Australia's Central Bank Says It Is Bust. Wait… WHAT?! And so it begins (realmoney.thestreet.com)

After the Australian fiscal year ended in June, the Reserve Bank of Australia marked its bond holdings to market – wiping out all its reserves.

The central bank of Australia on Wednesday made the astonishing admission that it is, basically, bust. Its entire equity has been wiped out by pandemic-related bond buying.

Of course, the Reserve Bank of Australia is a central bank, and can print money. So it can work its way out of a situation that would bankrupt a conventional bank or company.

Still, as the U.S. Federal Reserve meets today on interest rates, it’s an interesting insight into the challenges other central bankers face as they attempt to reconcile Covid stimulus with post-Covid inflation and economic emergence.

The RBA began its bond-purchase program in November 2020 as a second stimulus package in response to the pandemic. The first round of measures saw it slash rates to record lows, and set up a term funding facility offering cheap three-year funding to banks. For the bond buying, the central bank bought Australian government bonds and semi-government securities in the secondary market to lower interest rates on bonds maturing between five and 10 years out.

The program was extended, and extended, and extended yet again. Ultimately, the RBA bought A$281 billion (US$188 billion) in national, state and territory government bonds.

Now the bill has come due.

The RBA will announce its full-year results for the Australian fiscal year through June 30 in a month or so. But they won’t be pretty.

The central bank has had to mark the value of its holdings to market, resulting in a A$44.9 billion (US$30.0 billion) valuation loss. Offset by A$8.2 billion (US$5.5 billion) in underlying earnings from the central bank’s holdings, and it is posting a net loss of A$36.7 billion (US$24.5 billion).

That has exhausted the bank’s A$15.4 billion reserve fund and A$8.4 billion in other reserves, and then some. So the RBA is in negative equity to the tune of A$12.4 billion (US$8.3 billion).

“If any commercial entity had negative equity, assets would be insufficient to meet liabilities, and therefore the company would not be a going concern,” RBA Deputy Governor Michele Bullock explains in outlining the central bank’s situation. “But central banks are not like commercial entities.”

The RBA has a government guarantee against its liabilities, meaning “there are no going concern issues with a central bank in a country like Australia,” she says by way of reassurance. And of course the central bank can simply print more money, so “the Bank can continue to meet its obligations as they become due and so is not insolvent. The negative equity position will, therefore, not affect the ability of the Reserve Bank to do its job.”

A license to print money to get out of that kind of problem is never, however, going to be good news for your currency. And indeed, the Aussie dollar has lost 13.6% of its value against the U.S. dollar since early April. Look back 18 months, and the decline in what some Aussies joking call the “Pacific peso” is 19.5%.

It’s a far cry, with US$1 now buying you A$1.50, from 2013, when the Aussie dollar briefly rose above parity to become stronger than its U.S. counterpart. However, the Australian government was forced to inject cash into the central bank in 2013 because it had suffered losses on its foreign-currency reserves. The RBA notes it’s not requesting any cash injection now.

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Posted by freeeric

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