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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/September 2019 events in the U.S. repo market/archive1

< Wikipedia:Featured article candidates
The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 31 January 2022 [1].

September 2019 events in the U.S. repo market edit

Nominator(s): JBchrch talk 19:18, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a sudden and unexpected problem that affected a critical channel of the world’s financial plumbing one beautiful morning. This channel is called the "overnight repo market" and it involves big institutions trading $1 trillion per day. On September 17, 2019, it clogged up, and no one—from the Wall Street big shots to the Fed’s mathematicians—understood why. This is their story. JBchrch talk 19:18, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Image review edit

  • Image review licensing looks OK (t · c) buidhe 22:20, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Other issues: The article has too many short, stubby paragraphs. (t · c) buidhe 22:20, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Attempted to fix [2]. Let me know if the problem persists. JBchrch talk 23:01, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Support from Kavyansh.Singh edit

Completely non-expert review

  • "On the morning of September 17, 2019" — Well, morning where? Mention the time zone
  • Added "morning (ET)". Is it sufficient?
  • Not really, in fact it would probably be slightly confusing. Removed.
  • 'Secured Overnight Financing Rate' and 'Effective Federal Funds Rate' are not repeated in the lead. Do we need to define their acronyms?
  • The acronyms are used in the graph on the right and in its caption. I could write Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) and Effective Federal Funds Rate (EFFR) in the caption, but it would make it significantly longer. What do you think?
  • Federal Reserve over-linked in the lead.
  • Fixed.
  • "Subsequently, economists identified" → "Economists later identified"
  • Fixed.
  • "Other contributing factors have been" → "Other contributing factors have also been"
  • Done
  • "takes place "overnight"" — Why is it quoted
  • Because the term is used in a very specific technical meaning, and I wanted to draw the reader's attention to that. CMOS 17 § 7.57 is sort of lukewarm about doing this though, so I'm open to removing them if you feel like it's clear from the context that the word is used in an unusual way.
  • I'm not sure that using quotation marks is appropriate for emphasis, especially on Wikipedia. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 10:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "to as “repos”" — Why is it quoted (MOS:QUOTEPOV says quoting single-words may imply doubt)? Moreover, if it has to be quoted, the curly quoted needs to be fixed (“ to ")
  • Removed, since the "referred to as" already serves the purposes of the quotation marks.
  • "First, the borrower sells her securities to the lender and receives cash in exchange." — I am not asking to change anything, but am curious about the usage of 'her'. Better would be a gender-neutral term term like 'their'. Same in the next sentence. That being said, I don't have strong feelings towards any pronouns you use here.
  • I considered using the singular they, but I found that it affected the clarity of the sentence, especially since loans involving multiple lenders are extremely prevalent in investment banking. CMOS 17 § 5.255 outlines a number of techniques to achieve gender neutrality, but I don't think anyone of them would really work here. Accordingly, I prefer using "he" or "she"—and since all the finance books, articles and case studies have been using masculine pronouns for the last 200 years, "she" mixes things up a bit 🙃.
  • Seems reasonable, but I'll be interested to hear what other reviewers think ... – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 10:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "in this market... could quickly" — add a non-breaking space before the ellipsis
  • Done
  • "the Bank of New York Mellon, provides" — our article calls it just BNY Mellon. Suggesting to use the common name.
  • Done
  • Done
  • "According to Frederic Mishkin and Stanley Eakins," — who are these both individuals? economists? specify
  • Done
  • ""federal funds have nothing to do with the federal ..." — if this quote is taken from their book, then it should be specified like: "In their 2015 book, economists Frederic Mishkin and Stanley Eakins wrote that ..."
