Can Treasury buybacks become a tool for influencing financial conditions?
Core argument: Treasury plans to issue slightly more debt at each auction and use a portion of the proceeds to buy back older securities, tilting the composition of outstanding Treasuries toward more liquid new issues.
Treasury plans to issue a bit more debt at each auction with the understanding a portion of the proceeds would be used to purchase old debt. In effect, the composition of Treasuries outstanding would be tilted towards the more liquid new issues. The program could one day be deployed to influence monetary conditions. For example, Treasury could effectively ease financial conditions by issuing short dated debt to purchase longer dated debt. There is no indication of this today, but treasuries and the central banks do not always have the same goal, and conflicts between the two are common in history.

