Open Market Operations - Explained
What is Open Market Operations?
Written by J. Mance Gordon
Updated at April 23rd, 2024
- Marketing, Advertising, Sales & PR
- Accounting, Taxation, and Reporting
- Professionalism & Career Development
-
Law, Transactions, & Risk Management
Government, Legal System, Administrative Law, & Constitutional Law Legal Disputes - Civil & Criminal Law Agency Law HR, Employment, Labor, & Discrimination Business Entities, Corporate Governance & Ownership Business Transactions, Antitrust, & Securities Law Real Estate, Personal, & Intellectual Property Commercial Law: Contract, Payments, Security Interests, & Bankruptcy Consumer Protection Insurance & Risk Management Immigration Law Environmental Protection Law Inheritance, Estates, and Trusts
- Business Management & Operations
- Economics, Finance, & Analytics
What are Open Market Operations?
The most common monetary policy tool in the U.S. is open market operations.These take place when the central bank sells or buys U.S. Treasury bonds in order to influence the quantity of bank reserves and the level of interest rates. The specific interest rate targeted in open market operations is the federal funds rate. The name is a bit of a misnomer since the federal funds rate is the interest rate that commercial banks charge making overnight loans to other banks. As such, it is a very short term interest rate, but one that reflects credit conditions in financial markets very well.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) makes the decisions regarding these open market operations. The FOMC comprises seven members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. It also includes five voting members who the Board draws, on a rotating basis, from the regional Federal Reserve Banks. The New York district president is a permanent FOMC voting member and the Board fills other four spots on a rotating, annual basis, from the other 11 districts. The FOMC typically meets every six weeks, but it can meet more frequently if necessary. The FOMC tries to act by consensus; however, the Federal Reserve's chairman has traditionally played a very powerful role in defining and shaping that consensus. For the Federal Reserve, and for most central banks, open market operations have, over the last few decades, been the most commonly used tool of monetary policy.
A central bank has the power to create money. In truth, the Federal Reserve creates the money to purchase the bonds out of thin air—or with a few clicks on some computer keys.
Open market operations can also reduce the quantity of money and loans in an economy.
In practical terms, a bank can easily reduce its quantity of loans. At any given time, a bank is receiving payments on loans that it made previously and also making new loans. If the bank just slows down or briefly halts making new loans, and instead adds those funds to its reserves, then its overall quantity of loans will decrease. A decrease in the quantity of loans also means fewer deposits in other banks, and other banks reducing their lending as well, as the money multiplier that we discussed in Money and Banking takes effect.
Related Topics
- Legal Tender
- Numismatics
- Gresham's Law
- Barter
- Double Coincidence of Wants
- Parity
- Functions of Money
- Medium of Exchange
- Unit of Account
- Store of Value
- Time Value of Money
- Standard of Deferred Payment
- Liquidity Preference Theory
- National Savings and Investment Identity
- Circular Flow of Money
- Commodity Money
- Gold Exchange Standard
- Bretton Woods System
- Fiat Money
- Money Supply
- M1 and M2 Money Supply
- Monetary Base
- Savings, Demand, and Time Deposits
- Banks
- How Do Banks Create Money?
- Financial Intermediary
- Bank Balance Sheet
- Money Multiplier Formula
- Velocity of Money
- Multiplier Effect
- Quantity Equation of Money
- McCallum Rule
- Neutrality of Money
- Real Bills Theory
- Banking System?
- Central Bank
- Federal Reserve System
- Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)
- Fed Balance Sheet
- Term Auction Facility
- Taylor Rule
- How is the Federal Reserve Bank Organized?
- What is Bank Regulation?
- CAMELS Rating
- FDIC
- CFPB
- Bank Supervision
- Bank Runs
- What is Deposit Insurance?
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
- Lender of Last Resort
- Central Banks Carry Out Monetary Policy
- Open Market Operations
- Bank Reserve
- Discount Rate
- Federal Funds Rate
- Monetary Policy
- Contractionary and Expansionary Monetary Policy
- Loose vs Tight Monetary Policy
- Easy Monetary Policy
- Accommodative Monetary Policy
- Dove & Hawk (Monetary Policy) - Explained
- Tight Monetary Policy - Explained
- Stabilization Policy
- Pushing on a String
- The Effect of Monetary Policy on Interest Rates
- Federal Funds Rate
- Gibson Paradox
- Vasicek Interest Rate Model
- Equation of Exchange (Economics)
- The Effect of Monetary Policy on Aggregate Demand
- Quantitative Easing
- Reserve Currency
- What are Excess Reserves?
- Unpredictable Movements of Velocity
- Central Banks - Unemployment and Inflation
- Inflation Targeting
- Fisher Effect
- Asset Bubbles and Leverage Cycles
- Countercyclical
- Money Capital Market
- Quantity Theory of Money
- Aggregate Expenditure Model
- IS-LM Model
- European Capital Market Institute