Both of those, however, stemmed from the same thing behind repo, a reminder that September's repo rumble simply punctuated.

To be frank, every year should be the year of repo. But by and large nobody cares because no one can see it. They don't have an immediate reason shoved in their faces for why that would be the case. For the first time since 2008, last year they were given that justification.

And all its attention was squandered – twice – on the wrong part of it. Milton Friedman was exactly right. Because central banks employ most of all the Economists in the world the story is told in the way they want to tell it. For repo, it is always from the perspective of bank reserves as the generalized stand-in for systemic "liquidity."