  • I'm having a little trouble with this. Since Mishkin is an economist and Eakins is a finance professor (there is no shorter term for non-economist finance profs to the best of my knowledge), the sentence is already slightly longer, per the previous comment. If we want to identify the book with precision, we would have to say that it's the "8th global edition" or the "2015 global edition" of their textbook. If we try to add this information to the text, I feel like it's really starting to affect the readability of the sentence and the clarity of the information. Let me know what you think.
  • Fine. I think having a citation at the end of the sentence linking to the book is enough for curious readers. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 10:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Done
  • 'EFFR' should be defined in the lead as well
  • I've attempted something here. Is it better?
  • Sorry, I wasn't clear (and partly wrong here ...) I wanted you to change "The measure of the interest rate on federal funds is the Effective Federal Funds Rate, which is" to "The measure of the interest rate on federal funds is the Effective Federal Funds Rate (EFFR), which is" (added acronym as well as liked) – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 10:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "were considered to be quite stable." — by whom?
  • Removed, as both sources state it as fact, and so can we.
  • "2—2.25%" – should be en-dash (–)
  • Done
  • "On the morning of Tuesday, September 17," — same as the lead; morning in which time zone? Also check through the entire article.
  • More important question: why do we need to mention 'morning', 'afternoon' every time. Will removing them cause any harm? (sorry if I am missing something here, but again, this is a completely non-expert review ) – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 10:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • No problem, I don't think you're missing anything important due to your "non-expertise" :). I have now removed the mention in the lead, as it was mainly a stylistic choice to introduce the subject and add a bit of drama, but clearly that was creating more problems. In #Event, the important thing is that readers should get the timeline of how the day of September 17 played out. The problem is that my sources only mention the "morning" and "afternoon" without giving specific times. I could try to see if I can find an access to the Thompson Reuters Tick History database which would give me precise hours for the moment of the spike (6 AM? 7:30 AM?) and allow me to introduce a bit of variety in the wording. Do you think that it would be helpful? JBchrch talk 20:41, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you can find appropriate sources, then no issues. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 09:27, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (or New York Fed) — (1) Federal Reserve Bank of New York is already linked before (2) we need to mention 'New York Fed' on Federal Reserve Bank of New York's previous instance?
  • I wanted to relink it and introduce the abbreviation here because the NY Fed is only mentioned as a brief aside in the #The repo market section, whereas here it takes the center stage. What do you think?
  • Well, this approach might work, but there is no harm in specifying 'New York Fed' on Federal Reserve Bank of New York's previous instance – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 10:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Would you mind clarifying this? Should the I say the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (or New York Fed) two times, first in #The repo market and then again in #Response by the Federal Reserve? JBchrch talk 04:49, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "At 9 AM," — Add a non-breaking space between 9 and AM. Same for "8:15 AM" and other instances.
  • Done
  • "New York Fed’s" — Fix the curly quote mark.
  • Done
  • Removed
  • "was borrowed from the New York Fed by market participants.[15][26][a]" v. "All three operations were fully subscribed.[b][15][27]" (i.e. article needs to be consistent whether footnote would be after the references or before the references)
  • Fixed, moved before
  • " “sustained smooth functioning” " — the curly quoted needs to be fixed (“ to ")
  • Done
  • "First, quarterly" → "First, the quarterly"
  • I'm not sure about this one. Could you please confirm? Both of my sources use a very similar terminology and omit the "the".
  • ""[a] substantial share of ..." — the prose doesn't makes it clear who said this quote
  • Fixed
  • "The temporary cash shortage is nevertheless insufficient" — suggesting to remove 'nevertheless'
  • I would prefer to keep it in if that's ok for you, as removing it would make the transition slightly abrupt IMO.
