MNI BRIEF: Treasury Reforms Could Impact Fed Operations -Logan

Potential U.S. Treasury market reforms including central clearing of trades could prove significant enough to influence the Fed's desk operations over time, a senior official for the New York Fed said Thursday.

"These could ultimately merit a study of the costs and benefits of central clearing for some of the Desk's open market operations to ensure their ongoing effectiveness," Lorie Logan, an executive vice president in the Markets Group at the New York Fed, said in prepared remarks to the Money Marketeers of New York University.

The first group of banks will be able to participate in the Fed's new domestic standing repo facility early next year, she said. The standing repo facility was announced in July, along with a repo facility for foreign and international monetary authorities. Such moves are "working as intended to support control over the federal funds rate and other short-term interest rates," she said. Logan also stressed that "these new repo facilities are only intended to act as occasional backstops."