Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP)
Definition
An emergency lending program created by the Federal Reserve in March 2023 following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. It allowed banks to borrow funds for up to one year by pledging US Treasuries and other qualifying assets as collateral at par value (original purchase price), regardless of current market value. This effectively neutralised the unrealised losses on bank balance sheets.
Why It Matters
The BTFP was a major form of "Stealth QE" — it injected ~$165B of liquidity into the banking system at the peak of the 2023 regional banking crisis. Tracking its drawdown provides insight into whether banks have successfully raised private capital or remain reliant on emergency Fed support.
Related Metrics & Intelligence
Related Concepts
Stealth QE
Liquidity injection mechanisms deployed by central banks that expand money supply without being officially labelled as Quantitative Easing. Historical examples include the Fed's Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP, March 2023 — ~$180B), unscheduled overnight repo operations in September 2019, and the ECB's Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) extensions. The purpose is operational: inject liquidity while maintaining a hawkish public narrative.SOFR (Secured Overnight Financing Rate)
The benchmark US dollar overnight interest rate, computed by the New York Fed as the volume-weighted median rate on overnight Treasury-collateralised repo transactions. SOFR replaced LIBOR as the global reference rate for dollar-denominated interest rate derivatives in 2023. It reflects the true cost of overnight dollar funding in the US financial system.Yield Curve Control (YCC)
A monetary policy tool where a central bank commits to capping long-term interest rates at a specific level by purchasing whatever volume of bonds is necessary to maintain that cap. Japan's Bank of Japan has operated YCC since 2016, targeting 10-year JGB yields near 0%. YCC is effectively a commitment to unlimited bond purchases — a form of permanent QE when markets test the ceiling.Track Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) live
Open the GraphiQuestor terminal for real-time data, provenance, and cross-metric intelligence.