Primary Dealers (JPM and such) sell 75% of last Treasury bond auction on May 26th back to the Fed.

For those who care what is happening behind the scenes even as everyone continues to predict there will be no snags associated with the transition from a QE2 to a non-QE2 world, should look at this brief analysis. On May 26 the Treasury issued $29 billion in 7 Year bonds (Cusip QQ6)- the auction was considered a smashing success by all with the Bid To Cover coming at a record high 3.24 Bid To Cover, and pricing 2 bps inside of the When Issued: an indication of massive demand. Dealers were allocated $11.4 billion and as Stone McCarthy reported: "The $62.3 billion Dealer bid was up from $54.7 billion last month and it was the largest Dealer bid since February 2010." So far so good right? Here is what happened next. On June 1, barely a day after the bonds had settled, Dealers shipped $5.393 billion right back to the Fed (making who knows how much in "fees" in the process) in that day's POMO. And today, just a week after the last 7 year targeting POMO, Dealers sold another $3.168 billion to Brian Sack. Total tally: $8.561 billion monetized by the New York Fed in less than two weeks following the auction. Simply stated: the Dealers' unprecedented interest  in the auction... was transitory. Just two weeks later, theDealers have flipped back 75% of their entire position in the latest 7 Year On The Run bond. And this is the kind of sleight of hand that allows the Treasury to represent success after success in bond auctions, only to allow the Fed to do the backdoor switcheroo literally hours later, and compensate the conning Dealers for fooling the marks: in this case US taxpayers, naive believers that there is actual interest in US Paper, and of course China and other foreign investors who bought $13.8 billion of the same auction. What happens when Dealers are unable to flip up to 75% of any given bond back to the Fed in under two weeks: stay tuned and find out in precisely 3 weeks.