  • The first time, the link is through the "MBS" acronym ("Agency MBS"). I am concerned that a reader wanting to go Mortgage-backed security would not find it. An alternative would be to spell out the first occurrence of the term ("Agency mortgage-backed securities"), but these securities are widely called "Agency MBS", and I wanted to preserve that. Let me know what you think.
  • I decided to just dump the abbreviation, and use "mortgage-backed security" throughout. Accordingly, removed the second wikilink. JBchrch talk 18:32, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "According to JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon," → "According to Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase,"
  • Done
  • "Indeed, some economists" — Suggesting to remove 'Indeed' (in my opinion, it makes it appear like a news-article than an encyclopedia article)
  • Done
  • " "even small changes in the supply ..." — the prose doesn't makes it clear who said this quote
  • The problem is that adding "according to Sam Schulhofer-Wohl" sort of makes it seem as if it's his opinion, when it's just him describing an uncontroversial fact. Since WP:MOS#Attribution doesn't mandate in-text attribution in these circumstances, could we leave it as it is?
  • Do we need footnote [b]?
  • I felt that "All three operations were fully subscribed", while the technically correct terminology, is pretty much obscure financial jargon to most readers, and that we could help them out a little.
  • Fine, but I'll suggest to remove "In other words" from the footnote (in my opinion, makes it a bit un-encyclopedic/informal. Also, add a citation in the footnote [b]. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 10:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since we have to introduce the sentence, I changed "in other words" to "which means". Does that work? I don't really have a citation for footnote b, it's just the plain meaning of what the Fed source means by "subscribed", stripped of its jargon. What I will try to do is try to find a source that explains what "subscription" means in a financial context (which might be a dictionary). JBchrch talk 20:50, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "According to Afonso et al." — suggesting to use Template:harvnb to directly link it to the work. Same with footnote [d]
  • To the best of my knowledge, harvnb returns an author-date format, and its usage outside of a reference (<ref></ref>) is deprecated. Maybe there's something that I'm not aware of but, based on what I know, the only way to implement this suggestion would be through an anchor.
  • Inconsistency in sources listing "The Wall Street Journal" v. "Wall Street Journal".
  • Fixed.
  • "p. 452-453", "p. 6-7", "p. 302-303", "p. 18-20", etc. — there are a lot of instances of the same. (1) the dashes needs to be en-dashes (–) (2) I have no strong feelings, but page ranges should use 'pp.' instead of 'p.'. That being said, all we still need in consistency. Wikipedia doesn't mandate a paricular style.
  • Fixed the dashes. Not a fan of the "pp." notation, so I prefer to keep "p." if that's ok.
  • Some sources have the publisher/media outlet linked, some not (needs to be consistent)
  • I think that it is okay as long as it is consistent. We don't (and shouldn't) mandate a citation style. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 10:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Kavyansh.Singh Would you mind explaining the change from the "work" parameter to the "publisher" parameter [3]? It resulted in Reuters and Bloomberg not being italicized. JBchrch talk 18:49, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure. I made that change with the intention to remove the italics from those works, as even the titles of our Wikipedia articles of Reuters and Bloomberg News are not italicized. Any outstanding source formatting issues would likely be fixed during the source review of this nomination. Thanks! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 19:03, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Washington, DC" → "Washington, D.C."
  • Done
  • Suggesting to format the ISBNs using this tool
  • Done
  • Just a question: What is more commonly used, "U.S. repo market" or "United States repo market"?
  • "U.S. repo market" is most commonly used, and it would be surprising to read "United States" or "American" outside of vulgarization texts. See e.g. the first sentence here, which refers to the "U.S. money market". Here and here we find "US this" and "US that" all over. Beyond the scope of this article, I found usage of "U.S. repo market" here and here. There may be some WP:SSF about this, but I thought it was the most reasonable title. I should also note that in a lot of publications—news and scholarly alike—, the U.S. repo market is designated just as "the repo market", without specifying "U.S." (by contrast to other markets, which are designated as "the European repo market" etc.).

