 2020 pandemic [5][47][71].