U.S. Budget and Economy

Each week, the Federal Reserve posts the current release of Release H.4.1. at this link . This release is titled Factors Affecting Reserve Balances and shows the current numbers from what is commonly called the Federal Reserve Balance Sheet. There is a description of the Federal Reserve Balance Sheet at Econbrowser . In addition to the weekly release, the Federal Reserve posts historical data going back to December 18, 2002 . Tables 1 through 7 contain the weekly averages and tables 8 through 14 contain the corresponding data for each Wednesday. The weekly averages are the data that is most often referenced in the weekly H.4.1 release and elsewhere so that is what I look at in the remainder of this post. The following graph shows the composition of assets on the Federal Reserve Balance Sheet from 2003 through 2008: The actual numbers and sources for this and the following graph can be found at this link . As can be seen, the total assets rose slowly but steadily through 2007 and...