Except these minor issues, the article is an interesting one. Nice work! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 11:00, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much for your thorough review and your comments. Let me know if I understood your suggestions correctly and your thoughts on the few points that need to be worked out. Thanks again! JBchrch talk 05:34, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@JBchrch – Have left a few replies above. Thanks to you for writing this article! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 10:10, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I support this nomination for promotion as a featured article. The few comments/nitpicks above don't effect my support. Thanks for your work here! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 09:27, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot @Kavyansh.Singh! I'm not forgetting that there are still comments above that need to be addressed, and I'll make sure to do that later or this week-end (for the ones that require me to find sources). JBchrch talk 17:39, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Gog the Mild edit

Nice topic, Recusing to review. I will do a little light copy editing as I go. If you don't like or don't understand a change, could you flag that up here?

  • Multiple P/pp errors in the References section. Eg cites 6, 7, ... 54, 55.
  • Fixed (if I understood the concern correctly) [4] JBchrch talk 11:32, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sources: Armour et al - first name for Davies?
  • Fixed. Suprised I didn't catch it before. JBchrch talk 21:21, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "which injected $75 billion in liquidity in the repo markets". Suggest 'which injected $75 billion in liquidity into the repo markets'.
  • "a temporary shortage in the level of cash available". Does "in the level" add anything?
  • "exacerbated by the declining level of reserves". Delete "the".
  • "Other contributing factors have also been suggested by economists and observers." Delete "also". (Implicit in "Other".)
  • Removed. It had been added per the review above, but I agree that it's not a necessity. JBchrch talk 22:54, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "BNY Mellon". "When an abbreviation will be used in an article, first introduce it using the full expression".
  • I initially wrote "Bank of New York Mellon" but the review above suggested that I use the COMMONNAME "BNY Mellon" as established by our article. Maybe a compromise could be "This segment is called "tri-party" because a third party, the bank BNY Mellon..."? JBchrch talk 21:32, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If that is the common name, then fine. But yes, giving a reader an in line idea of what something is is usually good.
That's done.
  • "Contrary to repos, however, federal funds are unsecured." I suspect this is USEng. It may be more universally understandable as 'Unlike repos, however, federal funds are unsecured.' And does "however" add anything?
  • "On the morning (ET)". ET in full at first mention.
  • "a sudden and unexpected hike"." I am not sure how general the use of "hike" is. Suggest 'increase'.
  • "9 AM". "Twelve-hour clock times are written in one of two forms: 11:15 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., or 11:15 am and 2:30 pm. Include a non-breaking space."
  • Fixed (there was already a nbsp per the review above) JBchrch talk 11:11, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • You suddenly introduce Agency securities and Agency mortgage-backed securities without explaining what they are. And why the initial "A"?
  • The initial A was lifted from the New York Fed document, but I see that the Federal Reserve note omits them, so removed. I have to get back to you later on the substantial issue of how to best introduce these things, as this is a sourcing problem. JBchrch talk 11:25, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Gog the Mild: Ok so I have Fabozzi, Frank J.; Jones, Frank J. (2019). Foundations of Global Financial Markets and Institutions (5th ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. saying that The collateral in a repo can be money market instruments, Treasury securities, federal agency securities, mortgage-backed securities, asset-backed securities, or a pool of loans.. This would allow me to complete a sentence in #The repo market as follows: "In this context, the repurchased securities are most often Treasury securities[5][9], but can also be agency securities and mortgage-backed securities.[Fabozzi & Jones]" Do you think that this would add sufficient context to avoid their abrupt introduction? If so, I would just need to wait until the libraries I have access to reopen in early January in order to get the specific page of the quote, because all I was able to get is an epub (legally, of course) that does not have the pages mapped out. Also, and most importantly: happy holidays, and best wishes to you and your close ones! ❄️🎅 JBchrch talk 22:25, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much, and the same to you and yours. That looks good to me. I would prefer a footnote as well, briefly explaining what an agency security is, per "Do not unnecessarily make a reader chase links: if a highly technical term can be simply explained with very few words, do so." But if you prefer not to that's acceptable IMO.
Done, expect for the footnote, which is pending (and the Fabozzi page numbers, which will have to wait a little more). JBchrch talk 11:12, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Done for the footnote [6]. JBchrch talk 11:29, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "immediately returned to numbers closer to the Federal Reserve's target range." What does "numbers" add to this?
  • Removed. Also made slight changes to the whole sentence. [7]. JBchrch talk 10:34, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

