> Speculation on my part as I still don’t fully grok repo markets and only have a vague sense of how the treasuries market impacts equities but I’ll continue.
From my understanding the US treasury market is the most liquid and largest market for any asset in the world. Up until recently these treasuries had a positive real interest rate, so if you are a corporation with large amounts of cash (typically a bank) you don't want to hold this as cash in a banking account but rather you want to hold treasuries and get a small return. If there aren't enough people trading treasuries anymore and liquidity dries up this can have devastating effects on companies because they might hold lots of assets in the form of treasuries but they need to convert them to dollars to pay their employees or suppliers and need to sell treasuries for that. The repo facility of the FED is a buyer (or seller) of last resort that can hand out dollars for treasuries thus ensuring that there's no shortage of dollars.
> On top of this factor, this move by the fed surely will push inflation higher and I would assume production would slow given all the virus affects mentioned above.
I don't think this will push inflation higher. This is not QE (though there is a meme that it is) where the FED buys treasuries (and MBS) outright and holds them until expiry. If a bank sells treasuries to the repo facility then it will have to buy them back until a pre-determined date. So if the repo facility works it will compress the spread in the treasury market and thus reduce funding costs for banks and ensure that enough dollars are around. Right now it seems like lots of companies are hoarding cash and drawing close to the full amount of their credit lines which means banks are short dollars. Because most of these credit lines will probably be used to fund ongoing operations (pay employees, etc.) or bridge a shortfall in revenues they are unlikely to cause companies to invest more or hire more and drive up prices.
Christine Lagarde today announced TLTRO III (https://www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/implement/omo/tltro/html/inde...) which serves the same purpose. Helping companies and households to survive a shortfall in income. In short, you don't want to have a bunch of companies going bankrupt just because the economy stopped for a couple of months - the bureaucratic costs and resulting uncertainty for consumers would be much too costly.
From my understanding the US treasury market is the most liquid and largest market for any asset in the world. Up until recently these treasuries had a positive real interest rate, so if you are a corporation with large amounts of cash (typically a bank) you don't want to hold this as cash in a banking account but rather you want to hold treasuries and get a small return. If there aren't enough people trading treasuries anymore and liquidity dries up this can have devastating effects on companies because they might hold lots of assets in the form of treasuries but they need to convert them to dollars to pay their employees or suppliers and need to sell treasuries for that. The repo facility of the FED is a buyer (or seller) of last resort that can hand out dollars for treasuries thus ensuring that there's no shortage of dollars.
> On top of this factor, this move by the fed surely will push inflation higher and I would assume production would slow given all the virus affects mentioned above.
I don't think this will push inflation higher. This is not QE (though there is a meme that it is) where the FED buys treasuries (and MBS) outright and holds them until expiry. If a bank sells treasuries to the repo facility then it will have to buy them back until a pre-determined date. So if the repo facility works it will compress the spread in the treasury market and thus reduce funding costs for banks and ensure that enough dollars are around. Right now it seems like lots of companies are hoarding cash and drawing close to the full amount of their credit lines which means banks are short dollars. Because most of these credit lines will probably be used to fund ongoing operations (pay employees, etc.) or bridge a shortfall in revenues they are unlikely to cause companies to invest more or hire more and drive up prices.
Christine Lagarde today announced TLTRO III (https://www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/implement/omo/tltro/html/inde...) which serves the same purpose. Helping companies and households to survive a shortfall in income. In short, you don't want to have a bunch of companies going bankrupt just because the economy stopped for a couple of months - the bureaucratic costs and resulting uncertainty for consumers would be much too costly.