WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Data from the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) showed on Thursday that the central bank increased its holdings of the U.S. Treasury securities after it announced an early conclusion of its "Balance Sheet Normalization" process.
For the week ending Aug. 21, the average daily figure of Fed holdings of the U.S. Treasury securities rose by 5,151 million U.S. dollars to 2,085,859 million dollars.
The majority of the U.S. Treasury securities that the Fed holds were longer term securities issued by the U.S. government like Treasury notes and Treasury bonds, which totaled 1,942,540 million dollars, according to the Fed.
The U.S. Federal Reserve purchased government-issued securities and other securities like Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from the market in order to boost the money supply and encourage lending and investment after the 2008 financial crisis.
Commonly known as "Quantitative Easing," the unconventional monetary policy left the central bank with a massive holding of securities and MBS, providing more liquidity to the U.S. financial market to counter the headwind of crisis.
Meanwhile, the data also showed that the central bank decreased its holding of the MBS. The average daily figure of MBS holdings dropped 7,524 million dollars to 1,504,938 million dollars, for the week ending Aug. 21.