More to follow. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:28, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for accepting to review @Gog the Mild! Just a note that I might be less responsive than I would like to be until Wednesday, due to to COVID-related disruption. JBchrch talk 15:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not a problem.
  • "... seemed to stem from a temporary increase in the demand for cash and, at the same time, a temporary decline in the supply of cash ..." It may be me, but I am not seeing what "at the time" means in this context.
  • I am trying to underline that both the increase in the demand and the decline in the supply happened simultaneously. Would replacing "at the same time" with "simultaneously" be an improvement? JBchrch talk 22:51, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. Maybe '... seemed to stem from a temporary increase in the demand for cash and a simultaneous temporary decline in its supply ...'?
Done as suggested. JBchrch talk 10:24, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The temporary cash shortage is insufficient to explain the size of the movements observed in September 2019. Accordingly, the effects of ...". Perhaps getting a little unencyclopedic? Maybe 'The temporary cash shortage is nevertheless insufficient to explain the intensity of the movements observed. The effects of ...' or similar?
  • Fixed by removing "accordingly" (if I understood the concern correctly) JBchrch talk 12:14, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Seven uses of "however". Are all of them helpful to the reader?
  • Down to 4. However, I do admit that "howevers" are a tic of mine. JBchrch talk 11:18, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The tri-party segment's reliance on established relationships between market participants". How or why might this have been a cause?
  • I have removed this bullet altogether. The WP:TRUTH of it is that if interest rates are suddenly increasing, you would expect every institution on Wall Street to begin lending cash on the repo market pretty quickly, which would have the effects of lowering the rates (more supply of cash). But that cannot take place if market players rely on established relationships and are unwilling to trade with companies they are not familiar with. Looking back at my sources, this causal relationship is not explained as clearly and explicitly as I would like per WP:V and it is preferable to strike it. JBchrch talk 13:07, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I had assumed that was the case (my question was largely rhetorical), but felt an explanation was necessary. A pity about the sources, but fair enough. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:05, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "A general decrease in the amount of repo lending performed by money market funds". "performed" seems an odd word; is their a more felicitous one?
  • I think it can be removed (?), resulting in repo lending by money market funds. Also added some additional info to the sentence [8]. JBchrch talk 10:43, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That is it on a first run through. A great little article. Hopefully the first of many similar to appear here. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:07, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • No rush, but could you ping me once you get to the end? Gog the Mild (talk) 15:25, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Of course 👍. Taking this opportunity to already thank you for your kind comments just above! JBchrch talk 17:05, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Gog the Mild: I think I got to the end. Thanks again! Sorry for the time it took: this last week allowed for less focus-friendly times than I expected. Thanks for your copy-editing: the only thing I don't really understand is the addition of a {{lc}} template in a ref here ({{subst:lc:Repos}} Reflects Liquidity Feast for Dealers"). JBchrch talk 11:35, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ha, me neither. It's a bot, and while I always [usually?] check what bots do as I don't really trust them, I obviously missed this one. Reverted.
It is looking pretty good and so far as I am concerned you tackled my issues in an entirely timely manner. Nice to see high high quality articles on this sort of topic. Supporting. Gog the Mild (talk) 11:53, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Source review – pass edit

  • Add publisher location (Boston) to Mishkin and Eakins. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:09, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The sources used all appear to me to be reliable. I am unable to find any other sources which would materially add to the content of the article. The sources referred to seem to support the text cited, insofar as I have checked them. I found no unattributed close paraphrasing. I consider the sources to be current and everything that I would expect to be cited, is. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:45, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Spot-checks – pass edit

Will do. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 09:28, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Ref#2 — link — 27 instances
    • Ref#2.3 — OK
    • Ref#2.8 — It doesn't mention 9:00 a.m., is that supported by the other two citations?
      • It's supported by Afonso et al. p. 23. I've corrected it to "shortly after 9:00 a.m.".
    • Ref#2.18 — OK, but the comma should be inside the quotes, as the sentence ends there.
      • Fixed.
    • Ref#2.24 — The peak figure is "2.8 trillion", not "2.4 trillion". Both this and this say 2.8 trillion.
      • Thank you that was a typo.
  • Ref#5 — link — 8 instances
    • Ref#5.3 — OK
    • Ref#5.8 — can you give me a quote from the news article. I can't find it.
      • What caused the repo move? No one really knows precisely what happened. But traders pointed to a number of things happening at once that might have caused securities lenders to suddenly be willing to pay far more to get their hands on cash.
For one, Monday marked the deadline for companies to submit their quarterly federal tax payments. That sucked cash out of vehicles like money-market funds as companies transferred it from their accounts to the Treasury. Monday was also the day Treasury Department auctions of $78 billion in debt were scheduled to settle, meaning that $78 billion in cash was turned into securities.
Together, the factors could have “caused a shortage in cash in the system, causing a huge spike in overnight rates,” said Thomas di Galoma, managing director and head of Treasury trading at Seaport Global Holdings, in an email. Another theory: For whatever reason, traders were unprepared for what should’ve been an anticipated crunch in cash. “Term repo rates showed no bump earlier this month to bridge over the obvious one-day pressures that were due on Monday,” writes Jim Vogel, interest-rate strategist at FTN Financial.
  • Ref#4 — I have the same online copy of the book you cite with same ISBN number, but there is nothing except the title "14.4 Risk-Weighting of Assets" on p. 452. Can you confirm?
    • As I said below, I think you have an PDF made from an EPub that doesn't have the original pagination. At p. 452 you should get section "21.2 Wholesale Funding Markets" with the sentence A repo is effectively a form of short-term secured debt collateralized by financial assets. JBchrch talk 14:17, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ref#12 — link — I can't access this, WP:AGF here. But shouldn't this be marked as "|url-access-level=subscription"?
    • I'm happy to give you a quote if you want. BTW, do you want me to mark all paywalled sources as such?
  • Ref#17 — link — 35 instances
    • Ref#17.6 — I can't see 1%/9% figure.
      • It's what Figure 2 represents graphically. You don't get the exact numbers, but you see that the top percentiles of the transactions traded with an enormous difference ("spread") compared to the "baseline" rate that is the IOER (from which you can calculate the intraday repo rate). I don't remember exactly but I must have thought that it was a useful ref. I have no strong views about it and can remove it if you think it's not appropriate.
    • Ref#17.26 — Well, OK
    • Ref#17.27 — OK
    • Ref#17.35 — OK
    • Ref#27 — link — OK
  • Ref#36 — link — OK
  • Ref#47 — link — Yes, OK
  • Ref#52 — link — OK

– Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 10:30, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Kavyansh.Singh. Thank you very much for this. Will get back to you later for the rest, but for Armour and al., I think you have the PDF converted EPub that has not retained the print pagination. Link to Table of contents. JBchrch talk 10:53, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Kavyansh.Singh I think I have replied to all your comments. Thanks again. JBchrch talk 14:17, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you on the pagination issue, might me my fault. I'll still try to take another look and check few other citations in due course, but this is going pretty well! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 19:20, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot! I have the exact same PDF so I guess we both know whose fault it is 😁. JBchrch talk 20:56, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That is what I don't like, when pagination of the books change. But, as you say: "the truth is paywalled but the lies are free"... – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 18:30, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Few more spot-checks:

  • Ref#13 — Half OK. I don't have access to the 8th edition, so cannot confirm the page number. But yeah, that quote is included in the book (I checked preview of the 5th edition), so the fact verification is OK, page verification is WP:AGF
  • 16.1 — OK
  • 22 — It doesn't explicitly says "daily", but "The New York Fed publishes the EFFR for the prior business day on the New York Fed's website at approximately 9:00 a.m."
  • 35 — OK
  • 40 — OK
  • 3.3 — OK

Would be happy to consider this a pass once the Ref#22 issue is fixed. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 18:30, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you @Kavyansh.Singh. I've made the following fix: [9]. Does that work? JBchrch talk 22:36, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Happy to consider this a pass for spot-checks. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 06:57, 9 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Mike Christie edit

This looks to be in excellent shape. I know nothing about this topic, so excuse any misunderstandings on my part. Just a handful of comments.

