On Friday, Bloomberg wrote "FDIC Bank-Fee Change May Drive Near-Zero Short-Term Interest Rates Lower". The article said, "A planned change in deposit insurance fees for U.S. banks may lower already near-zero short-term interest rates, according to strategists at Barclays Plc, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and the Royal Bank of Canada. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. proposed broadening the base for deposit insurance fees to banks' liabilities, rather than domestic deposits. The plan is designed to fund depositor protection while shifting the burden to larger lenders whose reliance on riskier funding may pose greater threats to the financial system. Increased FDIC fees may cut into banks' interest income and drive money market rates lower, the strategists said. The volume weighted average for overnight fed funds, the so-called effective rate, may slide by as much as 0.1 percentage point if the FDIC change is implemented, according to Wrightson ICAP LLC, a Jersey City, New Jersey research unit of ICAP Plc." Bloomberg added, "Even lower short-term interest rates will potentially make it even harder for the $2.8 trillion money-market fund industry to retain customer assets. The FDIC changes will add to catalysts for lower money-market rates, chiefly the Fed siphoning of about $1 trillion in Treasuries from the market through its debt purchases by June, according to New-York based Brian Smedley, a strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, a unit of Bank of America Corp."
