Thursday, January 26, 2012

The squeeze on dollar funding in the Eurozone continues

The latest data on US money market funds is continuing to show reduction in holdings of Eurozone banks' commercial paper (CP). Again, money funds do not sell their CP, they just let it mature without rolling into new paper from the same banks.  Instead money market funds are buying Australian, Canadian, Japanese, and some UK bank paper (in addition to their holdings of US CP).

Non US holdings by US money market funds (Source: Fitch)

These Eurozone banks in turn are replacing their dollar funding with dollar loans from the ECB via the Fed's liquidity swap.

Fed Liquidity Swap

The impact of this transition will be a substantial reduction of dollar assets and even whole dollar businesses at European institutions. US corporations, real estate firms, US energy projects (where some European banks used to be active), etc. should not expect to see substantial new lending from  Eurozone banks going forward.  Dollar lending business will now be dominated by US banks who have easy access to dollar funding.   




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