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In macroeconomics, an open market operation (OMO) is an activity by a central bank to exchange liquidity in its currency with a bank or a group of banks. The central bank can either transact government bonds and other financial assets in the open market or enter into a repurchase agreement or secured lending transaction with a commercial bank.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is a committee within the Federal Reserve System (the Fed) that is charged under United States law with overseeing the nation's open market operations (e.g., the Fed's buying and selling of United States Treasury securities). [1]
To intervene in the "business cycle", a central bank may choose to go into the open market and buy or sell government bonds, which is known as open market operations to increase reserves. Open Market Operations are when the central bank buys bonds from other banks in exchange for cheques. These local banks then cash the cheques, which allow ...
(The correspondent banks, in turn, credit the dealers’ bank accounts.) In this way, the open market purchase leads to an increase in reserve balances. [19] Conversely, sales of assets by the US central bank reduces reserve balances, which reduces the amount of money available in the financial system for settling transactions between member banks.
The Fed consequently does not determine this rate directly, but has over time used various means to influence the rate. Until the 2007–2008 financial crisis, the Fed relied on open market operations, i.e. selling and buying securities in the open market to adjust the supply of reserve balances so as to keep the FFR close to the Fed's target. [8]
Such firms are required to make bids or offers when the Fed conducts open market operations, provide information to the Fed's open market trading desk, and to participate actively in U.S. Treasury securities auctions. [9] They consult with both the U.S. Treasury and the Fed about funding the budget deficit and implementing monetary policy.
The term OMO is now generally used to support a campaign, often led by the pensions industry and the media, to make sure people know the benefits of shopping around. The majority of people still don’t use the Open Market Option in large part because they don’t know they can or don’t realise the benefits of doing so.
The conduct of monetary policy is influenced significantly by the pace of real economic activity, the fiscal operations of the government, capital inflows and the operations of the commercial banks. These factors impact on liquidity and in turn affect inflation , foreign exchange reserve holdings and the exchange rate .