What the Hell Happened?

I’m confident the past couple years will be discussed and dissected by economics students for decades to come.

Here’s just two graphs visualizing the monetary movement that have made my jaw drop:

In both of them, there’s little to no movement for 5 years. Then…WHAM!

It doesn’t really matter what these graphs measuring – the shock is obvious.

jth’s Fed’s borrowing from May 2008:
bank-balances1

Kedrosky’s 30-day commerical paper rates:
a2p2spread_2

If this continues to fall, returning to 2006 rates in the next quarter or so, there will be as much discussion on the quickness of the recovery as there will be on the suddenness of shock itself.