  • 'Over time, a "confluence of factors" has been suggested by market observers and economists as the causes of the rates hike.' The three word quote is a little ugly and I think unnecessary. How about "Over time, market observers and economists have suggested a combination of several factors as the causes of the rates hike"? The word "factor" isn't enough to require a quote.
  • Agreed and fixed.
  • It would also be nice to rephrase the "[a] substantial share..." quote -- there's nothing about that quote that makes it attractive to keep in its present form.
    I tried (both last year and now) to rephrase this quote, but unfortunately I have been unable to come up with something that wouldn't be WP:CLOSEPARA. So I figured I would simply give credit where credit is due. But if you happen to have an idea of how we could phrase it better, I'm of course happy to consider it.
    Now I think I understand that paragraph a little better, here's a suggestion for a possible rephrasing. How about changing the earlier sentence to be "...meaning that their price was paid by their purchasers, many of whom would have been securities dealers, on this date". Then replace the quote sentence with just "The dealers who had purchased these securities would then normally sell them to their customers, but between..."? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:58, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm sorry Mike but I don't feel like the suggested wording would be an improvement. It seems to me like we would lose a lot of the precision which we get from the Schulhofer-Wohl quote, including the mention that the Treasuries are "gradually" sold to the customers for which—thinking it over once again—there's little room for improvement without entering into CLOSEPARA territory. JBchrch talk 05:12, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Between the moment dealers purchase newly issued Treasury securities and the moment they are able to sell them to customers, they lend the securities on the repo market. Thus, there were more Treasury securities to be financed in the market on September 16, but less cash available to borrowers to purchase them." I don't follow this. The dealers have spent their cash on these securities, so I would have expected that meant they would be short of cash, and hence unable to purchase securities on the repo market, meaning that borrowers would not be able to sell securities to these dealers on the repo market, repurchasing them the next day. But this says they "lend" them on the repo market, which makes it sound like they are the ones temporarily giving up the securities for cash, so they are receiving cash. If that's right, why does it matter that they acquired these securities? I suspect I'm failing to understand the underlying transactions here.
    Yeah, this is complicated topic and my sources do not provide a lot of detail about this, including those that I haven't cited in the article; I've slightly rephrased it to maybe adress part of your concern [10]. If I understand your question correctly, I think the aspect that you are missing is that primary dealers who are in the business of purchasing and reselling Treasury securities from the U.S. government are required to place a bid at Treasuries auctions at reasonably competitive prices [11][12] (p. 9). They can't just say "Bro I'm a bit short on cash at the moment, rain check?". But that is ordinarly not a problem because Treasuries and short term cash are normally interchangeable thanks to the repo market. So, loosely speaking, primary dealers will "use up" their cash reserves to purchase Treasury from the government, and will then use the repo market if they need cash between the purchase (from the government) and the sale (to customers). I debated adding a paragraph on this in the #Background section but decided against it because my sources did not really go in depth about this, and generally take as granted the fact that dealers in Treasury securities were short on cash due to the latest issuance. It would also require an explanation of what primary dealers are, which I think would be beyond the article's scope.
    That is definitely clearer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:58, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Can I just check that the reserves were around $10 billion at the end of 2007? It seems it might be a typo for something like $100 billion, given that reserves of $1.4 trillion are described as "such a low amount of reserves".
    There you go: [13]. You can also see it graphically here at page 4, figure 2.
    That's interesting -- so it looks like the low reserve number is because that's about the point at which reserve requirements were increased, in response to 2007-2008 financial crisis? If so a parenthetical or footnoted comment to that effect would help other readers whose eyebrows go up, as mine did. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:11, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't understand—based on what source do you say that? Liquidity requirements can be met using many different instruments (so-called "high quality liquid assets") and don't require the holding of cash in the form of bank reserves. The source says This increase was mainly due to large-scale asset purchases by the Federal Reserve designed to stimulate the economy when short-term interest rates were very close to zero (Gagnon et al., 2011). As a result, most banks now hold more reserves than needed to satisfy reserve requirements. JBchrch talk 13:30, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Struck; I misunderstood what I was looking at. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:46, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The disappearance of market participants' experience in navigating unexpected interest rates spikes of this kind, which were common prior to the 2007–2008 financial crisis" This is cited as a suggested cause, but how can lack of experience in negotiating an event cause an event? I can see it might exacerbate the event once it had begun.
    What the source says is Some observers also reckon markets just need to regain the experience they once had in navigating short-term markets. Before the financial crisis, it was normal for short-term rates to spike for short and often predictable periods. Market participants were aware of these risks and knew how to navigate them, thus containing any broader risks to the financial system. At the heart of it, this whole affair is about trying (and failing) to get the cash available in the financial system to where it was needed and requested (the repo market). But getting cash to the repo market is not an easy thing, and you need expertise in order to do it. Correa, Du & Liao 2020 sort of touch on the different issues that can arise (albeit in a very technical language). If people don't know how to do it, then markets can experience bad shortages this one. But as I'm re-reading my source, I realize that I may be taking some liberty with the source material by designating as a "cause". What do you think?
    What if we took off the bullet point for that line, and made it something like "Observers have also noted that" instead of calling it a cause? I do think "cause" is the wrong word here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:13, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. I've preferred to remove it altogether. If it can be labelled a cause, then it's not essential to the encyclopedic treatment of this topic. JBchrch talk 23:56, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 05:28, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for your review Mike Christie. Please see my answers above. JBchrch talk 19:50, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've struck one point and left a couple of replies above; the other two I need to think about some more, and I'm out of time this morning. More tonight, or possibly tomorrow. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:14, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I'm not convinced that the quote discussed above can't be effectively paraphrased, but that's a minor point and I see no reason to hold up support for that. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 08:40, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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