I am by no means an expert but I thought these repurchase agreements served a different purpose. Lets say that you are Lerrill Mynch. You have 2 clients, today

I am by no means an expert but I thought these repurchase agreements served a different purpose. Lets say that you are Lerrill Mynch. You have 2 clients, today client 1 has $10,000 in AAPL and client 2 has $10,000 in cash. Client 1 decides to sell $10,000 in AAPL and Client 2 decides to buy $10,000 in Ford. You go to the market and find that Soldman Gachs has a client that wants to buy $10,000 in AAPL and MP Jorgan has a client looking to sell $10,000 in Ford. Everyone agrees and everything is happy. Overnight Lerrill Mynch needs to makes sure that Soldman Gachs gets the 10k, Client 1 gets the shares in the security, MP Jorgan gets the 10k and Client 2 gets the Ford shares. In order to make sure that this whole transaction clears, Lerrill Mynch has to make sure that they have enough cash to cover the transaction.