Federal Reserve's $4 trillion rescue helps hedge funds

NEW YORK: Deepak Narula’s mortgage-bond fund is up 39% this year. George Sanchez’s monthly annuity payout is down 41%.

The near-zero interest rate the Federal Reserve charges financial firms, as well as securities purchases that will balloon the central bank’s balance sheet to almost $4 trillion next year, have made it easier for Narula’s $1.6 billion fund to thrive and more difficult for Sanchez, a former college library director, to enjoy retirement.

Chairman Ben S Bernanke’s efforts to energise the US economy since 2008 have been credited with rousing the housing market from a sixyear funk, lowering the jobless rate and putting more money in the pockets of both mortgage lenders and borrowers.

At the same time, Fed policy has been blamed for starving savers of income and boosting certain asset prices, widening the gap between the rich and the rest of the country, said Joseph E Stiglitz, the Nobel Prizewinning Columbia University economist.

“Monetary policy has been indirectly, surreptitiously helping the top and hurting the bottom,” Stiglitz said. Fed officials declined to comment for this story on whether their policies exacerbated inequality, said Barbara Hagenbaugh, a spokeswoman for the US central bank. Bernanke said last year that the Fed aims “strictly to do what’s in the interest of the broad public.”

He said last week that the policies are intended to “try and create a stronger economy, more jobs, so that folks across the country, including places like the one where I grew up, will have more opportunity to have better lives for themselves.” Earnings rose 5.5% last year for the 1.2 million households whose incomes put them in the top 1% of the US, according to estimates from the US Census Bureau.

At the same time, income fell 1.7% for the 97 million households in the bottom 80% — those making less than $101,583. After two rounds of asset purchases totaling $2.3 trillion through June 2011, the central bank began so-called QE3 in September.

QE stands for “quantitative easing”, in which the Fed buys securities to channel cash into the system. The goal is to stimulate spending and boost lending, which is meant to generate more jobs. Bernanke said last week the central bank will purchase $85 billion of assets amonth next year “to increase the nearterm momentum of the economy.”

That would bring its balance sheet to almost $4 trillion, up from $924 billion on September 10, 2008, the week before the collapse of Lehman Brothers deepened the recession. The Fed’s mortgage-securities purchases have bolstered demand, and the possibility of profit, for fund managers such as Narula. Hedge funds that handle mortgage securities have a 20% gain on average this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.